Penang Hills and Trails - Sungai Ara Explorer 8
Another Temple in the Hills

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a short Grade 3 walk with a less straightforward section or two. 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.

For pictures of the temple's celebration day in January 2018, see the extra pictures at the end of the hiking report.

We'd done five shorter walks in successive days, Yuehong really needed to rest her knee and in any case she had some urgent chores to do in town. It was time for me to do something a little 'mad'. We knew that a hash run had appeared from the south on the ridge from the Blue House above Sungai Ara and I wanted to check out that ascent. I had seen a red roof about half way up on Google Maps satellite view and on a disastrous preliminary visit to the top of Persiaran Kelicap I had seen flags and a sign which were typical for a Chinese temple.

The temple name in (Malaysian Pinyin) is Tang Heng Than, I discovered this by getting Yuehong to enter the three Chinese characters for it - right to left - into Google which throws up among others  http://www.angkongkeng.com/malaysia/20-penang/723-tang-heng-than, The address is officially Bukit Lada but that is no help in a web search.) 

So I parked Mavis Mk 2 just inside the turning and set off up the road. I had previously done a recce here on 4 wheels as I was tired at the end of a walk and as normal in these matters, I had ignored the sign. DO NOT attempt to bring a car beyond this 'No Entry' sign or you will, like me, regret it.

The road is a little narrow but initially passable and that's not unexpected hash paper attached to the tree.

This is where things went badly wrong for me, the gap between the boulder and the edge of the road, on checking, was large enough (just) to get through with extreme care. I considered it preferable to having to reverse a long way back. After which I had turned around at the first opportunity, the wide track up to the right. Coming back down, I had been offered assistance by a motorbiker, alas his signals were not always clear and Mavis ended up with a few scratches to the paintwork which have now been sorted at some expense, hence the appearance temporarily of Mavis Mk 2. 

Today, I was now on new territory, I continued up as did the hash paper. For anyone with a narrower car than a Myvi, the next gap would be more challenging still, I measured it as 4 boot lengths (4 foot or 1.2 metres).

There was one more wide track off up to the right (it leads to the road above which I used later) and then I came to the temple. That's a serious number of joss sticks to burn and the remains of many more underneath.

Outside were appropriate offerings and inside rather more. Without Yuehong, communication was not going to be as easy as normal, but I gathered it was a Hakka - Teochew temple and the joss sticks were for the birthday of the monkey king (in yellow) due the next day. He was flanked by two other gentlemen in red and green and to the right the larger statues were Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) and and the King of Heaven, there were numerous other smaller statues. See below for more information / speculation.

I was told to stop around as one of the devotees would shortly be communicating with the gods. It seems their utterances were being transmitted to pieces of paper which were then stamped for authenticity. Just why, I don't know but a serious donation was being made in the background.

Eventually, it was time for the real business of the day. There was no hash paper in evidence here, and I checked out the back of the temple. I don't like overgrown streambeds so I picked a promising site on the right looking up and after a couple of snips I found myself in old rubber as I had expected.  A quick glance around and I soon found what may once have been a path, I settled down for a bit of a slog as I had to climb the best part of 100 metres vertically according to the terrain map.

It wasn't demanding at all and in less than 10 minutes I could tell from the light that I was approaching a clear area. There was a bit of ginger to push through and I clambered up.

I don't know who was the more surprised, myself or the young gentleman in the car who was just opening the gate to his estate. We exchanged a few words, he was not unfriendly, but naturally curious as to how how and why I was here! Now obviously, I would need to establish how he had got here, but that could wait. While he was sorting his car and locking the gate, I walked up to the end of the road. There were several options but the contour path round to the house which had younger rubber trees above seemed the best option.

It was probably a good job Rover was chained up and the old lady (who turned out to be the driver's mother) was extremely shy. I wasn't going through the house this time and I looked around the back.

Before I climbed anywhere, I noticed that there was a pile of rubber and after that I wasn't surprised to find an ongoing concrete path.

There was no point in making life difficult so I walked up it, the black plastic seems to be a way of dissuading wild boar from entering, this is how it looked from both sides. I doubt it would have been too effective if seriously challenged.

Round the side of the rubber the path continued to some durian trees and I followed it up to the right. Looking back, I could see up to the ridge, it wasn't far away at all. However, loud repeated grunting noises suggested that the territory was already occupied, I was told later that it would actually have been a pair of very large wild boar.

So I followed a rough trail back round into the rubber and it crossed a wider, but overgrown trail, eventually terminating at a large hole in the ground, presumably intended as a water tank.

I went back a bit, the best way to the ridge seemed to be to follow a contour round and I picked a suitable fruit tree terrace. Of course, it was covered in ginger...

... but as soon as I left the orchard and entered the old rubber, it became a path, my instincts and experience had once again worked the trick.

It went down slightly and started to climb and there again I found hash paper, I've no idea where it had been since I last saw it near the temple.

I popped over the edge of the ridge and I found myself on a familiar path, just as I would have expected. I was next to a stand of bamboo, the pictures show looking in both directions, the second has a triangular piece of hash paper which we had found here a few day earlier. I was more than satisfied, I had my traditional break and went back the way I had come. I soon discovered I had come the optimum way from the house as the direct route back down through the rubber was rather steeper and much less even. 

I met the young man at the house again, we had a brief chat, it seemed his family had owned the land here for some 50 years and next door was part of the Brown Estate. I skipped round the side of the gate and headed down the 'leafy lane'.

It showed no sign of wanting to descend and the tree density started to decrease. The grassy wide trail to the right was one of those I had seen from below - we confirmed this the next day - but my new friend could not have driven up that way even had he wanted to with the current narrow road.

I was soon at the Setia Pearl Island development. The warning board is about the dangers of blasting, I felt quite safe today as there were a couple of cows grazing nearby. Attractive it was definitely not and I set off for a long hot trudge down what looked to be the access road.

This is what these wonderful people have done to the hillside, the picture says it all, money talks. Fortunately for me, my friend pitched up on his reserve motorbike and offered me a lift down, he must have been worried I would miss my way. I wasn't going to refuse and as we went we exchanged a few words on our surroundings, not surprisingly we were in complete agreement on the subject. I guess in due course, he will arrange to get access via the temple road but for time being he has to drive through here every time he visits his property.

In the unlikely event I hike this valley again, I know which way I will come, especially as I now know you can access the top road from the wide track up from the temple. 

Next day we both returned around noon, there was a constant stream of visitors who walked up or arrived on motorbikes.

We spoke with a gentleman in his 50s who recalls coming here for the first time as a young child, he remembers people talking about coming here in the 1930s so it has certainly been around for quite a while, although no doubt it has been rebuilt over the years.

Given the difficulty of getting information as there were few competent Mandarin speakers here, this is our reading of what the temple is about. It relates to the famous Chinese 16th century novel 'Journey to the West' based on the travels of the monk Xuanzang through Central Asia in the 7th century, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West. In the book, the principal character is Tang Sanzang and it is to him that the temple is primarily dedicated, his figure is in the cabinet at the back and again in yellow on the left of the Guan Yin picture above. The three other main characters are Sun Wukong  (the Monkey King) in the yellow robe, Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) in the red robe assigned based on the fork weapon and Sha Wujing assumed to be in the green robe by process of elimination. We suspect that many of the other smaller figures represent an eclectic collection of no great order. 

We were of course, invited to have an informal lunch, it would have breached Yuehong's strict regime so she pleaded she was a vegetarian. Definitely not on the menu for future events is the temple's pet wild boar, a female that was brought in at a very young age and is now three years old, she is completely tame. Beer was served, of course, and naturally we made an appropriate donation.