Shidee from Pedal Malaya dropped a hint about a bike trail in Port Dickson established by the Forestry guys. This information piqued our curiosity for weeks and finally off we went on a 90 minutes drive from Klang Valley to The Pusat Edu- Ecotourism Sg Menyala.
It's just 3km off the PD highway and you'd be greeted by this huge wooden building. It looks like an expensive government setup which was further confirmed after talking to a Ranger, claimed that the Cengal and Merbau building although it looks new, it's in fact 10 years old that cost a few million bucks.
The Pusat Edu-Ecotourism housed an Orang Asli museum, a conference hall and dorms, rooms for accommodation (RM100/night, cheap!), a surau and one of the cleanest government facility toilets I have ever seen in my life. The whole place is nicely done. There's also ample (free!) parking, shower (mandi hose cangkung), free public wifi, a small kedai runcit with basic mineral water and canned drinks but no makan place. So pack your lunch for your post ride meal. In fact, you can tapau some food for your mid ride meal as it took us almost 3 hours to complete the whole loop.
Coincidentally, the trail was officiated by the government bigwigs the day before on Saturday, 8th of August. So we were kinda excited to see what's waiting for us. Upon arriving, we registered ourselves and paid a bicycle permit of RM5 per bike. There were loadsa crisp newly minted pamplets of the PD Forest Sungai Menyala trail on the information counter. Take one or more, because for us that day - nasib bawak kalau tak confirm sesat.
The Pusat Edu-Ecotourism housed an Orang Asli museum, a conference hall and dorms, rooms for accommodation (RM100/night, cheap!), a surau and one of the cleanest government facility toilets I have ever seen in my life. The whole place is nicely done. There's also ample (free!) parking, shower (mandi hose cangkung), free public wifi, a small kedai runcit with basic mineral water and canned drinks but no makan place. So pack your lunch for your post ride meal. In fact, you can tapau some food for your mid ride meal as it took us almost 3 hours to complete the whole loop.
Coincidentally, the trail was officiated by the government bigwigs the day before on Saturday, 8th of August. So we were kinda excited to see what's waiting for us. Upon arriving, we registered ourselves and paid a bicycle permit of RM5 per bike. There were loadsa crisp newly minted pamplets of the PD Forest Sungai Menyala trail on the information counter. Take one or more, because for us that day - nasib bawak kalau tak confirm sesat.
At a brief glance of the map, there's no loop direction as in should we do it in clockwise or anticlockwise (It's there in the map, you need to decipher the POI indicator). Then there's no information on the length of each segment of the trail (it's in the write up), no grading - green, blue or black, no elevation information, no easy or intermediate loop to accommodate different skill levels and since all that was not included I assumed the map is not drawn to scale.
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We decided to do an anti clockwise loop. Here's how it was: 1. 1.6 km of gravel access road 2. 500 meter of 4x4 access road 3. 3.5 km of TNB access road followed by kebun double track 4. 9 km of riding next to a freeway then later quiet single lane road 5. 500 meters of sawit connector that we actually got lost for about 4km 6. 3.8 km of (finally!) forest trail 7. back up the gravel access road to get back to centre |
The first 1.6km
Started off rather easily at the edge of the Edu-Center, a steady undulating terrain. No hard climbs or fast descent. The route is gravelly flat, I assumed to cater for the casual makcik walkers. As you can see from the video there was no obvious signage saying this was the trail head. Agak agak je la. There's a junction here that goes to Denai Razani, that leads you to the highest Jelutong tree in Malaysia. More on that trail later.
The Next 4km of Access Road and Kebun Double Track
Map says we should be near something called "Danau Menyalo" but takde signage pun. Also, the map shows these VP and WMA codes. Are these coordinates? Shoppe discount codes? Anyways after the gravel road it looks like we're on TNB access road as we're riding underneath these huge ass transmission tower under the hot sun. No pokok coverage. There's a slight potential to get lost here as we found a single signage of go straight ahead to the biggest Jelutong tree in Malaysia. It's a detour from the main loop and snakes around abit until you reach the Jelutong tree.
It a big huge tree la. It's really tall sampai tak muat my phone camera. But the base of the tree is in a state of decomposition, probably termites. Loadsa discarded tree barks too. So I don't think its quite safe to visit this tree unless you want a huge Jelutong tree saying hi with a tree trunk punch in your face.
The dusty access road goes on for awhile until it turns into a double track as we reached the kebun nangka (jackfruit farm). No gerai juice nangka here. Just an unmanned farm to ride our bikes through. Here the trail gets chattery due to its a farm land and shared path probably with lori kutip nangka and motorbikes. So make sure you've got your low speed compression dialed. The nangka trees provided some coverage from the sun but not so much.
