Ayer Hitam, finally!

Numerous times I had heard and/or read about the Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve in Puchong. With a waterfall, maybe even more than one….

But I had also heard that this forest reserve was a research project of the UPM university and officially out of bounds. As I am a good citizen, I was reluctant to trespass…:)

Last week I joined a so-called hashwalk, for the first time in my life. I will blog about it later. After the walk there was an open-air beer party where I met Master Ho, 76 year old and still going strong.  When he was 15(!) years old, he started a hiking group Pathfinders55, which still exists today. We came to talk about Ayer Hitam and I accepted his invitation to join him for a hike there.

Here is the location of the Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve. Surrounded by urban development, it is surprisingly large. Our hike is marked in green.

Large map

Here is part of the Reserve in more detail (click to enlarge). Our hike was about 10 km and took more than four hours. The grey line comes from Google Earth and probably marks an”allowed” trail. On our hike we did not meet any enforcement officials, maybe because it was weekend

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Master Ho had sent me a whatsapp where to meet:

Date: Sunday 22/5/2016
Meet time at the the purple(or pink you may call it) colour single storey
corner shop opposite the coconut stall
Start time: 9.30am

I was surprised that there was quite a big crowd that Sunday morning. The pink/purple house was easy to find and Master Ho was waiting for us. We took a group photo and started our hike. Clear trail, climbing up, then down, crossing a stream, then up again.

After about one hour we reached the waterfall. Many people there, enjoying a bath and relaxing. No rubbish! I understood that the local community is taking care about the place.

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Here is a video of the waterfall

What next? We could take the same way back, but we also could have a look at the Blue Lagoon. Easy decision of course…:-)  So we continued our hike, passing another nice waterfall (no people, access difficult) and an orang asli settlement. Nobody living there now, probably only when fruits (durians?) are harvested. Romantic setting.

Here is a video of another river crossing. Master Ho and I decided to get our feet wet. Of course I was hoping that at least one of my friends would fall…

Here is Peter, taking a bath in the BLue Lagoon

The second Blue Lagoon is even more attractive, with a small waterfall at its end.

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A pity that these lagoons are out of bounds, but understandable. Fortunately they are located deep inside the Reserve. It took us about two more hours to hike back to the pink house. Here are a few pictures to show the beauty of nature.

All the time we were in the jungle, but just before the end, we came out in the open and noticed this rock face with bright flags on top. Maybe because the day before it was Wesak?

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A very rewarding hike!

Kanching revisited

In  my last blog I described how Aric and I were recently robbed when we were visiting the Kanching waterfalls. No physical hurt, only material loss. But I was wondering if this bad experience would negatively affect my appreciation for Kanching.

Ten days later I could check this…:-). Talking with my Kiara friends about Kanching, several of them confessed that they had never been there and that they were interested in a visit. So we organised a trip.

To be honest, I had been thinking what to do if I would meet the guy again, so I was happy to go with a group of friends, just in case…:-) But of course we did not meet any suspicious person this time.

It was a very nice hike. Here are a few pictures:

I had promised to bring my stove so we could make coffee.

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The big surprise for me was that Suat had baked a (belated) birthday cake for me. With a real candle. A delicious concoction with many ingredients, including rum. Yummie.

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I explained to my friends how the robbery had happened and we decided to reenact it, with Peter as the thief and me as the victim. A happy victim, according to Suat… :-). Kind of closure…:-)

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I checked  my Kanching geocache and found it to be in mint condition. Then it was time to go down and have lunch. The descent from the top fall is very steep, when the thief ran away, he can not have taken this route. Probably he took the trail upstream, hiding there and waiting until we had gone down.

Here are a few  pictures of our descent from tier 7 beside the cascade (tier 6).

And a video

Suat, for whom it was a first visit, liked Kanching, but was shocked about the rubbish we found everywhere, left behind by inconsiderate visitors. At one place it looked as if a party of (Malay?) youngsters had been interrupted by the arrival of the religious police. We found several full beer(!) cans, some clothes(?), and also a few plastic rubbish bags.

Being good citizens we used these bags to do some cleaning on our way back to the entrance. As you can see, it was no problem to fill the bags.

To end this nice outing, I treated my friends to lunch in T.K. Chong, near my condo.

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I am sure now that I will visit Kanching again, without bad feelings.

Robbed at Kanching!

At the Kanching waterfalls you always have to watch out for the  monkeys who are looking for food, but also can grab your belongings.

Snatch thief

And at the entrance there is a clear sign warning for snatch thieves.

So we are always wary, keeping an eye on our belongings, checking if monkeys or other people are hanging around our stuff.

However we were not prepared for somebody following us secretly and hiding in the jungle

When Aric and I visited Kanching two weeks ago, we were ROBBED ! Here is our story.

