Penang Hills and Trails - Jalan Chai Quickie
Balik Pulau to Balik Pulau

This is part 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.

It was that 'time of the month' when Yuehong's hair needed a bit of colour assistance so I locked myself away as I am allergic to such chemicals. We agreed that it would be good to do a half day walk and as a result we could only catch the 13.10  501 and get off it somewhere where we could end up in Balik Pulau. I suggested starting at Botanica but Yuehong vetoed that idea. Instead we decided to walk from Jalan Chai and look for a route up (and maybe over) which we had not previously used.

These are the pictures from our earlier visit showing the junction and beautiful Titi Heights, somewhere which won't see me as a resident - continue walking in front of the flats and very soon you will enter a shaded road, follow it through the bananas and oil palm.

Stay on the tarmac as you pass what appears to have been the estate manager's bungalow for the former surrounding rubber estate and a small Chinese temple.

Eventually, almost reluctantly the path starts to climb, we knew there were two paths to the right which we had yet to explore and we took the first of these at Yuehong's insistence. I pointed out that the only time we had been in the ridge area at the top was on one of our least pleasurable walks when we followed part of the 2012 Hash Rainforest Challenge but that was brushed aside and I have to admit it was a very pleasant ascent, there was just one junction and we kept right on the main path

As the path continued to climb gently, we could see the roof of one of the houses near the high point of the known path that leads over towards Bukit Elvira. In the distance below us was a reminder of why we prefer not to walk through the Botanica development.

Inevitably the path finished, but there was a clearly defined way onwards and upwards and finally slightly to our left I could see daylight at the ridge. I was sent up ahead to verify it was indeed accessible and there was all of a 5 metre scramble before we emerged.

In front of us were some recently planted rubber trees, we had come to one of the very few points on our previous visit to the area which was clear of secondary jungle. The ridge behind Yuehong runs up to the Temple with a View and further behind are the ridges leading to Nanshan, two areas where we have done several walks this trip. I went a little further up to check that the ridge was still overgrown which allowed me to take the second picture which clearly shows the way down.

Unfortunately, the plastic hashers of PH4 had been back here in December 2014 on another Rainforest Challenge and again left their persistent rubbish behind: Note how the traditional paper is breaking up but how the plastic is still 'almost new' after 3 months.

Fortunately that was our only encounter with their trail this time but it was the third time on a walk we had seen the mess they left behind. Yuehong went off along a terrace hoping for a concrete trail down but she was disappointed, we had to pick our way down the path through the rocks, it was much easier than the picture suggests.

At the bottom there was a small hut with the residual rubber from the tapping season that had finished as the dry season started.

We had now hit a good path but in fact we were almost at the Bukit Elvira road, there was just one more hut to pass.

When we hit the valley road (electricity pole HT BI 42) we turned right and had a relatively short walk back past the cemeteries to Balik Pulau. With Ching Ming coming on 5th April 2015, the local Chinese cemetery management had paid some Malaysian Indians (the traditional gardeners) to tidy it up, hopefully there would be some rain to turn it a little greener in the next couple of weeks. Finally, a reminder that the most successful businesses are those that recognise that there is a market for their waste products. Behind the truck is a chicken farm and bags of chicken shit are being loaded up for sale to the vegetable farmers in the hills as fertiliser.

It had been a very pleasant 'quickie', we had plenty of time at the Hometown Food Court for refreshment and a chance to access the internet for an hour as that at our condo is currently dead.

If you are doing this walk in reverse, then you should come out of Balik Pulau on the Air Itam Road and turn off left for the cemeteries. When you get to the electricity pole HT BI 42, turn left and go up the hill past the hut in the picture above. If you keep the old rubber to your right and the new rubber to your left you will come up to the ridge at the point where it is easy to cross over into the top of the durian estate. Just go straight down until you meet the concrete path (it will take no more than 10 minutes) and follow it down until you join the main path down which feeds into the end of Jalan Chai. You would have to try very hard to get lost.