I have been to hiking to 3 mountains already! I am amazed with myself! *feeling smug*

I admit, I am a city gal all my life. A docile person who prefers to curl up in bed with a book any day. I have been wondering why I am so into mountain climbing now… But it is a good break from all the mumbo jumbo of city life. You get to think about nothing else but about how to survive the climb up and down. Haha!

This time round, the trek is not as tough as Mt Ophir ( Gunung Ledang ). Mt Datuk ( Gunung Datuk ) is 870m/2900ft and it is in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan. We are the hardy ones apparently, for once again we opted for a night climb.

This time we reached the base camp at around 4am plus. I did not sleep at all this time round on the bus as the bus for this trip had movies showing on board – Wolverine and then some B grade horror movie that has people being cut up into pieces in forest by some weird hill billy cannibals (truly exhaustingly stupid and DUHHHH… had me laughing when the first person was slain… guts that spills out seems to be some jelly rubbery thingy – hmmf… ).

The moon was enormous and bright that night. It was surreal. Wished I had my SLR with me to capture the glorious bright big moon glowed. Here’s a feeble attempt using my dummy proof camera :

We waited at the base camp for quite a long time for our organizer as he was busy guiding the bus out from the narrow road leading into the base camp.

And it was obvious that we were not alone…

Pretty soon those pesky mosquitoes started swarming around us. And those of us wearing sleeveless shirts were easy targets and we became fast food for those mosquitoes. We were like standing there in the dark feeding the hungry mosquitoes… I think those mosquitoes must be having a huge feast with the 15 of us standing there…

We started the real trek at around 5am. And it was all the way upwards climb. But I must say, out of the three mountains, the view at the top for Gunung Datuk takes first place. Really beautiful and the wind is fabulously up there. It took us only 2.5 hours to reach the top.

Warning : There are many bees at the top of the mountain. I wonder why… But they were huge and they seemed to be particularly attracted to bags. Weird but true. Bees totally dig my backpack. Clusters of them just want to hover around my bag… Plus 4 of our group were bitten by leeches. EEEow…

Of course, I dreaded the way down. It was another harrowing experience for me coming down. But I think I did improve… In the end, I was the last one to come down

Another thing I learnt, must remember to bring a hair band to keep my perspiration from dripping into my eyes!

PS. If you are considering climbing this mountain, I heard some stories that when you climb it, do not bring or eat anything with pork. Seems like there are some stories about people who died because of that… anyway, it’s really better to be safe than sorry. So do take note!

All in the group were supposed to meet at the Woodlands checkpoint at 7-7.30am. Then once all of us go over to Johor Bahru, we went to meet the bus that was booked for this trip.

I only knew two people out of the entire group of 20+ people. The rest included a few foreigners, a old professor from Poland, a russian couple (they were very fast climbers!), a few more caucasian guys, a few more singaporeans including an auntie (amazing auntie who managed to reach the top! yey for her! ). But by the end of the trip, have made some good friends. All were very supportive and very kind. Good energy among the group! One even stayed very near to my house!

The funny thing is that I don’t even know about the hill that we are climbing. So now I just googled and found out more about this mountain :

2km from the small town of Kota Tinggi, it is situated in Gunung Panti Recreational Forest.

The organizer is an experienced guide who has climbed the hill for probably over 20 times. So all of us were in safe hands. Plus a few of us in the group also had been there before and thus they are pretty good too.

We took around 1.5 hours to drive from the Causeway to reach a small town to have breakfast. I think most of us in the group were hungry for some local food… Most of them had Bak Kut Teh ( famous chinese concoction of pork ribs soup with rice ).

Once we were all fed, the bus drove us to the base of the hill. Then we had to take some precautions like sun block as well as spraying vinegar onto our shoes and legs to prevent leeches. ( eek! I just crossed my fingers that it won’t rain today! ).

On my way up, I saw HUGE ants and myriad of insects. Then there was that big fat centipede with a red head. It really looked scary. There was one part of the climb up where I was left totally alone. The faster group had already gone up and the slower group was behind me. So I was in the middle and I was kinda of confused with which path to take. So I took the wrong path where there was some soft yellow mud and I had to practically climb up. I knew it was wrong when I saw plenty of spiderwebs ( it shows that no one went through that path )… but I was already half way through. Then I almost grabbed the huge centipede as it was on a tree root which I was about to use to get myself up. SCARY! Fat, big red headed centipede with hundreds of flaming red legs….

For me, climbing the rest of the hill was ok. Until the last part before reaching the top summit. I had very bad leg cramps… It’s like the entire calf muscles curled into a tight hard ball. That is probably because I did not do a proper warm up.

What’s the result after the long way up, here :

Then it was a painful way down… But luckily with help from supportive friends, I managed to get down ok! Yey! Then it was off to the waterfall. The water was really clear and cooling… It certainly was treat after the climb.

OUCH… til next time!