Penang Hills and Trails - Stairway to Heaven
The 1200 Step Temple at Paya Terubong

This is part of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang. Click here for the index which includes an alternative route to the temple from the Air Itam Dam. This is a Grade 2-3 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.

Along the road from Air Itam to Relau lies the United Hokkien Cemeteries in Paya Terubong (201, 203 or - best - 502 buses). Right at the Air Itam end there is a concrete motor cycle track that leads into the hills.

Crowded would be an apt description but it's still open for business. The graves vary from abandoned to well tended and this modern one has a nice 'old touch',

The track bears to the right towards the boundary fence and passes a small shrine. This is the start of the 1200 steps to the delightful Cheng Kon Sze (Cheng Ji Chan).

During our visit the durians trees which cover the lower parts of the hill were coming into season and the main purpose of the motorcycle track is to bring them out, as such it does a criss-cross with the steps:

Sticking to the motorbike track means gentler climbing and views that just get better and better. Behind the Guan Yin monstrosity is Bukit Cendana which is the subject of another walk in this series...

The downside is that eventually the track starts to divide, decisions have to be made and as far as we could see at the time, none of the concrete tracks still gets as far as the temple - we had two very dead ends, one of which produced two classic views and the prize of a durian which was unfit for sale as a whole, but half of which was more than edible. It's a matter of judgment as to when the view is optimal, higher up the nearer flats become too prominent.

So eventually we had to retreat and take the steps, about 800 of them! Some days later we did revisit and by descending found out where we had gone wrong. Finally we got to the delightful Cheng Kon Sze (Cheng Ji Chan or 9 Emperors Temple). Yes, it's just another 100 year old Chinese temple, (and the interior is off limits for photography) but 'location, location, location'... There is more detailed information on this temple on http://www.penang-traveltips.com/cheng-kon-sze-temple.htm (a site which covers many of the Chinese temples in Penang in some detail).

These days, I guess most visitors come up the road which starts at the back of Kek Lok Si on the Air Itam Dam road and this was a gentler descent on the knees, especially as by now the sun had moved round and it was shaded almost the whole way. The views are a bit different, this one shows yet more housing going up in Paya Terubong and someone has built a mansion in the hills but it doesn't look occupied right now. Just a small contrast in living conditions!

I was sure there must be a track from this road to the transmission mast road which leads to the Air Itam Dam but we had no energy to investigate. (As we found later it can be accessed from the temple itself.) Behind Kek Lok Si is a small 'landlord' shrine and the most interesting thing about the developments there is a twin funicular. Although there are two cars, they work independently and each has its own slab of steel as counterweight, the small orange pagoda in the middle bottom is one of the cars.

At the end of the walk from Balik Pulau to Air Itam, Yuehong had discovered the joys of 'Ais Kacang', a concoction of ice, sauces, beans and God knows what topped with ice cream. It must be good because she had two of them. It was, allegedly, part of her light weight dinner.