How hard can it be walking down a hill for a few hours? Well throw in a jungle, 37 degree heat and a lack of signs and it turns out to be quite difficult…

Last month I found myself staying for a few nights in Penang – a small island off Malaysia. It was meant to be a mini break with a colleague, which we had tagged onto the back of a week of work meetings in Kuala Lumpur. We had both decided it would be nice to take some time to explore a little of Malaysia and take some time to relax.

The word ‘relax’ didn’t fit too well into the first morning. Due to the extreme heat, we decided to pick up a ‘grab’ (Asian uber) at 7am and head to the historic George Town before the temperatures overtook us. We enjoyed meandering round the streets filled with murals that reminded me of Banksy and enjoyed photographing a huge variety of doors and ornate buildings, along with a stroll through the ramshackle market stalls on the jetties.

As the heat started to crank up we caught another grab to the foot of Penang Hill and bought tickets for the funicular railway which would take us to the top. The plan was to enjoy the shade of the trees and cooler air higher up as well as the views and the wildlife. 

The journey on the train was a little longer than I had envisaged – after all this was just a hill. And as it rose higher through the trees we could see paths and steps descending below. I wondered how long it would take us to walk down.

After enjoying lunch Malaysian-style with the vista of George town spread out below, slightly obscured by the clouds, we started to look for the start of the path down. The monkeys chattering overhead distracted us for a while and we eventually had to ask a passing man in running gear and trainers if he knew the way down the ‘hill’.

“You walking?” he asked. We nodded enthusiastically. He was looking at our feet – both displaying less than sturdy sandals.

“You can go that way, but probably the jeep track is best.” And he pointed at our shoes… or lack of them.

My colleague, Annette, is from New Zealand and didn’t fancy a track used by cars.

“How bad can it be?” she said. And so we followed the path down.

The jungle lined trail zig zagged down the hillside and we were encouraged by meeting other hikers coming up. They gave us breathless greetings and carried on in their trainers and walking poles. We continued to slither a bit in sandals.

There were some intersections at various points without any signs, we followed our noses, which took us to someone’s house. So, we trailed back up the hill, breathing heavily as sweat began to drip down our faces. We didn’t want to make any more navigation errors in this heat. But half an hour later we found ourselves back at a gateway, with images of guard dogs on the entrance.

As we retraced our steps yet again, I told Annette I had seen the pictures of an animal higher up on a tree but, as I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I had thought it was a tiger – which is more worrying a tiger or a guard dog?

The lack of signs and the apparent inaccuracies of the map we’d taken a photo of higher up, were beginning to become frustrating. As we finally began heading on what we thought was the right path, a young man in trainers bounded across to us and asked if we knew the way. We felt confident we’d found the trail at last and he seemed to agree and quickly overtook us. We saw him pause at yet another junction in the path lower down, before turning left. We followed on, which turned out to be a mistake. The path became narrow and steep. But there were ropes built into the trees to hold onto and the trail quickly evolved into a kind of assault course, where we had to descend backwards, holding the ropes and at some points swing ourselves round steep rocky drops to the path below. The sandals were doing their best, but they were only sandals.

We’d been going sometime now and occasionally had glimpses of the train through the trees or heard it rumbling by up above. The climbing ropes eventually joined the proper path we should have taken and there were several more dead ends before we finally came out into a clearing where we could see one of the midway railway stations and the houses and town below seemed a little closer.

It was gone two in the afternoon and the sun was intense. We could hear voices on the other side of the railway and began to fear we were on the wrong path again. A narrow trail led left and right below. Which was the right way? We were very tired and hot. The water was running low and we needed a sign. 

“Oh God, please give us a sign!” I said, and it was a kind of prayer. We stepped towards the path leading directly down and passed under a wooden arch. As we turned to look back, we saw the sign for the Penang Hill Trail directly over our heads. We had found the official path at last.

However, finding the path was just the beginning of a very long walk downhill filled with steps that seemed to go on forever. Our legs were becoming very wobbly, and we started counting to 20 steps and then stopping for a rest, but the mosquitoes soon had us moving on again.

When we finally found our way back we headed for cool drinks in a café and nursed our aching limbs as we waited for a grab to take us back to the apartment. Plans for an evening out on the town were on hold, in favour of a bit of a lie down in a cool room!

Penang ‘Hill’ turned out to be more of an adventure than we had planned and it took some time for our muscles to recover from that afternoon stroll through the Malaysian jungle. 

I am not sure Malaysians use the word ‘hill’ in the same way as us at all – we’re calling it ‘Penang Mountain’ because that’s what it felt like that afternoon.