After being back in Malaysia for a few weeks and having recovered from my jetlag, I felt the usual urge to visit a waterfall. Kanching waterfalls! Easy half-day trip. Aric wanted to test an app for his iPhone, that can take long-exposure pictures. Suitable for waterfalls, as it can create the “cotton-wool” effect.

We went on a Monday, only a few visitors at the lower tiers, nobody at the upper ones. Here are a few pictures.

Actually we met one guy on our way to the top fall.  An Indian, in his thirties, dark complexion, small moustache, didn’t look like a hiker. After we passed him, we watched him and saw that he was going down. And that fooled us! 

When we arrived at the top fall, Aric installed his iPhone on a tripod, while I took a short video of this 7th tier, just above the tall cascade (tier 6).

Here is the top fall, twice. The left picture is a “normal” one, the right one is taken by the app, using an exposure time of 4 seconds.

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During the preparations and the taking of pictures, we were only a few meters away from our backpacks. However, Aric wanted to take a last picture with both of us in the water, using his remote control.

That was the moment the thief had been waiting for. Apparently he had secretly followed us, hiding in the bushes. From the corner of his eye, Aric saw him grabbing our two backpacks. Of course he shouted, the guy ran away, nothing we could do.

I lost my GPS and my watch, fortunately my wallet and phone where in my pants, he had no time to search those. But Aric lost his wallet and his camera.

When we told the rangers in the office about it, they said it happened more often. And when I was collecting info for this blog on the Internet, I found this review of Kanching on Tripadvisor, written 19-1-2015 :

Beware at the top, two of us left our bags only meters away in what we 
thought was a safe place, within a minute or two of getting in the water 
they were gone, along with our phones, wallets, slr camera. 
We think we were followed or someone was watching from the jungle. 
Enjoy but be aware.

I have already added a warning to the Kanching page on WoM.

 

Amsterdam Architecture

When I am back in the Netherlands, my friend Inez and I always try to organise an outing. Last year for example, we visited Rotterdam and Dordrecht.This time we decided to stay in Amsterdam,  and visit some new and/or interesting architecture. It was a beautiful sunny spring day.

Our first destination was the new Westermoskee, the largest mosque of the Netherlands, with a floor surface of 800 m² and a capacity of 1700 people. The plan to build this mosque dates back to 1997, there have been numerous problems, now it is almost complete, the unofficial opening took place on 1-4-2016.

I was impressed by the architecture, based on the Hagia  Sophia in Istanbul, but in a very “Dutch”, brick-based style. It blends very well in the surrounding residential area.

Personally I am really proud of my multicultural hometown, that it has been possible to build this Islamic icon in a “Western/Christian” environment.  The opposite might not be easy these days..:-(. Here is a report by Al Jazeera about the mosque.

From the mosque it was not far to a former tram depot, built in 1902, and recently transformed in a cultural center with a cinema, library etc. Also many food outlets. It has been renamed De Hallen .

After lunch we went to the Western harbours. where we had a look at the REM island . In 1964 commercial radio and TV was not yet allowed in the Netherlands. A group of businessmen found a solution: broadcast from an artificial island, just outside the Dutch territorial waters!

Unfortunately for them, the experiment lasted only a few months, because the Dutch parliament quickly passed a law, extending the territorial waters…:-). The navy raided the place and confiscated the equipment.

The platform remained for many years where it was, off the coast at Noordwijk, but a few years ago it has been moved to the Western harbour where it now has a second life as a restaurant!

The harbour view from the upper deck is of course impressive. Windy too..:-)

Our next stop was the Spaarndammerbuurt. Here one of the jewels of the Amsterdam School of architecture can be found. This expressionist style of architecture peaked in the first quarter of the 20st century.

Het Schip (the Ship) is a creation of architect Michel de Klerk, built between 1914 and 1921.

Google Earth has a 3D option and in the left picture you see the Ship in 3D. In the right picture the iconic (although useless) tower of this housing estate for workers!

het schip

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The rounded forms are characteristic for the Amsterdamse School. The former postoffice now houses a small museum.

Last destination for the day was the new development of the IJdock. At the west side of the Central Station, an artificial island has been constructed, as can be seen in the two images below. Left the situation in 2006 ,  right an image from 2015.

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Post-modern architecture in optima forma…:-)

That was enough for a day trip. The next day I visited another highlight of the Amsterdam School, the social housing complex De Dageraad, built by Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer in 1920. Here an aerial view.

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Here are a few pictures of the Berlage Scholengemeenschap, built in 1924 by Arend Jan Westerman.

And here a collection of pictures of the Dageraad complex.

