Penang Hills and Trails - Temple with the View Circular 2016
Nearly back up to Speed.

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 walk. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

It's November 2016 and we're back for another action packed season of Penang hikes, regular reports will appear here until March 2017.

This walk is essentially the reverse of the Zig-Zag (to) Heaven one from February 2016 although with significant diversions.

I'd suffered a computer failure which was diagnosed as a life expired power supply. One of the many features I love about Penang is the 'little man' who provides traditional service and in this case Mr. Soo from near Island Plaza drove round in the morning next day before he opened his shop and fitted a brand new one in 15 minutes at a price which had me asking if it was enough; it would have cost me nearly half of it to take a taxi to get the computer to him and back home again. Every year, we go away for 8 months and in the first week we are back, lots of very ordinary people from bus drivers to hawkers to farmers in the hills go out of their way to say how pleased they are to see us again, it's that sort of place. Our dreadful new neighbours, British alas, know nothing about Penang and have refurbished their flat disrupting the lives of all around for months on end and as a 'coup de grace' have now added a ghastly stainless steel cage around their front door, it's exactly the sort of thing I would have expected if they had been newly rich mainland Chinese. It'll keep the monkeys out I suppose but since the only break-ins in our condo in living memory have been inside jobs, it's an ugly waste of money and is currently acting as a trap for wind bound leaves.

With the computer restored by 09.00 we were able to follow Plan A which was to approach the Temple with the View from the west and descend to the east. It was overcast which meant the walk out from Balik Pulau was cool but incredibly humid. We turned left to go up past the cemeteries. Among the plants present were what Yuehong assures me are Oleanders, just like we were gifted as cast offs back home in the summer. I'm not sure how they will survive our absence.

It's an atmospheric walk with a gentle climb through fruit orchards of durian and mangosteen with the odd rubber tree.

Eventually we had to climb the zig-zags and leave the valley floor behind. At one point heavy rains had caused a land slip which will need sorting before the next rains come.

Near the top of the climb are two tracks to the right, the first is gated, visitors are so unwelcome that electricity meter readings are written on the board. Fortunately, there are no such problems with the second which is the one I wanted to take. for the record it's at pole HT BI 10.

It's another lovely stroll along a tree lined track.

Coming out if the trees we could see where we had come down last time we were here. It seems standard practice to plant bananas after an area is cleared (this looked to have been rubber). The fruit trees will follow and as they mature, the bananas will be removed. Ahead and below, we could see where we had come in last time. My plan was to climb beyond and then traverse to the rubber at the top in the first picture.

By February 2024, there were durians in the cleared area and the rubber above had also been cleared and replanted. There was a ziz zag path up from the blue house above which continued up to the 'Temple with the View'.

The path seemed more likely than the road to go where we wanted, it was a bad choice as they ended at the same point and the path was covered in slime. We had climbed almost enough, now we had to go a little higher and around the side of the hill. 

In the cleared area it was never going to be a problem to get the height right, crossing the boulder strewn stream bed might have been another matter but the look on Yuehong's face showed confidence even though it had started to rain.

By February 2024, the rubber was gone and had been replaced by durians. The paths remained the same.

As it happens, there was a path at the end of the level and very soon we were at the bottom of the rubber. The better used track went on along the bottom but the presence of a large water pipe indicated why.

Instead, we knew to go up a few levels to find the wide track out. Someone complained about my habit of stopping her to take pictures in the mosquito infested rubber.

Most of the way up, we came across one of the hill farmers cleaning up some rubber. Not so long ago it had fetched very attractive MYR 8 a kilogram, but when the oil price crash came it had collapsed to about MYR 2 and as a result just about every rubber tree on the island had been left untapped for a couple of years during our last visit. What had changed everything was the international politics of the region. The Chinese having lost the South China Sea court case have sagely gone on a charm offensive to buy off surrounding countries. In the case of Malaysia, this means offering cut price infrastructure projects which can be paid for with commodities valued at above market prices. So this rubber is now suddenly worth MYR 5 a kilogram and while that's hardly a fortune, smallholders with trees of just the right age as here are cashing in. Of course, with a buffoon (or much worse) in the White House and the likely collapse of the Trans- Pacific Partnership, the Chinese won't have to try as hard as they might have expected.

It was all my fault as I suggested Yuehong ask him (in Mandarin) what the rubber price was because I hadn't seen a Malaysian (Chinese) working with rubber for a long time. We must have spent 20 minutes here during which time no doubt the mosquitoes took a rest after their lunch on her. Afterwards, we climbed further and soon came out on the concrete path that would lead to the temple.

There were a few rambutans on the trees here, but all just too high to pluck. I am not sure Yuehong knew where she was until we saw the flags on the temple and came to the access road.

We have new slim lightweight backpacks and Yuehong had cunningly appropriated the space I planned for my traditional refreshment with a large box of fruit. With the open air Hometown Food Court no longer available we would have to return to one of the traditional sticky Balik Pulau coffee shops and that meant having to take a view on how long it would take to walk down. That was not so easy as I planned to do a little exploring to tie up some loose ends.

It was good to see the ginger in flower as we went down beside the new house which seems at last to be completed. There is no easy route down to the right or straight on and I knew to turn left into the rubber where the undergrowth was least. 

Just a couple of terraces down is what soon becomes a wide path.

At this time of year, older concrete paths of more than a certain slope are lethal as they are covered in a near invisible slippery slime, so progress was a little slow. We survived this one but both ended up on our bottoms in quick succession later. Nevertheless, it's a very pleasant area to walk through.

Ours was not the main path and when we came to it we could have turned right and gone straight down. Instead, we went straight on with a chord that met another downhill path. Counter-intuitively we turned left although this section is flat.

Almost immediately we branched right and then went straight on when the better used path went left, Yuehong was looking totally bemused!

The path beyond the house is underused, especially as the fruit season is months away. Again, we could have turned right to go more or less straight down but that would have been too easy.

Instead we followed the undulating path through the fruit orchard until it suddenly took a sharp left and started to climb. We had reached an estate boundary and needed to follow the level ahead. I was quietly confident that there would be no unpleasant bashing and so it proved, it's actually the same durian tree in both pictures. We had come up this new concrete trail in February and joined the path we had just left a little bit higher up the hill.

There's quite a few zig- zags, Yuehong is standing where we joined the track by traversing from a road which had finished in the trees behind her. We came to a house whose rear prospect was typically unattractive.

The front view was much finer, this is an old estate which is getting a much needed makeover, but there was no one home. On down we went and as we came round the last bend Yuehong not surprisingly had an apprehensive look on her face.

Ahead was a closed gate and a high fence on either side. Fortunately, they must have know we were coming through and the padlock was not securing the bolt. I have to say that our point of exit did not come as any surprise to me, it was a few minutes before Yuehong got her bearings. It was satisfying to work out what I think are the last of the current paths to explore in this area, but as this comes out quite a way extra from Balik Pulau. I don't think it will feature regularly in our walks.

As everything had gone perfectly, we were into Balik Pulau with more than half an hour to spare before the official 501 bus departure time of 17.30. I polished off a Char Hor Fun produced by the couple who had been displaced when the Hometown folded and washed it down with a Tiger. We stocked up with fruit and were home by 19.00. 

We're not 100% up to speed yet, we slept very well, but next time we'll try a full length walk.