Feels like Jurassic era jungle: a stay in Malaysia’s new Rompin State Park showcases rare wildlife and offers creature comforts
- In Malaysia’s Pahang state, newly opened Rompin State Park is an area of primeval rainforest home to rare animals and endemic plants
- The upgraded reserve has a modern eco-retreat that offers a comfortable base from which to trek to pristine waterfalls; visitors can kayak or take a cruise too
Surrounded by the wide-leafed fan palm trees that grow only in this part of southern Malaysia, I feel like we’ve slipped back to Jurassic times. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a dinosaur walk past in search of ferns for breakfast.
Peninsular Malaysia’s most popular rainforest is Taman Negara (a name that means simply “national park”) but I am hiking in a lesser known patch of forest, Rompin State Park, a newly upgraded reserve in the southeasternmost corner of Pahang state.
Rompin State Park forms the northern portion of the Endau-Rompin national park, 870 square kilometres (340 square miles) of primeval rainforest that straddles the sloshing Endau River, a natural border between Pahang and Johor states.
Until recently, Endau-Rompin was most accessible from the Johor side, through the villages of Kampung Peta or Selai. However, the area flooded in March 2023 and many of the residents of Kampung Peta lost their homes, while Selai’s topography was radically changed.
Kampung Peta, on the southern bank of the Endau, has reopened to tourism but Selai is still closed.
A silver lining has been the rise of the reserve’s Pahang section, which was rebranded as Rompin State Park in 2020 after having been closed for three years.
