After the unsuccessful attempt at climbing Gunung Arong about a month ago, we spared no efforts in ensuring our trip upcountry would not be in vain once more. Our destination this time was the town of Kluang, 110 kilometres north of Johor Bahru and an hour and a half's journey in smooth traffic conditions using the North-South Highway along the west coast.
Below: not in vain, posing atop Gunung Milestone
Kluang was established in 1915 as an administrative centre for the central Johor region. Rail tracks were laid linking the town northwards to Kuala Lumpur, administrative capital of the Federated Malay States and southwards to the bustling port-city of Singapore. Trains a century ago would have transported both workers and produce to and from the oil palm and rubber estates in the area. Today, they bring in tourists from both Singapore and other parts of Malaysia keen to get a glimpse of small-town Malaysia.
We opted for the familiar, scenic, albeit longer and roundabout, eastern approach which we used the last time round to get to Mersing. A quick breakfast at the famed Kluang Railway Coffee, where the caffeine junkies in our midst raved about the unique flavoured of the coffee on offer, primed us for the planned ascent of the 510-metre Gunung Lambak. We share ten moments which made the experience a memorable one.
1. Values in Action, Kluang
We started our hike at about the same time as Mr Zhong, who lives in Kluang. As we paused by the information board at the trail head to size the hill up, Mr Zhong, tongs and plastic bag in hand, strode in purposefully and started picking up every piece of litter within sight. And his keen eyes missed nothing. He does this every day, all the way up to 半山 (halfway up the hill), which we took some huffing and puffing to reach. We have to set a good example for our young, he declared, we have to be responsible for our own immediate environment. He declined when asked if we could take a photograph of him.
2. Gunung Milestone
Mary and I may have made a mountain of a molehill nearly five weeks ago, but there is no underplaying the achievement of making it up Gunung Lambak after a three-hour slog. It was our first successful ascent as a group, and for Mary and I our first as a couple. (Mary requested that I qualify this: that this is the first hill/mountain we have climbed on foot from start to end.) There is hope for December, when Mary and I will attempt the volcanoes of El Salvador and Guatemala.
3. Trail thrills
Mercifully, much of the trail to the summit passed under forest shade. The quickest, most direct trail up started as an innocuous concrete path. This gave out after ten minutes, after which it became an unbroken upward slog on steps cut into stone and earth, two brief intervening rest points notwithstanding. On the lower flanks of the hill some of these were still buttressed by creaking wooden planks and hemmed in by shaky iron hand-rails. As the terrain steepened surer ground grew narrower and we had to scramble over looser soil on some stretches. Ropes were installed alongside the trail, so that both hands and legs were required to haul ourselves summitwards.
At the top, amidst the buzzing of dragonflies in the mid-day Malayan sun, we basked in our own self-declared glory. There was to be no visual reward for our iron-willed tenacity, no inspiring vistas of shadowy serrated ridges on the horizons. There was only the pompous self-congratulation of the deluded masochist, the inflated satisfaction of taking in the one clear vantage point to the west, marred as it was by poor visibility - those faint bluish hills which we claim as a prize for our unnecessary toil.
4. Nature's embroidery
The steep terrain gave us many opportunities, as we panted between bouts of grueling exertion, to admire the living raiment of green and brown which clothed the hillside - a sylvan latticework of sprawling root and trailing branch, testimony of the asymmetrical beauty of Nature.
5. Comic camaraderie
There was no lack of laughter all along the way, as we battled both fatigue and gravity. We had all our travel companions to thank for this. Mary was our walking jukebox. It being National Day back home too, she proffered a looping medley of incomplete verses from Home, Count on me Singapore and One people one nation one Singapore. And then we had the long-running incentive wrangle between Allan and Cindy, born of a case of contentious orthography - Allan spelt carrot, Cindy spelt carat. No prizes for guessing who prevailed.
6. The delusion of distance
Are we there yet? The eternally unanswerable, almost existential, question on many hikers' minds. Jayson and I attempted to do so, nonetheless, when Cindy asked. Our standard responses of ten minutes more and Jayson's almost there drew more questions however, most of it almost vitriolic.
Below: the only pH scale which matters, ranging from "almost there" on one end to "ten minutes" more on the other.
7. Home abroad
There is nothing like meeting a compatriot when you least expect it. While Lambak is a popular destination for Singaporean hikers, we hardly expected to meet a fellow Singaporean at the summit at nearly three in the afternoon. Our compatriot (we chatted happily but didn't ask his name), who arrived ahead of his companions, hailed from Bedok and bussed it from Singapore via Larkin to Kluang. Dressed simply in a sleeveless 42.195km Finisher T-shirt, shorts and running shoes, he - glistening arms and toned calves all - easily outshone us with our long sleeves, camouflage long trousers, mosquito patches and cans of Off repellant.
On the way down we entered into another conversation with a white-haired (very sprightly) elderly Malaysian Chinese man who, surprisingly, wished us Happy National Day on our way down. It could be that he had a long memory, although later he shared that he learnt this off the Singaporean channels on air locally. As a Singaporean and a historian, it was a poignant moment. Our circumstances, history and citizenship could have been very different. There is no denying the shared heritage between both our countries. It is the political lines on a map which matter most, but at the same time they hardly do, too.
8. Roots
As we neared the summit, I urged my companions not to 功亏一篑 (a Chinese proverb that means to fall short of success for want of a final effort). You pass your Chinese, Cindy exclaimed in response. Perhaps it was uttered more in disbelief than in praise. Earlier, Mr Zhong had made a similar remark. 你的中文讲的不错 (literally translated as your spoken Chinese is not bad). I was pleased, of course. And needless to say, I was also aware of my own fluency, or lack thereof, in Chinese.
It encapsulates the very different directions taken by the plural societies left behind by the British on both sides of the Straits of Johor. In Singapore a common multiethnic political identity sometimes loosely masquerades as a common cultural identity, albeit acknowledged as nascent and tenuous. On the other hand, lacking Singapore's enforceable centralism, Malaysian communities have been refracted through a very different political prism into a wider spectrum ranging from the cosmopolitan to the insular.
Here, Robert Kaplan's description of both the Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese communities in his recent Asia's Cauldron (although doubtless a sweeping generalisation) deserves some consideration. According to Kaplan, compared to the many Chinese communities the world over, amongst them China's post-Maoist communities, Singapore's Westernised Chinese and Philippines's Chinese mestizos, the Malaysian Chinese have managed most successfully to retain their culture.
Here at the foot of Gunung Lambak was the classic post-colonial encounter, an incongruence further emphasized when Mary felt compelled to confirm: 他的中文已经算是很烂了 (his actually isn't considered fluent at all).
Below: smugness at my own command of Chinese, actually a makeshift shopfront at the trail head selling snacks and drinks.
9. Climate change
God is good. Prayer is potent. Ours for good weather was heeded emphatically. All day, it was neither too sunny to torment nor too cloudy to disappoint. The turn in the weather was perfectly timed too - claps of thunder just as we freshened up post-hike.
10. Highway to civilisation
My favourite part of the whole experience was going up Lambak, but the most pleasurable sentiment came from finally getting into the car and heading back to civilisation. This came from the certain knowledge of food in hunger and rest in weariness, and all in good company. As I pondered these thoughts on the way out in the car, I quipped that wah eh kah nng liao (in Hokkien, my legs are numb).
Allan's pithy, almost emotionless, response? Wah eh kah zee liao (my legs are broken).
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