The Amsterdam School style is easy to recognise, many buildings can be found in Amsterdam, maybe something for another blog…:-)

North-Holland, March 2016

This year I was back in the Netherlands about one month earlier than usual. Here is a view from the train on my way to my sister in North-Holland, a few weeks later there will be plenty of flower fields here.

Now only an occasional field with crocuses (left) and daffodils (right). No tulips yet

I spent the Easter weekend in Valkkoog, where my sister and her husband are living. A small village with a vibrant social life. There was a traditional egg hunt for the kids and in the church a brunch was served. A few of their neighbours are rearing sheep as a hobby, and this was the time that the ewes were yeaning  (hm, I had to look up “ewe” and “yean” in a dictionary)

About our visit of the Kranenburgh Museum in Bergen I have already reported in my post Museums, museums, museums. We also visited a very different kind of museum, Tulpenland , about the history of the tulip. A quaint collection of items related to the tulip. A path through a forest brings you to the various exhibits.

Ever heard about the Tulip Mania ?  It was a short period in the Dutch Golden Age (17th century) during which prices for tulip bulbs exploded dramatically and then suddenly collapsed. In the Tulpenland garden some Amsterdam merchant houses have been rebuilt on a miniature scale, with information about this “tulpengekte” (tulip madness) where the price of one bulb could be equal to a house…:-)

The Netherlands is one of the largest exporters of tulips in the world. Look at the numbers in the picture below (year is not given). Two billion tulip bulbs and a slightly smaller number of tulip flowers, with Germany as the largest buyer.

It happened to be the opening day of Tulpenland for the 2016 season, we received a complimentary pot with tulips! Pity I could not take them back to Malaysia..:-(

There is a saying: God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands and that seems particularly true for the province of North-Holland! Compare the two maps below. Left a map from 1740, right a recent Google Earth screenshot.

The polders that already existed in 1740 are colored green, with the dykes in red. They are outlined in green in the GE image. Later land reclamation projects are outlined in brown. The first big reclamation project was the Zijpe (1597), the Wieringermeer was only reclaimed in 1930, at the same time as the Afsluitdijk was built, basically transforming a “dangerous” sea (Zuiderzee) into a “quiet” lake (IJsselmeer)

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As you can see in the map to the left, there was a sea both east and west of North-Holland! The east side was protected by the Westtfriese Zeedijk, the west side by sand dunes. Nevertheless numerous floods occurred, and one of them, the St. Elizabeth’s flood (1421) breached the dunes near Petten, destroying the village and killing many people. Attempts to create new dunes there were only partly successful, in the following centuries the sea was slowly advancing and the land receding. In the image to the right this weak spot is indicated in red.

Here is a map published in 1600, showing the Zijpe polder, just drained in 1597. The letters mark the land parcels in the new polder, to be distributed to the various stakeholders. Notice that the map has been oriented almost east-west

Zijpe_map

A detail of this map shows the (rebuilt) village of Petten and part of the weak spot in the coastal defense. There is still a small forest there , the Honsbosch. The lower part shows  the present situation, with the old coastline indicated. The coastline has receded a lot, the old Petten has been swallowed by the sea, a new Petten has been built.

Old and new 1

One more comparison, with a later map, dated ~ 1730. In the meantime more floods had occurred, for example the 1717 Christmas flood. Comparing with the 1600 map, the Lay polder has been drained. The coast line has receded again. The forest is no more.

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In the  Google Earth image  you see basically the Hondsbosche Sea Dyk, made of basalt and concrete, built around 1880. A final solution? In a way, yes, recent floods,like the disastrous 1953 flood, have not affected this sea dyke near Petten. But of course the Netherlands have to prepare for global warming and a resulting rise of seawater levels!

So, what to do? One solution would be to increase the height of this sea dyke again, as has been done in the past a few rimes already. Here is an (Internet) image of the sea dykes, couple of years ago. At the back is the actual Hondsbosch sea dyke, in front the Pettemer one. Forget about the details, just notice that the Pettemer one (different authorities!)  has been raised a bit higher than the Hondsbosch one..:-) And notice how much the low-lying farms to the left depend on the strength of these dykes!

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A few years ago it has been decided to try a more audacious solution, instead of raising the dykes, fight back against the sea and create new dunes in front of the existing dyke!

In the last two years about 35 million (!) cubic meters of sand have been dredged from the sea and deposited in front of the existing sea dykes, creating a new “dune-scape”. The result is clearly visible from Google Earth…:-)

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The Netherlands at its best..:-) There is an interesting visitor center in Petten: Informatiecentrum Kust, Zand tegen Zee (in Dutch). From there you can climb the newly created Lookout Dune.

It was cold and windy during our visit. PLenty of kite surfers and horse riders.

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North-Holland is a fascinating province. Must spend more time there during my next visit..:-)