The jungle is a place where Mother Nature can, if allowed, kill you in a short period of time.

I learned the following: To have two sets of clothes, one dry, one wet. Wear the wet, sleep in the dry. You can't have too many socks. Never sleep on the ground, the ants will carry you off. Mosquito netting is mandatory. Have a backup to your backup packed in a plastic bag, with dessicant, tightly sealed, in another plastic bag - that way there is a 25% chance that backup will work and not be wet. Black palm trees - they have spikes on them- grow right where you need to grab to pull yourself up, over, or through - wear gloves with leather palms. Daily maintenance of boots, feet, knives, radios, weapons is a must. Guesstimate the distance you are going, guesstimate the time it will take you, add 25% minimum, then add a day to guess how long it will take you - as in 10 miles will take 1 day, 8 hours, maybe if you are lucky. Stop at least an hour before sunset to make camp, sooner if you are tired. And finally - freaking howler monkeys will scare the snot out of you, and literally throw poo at you too.

Great autobiography of survival in the jungle of south America.

Jungle: a harrowing true story of survival

That was on the Science of Survial and I shouldn't be alive featured on the Science Channel. I have rewatched both shows at least 11 times. What a story.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate first hand practical experience. Also, helped me to determine that I never want to be lost in the jungle! But, if I were going, I would print out your post!

Thanks for sharing it.

M

Mosquito repellent: I was coating all my exposed skin one evening in the Philippines and I noticed I missed a spot on my knee. I ignored it and went out to dinner at an outside restaurant. I felt the damn things and looked down at about 5 mosquitoes on the one spot that I had missed biting into what was already a red raised plateau of mosquito bite--- horrid! Use it and don't skimp!

Also, carry more water than you think you will need. It will be gone before you want it to be. I was out hiking one hot day and just as I had finished off my water the terrain got very steep. The top of the hill was just about 20-30 yards ahead and I was determined to get to the top, but I was just too thirty... thirst can come on very fast in the jungle and when it does, you better have a plan. I was surprised just how quickly I was dehydrating. I was feeling very weak and I started seeing colorful kaleidoscope patterns in front of me as the vegetation began playing tricks with my eyes. I couldn't walk uphill anymore, so I just sat in the grass and waited for some strength to return. As I descended back to town, an almost magical breeze picked up... take plenty of water!

Depending on where you are, be wary of with whom you frequent or are seen with. As has been stated before, don't hang with anyone involved with drugs or any other crime. Some penalties are very severe, including death. If Malaysia is anything like where I was in the Philippines, be prepared to be as assertive as necessary without being overly threatening to avoid being taken for a sucker, or worse... Here's the story:

I was drunk with my boss (I was a camera assistant and studio manager for a documentary film about deforestation and its effects on indigenous lifeways) and some colleagues/friends at a bar late one night in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. I was feeling kind of sick, so I decided to go home. My boss reminded me of the mob-style killing of a suit by another suit that he had witnessed late at night in our hotel lobbyfront, and that he had been approached the next day by some wary people whom he believed were warning him to keep his mouth shut, and so he wanted me to be extra careful on my own, as they might be watching me as well. I told him not to worry as I was only getting a cab and going straight home. As I thought about what my boss had told me, I also thought about all the kidnappings of white people I had heard about. There are many different military factions living in the jungle, and I heard that one of the ways they finance their outfits is by way of kidnapping white tourists and ransoming them to their relatives back home. My boss and I were the only two white guys on this entire island I had seen and I had been there for more than a month already. Before he hired me to join him in the Philippines, the first thing my boss wanted to know is how well I could handle myself, did I know any martial arts, etc. This place could be a very dangerous place with factions wandering into town fully loaded, corrupt police, crime. I walked out of the bar and I got into the cab (cabs in Cagayan are just normal looking passenger cars) that had just driven up to the front of the bar, after being motioned by its driver to get in. I told the driver where I needed to go and asked if he knew where that was. He said “yes” as I expected him to, as where I lived was a well-known upper class location. It was also a place most of the locals could not afford. I lived in a new resort housing tract that was just being built and it was behind a wall with broken glass bottles cemented into the top (I call it ‘Cagayan barbed-wire’), and had one or two gatemen with guns at the ready to allow or deny entry. Our house was the only one occupied at that time. Anyway, he started driving and did not say a word, very unlike the other drivers whose cabs I had been in. They were usually playing music or talking or both and all of the cabs had a few photos, dash trinkets, and even bright colored interior lights; most of the cab drivers got very creative with their rides. But this guy just drove and looked at me with a weird grin; his cab didn’t have any of the typical extravaganza. I was drunk so I didn’t think about it, but when we got out of town, I noticed that we had driven totally out of town, and very quickly, but where I lived was at the extreme other end of town. I told him he was going the wrong way and to turn around and I would guide him where to go. He refused, saying “Ahead. Right way. This way.”, all the while grinning at me, trying to get me to trust him. I tried to get him to turn around about three times as I could see nothing but jungle on the road ahead and the fading lights of Cagayan behind us in the mirror. There was no doubt at all that we were going in the wrong direction and I knew that there was nothing ahead but dark jungle until the next town about 50 miles away. I then snapped totally out of my drunkenness and I knew that he was taking me to where he had some guys ready to either rob me or worse. I looked at him one more time and I sternly said, “Hey." He looked over at me again with that same grin, like he was ready to calm me again with his reassurance that he was taking me where I wanted to go, and as I felt the rage within me rise, I locked eyes with him and calmly said with all the truth of a rising sun, "If you don't turn this car around right now I'm going to beat you to death." His coy smile suddenly cracked fiercely and broke into pieces as he quickly slowed down and turned the car around and drove obediently in silence for the 20 minutes or so that it took to get to the front gate of where I lived.