Soon, we reached an open field and the trail turned smoother albeit we can pedal faster. Subsequently the double track sent us to the edge of the field and a tiny signage sais we have to go through a locked gate.
So until the locked gate from the Edu-Ecotourism centre, the route has been mostly flat and undemanding. Easily accomplished by anyone with a good bike and decent fitness level.
Started off rather easily at the edge of the Edu-Center, a steady undulating terrain. No hard climbs or fast descent. The route is gravelly flat, I assumed to cater for the casual makcik walkers. As you can see from the video there was no obvious signage saying this was the trail head. Agak agak je la. There's a junction here that goes to Denai Razani, that leads you to the highest Jelutong tree in Malaysia. More on that trail later.
The Next 4km of Access Road and Kebun Double Track
Map says we should be near something called "Danau Menyalo" but takde signage pun. Also, the map shows these VP and WMA codes. Are these coordinates? Shoppe discount codes? Anyways after the gravel road it looks like we're on TNB access road as we're riding underneath these huge ass transmission tower under the hot sun. No pokok coverage. There's a slight potential to get lost here as we found a single signage of go straight ahead to the biggest Jelutong tree in Malaysia. It's a detour from the main loop and snakes around abit until you reach the Jelutong tree.
It a big huge tree la. It's really tall sampai tak muat my phone camera. But the base of the tree is in a state of decomposition, probably termites. Loadsa discarded tree barks too. So I don't think its quite safe to visit this tree unless you want a huge Jelutong tree saying hi with a tree trunk punch in your face.
The dusty access road goes on for awhile until it turns into a double track as we reached the kebun nangka (jackfruit farm). No gerai juice nangka here. Just an unmanned farm to ride our bikes through. Here the trail gets chattery due to its a farm land and shared path probably with lori kutip nangka and motorbikes. So make sure you've got your low speed compression dialed. The nangka trees provided some coverage from the sun but not so much.
Soon, we reached an open field and the trail turned smoother albeit we can pedal faster. Subsequently the double track sent us to the edge of the field and a tiny signage sais we have to go through a locked gate.
So until the locked gate from the Edu-Ecotourism centre, the route has been mostly flat and undemanding. Easily accomplished by anyone with a good bike and decent fitness level.
Bypassed the locked gate from the side and two path, clear as day - are available to the left and to the right. No signage which way to go, we just randomly assumed that we're supposed to stick to the main road. So we took right and ended up at the Timbang Sawit and onto the side of a freeway. Somehow I should have known this no signage business is foreshadowing something for us up ahead.
9km of Jalan Raya Exposed Under the Sun Mid Afternoon Bike Ride
Sangat tak cool, kena spit out at the side of a freeway on a "Forest Trail" path. I reckon who ever designed this litany of pathways should try and ride any of our local bike trails, like in Kiara, Putrajaya Challenge Park or Kota Damansara Community Forest which correspondingly also ran by the Forestry guys.
Referring to the map, this road segment could be easily bypassed by linking the open field section after the kebun nangka to the 8th POI Sempadan Hutan. This road section should have been made optional for riders wanting to get some extra mileage. Instead here I am with my 2.5 Assegai tires attempting this road section under the hot mid afternoon skies. Since it's a freeway, cars are going fast. It's not impossible for a car to suddenly swerve into the emergency lane and banged us cyclist from behind no? It has happened before and it can happen again. Obviously, this is a dangerous section.
Also, these signage. Laminated paper stapled to a wooden post. How long would it last? 2 weeks? 1 month? 3 months? Is this temporary or permanent? I mean, there's these nice pamphlets, swanky forestry centre, trail designed for the public and one day old launching ceremony but these flimsy laminated paper signage are supposed to be indoors, not out under the sun and exposed to the elements.
Panas. Climb banyak. Boring. Tak best langsung.
If i hadn't carried the map with me and missed the puny signage I would have ended up in Segambut or something.
9km of Jalan Raya Exposed Under the Sun Mid Afternoon Bike Ride
Sangat tak cool, kena spit out at the side of a freeway on a "Forest Trail" path. I reckon who ever designed this litany of pathways should try and ride any of our local bike trails, like in Kiara, Putrajaya Challenge Park or Kota Damansara Community Forest which correspondingly also ran by the Forestry guys.
Referring to the map, this road segment could be easily bypassed by linking the open field section after the kebun nangka to the 8th POI Sempadan Hutan. This road section should have been made optional for riders wanting to get some extra mileage. Instead here I am with my 2.5 Assegai tires attempting this road section under the hot mid afternoon skies. Since it's a freeway, cars are going fast. It's not impossible for a car to suddenly swerve into the emergency lane and banged us cyclist from behind no? It has happened before and it can happen again. Obviously, this is a dangerous section.
