Don't just eat

Penang National Park, Teluk Bahang. We reached here at 9.15am on CNY Day 4 and submitted our names at the registration counter before we were allowed to enter the National Park (foc).

The entrance to the National Park (tropical/equatorial rainforest) is on the right of the photo above.

Please click on the above for a larger photo. From the entrance, there are hiking trails leading to a few places.

We walked to the Meromiktik Lake and Kerachut Beach which according to the guide above is about 3.4km away (1 way) and takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes one way but we took longer than that.

The beginning of the trail has paved walkway so it is a piece of cake.

It became harder for me when it came to the above - a climb uphill on steps cut out from the soil because I seldom exercise at home.

There are also many portions of the trail where the path is on flat grounds, lucky for me.

Stone steps like the one above help us ascend uphill or descend downhill nearer to the beach. When it comes to ascending and descending I walk really slowly to ensure that I do not use up all my energy and let about 30 other hikers pass me. They are walking so fast that they quickly disappear out of my sight.

The sign above says "please do not leave anything behind" but we saw quite a number of empty drink bottles lying on the ground along the trail.

Although it was a hot and sunny day, some parts were quite dark due to the trees providing us with shelter from the sun.

We crossed a few cement bridges like the one shown in the photo above.

After walking for 2 hours and 15 minutes we reached the hanging bridge leading to the Meromiktik Lake (left of the photo) and Kerachut Beach (right of the photo) at about 11.45 am.

There are only a few Meromiktik Lakes in the world. A Meromiktik Lake is a lake with two layers of water that do not mix - sea water and fresh water. As can be seen, the lake is dry in many parts.

Kerachut Beach - no swimming is allowed here. There are no food or drinks sold here either so we brought our own drinking water and bread. We overheard a couple taking a boat back for MYR40 per person and they were the only ones on board. As I still have some energy left, I decided to walk back instead of taking a boat back to our starting point because to me the return journey always take a shorter time.

We sat around enjoying the lovely scenery for about an hour while eating our bread and resting before retracing our steps to our starting point at 12.55 pm. True enough, the return journey is faster although we need to climb long flights of stone steps and we reached the registration office at about 2.25 pm taking only about 1 hour 30 minutes.

For someone who do not exercise at all, my legs ache the next day but I expected that. It is a nice change to walk a forest trail instead of just hanging around in shopping malls during CNY. Would I do it again? Probably not on the same trail. Perhaps I would walk the other trail to the lighthouse instead. This is a good activity for those who are keen to exercise and learn about nature because there are many signboards along the trail explaining about the forests.