Penang Hills and Trails - The Malihom Loop
Balik Pulau to Malihom and back again.

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk based on length. 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.

I was torn, we were well into the last week of our Penang 'season' and time was not on my side. On the other hand, I had broken our 'one day on and one day off' cycle by doing some 'exploring' with John Baker the day before and this would be my third serious walk in as many day. 6 hours on Saturday, a mere 5 hours on Sunday and now on Monday? Well you are only (relatively) young once and who knows what shape I or the island will be in 9 month's time which is the earliest we can expect to be back. This walk walk was only 'new' in the sense that it combined parts of three others, two of which were going in the opposite direction to before. It would be perfect for anyone who wanted to park a car at the start and return to it later without having to retrace their steps.

Monday is a bad day in Teluk Bahang as the Belimbing is closed and to be honest the K-Haleel Nasi Kandar morning service is crap. There was even a moment of panic when the 501 bus was very late arriving. It got worse when the 502 driver from Balik Pulau applied the rule book and refused to set us down at the right place on the hill up. To be fair, I had previously marked this out as being a dubious proposition even if one of his colleagues had played ball a week earlier. That's life, we just had to spend 10 minutes walking back down and thereafter everything went to plan, five hours of nearly pure Penang joy and not a murmur of complaint from Yuehong, that's the measure of how fit she is now. This is almost a 'cannot go wrong experience' as the MPPP has marked out the first part which broadly follows the contour past the FCS fruit farm. Thereafter, there are very few critical junctions.

The MPPP's interest dies at the next junction where the road (up and to the left) becomes seriously steep for a while. Never mind, there are compensations like the view back which includes some of our favourite parts of the island.

A bit of shady rubber is just perfect for cooling off. Just be sure to turn left before the large house and then almost  immediately right again to avoid the born again vegetarian meditators. You'll know you've got things right when you have to skirt these metal gates.

It's a relatively new road, hence the ferns alongside it, there's just one major junction, where you have to turn right (left is a dead end as we had found out a few days before), the 101 seems to be a mountain bikers' route marker. 

This seat must have commanded quite a view when it was installed but, of course, no-one ever comes up here these days. The inscription waffles on about religion and the 'east mountains'...

When a road like this expires the first time we have used it then it is a cause for concern, but we had been over the top here in the opposite direction and knew there would be a path on down through the rubber to the Sungai Ara Valley.

It came out just behind the giant bird's nest factory farm, should you want to find the route over the hill in the opposite direction note that you need to turn right and right again so as to go up where Yuehong is coming down in the first picture.

I don't think they employed an architect and the area around it is a rubbish tip, but it does make for some kind of landmark. That's the rubber we came through behind.

On the opposite hill, someone is inflicting a massive scar on the side of Bukit Papan and at the T junction on the way down, I needed to check the left turn back into the hills. It didn't go far, the Chinese temple at the end had a far more satisfying outlook, a mixture of fruit orchard and secondary jungle above. It was lunchtime, I don't think there is another path up and over to be discovered there, but there was no time to look today.

We wandered on down past the Thai style Buddhist temple, Samnaksong, but it was locked and temporarily deserted. Down in the valley, the resort was now branded 'Fig Tree Hill', the banner may be accurate but surely unnecessary as the number of passers by who might be in the market for accommodation must be vanishingly small. We were soon at the bikers' resting place, on down Sungai Ara would be half an hour away finishing in Jalan Kenari opposite the secondary school. However, for us this was the point where we would turn back and go over the hill to our starting point, it was barely 2½ hours since we had set out and we were 'on time' for an anticipated early dinner.

We chose to go up 'Penang's Quietest Road' rather than the 'Twelve Bends to Heaven' because it was likely to be more shady and it was the direction we had not done before. Now there's a notice that cannot be taken seriously... I needed no second invitation to follow Yuehong up the road, remembering to bear left some half way up.

It's hardly the most demanding climb on the island, but when we came to the welcome sign I confess I was ready for that second bottle of amber liquid which was weighing me down. 

To avoid the dogs, almost immediately we cut right through the bananas coming out just above the 'Carpet' and we continued upwards to the ridge (Click here for this section in pictures, which had changed by 2015.) We continued down until we met the road makers. Progress continued to be rapid and the first concrete was going in. The road will eventually go all the way to the top apparently, it must be costing a fortune and I can only guess that apart from the cheaper fruit transport somebody intends to build a house or two up here. While most of the conversation was in Chinese, I was surprised to find that the man with the hose spoke more than passable English. It doesn't look too good right now, but at least it wasn't virgin jungle before, in a few years the trees will grow again and it will be like the road at the bottom which temporarily sees a stream of trucks bringing in materials. (By 2015 naturally it had been completed.)

It's the future, it's progress and there's nothing we can do about it. However, unless they go completely mad then there are still unspoiled areas on the island which will be good for another 10 years by which time I will most likely be forced to hang up my boots. The 502 coming down Jalan Tun Sardon kept us waiting but we had more than enough time left for our planned early dinner in Balik Pulau before heading for home on our familiar 17.30 501 bus. Back in January this would have had us both exhausted, now it's all in a day's work.