Vance and Bobbi walk from Air Itam Dam to Balik Pulau in 4 hours

I was surprised that that's all the time it takes to walk from Air Itam Dam just up from Kek Lok Si temple in the bustling market town of Ayer Itam all the way over the mountain to the costal plains where lies Balik Pulau on the other side -- just 4 hours.

I finally worked out that the two were that close when the Thursday Ramblers staged a 3-hour out and back hike from the dam parking lot to the hillside temple of Ngor Hean recently, and that my contacts in the Sunday hiking group based in Balik Pulau were offering walks to the same destination in a similar time frame from the other side of the island. We haven't been able to make either walk, but when I looked it up on Google maps, I found that the dam-to-temple route should take 1 hour and 9 minutes, and the the temple to Balik Pulau was pegged at an hour and a half down the rough road which emerges onto 4 lanes just short of the small town of Balik Pulau itself.

The Thursday Ramblers created an event here, https://www.facebook.com/events/459534198030291/
The proposal read

• Surface: Concrete and sealed paths almost entirely.
• Topography: Mostly flattish, with a gradual rise to temple, with gradients no more than 20º.
• Elevation Gain: 320m
• Distance: approximately 8km round trip.
• Meet at 9:00am at Carpark. https://goo.gl/maps/5E53dZy8rCkBmtLw9

That seemed pretty straightforward. I also found a bicyclists' blog post that gave pictures of the junctions encountered on the walk
https://www.penangcycling.com/2017/07/24/ayer-itam-dam-hill-turnhilton-ngor-hean-%e4%ba%94%e6%98%be-temple-mountain-cycling/

I made a pdf of this and parked it on my cell phone so we could refer to it as we trekked, even if we didn't have a data signal en route. As it turned out, the signal was pretty steady the whole way, at least whenever we checked Google maps on the way down to Balik Pulau.

That post gave a pretty clear picture of every turn except for where exactly to begin the hike. Here's what it looked like from the blog post:

I followed the instructions as best as I could work out. The Grab taxi let us off at the car park. Walking ahead with the lake on our right, this is indeed what we saw, but the gate and signage had been altered so I wasn't sure I was going the right way when we walked through the gate on the right. But the motorbikes were there and up ahead I asked someone if this was the right way, and despite pronunciation problems -- the temple name is sometimes written Ngor and Ngoh, and Hean and Han, so I tried various combinations, and at last my interlocutor understood, ah, Noh Han, he repeated back to me, or something like that, and pointed the way forward.

But by then I was already past the gate so I missed getting a picture of its new appearance. I finally pulled out my phone to film these entertaining monkeys just a few minutes further up the road.

In the video you can see (on a fine day) the pleasant surroundings and glimses of the Air Itam reservoir in the background. Here is another shot from just a little further up the pleasant jogging, hiking, motorcycle, bicycle, and occasional car-traveled tarmac.

By now I was determined to update the pics on that fairly accurate blog post we were following. The first junction was pretty obviously marked. In this one the new paved road goes off to the right to continue around the lake, and the concrete road you want is uphill and signposted Ngoh Hean. Here are the road view and signage views.

When you keep on keeping on up the hill you eventually come to a little temple on your right with a makeshift exercise gym on your left, in case you're in the mood after the hike so far. In any event, it's worth a few photos.

Not too far uphill past that you come to the "Hill Turn" shed. There are benches and shade here. The road to Ngor Hean goes off about half an hour to the right, and if you carry on straight you eventually arrive in Balik Pulau. Incidentally, the shaded walk uphill with trees on both sides ends here and at mid day and this high up on the mountain, or more correctly bukit, the path ahead is mostly in sunshine.

Just uphill at the next juncture, it looks like the road to the left leads to a B&B of some kind. To reach the temple just keep following the red on yellow signs, here pointing right.

Lots of langur monkeys live up here. At this next juncture, it's an obvious right hand way

Bobbi thought this one would look better with me in the picture :-)
























At this one the sign points to the left, taking you into a steep downhill hairpin.

If there is any ambiguity, it will be resolved by the presence of flags on lampposts in the correct trail ahead.



























At this last juncture, you can see the temple at the end of the path off to the left

This last hundred meters is lined with buckets collecting something from the trees.
Does anyone know what? If so, leave us a comment.

Here are some views from around the temple.

You can see Balik Pulau and the other side of the island from here.

Worshippers at this temple carry handfuls of prayer papers and burn them in these ritual stoves.




























There is evidence of even more serious burning here.

From here we headed back down to the Hill Turn and instead of turning left and back to Ayer Itam, a predictable hour back to the lake, we turned right and descended toward Balik Pulau.

It's a steep descent, knee jarring and foot burning, infrequently dotted with homesteads, not any of them welcoming to strangers.

The signs on this open gate
say "No admittance"
and "Beware of dog"

Given the patina of neglect here I doubt that anyone is feeding the dog.

But we didn't test that theory.















We continued an hour down the hill with the sounds of a rippling brook to our left which we eventually crossed when we reached the valley floor where the Annamadavihari Meditation Center's strikingly modern but rustic buildings nestle into the hillside. After another half hour on we came to the Suriana Botanic Conservation Gardens. The gardens at least appeared to welcome visitors ...

 well, uh, I guess you're welcome there as long as you don't actually try to enter ...

At least they don't threaten to sic dogs on you. What caught my eye about the Suriana Botanic Conservation Gardens was this hand wrought tree sculpture across the street from it.

People were growing pineapples in roadside gardens here.

It was another half hour hike into Balik Pulau from here. We soon passed a large catholic cemetery. The last fifteen minutes opens into a 4-lane street which has catholic schools and churches either side of the road. We soon emerged on the market where we paused to establish physical presence by having our likenesses taken.

We have just walked down from the mountain in the background. Turning up the street to our left, your right as you look toward the market, we come out on the KFC, another landmark in Balik Pulau. Just beyond the KFC is the bus terminal. Within a quarter hour of arrival there, we were on a 502 bus back to Komtar, in Goergetown, where we easily got a bus back out to Tanjung Bungah, where we live.

We had left our home in a grab at around 10 am and started our walk at about 11 am at Air Itam Dam and by 3 pm we were on a bus back home. It was a nice day, a day where once again we learned something more about the scale of the small island on which we live.