Chiling Falls Hike

So, Friday (October 26th) was a holiday here in Malaysia, which means Troy was able to have a three-day weekend. The holiday was Hari Raya Haji, which is an Islamic festival to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim (also known as Abraham) to follow Allah’s (God’s) command to sacrifice his son Ishmael. So, because of this holiday, Troy didn’t have to work and we got to check out something pretty awesome.

We had originally planned on going to Malacca, but things didn’t quite work out, so instead we joined several of Troy’s coworkers to go hike to some waterfalls. It was an interesting experience. Troy has some very unique coworkers. The original group we went with consisted of Troy, myself, Shauna, Seth, Scott, Bao and Asmaa. We went in to two cars and unfortunately, the other car never made it. There are two cities that have a one-letter difference in their spelling and they went to the wrong one. The city they went to was Kuala Kubu Baru when they needed to go to Kuala Kubu Bharu. Crazy, right? So, it just ended up being Troy, myself, Shauna and Seth that made it to the falls.

Getting there was interesting for us, too. Seth drove while Shauna navigated for a while and we had a bit of an adventure. We took a bunch of wrong exits and got turned around several times. And it wasn’t Shauna that was getting us all lost. The streets in Kuala Lumpur are really confusing and the map programs aren’t entirely accurate with where we are on the road or where the streets actually are, so we missed turns and took wrong turns because it doesn’t make a lot of sense at first. Seriously, navigating in that city without a gps is a nightmare and the maps on iphones are a disaster! Troy eventually started using his android map to assist with the navigating and, between the two of them, we finally figured out where we were going.

Overall, it took us about two hours to get to Chiling Falls. Only took us about an hour to get back, but that’s because Troy drove and was going about 50km over the speed limit. Nobody really cares, though. I don’t think anyone actually pays attention to traffic laws around here.

Before making it to the actual hike, we stopped at a Hindu temple for about 30 minutes or so, waiting for the other car to arrive.

We had decided to meet up at the turnoff leading up to the hike since our car wanted to stop and grab a few things at a convenience store while the other car wanted to head straight to the hike. Once we realized they were in a different town and wouldn’t get over to us for about an hour, we decided to do the hike without them. I think they all were okay with that and just wanted to go home. They all sounded pretty frustrated with the streets as well, so none of us blamed them for not wanting to try and get to us. I feel bad for them because getting lost around here sucks. You can ask locals for help, but they either don’t understand what you’re asking, you don’t understand what they are saying or they have no clue what you are talking about or looking for. 

After leaving the Hindu temple, we came across a scenic overlook next to Lake Selangor. We all thought it was pretty, so we made another stop to take pictures.

Once we got up to the hike entrance, we came across a bit of an issue. The first parking area we drove  by was completely deserted. Seth didn’t feel comfortable parking in a little grass field that only had a dumpster (overflowing) when just up the road a little ways there was another tiny grass field with about 5,000 cars (not really, more like 12) all crammed in there and making the road almost impassable. None of us could figure out why the one parking area was overflowing and the other parking area, probably a 30-second drive away, was totally empty. But Seth figured there had to be a reason why nobody parked there, so we found a spot in the overflowing area and parked. Of course, we had to navigate around the fallen tree to turn around to park, which provided some entertainment.

Once we got situated and parked in an area we hoped we wouldn’t get blocked into, we headed out for the hike.

To get to the area that leads to the falls, you have to go under a sign, down a path and past a field. There is a fence that blocks the field when the hike is closed, but Seth had called to make sure the hike was open on Friday and the lady said it was, so we just jumped the fence. There was a large group of Chinese people standing in front of the fence, unsure of what to do, and they all followed us after we jumped it.

They have a not-to-scale map of the hike to the lower falls and we followed it for the most part. We branched off a few times, but ended up going back to the main path because it’s a lot easier. lol

 

When I say ‘we’, I mean myself and Troy. Seth and Shauna took off after a few minutes, so Troy and I did the hike by ourselves. They wanted to do the hike at a faster pace and Troy and I wanted to take photographs, so we split up and made plans to meet back up in a few hours. Eventually, Troy said we needed to stop taking so many pictures and hike a bit faster. He was concerned about flash floods from the afternoon rains, so he wanted to be done with the hike before it started raining. It usually starts raining about 2-4 in the afternoon and we anticipated being done with the hike between 2-3. Because of our deviations and the additional hike to the higher falls, we didn’t get done until after 3.

Even with not taking as many pictures as I wanted to, I still took a lot of pictures. Anyone who knows me knows that my camera is my best friend. I LOVE taking pictures. Anything that looks interesting or I think it pretty, I will take a picture of it. Back in Oklahoma, Lyndsay and I used to walk 5 miles around the lake in the evenings (only lasted a month or two lol) and she would tease me about taking lots of pictures every time we were there. The sunsets were just so pretty and different every night. So, yeah, I know I take a lot of pictures. I can’t help it. I love taking pictures.

