Hell On Earth
Last Sunday I joined a Photo Malaysia Northern Chapter outing to Sungai Kog, in Kulim. We were expecting a great photo op in some unadulterated jungle with stories that it’s teeming with animals and exotic birds. Well, take everything with a pinch of salt I’d say.
We ended up trekking through some really uncharted jungle, led by two guides who hacked their way through all kinds of foliage. But along the way, we were faced with a menace much worse that the unforgiving terrain. Leeches.
Goodness, they were everywhere. Every single step of the way, you could see them moving along the ground looking for their next host to feed on. Some of them were even perched up on leaves waiting to pounce on any unsuspecting mammals…..namely us.
Each one of us had about 30-40 leeches easily, latched on to our legs. Some of them even got up to our bodies. The horrible thing about those suckers is that they inject you with an anti-coagulant which prevents your blood from drying up. So when you yank a leech off, the wound that is left behind will bleed for hours. We were bleeding like slaughtered chickens.
I bet that none of us were thinking about anything remotely related to photography, as we gingerly thread across the trail freshly made by our guide. Some of my friends who weren’t fit enough had trouble keeping up, so after about 2 hours of trekking, we decided to head back. We missed out on seeing the waterfall that we had planned to photograph. Oh forget that! I’m going home!!
During lunch, I discovered that I had transported another two “hitchhikers” with me. That really freaked everyone out. A blot of blood suddenly appeared on my shirt, and then I knew that one of them just finished feasting on me. One of my friends had a patch of blood on his inner thigh. Bad joke, but it looked like he was menstruating.
Well, I’m glad it’s over. At least now I can say that I have grappled with leeches. Hopefully it will be the first and the last I’ll see of that wretched kind.
These are a few of the handful of pictures that we managed to take througout the ordeal....
What's on my mind now? A nice bath, a cold drink.....
Bloody sock, thanks to our squirmy foes.
Team LeechFest 2005.
Thanks to Tse Chien and Kelvin Khor for the pictures :)
We ended up trekking through some really uncharted jungle, led by two guides who hacked their way through all kinds of foliage. But along the way, we were faced with a menace much worse that the unforgiving terrain. Leeches.
Goodness, they were everywhere. Every single step of the way, you could see them moving along the ground looking for their next host to feed on. Some of them were even perched up on leaves waiting to pounce on any unsuspecting mammals…..namely us.
Each one of us had about 30-40 leeches easily, latched on to our legs. Some of them even got up to our bodies. The horrible thing about those suckers is that they inject you with an anti-coagulant which prevents your blood from drying up. So when you yank a leech off, the wound that is left behind will bleed for hours. We were bleeding like slaughtered chickens.
I bet that none of us were thinking about anything remotely related to photography, as we gingerly thread across the trail freshly made by our guide. Some of my friends who weren’t fit enough had trouble keeping up, so after about 2 hours of trekking, we decided to head back. We missed out on seeing the waterfall that we had planned to photograph. Oh forget that! I’m going home!!
During lunch, I discovered that I had transported another two “hitchhikers” with me. That really freaked everyone out. A blot of blood suddenly appeared on my shirt, and then I knew that one of them just finished feasting on me. One of my friends had a patch of blood on his inner thigh. Bad joke, but it looked like he was menstruating.
Well, I’m glad it’s over. At least now I can say that I have grappled with leeches. Hopefully it will be the first and the last I’ll see of that wretched kind.
These are a few of the handful of pictures that we managed to take througout the ordeal....
What's on my mind now? A nice bath, a cold drink.....
Bloody sock, thanks to our squirmy foes.
Team LeechFest 2005.
Thanks to Tse Chien and Kelvin Khor for the pictures :)
posted by Mike Ng at 11:03 AM
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