Malaysia - Gua Musang & towards 2004

"Demand for palm oil is growing and fast. At the moment, most of it ends up in hundreds of food products - from margarine and chocolate to cream cheese and oven chips - although it's also used in cosmetics and increasingly, for use in biodiesel. But the cost to the environment and the global climate is devastating - to feed this demand, tropical rainforests and peatlands in South East Asia (here in Malaysia for example) are being torn up to provide land for oil palm plantations"
Read more about it on Greenpeace web site

On the way to Mua Gusang...

Gua Musang

"The rubber tree (or Hevea in Latin) is a tree belonging to the family Euphorbiaceae. It is of major economic importance because its sap-like extract (known as latex) can be collected and is the primary source of natural rubber."
Read more about it on Wikipedia

Rolling on the river some hours, having a trip to a Orang Aslis' village, where the Malaysian aborigines live.

The boatman

"Early peoples, probably from the first wave humans as postulated in the 'Out of Africa' theory, lived a simple lifestyle of hunting-gathering. Paleolithic Malaysia had no defined border or countries, no known government, religion, money, etc. Descendants of these early inhabitants still live in the hills of Malaysia, some of their villages are accessible, they are known as Orang Asli, meaning 'the original people' or aborigines."
Read more about it on Wikipedia