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!