Also, these signage. Laminated paper stapled to a wooden post. How long would it last? 2 weeks? 1 month? 3 months? Is this temporary or permanent? I mean, there's these nice pamphlets, swanky forestry centre, trail designed for the public and one day old launching ceremony but these flimsy laminated paper signage are supposed to be indoors, not out under the sun and exposed to the elements.
Panas. Climb banyak. Boring. Tak best langsung.
If i hadn't carried the map with me and missed the puny signage I would have ended up in Segambut or something.
This is the first out of four dragon back climb? Attempting this climb on fat trail tires is an exercise in unnecessary masochism. A redundant route since a shorter route can be made available via the forest. As there are no coverage along this road section, the tedious tarmac climb under the blazing hot sun would eventually sapped your energy faster than riding in the trails. There are no shops along the way so please pack enough liquids and food.
The dragon back road continues straight on and eventually we arrived to a junction that splits between the sawit and continuing the ride on the road. We decided to skip the Orang Asli Temuan village as we've had enough riding in the searing heat. Little did we know that this 500 meters connector would later turned into a 4km adventure.
Following the direction of the signage after turning in from the road, we started pedaling into the sawit plantation. After awhile the wife was wondering why are we riding south since the map showed the sawit connector is heading west. In a state of dubiety, we continued on assuming the trail will eventually turned west but no, because we hit a huge longkang. Then we back tracked because I thought maybe we missed a signage or apa. This proved futile as we ended back again to where we started. I did this a few more times until we realised we have exhausted all possible junctures.
We tried as many possible junction to the general direction of the signage. Left, right or straight ahead? We tried all possible ways and all led to either dead ends or a big huge longkang.
The wife was like maybe we should continue behind this fallen tree? We tried. After 5 minutes we reached a big huge longkang. Again.
Big huge yucky longkang drawing out the parameters of our misadventure in the sawit.
So my Garmin says we've been stuck for over an hour with 4km worth of backtracking forward gostan looking for a way to continue. So it's time to get creative and take things into our own hands. Investigating the signage in the Sawit connector, I realised it was removed from the original location and was just left on a damn tree as I found the original lubang where it was broken off metres away. So we've been going around in circles because someone was being really lazy on the signage.
Then following a westerly direction, we tried to look for signs off the sawit road that would indicated an exit or some sort. Our luck was good as we saw a small imprint of motorcycle tracks. Within minutes we finally sighted another signage - not leaned against a tree, but pointing into the forest next to the sawit plantation. Buang masa.
FINALLY. The Forest Trail and Spiders!
So we rode through gravel road, TNB access road, kebun double track then the boring freeway under the hot sun. Then got lost and finally we're here lah - the forest trail. Or alternatively, after the gravel road we could just go straight from the junction to reach here.
Alas, the forest trail was only 3.8 km long. An easy green trail where makcik, kids and all walks of life can enjoy the trail. However it looks like no one sapu the trail as the forest floor is thick with leaves, branches, barks, existing in various stages of decomposition above the soil surface. So you need at least a 1.5 width trail tyres. And spiders! There's just so many spider webbing crisscrossing the trail that you'd get some free karate lesson for piaping them spiders that crawled up your arms.
As I mentioned before, The Forestry guys could have bypassed the road segment thus linking up the kebun nangka bit to the forest trail and create a shorter green loop that can cater to a more beginner or santai riders. Then advancing into the road section is a blue loop, for slightly advanced riders who wants more mileage that wants to attempt the dragon back under the hot sun.
Once we headed up back the gravel road and reached the centre, we met up with Encik Zul; a Forestry ranger and shared with him our grievances. He was instantly apologetic what's with the locked gate, the flimsy signage and our Sawit-sesat fiasco, promising changes in the near future. But they just officiated the trail a day before. (●__●)
Once we headed up back the gravel road and reached the centre, we met up with Encik Zul; a Forestry ranger and shared with him our grievances. He was instantly apologetic what's with the locked gate, the flimsy signage and our Sawit-sesat fiasco, promising changes in the near future. But they just officiated the trail a day before. (●__●)
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The whole experience left me with a bitter taste due to the unnecessary signage screw up that was astoundingly silly. Hopefully the promised rectification would come soon enough. |
Really enjoy ur writing. I do make a trail review on my FB but it was never as good as yours!
Are the Forestry folks going to eliminate the road section and create proper trails instead?
They definitely should IMHO
Nice!