Penang Hills and Trails - Yet Another Pantai Acheh Loop
Exploring the Hills above the Village

This is part of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang. Click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk (at least). 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.

This account is linked from my Penang Peaks page which lists peaks over 400 metres as well as other places of interest and viewpoints. To find other hikes which visit this peak please check the maps of this are using this link.

Today's walk was set up to show good friend Rexy Prakesh the countryside between Pantai Acheh village and the round-the-island road. It's not totally dissimilar to the one we did with Dave Ray and Mike Gibby but this time we started at Pantai Acheh instead of the round-the-island road near the Tropical Fruit Farm.

For a cut down version of this walk, please see our Christmas Day 2018 report.

It was Chinese New Year's Day and the local temples were well worth a visit, although most of the activity will have been around midnight. At Sungai Pinang, some of the large joss sticks had been burned and the road was littered with the remains of fire crackers. Inside, it was very smart with plenty of oranges on display.

This was at Pantai Acheh, next to the school (left) and above the village (right).

Rexy left his car in the shade and we took Mavis up the valley road as far as it could go. We took the familiar path to the right and when we got to the 'model durian orchard' we found the young owner in attendance. Unusually, he was a Hokkien although one of his grandmothers was a Hakka. As he had been to George Town Secondary School and then the Free School he could have spoken with either Yuehong or myself. The orchard is 7 acres and has no less than 10 different varieties of durian trees. Despite the current durian boom, he says he makes a modest income and that most of the money ends up in the pockets of the middle men, a sentiment we have heard several times before.

At the top of the path, Yuehong vanished into the gap in the ferns and as we had started quite early, there was a clear view of Bukit Batu Itam.

Rexy added RG 24 to his collection, I suspect he must have been to nearly all the known examples by now although I am not sure he keeps a list. While the ridge around the 'White House' is quite tidy now, the area to the south is rather scrubby and full of the kind of plants that colonise a cleared area which is not properly replanted; in a few years it will be difficult to get through here the way things are going.

We went down the concrete path at the end and caught up with Yuehong who was charming another durian farmer. He had just one acre but managed several more for his friends. He was a fan of the 'Red Prawn' variety and felt that the current favourite 'Musang King' was overrated and was grown as much for its speed of growth and yield as its actual inherent quality. We had come down this way so that Rexy could see an endangered species, a clove tree. The farmer above said that there are several in the church yard in Balik Pulau and we marked that as something to check out.

As we had come so far down, we were faced with quite a climb to get back to the road that runs round the side of the hill to the next ridge. Yuehong got Rexy to take a picture of us with a classic view of rural Penang, the colours being very strange on the 'toy' and they defied my attempted correction.

Rexy was very interested in the small area of uncleared jungle on the top of the hill, it would be good to think that the farmers appreciated its beneficial effect. Interestingly one of the trees bears a number, something that is more common in a fruit orchard. Such an area would not normally support much wildlife, but as we walked along the edge we saw a solitary dusky leaf monkey returning from the rubber estate next door.

From here we walked down through the chicken farm towards the round-the-island road and it being a public holiday there was no 'management' present to complain about our presence.

It was only 400 metres along the road next to the new security fence to our turn off (Tropical Fruit Farm 400 metres) and immediately we were back in a peaceful area. Compared to a few weeks ago, the path down had been cut back.

However, as we had found elsewhere, this was solely for the benefit of visitors to the Da Ba Gong shrine and when we turned off, the path was not only less than obvious but very soon it was almost completely covered in vegetation.

Where it passed through trees, it was quite clear but with odd small tree down. Overall, it was no longer suitable for the mountain bikers who used to come this way regularly. In fact if you were not familiar with path then you wouldn't want to be coming this way at the moment.

The orchard at the end was clear, however, I would guess that whoever maintains it has come over from Pantai Acheh. There were two rubber rollers (presses) here, a reminder of the former use of the land.

The house is certainly abandoned, the old man in the underpants is probably history. The path goes a short way beyond and both the bridges over the stream are damaged, Rexy shot off again to check out the small waterfall here.

Yuehnng headed up through the long grass, there's some kind of path up this ridge, but it helps to know where it goes. By now Rexy was happy to take our word for the 'needful' but in fact I was standing on the concrete path over to Pantai Acheh when I took the last picture.

It was never intended to be a walk which I documented meticulously as we have recorded it many times before so it is sufficient to note that the path back to Mavis was in perfect condition unlike the one we had just left. It would be sad if the 'Secret Garden' trail was to be lost because it is a real treasure, but it seems that apart from us, no one else is hiking along it...