Desaru Eco Tour & Beach Holiday

Johor state in Malaysia, on Singapore's doorstep, is proving to be my new favorite playground.  After two weekends of hiking near Kota Tinggi on Gunung Panti, I took the family on an eco-tour of Desaru.  Throw in a beach resort, and you have a perfect mix of fun and adventure.

Our itinerary included a fruit farm, an ostrich farm, an alligator farm, a firefly cruise, water park, sand play and wading at the beach, as well as two dinners at an amazing seafood restaurant in a local fishing village.   The basic research for the trip was mostly gathered from this resourceful site.  And we stayed two nights at the Lotus Desaru Beach Resort.

The Desaru Fruit Farm was awesome.  Although most fruits were not in season, there were plenty of blossoms and young fruit on their way to ripening.  The tour guide was quite knowledgable about the horticulture and about the many health-related uses of fruits and herbs - the perfect fruit saleslady.  Lizzy was especially enthralled with the large snails that we spotted on some banana tree leaves.  She kept pointing at the snails and saying "that's not poop...."  There was also a mini-zoo where we fed rabbits and goats and saw some monkeys and chickens.  We then sat through a seminar about wild bees and the many exulted benefits of their related products - pollen, honey, somecrapolis, you-name-it these bees produced it and it cured you-name-it again.  We ended up buying 3 large bottles of wild bee honey that we are still taking on a daily basis as a cure-all elixir.  It's yummy and Lizzy likes to scoop it with a tiny little spoon.

The Ostrich Show Farm was not nearly as exciting, but we learned some interesting things about ostriches - like that females are carrying more than 10 of those huge eggs inside them at any one time.  That those eggs have more protein per unit of egg than the chicken variety.  That Lulu has a 4-carat diamond ring inside of her and cutting her up was more expensive than paying off the irate ring-owner... We ate ostrich egg omelet, ostrich satay, ostrich steak, and ostrich tendon soup.

The crocodile farm is a bit of a bore with its tens of pools of crocodiles just doing their thing - lying around lazily.  However, the feeding that was going on while we were there definitely made for a fun visit.  The "farmer" wheelbarrowed around a bunch of chickens and kept taunting the crocodiles and throwing them a carcass to either fight over (young ones) or devour in one gulp (isolated adults).  We got two teeth as souvenirs.

The firefly cruise was neat.  Basically, you get on a boat after dark and cruise along the mangrove lined river looking out for fireflies.  The boatsmen have a trick to getting the fireflies to light up and so you get to see a lot of them.

The hotel is well-positioned and boasts a really nice beach.  Pretty good amenities.  Rooms are outdated, but the real problem is that the housekeeping staff is clueless and ineffective.  The water park is dangerous - Lizzy got her first nosebleed shooting out of a water slide at top speed and hurtling at mommy's jaw-slacked mouth.  4+ I'd say.

Sungai Rengit is a tiny fishing village with many good seafood restaurants.  We went to Crystal Garden the first night, and had such a good time we returned to the same place for a second night.  Why risk it when you've found the perfect spot.  Bamboo clams, mini lobsters, clams, steamed fish, fried tofu, vegetables - all perfectly prepared.  Yum.  Can't wait to go back. 

This was a really nice and easy vacation to the near-abroad.  Days were fun-filled and adventure-packed.  Food was great.  And we experienced some new things and had no dull moments in-between.  I'd recommend a Desaru weekend to anyone with a car in Singapore.

Gunung Panti & Kota Tinggi - Mission Accomplished

I could not let Gunung Panti defeat me, so went back on the same trip as last week - Gunung Panti hike plus Kota Tinggi Waterfalls.  This time with another colleague from work.  After trekking through the thick of it last week and studying the terrain map on Google, I knew where we had to go and pushed Deepak to jump across the muddy creek to the correct ridge.  We quickly found the right trail and took it directly up the Western face.


Other than fighting a wave of exhaustion the climb up was fairly uneventful.  One bonus to not going up an actual trek last week was that we didn't see human trash all over the place.  That was annoying today.  When we got near the peak the mountain turned into a rock wall.  Luckily there were ropes positioned in good spots to help one climb.  We were rewarded for our rock climbing by a magnificent view and the sound of illegal logging...

The waterfalls are still awesome, and this time I found more spots on top of the lower waterfalls where the pools are deeper.

