Penang Hills and Trails - Bukit Laksamana Revisited
Tropical Fruit Farm to Batu Ferringhi.

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This should be a very long Grade 3 walk (although in practice Grade 4 as I cocked up the final bit). There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route intended / followed. Click here for a list of the known PBA rain gauges.

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

IMPORTANT

By December 2023, the route from the Bayview Beach Hotel towards the Batu Ferringhi Reservoir past the 'Chin Farm' had been aggressively blocked by razor wire in the area where there is a gate by the water tank. There are also numerous signs stating "NO TRESPASSING - NOT A PUBLIC HIKING TRAIL"

This will mean that there is no longer any access to / from any of these well known paths:

1. That to the Rimba at Teluk Bahang
2. That to RG 17, 18 and 19  (and on to Bukit Batu Ferringhi / Western Hill area)
3. That to RG 20 (and on to Western Hill area)

I do not know about current access through the main gate to the aqueduct above the former Holiday Inn.

By October 2022 a metal fence had been erected just inside the starting point described here. I have not had the time to see how secure it is but it does suggest that PBA rain gauge readers would have to gup via the Tropical Fruit Farm instead.

This was to be my third ascent of Bukit Laksamana and Yuehong's second, for more detailed descriptions see:

• Back Door to Laksamana (same direction)
• Another Stairway to Heaven (opposite direction)

Also relevant for the third section of this walk is

• Rimba Ridge (same direction)

Normally on a hike which is unbalanced for ups and downs, we would prefer to have more 'up' then 'down' but the condition of the path up from near the Tropical Fruit Farm was a consideration here although the uncertainty of arrival at the finish with very few (501) buses and the last one passing the TFF at around 18.00 was the ultimate deciding factor.

For full details of the first part of the hike please see the Back Door to Laksamana report, things weren't much different today except of course Rexy wasn't with us and there was no side tracking to check the link to Titi Kerawang. However, the weather certainly was different, these were the first two rain gauges, RG 23 and RG 22.

And the view from RG 22 was very tasty: That's Bukit Batu Itam on the left above the water where we were a couple of days earlier.

Some people are difficult to satisfy because Yuehong complained she was dazzled by the sun shining into her eyes. There was a real spring in her step without the prospect of rain and we got to the top nearly half an hour quicker than before.

On the first visit, the summit was in cloud and the rain was bucketing down. Today we got the classic views:

This is the typically Malaysian viewing platform with our ultimate destination, the Bayview Beach Resort behind, down in Batu Ferringhi. Things looked set fair as we hit the first ropes of the day.

Unfortunately, Yuehong had neither sufficient sleep nor calories for breakfast and she now faced a 'mid hike crisis' as her body went on strike.

It took twice as long as it should have done to get to rain gauge 13 (RG 13) and eventually a 20 minute 'time out' was called. 

This did the trick, not least maybe because earlier on the walk she had eaten more than half my jam sandwiches, something I don't really need but bring along 'just in case'. We roared past rain gauge 14 (RG 14) and I even got a 'my little schoolgirl' wave.

In no time we were at Station 10, which is the major junction above the Forest Park. Now I really didn't want to go down from here as it's often slippery and has some pretty serious rope work, so I was more than pleased when Yuehong elected to continue along the ridge as we had originally planned.

We did this trail last year and knew that, at least initially, it was great hiking. We flashed past rain gauge 21 (RG 21) and left the forest park area at the next junction with its Christmas tree of signs.

There was time for a spot of log hurdling and the next junction I got right, the paper and plastic goes left, where I know not but we once did a walk in that area ahead and will never return. 

This trail was not marked at all save with these pieces of blue string - I don't who they are but they seem to get in all the best places and they use these subtle markers to show their trails. Things were looking good when we reached rain gauge 15 (RG 15) which was our sixth of the day. I polished off yet another Tiger and prematurely congratulated myself on another job well done.

We set off with high hopes although I was aware that last time we had faced deliberate blockages lower down.

As we skipped round a couple, what Yuehong noticed and I did not was that the blue string had turned left. The trail I was trying to follow along the ridge was basically quite overgrown and it was easier to walk parallel to it.

Madam was not amused, she hadn't mentioned the blue string because I seemed so confident, she reckoned it was the Tiger pulling my strings. Then we hit the ferns...

... and more ferns. Then we could see a rapidly flowing stream below us. It would have been an easy walk on the other side, the Batu Ferringhi Dam was probably just 200 metres away but there was too much water to cross safely.

Instead we had to 'follow' what little was left of our disused trail, which largely comprised my kicking our way through metre high ferns until we reached the dam. Ahead was a fence erected to stop people coming this way which would have been the cause of the path's demise. Fortunately, Yuehong spotted that we could readily cross the rocks below the dam as nearly all the water was being abstracted by the PBA. Before we made the traverse we washed off as much as we could of the fern detritus which covered us but there was nothing we could do about our smells.

It was an inglorious end to what had been a memorable hike, with various amounts of 'lost time' we had been on the go for nearly 10 hours. I would like to report that we had a swift journey home, but it was the second day of Chinese New Year, Batu Ferringhi was in gridlock and demand for the 101 buses far exceeded supply. It wasn't for want of trying, when we managed to board the third bus that came, we saw no less than six buses heading for Teluk Bahang which had become trapped in the chaos. Those many waiting at the George Town end of the strip would have waited a long time, ours filled completely at the next stop and that was it, everyone else at the remaining bus stops was left behind. There was no formal dinner, we were too tired and slept very well.

There can't have been too much lasting damage to our relationship as not only has Yuehong demanded WE immediately go back to the dam to find out where I had gone wrong, she has asked for 'more of the same' because her bathroom scales smiled at her the morning after. We had no problem to sort out and correct my egregious error.