KL's Lankawi Adventure

Leeches

Seven or eight black, wiggly, inch-long creatures waved back and forth on my calf, attached to the skin as if growing out of the muscle. They danced back and forth nearly to the perfect beat of one of my favorite dance songs, "When the Rush Comes." Don't ask me why I suddenly put the movement of the creatures to a dance song. You never know how you'll react to the horror of leeches attached to your leg and draining it of blood until it actually happens. I tried to channel the lessons of my prior week of 'Surviving Hostile Regions' training in Malaysia. Who knew I'd have to use them so quickly?

"Whatever you do, don't panic," clipped the Australian voice of my AKE instructor in my class as he showed us pictures of lethal snakes, spiders, scorpions and leeches from Asia and Africa. His name was Mick, a former Special Forces officer in the Australian military and now a military consultant with the agency teaching journalists how to withstand the hostile regions my news network might send me to.

"Take a lighter or salt and let the leech fall off on its own. Do NOT pull it out!" Mick paced before the 12 international journalists with his eyes wide open, his arms held up to emphasize a dramatic pause. This is a guy who knows how to grab attention from an audience.

"Because what happens when you pull it out?"
Visions of blood gushing everywhere like a crumbling dike holding back bodily fluids entered my mind.

Mick's nose scrunched as if he'd just come across an unpleasant odor. Another dramatic pause. "Because you leave the head inside your body. And that causes an even bigger problem than blood loss. You're now ready for infection."

Mick straightened his back as he let the image and the lesson sink in on his now fairly disturbed student-journalists.

"So…." Mick held up one finger. "Don't panic."
Mick held up a second finger. "And don't pull it out."

For a week we learned numerous lessons like that, from medical responses to dealing with land mines to becoming a hostage. Minutes after the Aussie instructors had declared us "Hostile Region" worthy, I headed off with my beloved to Langkawi, Malaysia, an island that sits in-between mainland Malaysia and Thailand. My fiancée, Mike, had planned a rainforest getaway right after my AKE course in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mike had booked us a hotel smack in the middle of a 50 million year old rainforest. Seriously.

As we drove up to the hotel, the driver pointed out to the road.

"Monkey," he said.

"Monkey!" I hollered. The smallish grey monkeys gathered on the road staring at us like chickens, curiously wondering who the next guests to their rainforest might be.

We pulled into the hotel and walked into a foyer of sweeping grandeur: wood pagodas, marble walls, attendants in white ready to meet our every need. As we walked to the room, the immense trees swayed in the humid jungle air, accompanied by the screeching sound of thousands of cicadas.

"This is the nicest hotel I've ever seen," I said to Mike.

"Yeah," he said, fatigue clinging to that word like thick syrup. Poor Mike. He'd gotten a terrible cold our first night in Kuala Lumpur and five days later, it hung on with a force he couldn't shake.

Mike insisted that I get out and see the jungle. "If I can't, one of us should," he said, lying prone on the bed. I scanned the list of adventures offered by the hotel. 'Jungle Trek' promised a four hour, strenuous hike through untamed jungle. That had my name all over it.

The next morning, I met up with my guide, a deeply tanned Malaysian man wearing mud-splattered pants and carrying a walking stick. He repeated his name three times for me, but I still didn't quite get it. There are quite a few vowels in the names of the locals in Langkawi and in the case of my multi-vowel-named guide… I decided to just call him "sir." We picked up two other guests from the next hotel, a middle-aged couple from Australia. I haven't met too many natives of Australia, so perhaps this is a rather uneducated generalization, but all the Aussies seem to be seriously tough people. The Aussies were both six feet tall and from the looks of their muscular bodies, they were used to getting into the wilderness. The man in particular looked like he might be former military (this assumption may be from my week of being instructed by Australian former Special Forces officers). They told me they lived in Dubai and traveled around the world frequently. I worried about keeping up.

The description in the hotel did not exaggerate the 'Jungle Trek.' We slipped and climbed, the jungle floor a knot of mangy limbs, roots, prehistoric looking leaves and vines.

"This tree," said our guide, "strangles host tree." He pointed to the knotted tree, that looked remarkably like a muscular limb, 70 feet high into the sky. "Inside, hollow."

I peeked into the tree. It was indeed hollow. The guide explained how the original tree probably had a bird land on one of its high limbs. The Langkawi jungle is home to a type of seed that birds ingest. The bird craps the seed onto a limb and then the seed settles into its host and begins to vine down the host tree to the jungle floor. Eventually, the vine circles the tree and strangles the original tree. All that remains of the now-dead host is some petrified wood at the top of the now encircling vines.

The guide walked us along, telling us stories about the animals, roots, vines and trees. The theme of the jungle became apparent. The weak die. The strong feed off the weak and flourish.

About 90 minutes into the hike, the guide led us to a tree that had toppled over a bubbling creek. "Sit, rest," he said. He squatted on the tree trunk. "Can't sit or sleep in the jungle, because of leeches." He reached down and pulled off a tiny, squiggly looking worm.

"Really?" said the Aussie woman.

"Really??" asked her husband. "Holy crap, I'm flogged!"

