Tasik Cini Travel Guide

On the lake I saw many young girls also on canoe to fish with only fishing line and a tiny hook with worms as bait. These aborigines possessed beautiful canoeing skills when they fish, they actually lean to one side of the canoe to let the canoe staying slant so that it won't move. This way they can stay permanently to fish and the speed of propelling is too fast for me to even get closer.

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The Jakun are the second largest of the nineteen Orang Asli people groups of Peninsular Malaysia. They are part of the Aboriginal Malay (officially called Proto-Malay) subgroup.

The Jakun are believed to have lived in the Peninsula for 7,000 years. The Department of Orang Asli Affairs labels them Orang Hulu (People of the Upriver), a term which the Jakun refer to themselves.

Traditionally hunter-gatherers, the Jakun are now more settled than most of Malaysia's Orang Asli groups. They live by setting fish traps in rivers and streams. They hunt game with blowpipes and poison darts, and gather fruit and forest products for bartering.

They trade rattan, wax, woods, resin, and camphor they gather in the forest for tobacco, gambier, and areca nut. It is difficult to say how many Jakun there are because they have been speaking Malay as their mother tongue for at least 200 years.

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Tasik Chini is a lake that was formed from the natural damming of a river valley. It is Malaysia's second largest natural lake and is made up of a series of 12 lakes.

The older Jakun folk that live believe that Naga Seri Gumum; the old dragon still gurads the waters and has been there since the birth of the lake, a long, long time ago.

Since the building of the dam, much has changed at Tasik Chini. In some areas around the lake, oil palm plantations have crept up almost to the edge. The leaching and flushing of pesticides and fertilisers into the lake from the plantations is likely to damage the fragile ecosystem of the lake. With proper management and use of organic fertilisers this would help retain the natural conditions of the lake.

The lotus that once spread across large areas of the lake are blooming once again; new growth is taking place. From June to September, the lake is speckled with white and pink lotus blooms. And sometimes in the early evening, tomans (a huge ferocious fresh water fish) can be seen leaping over the lotus leaves, eager to make a meal of an unsuspecting frog .