Penang Hills and Trails - Nanshan Follies 
Playing Around above the Relau Pass

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.

Be aware that by December 2019, the path through the old rubber described below was at best 'indistinct' and at worse 'effectively impassable' and we decided not to attempt to follow it. 

Old friend and fellow masochist John Baker had flown down from Bangkok for the weekend to get some fresh air. I had tried and failed to blunt his enthusiasm the previous day with a six hour epic from Titi Kerawang to Balik Pulau which was part of our regular 'one day on and one day off' hiking cycle. It was a chance for me to experiment a bit as Yuehong was committed to tidying up before we flew back to the UK at the end of the week. John was simply 'demob happy' as can be seen by his reaction to the suggestion that we might leave the hill top before it got dark...

On the other hand, I had another walk to do the next day and so I agreed we would just do an afternoon session which saw us set out at 14.00 from the lower reaches (1.2km) of Jalan Tun Sardon once I had persuaded the 502 bus driver to set us down. Not surprisingly, John was creaking a little after the previous day's marathon hike, at least to start with. It's not a difficult trail to follow, you just follow the road and when you get to the old cars, just 'follow the yellow brick road' and resist the temptation to make an early strike for the hills.

That was the familiar bit, at least to me, but ahead was what was once a rubber plantation and we had only the word of our friends from Sulawesi that the path went through. It started off as a 'you must be joking' exercise, but as the realisation dawned that we were going to get somewhere, a spring returned to the step and up we went.

We had arrived in the Nanshan Highlands, after the tank where the rubber gave way to vegetables we turned right and were soon at the infamous five way junction in the middle of what is increasingly becoming a wasteland and monument to unrestrained short term greed. It was too early to go down and I wanted to check out the paths north along the ridge towards the Bukit Penara masts. Walking up we came to this junction. Left would eventually lead down to Balik Pulau and ahead would lead to a minor summit which I would rather skirt, so right it was. There was a nice view looking back to a trail I had inflicted on Yuehong after we had foolishly inflicted over two hours of torture on ourselves.

It seemed a good idea at the time to follow the contour path as it went through a burnt patch and back into overgrown rubber. It seemed less of a good idea when we hit the ginger and eventually common sense prevailed and we clambered up left into the cleared area.

While I was worrying about mere trifles like how to get out without having to retrace our steps, John very sensibly decided he would make the most of the occasion and mount his Michael Palin imitation. Talk about having a bath with a view, I wished for a moment I too had brought my swimming kit with me. He was right, the view was indeed absolutely splendid even if I had seen versions of it before.

For my sins, I have a couple of very young grandsons and they too look most unhappy when bath time is declared over. But I bet they have yet to be told to go straight from it into the undergrowth. The Bukit Penara masts were tantalisingly close but time was not on our side. The somewhat overgrown ridge path came to a crossroads and while ahead might eventually have 'done the job' it was not in a good state and right was the best bet available.

John being a trusting kind of guy just shrugged his shoulders and followed me down, I'm sure he was more than pleasantly surprised to see a house ahead and then join a concrete path. He had even had the sense to keep a spare Tiger for the time when he realised that he might actually be spared from the nocturnal attentions of a complete madman.

Yuehong and I had been here before but I don't think John would have believed me if I had told him. Yes, the 'light' was good, but is lemon grass an appropriate crop or these flats an appropriate home?

The rest, as I have said many times before 'is history'. It doesn't matter how good the light is, Paya Terubong and the high rise buildings beyond stretching all the way to the coast are an abomination and the man made biblical flood can't come too soon in my book.

We found a George Town bound 502 and jumped aboard. I declined an offer of dinner in Little India and headed for home, bearing a large watermelon which I knew would spare me somewhat from Yuehong's wrath because 20.30 was far later than my exeat ticket was written for. I do hope John enjoyed his weekend in Penang, no doubt I'll hear eventually but at the moment we're suffering from one of our periodic internet blackouts