I ended up with 171 pictures from the hike, even with not taking all the pictures I wanted to, so it was probably a good idea for Troy to tell me to cut back on stopping so much. The pictures aren’t super fabulous because I didn’t used the DSLR. Being a river/waterfall hike, I just stuck with my little  waterproof point-and-shoot. But, I still got some decent shots.

This is the bridge we had to cross to get from the entrance area over to the hike.

The path for the hike varied quite a bit. Part of it was brambly, part of it was muddy, part of it was clear dirt and part of it was in the river.

I think Troy was already starting to get exasperated with all my pictures. haha

There were tons of giant dragonflies.

Token picture of us about a half an hour into the hike. I love Troy’s facial expressions.

We had to cross the river 5 times and the water was pretty deep at some of the crossings. Troy got in the habit of doing a test crossing to guage the depth and then coming back to get his camera gear. He would carry his camera bag over his head and I would carry his camera. Mine is waterproof, so I just stuck it in my pocket  to focus more on his camera. I wish I’d gotten a picture of the point when it was up to Troy’s chest. I was a bit more focused on making sure the water didn’t sweep him away, though. He did slip and fall in the water once while carrying his camera, but I had reflexes like a ninja and grabbed it before it could go under with him. 

There were butterflies all over the place. At one point, I just stood still and this one butterfly kept doing circles around me. It was cool. It landed on my shoulder and my head a few times, but it didn’t stay long enough to get a picture. It was really neat, though.

This was our first view of the waterfall!

This monkey was just sitting there, watching people eat their lunches and swim in the water.

There was a group of Indian guys who all asked to have their pictures taken with me. lol. It was kinda funny. I felt a little silly because I looked like a disaster, but I guess it’s a novelty to have pictures with foreigners. 

The waterfall was pretty and the water was cold! When I went in there and Troy started taking pictures, one of the Indian guys came over to me and started posing. lol. They were funny guys.

When we were heading back to get to the path that lead over that waterfall and to the higher ones, there was a group of Chinese people who were forming a chain-gang to get their people and supplies across the river. They were really nice and offered to take Troy’s camera bag across the river. I’m really glad they helped. Troy slipped at one of the previous crossings and had dunked the camera bag. His camera and his head stayed above the water (barely) and he struggled to keep the camera above water and get his balance until I was able to jump back in and grab his camera and his arm. The combination of the slip and the weight of his camera bag hurt his back, so it was nice to have them take the bag for a few minutes. I tried carrying it for a little while, but it was so heavy and Troy didn’t want me to hurt myself carrying it, so he only let me have it long enough for him to stretch his back out a little bit.

This looks like flat ground, but it is actually going almost straight up. The tree roots formed a stairway to get up above the waterfall. It was really steep and really high.

This is the view from the top. It was so high up that we couldn’t see where we had started from.

The path got a little scary after this. It was a thin strip with a lovely precipice over the waterfall. I got a little nervous at this point because I’m afraid of heights. I told Troy I was a little scared and he was really good about holding my hand when it was wide enough to do so and turning back to help me climb up things that were steep.

There were these cute little mushrooms all over the place, growing out of the moss. They were fun to look at and took my mind off the drop behind me.

This was as close as we got to the higher falls.

We were supposed to have met up with Seth and Shauna at the higher falls, but we didn’t find them and decided to head back down to the main waterfall to see if they had gone back there. Plus, we couldn’t see any easy way over to the waterfall from where we were. Another reason we turned back is because it was starting to get overcast and also because Troy had deviated from the actual path on accident, so we weren’t sure we were even in the right place where we were all supposed to meet. There had been a fork at one point and we took the fork closest to the water and it eventually just faded away. Once we lost the trail, we just cut through foliage and decided that we had taken the wrong path once it got too dense for us to go any further. After we started heading back, we hit a patch where Troy’s phone had service and we got a voice mail from Seth saying he and Shauna were back at the main waterfall waiting for us. So, we hurried back and started the trek back to the entrance.

All along the hike there were some really pretty bushes, leaves, growing things and lots of bugs.

Once we got back to the main area, we were all pretty exhausted, but happy we’d gone on the hike. It was a lot of fun. We made it out before the rain started and got the car out without any problems. 

Troy got to drive home and he was very excited about it. Seth and Shauna regretted the decision to let him drive shortly after we got back on the road because Troy’s used to driving his Audi TT and we were in a little Proton.

The Proton doesn’t drive nearly as well on the twisty roads at high speed as the Audi would have, so Troy almost went off the road a few times. And almost hit a couple cars. And almost drove the wrong way. It was quite the experience. But, we made it home. Yay!

As a side note, even with being out in the sun for several hours, I STILL didn’t get a tan. Okay, yeah, we were under trees about half the time, but come on! I should have gotten something! *sigh*