Penang Hills and Trails - Sungai Ara Explorer 4
Filling the Gaps in our Knowledge

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk owing to the number of (mainly minor) obstructions. 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.

We'd been in the Sungai Ara area above Jalan Kenari a few days earlier and it had left a few loose ends as we we really didn't want a long walk back up the Sungai Ara Valley to recover Mavis. Today was designed to resolve those issues, in the end it took a bit longer than expected and I didn't have to activate my plan for a second short walk in the area.

Our kicking off point was on the bizarrely named Persiaran Kelicap because it has another half at least 1km away towards Bayan Lapas round the back of the development (at Kampong Perlis on our map below). It's clearly shown on the the map in this report https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/the-blue-house, it would have helped if I had looked more  closely at it before starting! The gate was too inviting...

This area is the nearest thing I have seen to a slum in all my years of living in and visiting Malaysia, presumably it houses the migrant workers who are building Sungai Ara's concrete jungle.

The occupants actually have a better view than those who will occupy the rather superior houses below!

Beyond we had our first wildlife experience of the day and then our path turned right up the hill. There were two quite overgrown paths to the left, one straight up which finished at a ruined hut and one to the right which was my idea of the right direction except that it was doing anything but climb.

First impressions were not good but it soon opened up even if it had the usual obstructions. Things got better when we found a fence on our right, but I said to Yuehong that we weren't anything like high enough up the hill.

Eventually we came to a junction and before we tested the path upwards, I needed to check out my suspicions. Indeed we had spent half an hour to get ourselves almost back to Mavis. Beyond the gate, just 10 metres ahead, was a concrete road that led back to our parking spot. It would have helped, as I said above, if we had looked more closely at the on line map. Never mind, we weren't in a hurry and now we were climbing.

This was an excellent path, we zigged and zagged and when we came to a junction we elected to take the path that followed the contour.

Wrong again! We passed a Malaysian collecting bananas - a rare sight - and the path finished at this hovel for two.

Back we went to the junction and again climbed up, the quality of the path declining markedly after we passed these water containers. Not that it greatly mattered because after the next U-bend we soon came to a stand of bamboo which we recognised as a junction we had come to on the previous walk here.

So instead of following the main path up left, we took the minor path straight ahead and when it finished, we again climbed a few terraces and followed the plastic fence until we came to the durian orchard.

We could see the flats below where we expected to re-enter civilisation, but first Yuehong had to sample a pomello, one was conveniently placed next to our path. Actually it was past its sell by date but she soon found another better example which she consumed while I sank a couple of Tigers, it now being clear we would have no time to do another exploration today. 

This time we left by the main gate and again there was no one around to enforce the stupid notice.

Round the corner was yet another example of an increasingly common sight on the island, that of an overgrown durian orchard getting a makeover.

To satisfy our curiosity we needed to follow the concrete road down, at one point a tree had come down in the recent storms but it was no threat to the non-existent traffic.

Soon we had our second wildlife experience, my theory is that these are 'temple cows' which are wheeled out for Hindu festivals. Ahead was civilisation, the sign would tell us it was Cangkat Kenari 3.

Looking back this is what we would have seen if we had chosen to park up here, something we will do in due course as there would be a good loop walk involving the Blue House ridge without the need to use the Sungai Ara valley road. We turned left into Cangkat Kenari and then right into Jalan Kenari. Here the final piece of greenery was being sorted for yet more housing and a tree stump was being clinically removed in what was clearly an uneven contest.

My opinion of today's Sungai Ara compared to the one I knew 40 years ago is completely unprintable. I wouldn't live here even if they gave me a free house and free dinners in the Yo Yo for life. Talking of which, we adjourned to the said establishment as it was a Wednesday and our Sungai Pinang venue would have been closed. Yuehong got her breakfast vegetables, we spent a small fortune on fruit in Balik Pulau and were home long before sunset.