Author : Ms. Colleen Koh (Singapore Adventure Club)
Anthony, William and myself took up the invitation by SKS Outdoor Adventure Co. to join them in their recce trek to Gunung Bubu. Besides the 3 of us, there were Andrew, Paul, Hock Sing and Wengsia as well as Daud, our guide, totaling 8 persons on the trek.
Located in Kuala Kangsar, Perak state, Gunung Bubu
stands at 1568m. One can reach the mountain after a 2 hour drive from KL city
centre to Hutan Lipur Ulu Kenas. From
the foot, it took us 4 ½ hours to reach our campsite for the night. The next
morning, we took another 2 hours to summit.
The terrain is pretty “normal”, or perhaps I was too distracted to
focus much on the surroundings. The distraction that I’m talking about is
LEECHES! The mountain is leech infested as it is still a virgin jungle, with
relatively less trekkers as compared to the likes of Ophir, Belumut. During the
entire trek, I have encountered hundreds of leeches, the most that I’ve ever
encountered in my life. I felt rather traumatised, and stopped frequently to
flick off those blood suckers. Yet
you cannot stop for too long, because you can see more leeches crawling towards
you! As for the more experienced trekkers like Anthony and Paul, they adopted a
bo-chap attitude in dealing with the leeches and continue trekking without
bothering about the creatures, as it is pointless to keep removing the leeches
since they are simply unavoidable! Only when they reach a resting point, then
they will set out to remove the leeches.
The highlight of this trip for me was really the
LEECHES!! As such, I will dedicate the rest of this article to ExPoSe them and
hopefully to help fellow trekkers be better prepared to deal with these
bloodsuckers! Here goes…
ABOUT LEECHES.
Leeches are invertebrate worms which feed on blood
and can be found in xxxx
Asia, particularly South East Asia.
Most leeches belong to the freshwater species and live in still or slow
flowing waters. There are also land
leeches which are found in wet tropical rainforests, or moist areas of drier
forests.
With sizes ranging from 0.2 to 18 inches, leeches
possess sensors that can detect heat, light and movement. Thus, they are able to detect you coming because of your
movement and your body warmth. Once
attached to your skin, they bite and have their fill of blood for about ½ hour,
after which they drop off. Due to
slow digestion, they can go without food for months to come.
As for the victim, he/ she will continue bleeding for hours, as the
leech’s saliva contains an anti-coagulant which prevents the blood from
clogging. On another note, this
anti-clogging aspect of the leech bite have made leeches really useful in the
field of medicine. Since 2500 years ago, leeches were used for
‘bloodletting’ purposes, which was believed to remove ‘bad blood’ thus
curing certain ailments. In modern
medicine, leeches are used to help restore blood circulation to grafted or
severely injured tissue. Thus far,
there is no evidence to show that leeches spread diseases.
A possible reason for this could be that they only eat once or twice a
year, and thus by the time they feed on another host, the pathogens that they
have ingested are already dead.
HOW TO PREVENT
LEECHES FROM GETTING ONTO YOU IN THE 1ST PLACE
Leeches are water lovers and thus tend to be more
prevalent in wet areas and after rains, so be on the alert in such situations.
Another good way to prevent leeches from biting you
is to wear leech proof socks, which are made of fine woven material (such as
calico) and worn over your regular socks. This
is advocated by the author of an Internet article, and I’ve not personally
tried such socks.
I have also heard someone mention that pantyhose is
good for leech proofing. ??
Our local guide recommends us to spray insect
repellent/ insecticide on our boots (according to Wengsia, only the brand Baygon
will do). However, we were still
attacked by leeches as we had to wade through a few rivers and the insecticide
had probably been washed off.
Please also note that even though your feet are
protected, leeches can still “fly” onto you, by falling from branches and
leaves. In fact, I kena a tiger
leech bite on my upper back, and I did not bother to check as I thought it was
just a normal itch.
HOW TO DEAL
WITH LEECH ATTACKS.
For me, I swear by my “shang fang bao jian” which
is a sturdy short wooden branch that I hold in my hand to flick off the leeches
whenever they attached themselves to me.
William advocates his bottle of yoko-yoko (a
medicated lotion) which he use to dab on the leeches (make sure you don’t
mistakenly use that bottle!). Other
chemicals that leeches hate can be used too. These include vinegar, salt, tiger
balm.
Other less ideal ways of removing the leeches include
using fire, as leeches get dried up and will just drop off. However, this method
is risky as you might accidentally burn yourself.
And of course your can just physically pull the leech off, but its teeth
might remain embedded in your wound.
Another method advocated is to do nothing at all and
wait for the leeches to have their fill and then drop off.
The rationale for this method is because once the creature has bitten
you, the blood will continue flowing regardless whether you remove the leech or
not. However, I do not support this
method, as if you’re alert enough and remove the leech early, it might not
have time to sink its teeth on you and thus you’ll avoid being bitten at all.
Well, its really up to individual preference to
decide the methods that you want to use to remove the creatures.
To speed the blood clogging, you can apply direct
pressure to the wound.
Some leech bites (esp from so-called tiger leeches)
will stay itchy till days/ weeks after the bite, thus anti-itch lotion (I
found medicated oil quite useful). will
be useful. However, if the wounds are infected, do consult a doctor.
After the trek, I extended my stay in KL with
William. In the hotel room, we were still rather paranoid and made sure that we
looked through all our belongings to check that there were no leeches.
Eventually we found 2 leeches in the bathroom.
Reaching home, I set out to wash my dirty boots. Lo
and Behold! There were at least 10 leeches hibernating in my shoes, even though
I thought I had removed all of them immediately after we reached the foot of the
mountain. I took pleasure in burning them off and washing them down the drain!
But that’s not the last of my experience with these
creepy crawlies. 2 weeks after the trek, some of my leech bites were still
itching. sigh…
References :
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http://www.websurf.net.au/~susan/leeches.htm
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http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/
-
http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/leeches.htm
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http://marina.fortunecity.com/harbourside/83/bubu.html
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