Youth Park to Rest Stations 3, 5, 39, and traverse to Post 84

March 17, 2020

In a speech by the prime minister to the nation last night, a lockdown to control the pandemic was declared starting on March 18. So while the tuff who go shopping were casting concerns with social distancing aside as they ransacked the stores for whatever supplies they could find, toilet paper being the most prized (and most unnecessary) item, and stood for hours elbow to elbow in long queues at overwhelmed cash registers, Bobbi and I headed for the Youth Park.

As it turned out, it was a wise move, because lockdown happened quickly after that. All the parks are closed now, not sure when we'll be able to get back here, if we survive the threats to health and economy.

But on our last day of freedom, we made a great walk up Penang Hill trying to knit some trails together. We've been up from Youth Park often to rest station 3 and on up to 5, then up not so steeply to 39, and down various ways from there to Ayer Itam or back to the Youth Park. And we've been up to the upper station in various ways (best is to ride up and walk down; worst is to walk the Jeep Road, either up or down) and from the top of the funicular track we've been down to Viaduct station and dropped down from there to Moniot Road which runs to the south to Claremont Station and down to Middle, or to the north to Post 84 on the Jeep Road. But today we walked up from Youth Park all the way to 39 and then carried on up the trail from there and ended up at Post 84, from which we took forest trails back down to Botanical Gardens.

There were few people in the Youth Park when we arrived there. No one prevented our entry to the park and movement up the trails, and we met only a few people coming the other way, a good place to exercise and keep social distance at the same time.

I decided to go what I think is the easiest way up. You enter the Youth Park and bear right until you come to the statue of the Karate Kids poised in tentative combat. To your right you will see a model of the funicular and beyond that a trail heading up.

The model of the funicular is on the concrete base obsured by this sign. The trailhead is the stairway marked by the blue sign with the yellow stripe on top.

It was tempting just to take the funicular.

This trail leads you up a gradual slope through a monkey forest and then steeply up to Rest Station 3 at the top of a long set of stairs rough-hewn into the forest path. Pausing for rest we heard a rustle in the forest. At first we couldn't make out where the sound was coming from, but we soon located it to be coming from a monitor lizard foraging in the underbrush.

According to the time stamps on my photoes, we started our walk at noon and reached station 3 a sweaty 30 minutes later. I Whatsapped this picture out to my Thursday Rambler friends who were posting their pictures from the crowded supermarkets. After a short rest, Bobbi and I moved out from Rest Station 3.

The sign here notifies us that we are on private property soon to be developed. It urges us to form a committee to work with the developers who are willing to help the community to provide an alternative route around their development.

The trail up from Rest Station 3 is the most taxing part of the hill walk, another half hour of more punishing steps until you broach the top and come out on a shed where you can find a seat and rest. But the trail is relatively flat after that, just a few minutes from there up to Rest Station 5.

Rest Station 5 is one of the gems of this side of the mountain. It is an oasis in a mountain jungle. There is a temple here with water works trickling the water down slender leaves overhanging a pool. There are tables and chairs on a veranda overlooking the coastline, an exercise area for people who haven't had enough just getting here, various artworks painted onto the rocks, and even a place where you can pour yourself tea (on weekends, when it's busy).

But our goal today was Rest Station 39 -- well not Rest Station 39 exactly, but the rock on which is painted "39".  So after a short break, we moved on up the hill, at a gentler slope now, with nice views from the trail.

Within a half hour we came to this newly maintained bridge

15 minutes further up the trail we found ourselves walking in a trench that looked like it had been augmented in the past to allow for the passage of water buffalo (just speculating).

And a few minutes beyond that we came to the boulder that has 39 painted on it with an arrow pointing down to the left. Bobbi is standing in the trail sloping up to the right, the one we wanted to explore today. It had been right on two hours since we had left the Youth Park.

I've been to Rest Station 39 a couple of times; it's also a beautful place, just down the hill from its marker rock, well tended by its caretakers, and has one of the best balcony views you could possibly get from Penang Hill, of Ayer Itam all the way from Kek Lok Si on the hill to the right to the large Penang State Mosque in the valley below, and Penang Bridge to Butterworth and the seascape it crosses. 