I looked at his leg, which had several leeches moving up and down it.

And then I pulled up my pants leg, which brings me back to my dance song and the seven or eight leeches on my leg.

I shook my leg. Nothing happened. "Uh…" I waved my arms at my guide. Dammit. I wish I knew his name, I thought.

The guide moved over to me and pulled one off. He shook his hand, the leech still stuck to it. He gave it four more shakes and a flick… and then it was gone. I looked down at my leg again, trying to remember the advice, "don't panic." Where the leech had been was a red circle, where the infernal thing had been sucking my blood. His friends were still sucking away.

"We're not supposed to pull them off, right?" I asked my guide. I looked at the tough Australian couple, now fully freaking out.

"They fly!" the woman shrieked. Fly isn't quite how I'd describe this particular type of leech. Somersault toward you at every angle and magically crawl under your pants, your socks and down to your toes seems more accurate. I have no idea how they do it, since my hiking shoes were tied as tight as can be.

"They're all over my calf!" the man screamed, revealing four engorged leeches and two big bloody blotches where a couple had fallen off.

"You're bleeding," said his wife.

The man's eyes widened. "They're on my bum, they're on my bum! Mary, check my bum!" The next thing I knew, he pulled down his pants in front of the 50 million year old jungle, me, and our bemused guide. When people are freaking out around me, I've learned I often have the exact opposite reaction, as if they absorb my anxiety. I also wanted to bring some civility into our little group so we didn't spiral out of control in front of the very calm Malaysian guide. The man waved his hands around his naked bottom. So much for Aussie toughness.

And so much for my week of Aussie survival skills. I turned to the guide, who hadn't responded to my question of whether to pull them off or not. He was pulling them off with ease, apparently not a graduate of my 'Surviving Hostile Regions' course. I watched another leech somersault onto my leg. Enough, I thought, and I began to yank those suckers off, one by one. Some hadn't fully attached so they came off easily. But some looked like they had burrowed into my body and I had indeed left their heads floating somewhere in my bloodstream. Infection seemed a far lesser pain than the horror of the leeches on me right now.

"I got another one, I know it! It's in my shoe!" screamed the Australian woman as we continued our hike.

The problem of being on the floor of a massive, untamed jungle is that the pests don't recede. I've since learned that leeches in Malaysia are heat-seeking. No kidding. We continued our now 'Hike of Horror' not really caring about the lovely stories about the damn trees. Every 20 yards or so, someone would be pulling off another leech. I noticed, too, that what I thought was mud splattering our guide's pants wasn't mud at all. It was blood spots from leeches.

At the end of the hike, cut short by an hour because of the hollering Australians, we took off our shoes and socks. I found three more at the bottom of my feet and two more on my ankles. I also had several big, red spots where some of the leeches had successfully burrowed in. Giving my legs a twice over, I was fairly convinced I was leech free.

I went back to the resort and ran to the hotel room. Mike sat near the window, clean and calm and appearing a little healthier. I hollered from the door, "I can't come in. I walked through the jungles and I think there are still leeches on me so I want to go into the water." Mike tells me later that I looked like someone had killed my cat. But in MY memory, I was the picture of calm and repose.

I did remember that leeches need to be burned or salted off. They don't like extreme heat or salt. So as a safety measure, I'd dunk my clothes in the sea water and sit there just in case some had gotten on my 'bum.'

I took off my right sock at the beach and saw a black, engorged leech stuck right in-between my big and second toe. Here's something else I'm learning about me: when I'm in the presence of my beloved, I feel fine freaking out if he's going to be calm.

"Ahhh!" I hollered. "There's another one!"

Mike laughed. Yes, he laughed. Laughed. He was doubled over laughing at me. He was going to be in serious trouble later, but for now, I was the one in trouble. "Go into the ocean," he said, giggling.

I ran to the sea and began to shake my right leg. The dang leech held on. I shook some more. It continued to hang on. I started to rake my toes in the sand. Still there.

"It's still there," I whined, deciding to completely abandon any composure of the last few hours. Mike laughed harder. If I wasn't standing on one leg and the other was being drained by the leech, I would have tried to dunk him in the ocean.

"Do you want me to pull it off?" he laughed.

"No!" I said, "Sea water's supposed to do it. The AKE guys said they don't like salt."

Mike continued to laugh while I shook my leg in the water. Forget it, I thought, mad at the leech and my so-called loved one.

I pulled half of it off. It was really stuck on there. I turned to Mike.

"Pull it off!" I said.

Mike reached down and grabbed for it. The first grab was unsuccessful and it either grossed him out or he feared for his own welfare and the leech ending up on him.

He made a second attempt and this time, I felt the leech suction off my toe. Mike flicked it into the sea water.

I immediately sat down in the sea water as Mike laughed and laughed so hard I thought he might tip over. I could now feel phantom leeches in my swimsuit, on my legs, in my hair and under my armpits. That feeling would not go away for the rest of the day. And when the feeling would fade, I'd start to imagine little leech heads floating around in my bloodstream.

In my first test of my 'Surviving Hostile Regions' course, I come away with this important lesson learned: hearing the lesson is one thing, application is quite another.

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