Alone in Eden.
As one gets older nostalgia becomes almost too painful to bear, and fragile memories are easily shattered. So travelling the route I once came with Kit when he was only sixteen - what a good travelling companion he is. - has not been easy. But with the serendipity of the road I have ended up in an extraordinary place I have not visited before. I have read about The Agricultural Park in Tenom in guide books and tourist brochures and had assumed that it was just that, a kind of experimental farm. It is something of that, but is more a vast and beautiful botanical garden, dotted with lakes and themed gardens of al kinds, including cactus and Japanese. All beautifully kept and spotlessly clean. And I am the only visitor. I tried to book but as I could not get an answer to my emails and texts I just turned up after riding the extraordinary jungle railway to Tenom. I have one of the girls dormitories in a huge ashram and at night I am locked in the park. It is a common childhood fantasy to be locked in a theme park, though perhaps not an educational one, and now in old age it has happened to me. There are no ghostly or criminal goings on as far as I know and instead it is a dark oasis of peace and tranquillity. Unlike the children's fantasy parks at night.
This is the third place of this kind I can remember staying in:
The empty hotel in Jokkmok in the Arctic Winter
The Haunted Hotel near Malang
And now this Agricultural Park.
Now I think of it there was also the hotel in Abisko in Arctic Sweden where T H White -I think it's T H White - set that wonderful story of the tourists eaten by a troll.
I'm glad I road the jungle railway again, it is all being done up with new stations and trains. The stretch from KK to Beaufort is now very smart, but the old broken down train still takes you half way to Tenom and then you are put on a new train; new train, old track, and the new train rattles along swaying like a fairground ride as it follows the river up the steep sided valley into the hills. It is air conditioned! That goes some to destroying the romance of the journey, but even on a new train the journey is still magnificent: the jungle falling in a green tumble down down the sides of the valley and the torrent of brown water pouring down from the mountains of the Crocker Range that you can sometimes glimpse standing like a cloud topped wall in the distance.
But I shall not ride it again, I just want to keep those memories of when it was all old train and I travelled it with Kit. It is best when you are older to seek out new places and new experiences. If you are expecting nothing from them new places cannot disappoint and there is always the possibility they may delight.
Tenom was the place a young girl came up to us and asked if she could 'shake' my son.
As one gets older nostalgia becomes almost too painful to bear, and fragile memories are easily shattered. So travelling the route I once came with Kit when he was only sixteen - what a good travelling companion he is. - has not been easy. But with the serendipity of the road I have ended up in an extraordinary place I have not visited before. I have read about The Agricultural Park in Tenom in guide books and tourist brochures and had assumed that it was just that, a kind of experimental farm. It is something of that, but is more a vast and beautiful botanical garden, dotted with lakes and themed gardens of al kinds, including cactus and Japanese. All beautifully kept and spotlessly clean. And I am the only visitor. I tried to book but as I could not get an answer to my emails and texts I just turned up after riding the extraordinary jungle railway to Tenom. I have one of the girls dormitories in a huge ashram and at night I am locked in the park. It is a common childhood fantasy to be locked in a theme park, though perhaps not an educational one, and now in old age it has happened to me. There are no ghostly or criminal goings on as far as I know and instead it is a dark oasis of peace and tranquillity. Unlike the children's fantasy parks at night.
This is the third place of this kind I can remember staying in:
The empty hotel in Jokkmok in the Arctic Winter
The Haunted Hotel near Malang
And now this Agricultural Park.
Now I think of it there was also the hotel in Abisko in Arctic Sweden where T H White -I think it's T H White - set that wonderful story of the tourists eaten by a troll.
I'm glad I road the jungle railway again, it is all being done up with new stations and trains. The stretch from KK to Beaufort is now very smart, but the old broken down train still takes you half way to Tenom and then you are put on a new train; new train, old track, and the new train rattles along swaying like a fairground ride as it follows the river up the steep sided valley into the hills. It is air conditioned! That goes some to destroying the romance of the journey, but even on a new train the journey is still magnificent: the jungle falling in a green tumble down down the sides of the valley and the torrent of brown water pouring down from the mountains of the Crocker Range that you can sometimes glimpse standing like a cloud topped wall in the distance.
But I shall not ride it again, I just want to keep those memories of when it was all old train and I travelled it with Kit. It is best when you are older to seek out new places and new experiences. If you are expecting nothing from them new places cannot disappoint and there is always the possibility they may delight.
Tenom was the place a young girl came up to us and asked if she could 'shake' my son.