Photos from my last holiday!

1) Hutan Lipur, Berkelah Waterfall
We met on 14 December 2008 at KTM Tanjong Pagar Station. We took the morning train (5.30am!) and began our journey. First stop : Mentakab station! It was a 7 hour journey.


Azman and Sufyan


They played cards for a while in the train and after that we all KO-ed. Below is the station we alighted at! It was almost in the middle of nowhere. There were no buses, no cabs. There was an uncle (can you spot him in the picture? Haha!) who offered to drive us but he didn't know the place we mentioned and we had no maps! It was so funny because nobody knew the place we wanted to go to.

What's funnier? Everytime people ask us where we're going, we'd say 'Berkelah' because the name of the place is Berkelah Waterfall. But when we say 'Berkelah', the next question that came was, 'Where?' because Berkelah means Picnic! So anyway, we walked out of the station and started looking for cabs. The uncle eventually caught up with us and was willing to send us despite not knowing where we were heading to. Hahaha.



There!  The entrance of the place. It was almost a 2 hour ride to get to the main road, the outside of this place. To get into this place from the mainroad, it's a 5km journey. The uncle drove us in and then it got us thinking, how the hell are we going to get out tomorrow!? He didn't want to come back and fetch us, so we made a deal with the aunty selling drinks by the side to send a car to fetch us.

I was surprised that there were so many people, even along the way while we were trekking! They're mainly families spending time together there.





We stopped to chill here because we got lost. Imagine a river. We went across the river and then we were told it's the wrong way. And then we cross back to the other side. Wrong. Cross again. Wrong. Cross again. Wrong. In the end we decided to stop in the middle to chill. Haha! Then  there was a guy at the top shouting to us, asking us to go all the way back because we're heading the wrong way. !! Sufyan went off to wander to find the route.





We finally got up! But it was not the peak. To reach the peak it's another 2 hour trek and we were tired and hungry. Anyway, it was a good spot. Had fun playing around before we settled down!









This was taken the next morning. This picture is cool because, look at our faces. And the fact that Fareez was given the forfeit of cooking breakfast for everyone because he was the loser from Indian Poker before we went to sleep. Hahaha. And that's me being the good girlfriend helping him out. HAHA.



While the rest went off to chill at the camping spot, Fareez and I went off to trek further up.





And then it was time to leave. I really liked the place! Anyway, trekking out was real fast. But you know what? When we reached the entrance, it was TOTALLY EMPTY! So we had to walk out, the 5km walk out. Oh my gosh. We were rationing water, no more food. I was lucky my Mentos supply didn't run out. Hahaha. Never leave home without junk food. When we reached the main road - no cab, no bus, we were really in the middle of nowhere. Every vehicle that went past gave us funny looks! Finally, again, God was being kind, an uncle on motorbike talked to Fareez who was wandering around taking photos and he agreed to drive us all the way to Cherating! Straight to our next destination!





2) Cherating

When we reached Cherating, we made sure we got the number of the uncle who sent us and told him to come back 2 days later to fetch us since we all got a ticket back to Singapore from Kuantan. After that, we searched for a place to rest. Good deal we got. 80RM with 2 queen sized bed and a single bed. Perfect for us! But we didn't do much in Cherating. We arrived on the 15th, pretty late already so we checked in, had dinner and went back to the motel because the mosquitoes WERE INSANE. Sufyan had so many bites on his shoulder it looked like one big piece of island on his shoulder. Gross!

We planned to wake up early on the 16th to see sunrise, but of course none of us got up except for Mei Hung. Mei Hung's so funny, she wakes up at odd hours! I remember in Berkelah, we woke up at around 2am and started reading IN THE TENT!  With her torchlight! Hahahah. But anyway, we woke up on the 16th, had breakfast, and started to ask around about the activities we could think of.

* We wanted to rent bike. The place we went to only had 1. One of the places provide free bikes but only for people who stay there. We even  wanted to pay them for the bike but they refused.

* Guidebook says there's horseriding for 10RM an hour. We checked out, the guy wanted to charge us 100RM an hour!

*We looked for the place where we can book water activities like snorkelling and stuff like that, but someone told us that the place got burned down!

So were we left with nothing to do there! Well, except for the boat ride at night to see fireflies. We walked around, went to the beach and spent time playing cards. Anyway, it was monsoon season so there was really nothing to do there.







Baked. Burnt!



We ended up playing card games by the beach because it was too hot to be walking around and we were waiting for night to come because we decided to go on the night boat trip to see fireflies. Our individual facial expression while playing cards:









The fireflies were beautiful! It was so, so surreal. I don't even have words to describe it! We chilled at a really nice cafe, talking about many things while eating pizza. It was our last night and I was not ready for holidays to end! A few things happened that night but let's skip it. Fareez decided to continue the holiday with me so we decided to forgo our ticket back to SG with his friends.

On the morning of 17th, the uncle fetched us as promised. Fareez and I bought tickets to KL, where we'll continue our journey to Taiping because we couldn't find tickets straight to Taiping from Kuantan. We said our goodbyes to others and left on another adventure!


3) Taiping

Again,  we were lucky. We reached KL at around 2pm and headed for the KTM Intercity Train Station. We reached the station at 2.30pm and were told that our train was at 3.30pm. The train was late! It was supposed to reach KL Central at 2.30pm but it got delayed. Well, it didn't reach at 3.30pm. Haha. It came close to 5pm!

By the time we reached Taiping, it was evening. Below is sunset from the train. We walked around to find a place to rest, had dinner and got our rest.



The next day, we walked around. Decided to go to the zoo. It was a 45minute walk from our hotel. After the zoo, we walked around the lake. Had dinner, went back to hotel and rest.







On the 19th, Fareez and I went trekking, up the Bukit Larut. It's also known as Maxwell Hill. We seriously underestimated this hill! We went on foot, in slippers, with no food (I had a couple of energy bars) but we didn't forget water! It was a freaking 6hour trek up and at sometimes I felt like my legs were going to stop functioning. There were land rovers to take people up to the peak but both of us proudly walked on saying, 'Land rovers no kick ah!' HAHA.



Oh, this is the war memorial we went to on the way to the hill.




Halfway.


I was scared to stand on this thing because I was imagining a Pontianak swinging on it. :o


THE TOP! Finally. When we reached the top, we couldnt see anything below because it was so foggy. It was cold too and we were both in berms. The worst part about reaching the top? It started raining. AND, WE WERE TOLD WE HAD TO BUY TICKETS BEFORE WE COME UP IF WE WANTED TO GO DOWN WITH LAND ROVER. OMG.

Again, we were lucky. They managed to get us down in the land rover.





I loved the trek. Because even when I was almost nearing the top, Fareez and I saw old people trekking on their own. Old, as in, 50s-60s kind of old. Damn fit yo! People in Malaysia are very friendly too. There was a family we met at the top, we shared a landrover down with them. Later on that night, Fareez and I went to a shopping mall outside of Taiping where we indulged in good food and Starbucks. We met the family there again! They're a real cool family. They travel all over to visit nature places as a family. Their father even said they went to Singapore once and spent the whole day visiting all the nature parks in SG! And that just gave Fareez idea what to do with me if we ever settled down. Thanks Uncle!

I had an awesome time :D
 

(Most of the pictures by Fareez, a couple by Azman and Sufyan. Didn't have my camera with me!)