From the jungle to Gothenburg

The jungle has been nothing but amazing. Very hard to do justice in pictures. It is like you expect to stumble over David Attenborough around the next corner. This makes the fishing even harder as you don’t know where to look. It is not just the red mud you see in Paul’s instructional videos. It is walls of all different kind of trees, bushes, flowers and other plants covering the hills and mountains around the lake. There always something moving around in the bushes, sneaking or quite a bit less discrete. The jungle is full of life all the time and even more at night. Quite relaxing when you lay down to sleep and at the same time good to be on the boat. But some of the scarier things can swim. Like the Asian Water Monitor, can grow up to 2-3 meters, thought I did see a crocodile the first time. The tapir isn’t scary but apparently a good swimmer if I read correctly. We probably did see one of those. Half of the body and from behind. Looked quite peculiar. Cute little monkeys, bigger monkeys.  Those big bastards can startle you quite the bit especially when anticipating a shot. 

It took some time to understand that going there is something special and that I had to got there. When I finally did it was beyond my expectations. 

The water doesn’t look the same as in the videos. It looks inviting and at the same time a bit scary as you cannot see what hides in the deep. Stumps emerging from the unknown depths can make you think of monsters in the depths.

And take care when jumping in, it can be a stump there hiding. Or a scary looking stick floating up to you when you take the evening swim in the flood lights of the battleship. Driving the boat around the is much about avoiding these stumps. Some of the stumps you will find with the boat, so if you are standing up have soft knees and always hold on to something. 

The jungle gave me a feeling of living in the TV series Lost. I’ll have to watch a few episodes and see I’m correct. And driving the boat around in the really narrow parts of the lake felt like the book/movie; Where the crawdads sings. The book is better than the movie.

It could be a good idea training your legs a bit before going there to handle standing up for a whole day. Some flexibility can be a good idea also or getting in and out of the battleship will be a bit challenging.

Sleeping in a hammock was nice, but I won’t switch my bed out! Getting in and out took some climbing.

And good workout programme going here would be goblet squats, and then take the weight and go for some suitcase walks. That would take you far. Add some hanging, see FP One exercise to take care of it all?, and you will have a lot of the things you will encounter on the trip covered.

I found Paul’s cooking very enjoyable but what really amazed me was the speed of his eating. I’m usually a fast eater but now I got to see how others have it eating with me. When I was half way finished Paul was done!

And I will take some inspiration of his cooking. Large vegetable stews is a good idea and I believe it could be a hit at home. I should get more veggies in my diet and this can really help. The stews could be part of Paul being so fit! An inspiration, I need to up my game!

My HT7 is no more. While casting to put the fly in front of a set of babies where the parent wouldn’t  rise, there were a loud crack. iIt looked a little bit cracked in the dark and the plan was to fish it until I blew out. Paul found it quite enjoyable. He was laughing talking about my broken rods while keeping on the ground telling me; I’m still far behind him in that area. 

The next day while getting ready I noticed a long lengthwise crack and a small crack diagonally. Wonder what my reaction would’ve been if I got a take on it like that. 

So now it has to go to the rod doctor in Spain. I got almost three years out of that rod and a lot of long casts. Next time I will be nicer, or we’ll see about that. It plays so nicely with the MED5 and can chuck the MED7 so far. I’m hopefully going back Malaysia sometime and then I’ll definitely want to be bringing a HT8. I got some casts in with Paul’s rod and if I had been practicing with a HT8 before the trip the snakehead would have had a harder time. This time they were lucky. I will write a bit more in depth about how I would structure the training going fishing form snakehead in a future FP. 

I will write more about my fishing adventures, both with Paul and alone in future FPs. But you might wonder if I did survive the plague in the boat. So far it seems like I did. Being out of the battleship quite a lot probably did help. And a big heap of luck. Probably mostly luck. I did survive on a diet of crackers, nuts and a beer or two during these days. It felt safest that way and the appetite wasn’t the best. I also didn’t want to disturb Paul by cooking. I could’ve brought the cooking station out of Paul’s place of resting though.

I was cleaning my hands quite vigorously during these days trying my best to avoid the virus. And avoid the toilet. That is a common recommendation in these circumstances. So how do you do that? Use the jungle toilet. I can tell you that the Ronan is quite stable in the stern. So you don’t have to jump ashore risking being attacked by an elephant with your pants down. And, in this circumstance, you luckily never run into someone else in the jungle. 

As Paul did the cooking the night he got sick and I ate that food, for dinner and lunch the day after. I guess that luck was the biggest factor in my successful strategy. 

These trying days was not the best time, being worried by Paul back in the battleship. Would we need to get him to a hospital?

The weather was not helping these days either. Paul laying sick in the boat being rocked by the waves. For me the weather made the fishing very hard.  Making me feel like I didn’t know anything at all about snakehead fishing. ”What was wrong with me not finding any fish?” 

What would happen if something happened when I was alone out on the lake? When would someone come looking for me? After a while I had it figured out that it probably wasn’t as unsafe as I was expecting. I tried to keep Paul updated on the area I would be in. And keeping Minna and my mother posted about when I left the battleship and was back. They also kept a close watch on Paul’s progress during the time. 

Also wondering if I would become sick, that would’ve not been a great time in the boat. Hopefully I will be back so we can get a do over of those days and then some. 

The days in the jungle are really intense. It is hard to remember all the things happening and keeping the days apart. Always keeping a high focus looking for fish and the adrenaline while chasing a fish making everything a blur. I’ve kept a little journal that I hope will help me keep track of the days.  

The pet gourami was fun too. Fascinating fish. Paul can make it do some tricks! Like dogs quickly has me figured out that it doesn’t take much attention to get a snack from me. The gourami soon had figured out that it could easily get me to catch it an insect or a dried shrimp. A caddie was a popular snack, sucking it down with a loud smack. 

One thing I didn’t think of when on the battleship. I have the exact same thing prepared at home for my dog as Paul has for the gourami, a bag of chopped up cheese. 

I had a plan for the jet lag going there, failed parts of it but followed it partly. It might have worked as I didn’t feel affected from jet lag during my stay. Even if I tried hard to undo the plan by staying up until three in the morning, while having the famous the last beer, to be up fishing in time the next day. If I remember correctly it was a discussion about hauling and distance that kept us up. I don’t remember how the discussion ended but I’m quite sure we were completely in agreement about everything that night. 

The protocol was to take melatonin at expected bedtime in Malaysia and sleep if possible at night time if Malaysia or at least rest and close my eyes. Seems to have worked well. We will see how I manage going back. Then the protocol is less sleeping and only melatonin for the first days at home. 

I picked up a new style in Malaysia. The sarong. Very comfortable. I haven’t told Minna. Wonder how she will like my new style?

Oh and before I forget, when on the lake it can be a good idea to put your phone in flight mode as it can spend quite some energy searching for cell towers when you are out of reception. And if you like me are used to free to free data roaming in the EU/ESS. Not thinking about that could’ve costed me $30 when stopping in Doha for nothing. 

That has to be all for this FP. 

Cheers, Rickard

PoD: An amazing waterfall I climbed up to get a really good view.