A trip to a theme park with roller coasters?
Nope. Even better than that.
Mountain hiking.
Standing at 1,276m tall and a long way from being the tallest mountain in Malaysia, Mount Ophir (or Gunung Ledang as we call it in malay) is still the tallest mountain in Johor and should not be underestimated. Well, if you’re unfit like me.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, it is believed that the origins of the mountain’s many names are all related to the mountain being rich with gold deposits which I unfortunately did not come across.
Accompanying me on my journey to finding the lost treasure of Mount Ophir is Weldon Wong, Krystal Yap, Yeh Yang, Liang Chay King, Sean Morais, Sri Ram, Lee Kean Wee and fellow Eurobot 4 groupmates, Kapilanjan and No Chill Chen Yew.
(Special request from someone for everyone to be mentioned.)
We left the Student Village at 4.50am and what we thought would be a 2-hour drive ended up being more than 3 hours long after taking a wrong turn, arriving in Malacca and facing a roadblock made up of cows, geese and men on motorcycles.
We arrived at the Gunung Ledang National Park much later than scheduled, with our guide, Cikgu Tan waiting for us.
We were told that if along the way up, it did not look as if we could make it to the peak by 2pm, we would have to give up and turn back. And so we sprinted all the way to the top.
We were worried we would not be able to reach the peak as it was already late but started hiking, we did.
9.05am. Start.
Chen caught up a little while later and told us that Ram was out of the treasure hunt because Bukit Semput really made him semput.
You will be missed, Ram.
Photoshoot time.
It was here where we found out that Chen would not be continuing to the peak with us.
You will also be missed Chen. Who was the other person we should be missing again?
2.02pm. Peak reached.
Once our eyes and bellies were satisfied, it was then time to head down.
I was a bit dead to take any more photos and the way down was pretty horrible for me once it started raining. The trees shielded us from most of the rain but the ground got really, really muddy.
Hiking with almost treadless shoes was not one of my best ideas. And my knees gave up on me.
Regardless, we made it down alive.
6pm. End.
A big thank you to Cikgu Tan for all the help and for just being an awesome guide and to Weldon for organising the trip.
Gunung Tahan, we’re coming for you.
For more photos, click here.
Aftermath:
By the way, has anyone heard of the story of how King Kong lost his lunch to a group of monkeys?
If you haven’t, ask Ram. He tells it the best.