Penang Hills and Trails
Malihom Explorer

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 walk although quite long. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed.

This walk was inspired by our Malihom Bypass Hike which was a great walk but the start was less than totally satisfactory. In the event, the same could be said of this one...

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

We'd been in the Malihom area a couple of times this trip, but I realised that we had yet to walk up the main approach road. We've done it many times, but it never fails to please. When we were dependent on the buses, we rarely if ever walked down it as there is nowhere to stop one, it requires walking up the hill to the turn off for the Bukit Genting masts / restaurant. Parking is excellent here, we just had to make sure we could get back afterwards. The infamous 'purgatory' temple was not yet open for business, no doubt the proprietor was nursing a hangover but he came out briefly when the dogs barked but quickly vanished back inside.

It was a good day for any climb, cool and overcast but clear. That's Pulau Betong (yet) again. The compulsory 'piss off' notice really ought to have a small addition which reads 'Responsible hikers are welcome here", but that's true almost everywhere on this side of the island.

Walking up the zig-zags is a pleasure when they have been planted thoughtfully.

Here's the other view, Bukit Genting and its masts with Bukit Pulau Betong in the background. The iconic corkscrew is still present to tell hikers to turn left.

The area along the path is a little clearer now waiting for young trees to grow and once through the (un)chained barrier we were soon at the pass.

As we expected to have plenty of time today, we wanted to look at the area to the right, it was cleared a couple of years back and we expected it would provide a good 'look out' position. First though we had to negotiate a small stream bed and a little bit of artificial assistance was required. Above we could see the hut next to the jungle which still covers the top of this hill.

Actually, sitting at the end of a concrete path, it's main purpose is as a water tank. The picture looking north doesn't do justice to the view, behind the main ridge here from left to right are the Air Puteh, Bukit Elvira and Balik Pulau valleys. For the first time in quite a while, they were not covered in cloud in the middle of the day.

This is the extraordinary contrast looking east, Bayan Baru with Pulau Jerejak behind.

Next to the hut was a rusty contraption, clearly a wild boar (babi hutan) trap, there must be plenty in the adjacent forest. Any unfortunate animal pushing on the horizontal bar will release the metal gate.

One of my reasons for coming here was to get this view, I knew it was available as we had been on the other side of the valley a couple of times recently. The first time, we had taken the ascent shown in red, no wonder we had failed to make contact with the cleared area shown in purple! The second time, we had come up just below the coconut farm (cyan), through the rubber to the open area and roughly followed the yellow line down. Only looking like this explains everything, a GPS / satellite view is definitely inadequate here.

We set off down and at the first T junction we checked the right side. Ahead of Yuehong is as thick a kind of jungle as you will find anywhere on the island, I doubt this has ever been rubber.

Back we went and started down. This land will have been cleared many, many years ago and it was then planted with rubber. The new owner has ruthlessly cleared it to plant with fruit trees as is his right. However, It seems he doesn't have the resources to do a complete speedy replanting and he might well have been advised to do it progressively so as not to leave the land so exposed. For the two previous years it had been brown and black from burning and a lot of nutrients will have been lost.

We turned left as we didn't want to go down towards Sungai Ara today. We got a novel view of the Malihom Resort. I can see why they are unhappy at this clearance which has made their own site much windier than it was before. We had to leave the path and follow an old terrace, easy enough except when we came to the streambed.

Yuehong was smiling because she had spotted that there was probably a path behind the netting, I had gone on maybe another 50 metres through the undergrowth. We returned to the junction where we had arrived from the north side about an hour earlier.

The path up and around has now been concreted so it's a lot easier to follow. Eventually it finishes just below Malihom, but we took the earlier right hand route along the ridge and into the rubber.

This represents another kind of purgatory, anyone coming here is immediately enveloped by mosquitoes, I was squashing half a dozen at a time on my arms, I can't use repellent but Yuehong does and it made no difference. We were very glad to exit the rubber at the point where the 'Malihom' avoider path goes down.

After the long grass, it' a short descent down the road and round the side of the locked gates.

Yuehong was aghast that I wanted to turn left, "Dogs" she said, but I think her memory was faulty here. The first one is only a risk in that it might lick you to death and the next two are 'all bark'. You can see the traffic levels here from the latex laid out in the middle of the road to dry.

The road now becomes a path and then turns back into a road after a zig-zag.

We were granted a view of the target for the second half of the exploration and then came to a complex crossroads. As always we waved at a passing farmer on a motorbike and continued across and down.

Once again, I was guilty of sloppy planning, I had failed to check just which house we should pass on a path to the left (this on the basis that making mistakes often makes life more interesting). So when the first one offered a route beyond, I just took it although when the path didn't go down as expected I soon realised it wasn't the one used before.

Never mind, it wound round the hill, it was in more than fair condition and led into a durian orchard. Never mind it was fading out before our eyes.

Ahead was what was probably the required banana plantation but right now it didn't look a very good option. We had come through it on a dead-end path a year ago, but finding that path amongst all that crap didn't sound like a good idea.

Losing height is never our favourite option so that left just one choice and that was to head up to the ridge. This orchard is probably only cut seasonally and while the undergrowth was not high, any 'paths' there might have been were hidden, the camera went away, so the first picture is looking back down. We found ourselves pushed left as we climbed towards a cleared area where we found a path.

One zig-zag and we were on a concrete path with an electricity pole, JTS 45C 22 and a hut just above.

Yuehong was having a very good day, she recognised the farmer as the motorcyclist we had seen earlier, hence we could guess how he had got here. That wasn't going to help today though. Now it was worth a small fortune, he had just taken on the task of giving his grandfather's orchard a complete makeover. Since he could work out how we had come up the hard way, he had no hesitation in showing us the way (I won't say 'path') onward, grasping his parang, he added a few more hacks to the route he had cleared. When we got to the end of the clearance, he climbed up to the left (old rubber terraces of course), giving Yuehong a helping hand.

Immediately, out we came into a beautifully maintained orchard. "Mine will look like this in 2 years time" he told us. Ahead lay a wide track.

We followed it slightly upwards and then down towards a house.

The only sign of activity was someone cutting the grass, making so much noise that I doubt he knew we were there. "I recognise this" said Yuehong, I certainly didn't. Indeed we had walked past the other side as long ago as February 2013 on our first blunder full visit to Malihom when we had to ask the 'people on the hill' where the path was.

We joined another concrete road and ahead of us was a gate which we knew to be normally padlocked. It didn't matter as the iron grill on the right was 'removable' and afterwards we put it back in place.

So that was it, we just had to walk most of the way back down the Malihom approach road. It had been a most educational walk!

My fridge is more than full at the moment so it required only a stop at our favourite restaurant in Sungai Pinang on the way home.