There are a couple of ways up or down from there. You can drop down the steps from 39 and continue all the way down to Padang Tembak Dou Mu Gong Jiu Wang Da Di Temple Taman Ayer Itam, https://hikingpenang.blogspot.com/2019/11/padang-tembak-dou-mu-gong-jiu-wang-da.html, or you can go down as far as marker 33 where you find an easy path leading north to a bee farm and eventually back down to Youth Park.

But the big adventure for us today was not to go down the hill to Rest Station 39 but to push on from there on the trail that looked like it might be climbing the mountain to where I imagined Post 84 should be, but it turned out was going slightly downhill. You get similar views along this trail as from RS 39, but through a forest canopy as opposed to from the natural balcony that makes Rest Station 39 a special place that people like to congregate after walks up from Ayer Itam and linger over cards and tea.

It was a fairly level trail with some slippery eroded parts, and a few fallen trees making the going sometimes tough

But not too tough. Still, the trail twisted us so far down hill that I thought it might end up somewhere in Ayer Itam eventually. But we kept on it, following the red arrows attached to various objects with metal coils, until we came to this yellow sign indicating where we were headed, about half an hour out from the 39 marker boulder.

It was good to have the reassurance, but the sign was not strictly necessary, since there were no other branching trails that I noticed. The sign might have said, Post 84, 10 min. That would at least have been informative, but if it's your first time on these trails, it's nice to at least know you're on the right one.

Post 84 is a new station that has been built by the side of the Jeep Road. It wasn't there a couple of years ago.

Just behind Bobbi is the trail we walked in on. If you walk back up that trail, right away you come to a fork in it:

The left fork goes back (or on, depending which way you're headed) to Rest Station 39. Follow the right fork and at about as far down as you can see in the picture above, you find a trail going to the right, past the shed you see here:

That trail leads to the stupas or back to the Sin Fah Thong Temple in Ayer Itam, over a gnarly trail (as in gnarled roots) and past a house which warns of dogs, so be careful if you take this trail (number 3 in the options below).

So Post 84 is the confluence of many trails, the focal point of many pleasant walks all the way or halfway up and down Penang Hill. You can get to Post 84 in several ways. Here they are the ones I know of:

1. You can walk up the Jeep Road. This is straightforward from a navigation point of view but is miserable if you are trying to hike. It's unrelentingly steep, and you have to dodge the vehicles going both ways, so it's not a stroll in the forest. At any rate, halfway up the hill, at around the 2.5 km marker on the 5 km road, you come to Post 84 and you can see the Moniot path well marked just to your right, or Bobbi's left, in the picture above.
2. You can come down the funicular line to Viaduct, or go up to Claremont, and from Viaduct drop down to Moniot Road. Or if you are at Claremont there is a marker further up the path almost to Moniot Station pointing the way north to Moniot road. I'm sure you could get to Moniot from there, though the trail appears truncated coming south from the other way, but nevermind, however you get to Moniot Road, you continue along it on a fairly nice trail, with only a couple of places where people have left ropes to help you down the worst bits, and you eventually emerge on the Jeep Road at Post 84.
3. You can find your way to the golden stupas from Clairemont station on the funicular line [https://hikingpenang.blogspot.com/2019/03/stupas-on-penang-hill-discovered-on.html], or head up from Ayer Itam toward the stupas, and you'll see a trail branching north up the hill. This leads over private property with signs warning of dogs, but when I did it I didn't see any dogs, and the trail skirted the property that the dogs would have been defending. From there it went uphill on a root-clogged trail, but eventually came out at Post 84.
4. You can start out on the pipe-track path into forest just over the bridge opposite the Waterfall Cafe and after 100 meters or so make the right turn from there up the path marked with orange writing on a rock and head up the path with yellow and white bands on trees guiding you uphill. Steeply uphill you go, on trails that are difficult coming down over the roots. Eventually you level out and come onto Post 84.

I'll post more about that last option when I get a chance to go back through photos of previous walks. For now, just puttering about the house, thinking to walk up and down the steps here in my condo to keep in shape for more walking once the COVID-19 threat has passed.