Toddler Jeopardy

A few weeks back we spent a quiet afternoon at the East Coast Park beach with Lizzy, getting her ready for that week's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" lightning round:

Gunung Panti & Kota Tinggi

Rainforest Trek

This week I organized a hiking trip with some of my colleagues at work to Gunung Panti - the nearest mountain in the neighboring state of Johor, Malaysia.  There was very limited information about trails in this area, but we found an enthusiast's guide with GPS waypoints so we thought it was something we could do.  With GPS and compass in hand (and passports, visas and employee passes) we travelled by car from Singapore to the nearby town of Kota Tinggi.  There were only four of us - a colleague and his wife, and a junior member of the team who I am mentoring.  Connie and Lizzy had tickets to Ugly Duckling.

Besides hike organizer, I was also the driver for this trip, so I woke up at ~5am in order to get to the first pickup point at 5:40am, and to the second one by 5:55am. We were across to Malaysia by 6:15am.  This was the first time I drove through the Woodlands link - there are only 2 bridges from Singapore to Malaysia and I've taken the other one twice.  They are really similar and I am not sure why the so-called Second Link is favored (Google maps refuses to give directions via Woodlands).  I can understand taking the out-of-the-way Second Link to Kuala Lumpur or Penang, but not to central or Eastern Johor.  The main thing is to get to these border crossings before 6:30am and avoid them altogether during public holidays...

We were at the outskirts of the Gunung Panti Forest Reserve around 8am.  The dirt road that led to the trailhead had some very big weak spots, so we ended up parking next to the guardhouse just outside a nearby hotel - I tipped the guard to watch the car, mostly to make sure no monkeys attack it, like they did in Thailand.  The trail we followed leading from a makeshift camp opened out to a nearby farm or kampong.  It then picked up again wherever we chose to climb over the farm's fence...  A simple study of the terrain ahead of time, and a closer look at a compass would have saved us an hour and a lot of stress.  As organizer I take full responsibility for not being better prepared.  Trying to find the main trail, we fought the thick rainforest full with leeches, mosquitoes, and very sharp brambles only to get ~100m or so, elevation-wise, short of the peak when I decided to give up and start heading back - I was not very confident of my trekking skill by this point, and it was getting close to noon.  I wanted to play it safe given that I was leading the way and there was a lady present.


View Gunung Panti - April 2, 2011 in a larger map

On the way down, we lost the trail again.  And again.  We somehow got to the damned farm again... and again - the third time was not my fault, except maybe that I did not sufficiently fight the rest of the group about which way to go. We made it back down by ~2pm.  We were all bleeding from leech bites along our sock lines.  Some of us ran out of water.  I had a crazy cramp in my left calf.  As soon as we made it down I vowed to return within two month's time for a do-over.  The GPS died near the peak, not that the piece of shit really helped.  Switching to a mechanical compass (don't trust your iPhones!) was the way to go.  It made me fairly sure of my bearings and direction of travel (other than down).  It was the first time I trekked without following a well-marked trail and a hiking map.  We were also the ONLY people on the mountain - that was a new experience for me, and I came out a better trekker and more sure of my general survival skills.

Leeches

As I noted above, we were all attacked by leeches on this trek.  This was my first experience with the suckers (pun intended).  They look like worms, and once attached to your skin they swell up in size from the blood intake.  If you try to rip them off your skin, it will cause minor injury.  The approved way to get rid of the leech is to sprinkle salt on it - we came prepared.  It will then contract and lose contact at which point you can flick it off.  It will also eventually get off of you once it had its fill.  After my first leech attack, I raised my socks as far as they could go.  I was wearing really thick wool socks and this kept the leeches from getting to my skin through the sock - something that happened to others in my party.  Every 15 minutes or so I would check my boots and flick off any leeches climbing toward the sock line.  This seemed to work.  When we got back t the car there were some on my socks inside the boots, but they never made contact after the first one.

Cold Bath

After the stressful hike, we drove 5 minutes north to the Kota Tinggi Waterfalls Resort.  I really didn't know what to expect, but we were already there, so we paid the 10RM fee per person and parked the car.  The resort is quite dinky, no doubt.  We washed our hike off in a small pool by the hotel reception.  Then we walked to the waterfalls (despite aching limbs).  In short, the waterfalls are awesome.  The water is cold and refreshing, and the cascading terrain has created small pools for those brave enough to climb the slippery rocks to get a nice perch and a "massage."  We spent an hour enjoying ourselves and taking pictures.  We even got to see a snake swallowing another snake whole.

This was my third and best trip to Malaysia to this point.  I suspect I will be back in Kota Tinggi very soon!