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Gua Charas
Deep in the midst of a oil palm estate is this limestone outcrop, complete with cave and temple. Dave, a friend from Minnesota that I made at the ESL conference, came by bus to Kuantan Thursday afternoon. I had invited him up to have a look around for a few days. He’s studying for his master’s in teaching ESL, but is off for the summer working at a Chinese speaking kindergarten (pre-school) in the state of Johor and doing some research. He’s quite good with kids as you might imagine as working in a kindergarten, so Viv and Will took to him right away.
We decided to take a trip out to a small town called Sungai Lembing (Lembing River) just 20 miles north of Kuantan and stop by the cave nearby. It wasn’t until around 11 that we got on the road, but the drive over to the cave wasn’t long. You’re out amongst the oil palm estates and rubber plantations in that area. The oil palms are quite stout and have lots of bushy palm leaves on top, not tall and slender like the coconut trees. I’ll show you more about the oil palm another time. In any event, there are hundreds and thousands of rows of these neatly spaced palms on the estates.
The climb up
Some really big steps They provide a nice shade canopy for everything underneath (very little brush or ground cover as not much light gets in and what does grow is kept cut back). All that shade does make a nice home for cows, goats and …snakes, so we didn’t venture into the shade. We drove through about 2 miles of an estate after turning off the main road to come to giant limestone outcrop surrounded by oil palms. This is home to Gua Charas (Charas cave) and its temple with a sleeping/reclining Buddha.
It’s a very steep climb up to the cave entrance, first going up steel steps, then concrete and stone steps. When I say steep, I mean “ladder” steep. The temple cave is only about a quarter to halfway up the mountain, but the climb is nearly vertical. At the entrance, you can feel some coolish air flowing out, but it also reeks of bat guano. To the kids credit they made up the steps with us and even braved entering the cave despite the smell. It’s very hot and humid outside, and you’d think that the cave would be nice and cool or almost cold. Nope. Just a really muggy
humid feeling is all you get. There is an electric cable strung up the mountainside from the monk’s house at the base. Before you start the climb you make a donation and he turns the lights on for you. There is a spooky twilight feel as you go farther into the cave and you see shrines spread here and there. Also, you can’t help but notice the high whining chatter of the bats that live on the ceiling of the cave. The cave extends back a good 200-300 meters and has a very high ceiling to it. In spots you can see tiny shafts of light coming through openings, but it’s generally dark. After passing some of the shrines we came to the reclining/ sleeping Buddha. It’s not a huge one like some of the ones in other parts of Southeast Asia, but being in the cave makes it a worthwhile visit. Reclining Buddha statues represent him as he prepared to enter nirvana. We passed a few other people on their way out as we headed in; other than that it was just us and the bats.
After visiting the shrines in the back of the cave, we backtracked
Viv in the cave
Viv making a request of Buddha and continued our climb up the side of the limestone mountain. The concrete stones disappeared and we were left with just a rocky trail and a handrail to hold on to. At the top there is a cave with lots of different views looking out over the oil palm estate. It was quite breezy as the wind could blow through the small cave from one side of the mountain to the other. The rains came while we were up at this highest level. We decided to wait it out as the afternoon rain is usually intense but short. After about 20-30 minutes it had stopped and we made our way carefully down the wet slope back to the car. It was a good visit.
We continued on the town of Sungai Lembing. Once home to one of the world’s largest longest and deepest subterranean tin mines, the mine was run by a British firm from 1906 until 1986. Once it shut down, the town sort of followed suit. However, the town isn’t all dead. It has its visitors on the weekend and a few odd ones like us during the week. The town is basically set up along one
Hanging bridge over Sungai Lembing
One of the several bridges used to cross the river to the orang asli (indiginous) village. short stretch of road, with a few shops and restaurants still open and the Hainanese Chinese Association hall in the middle. In the center of the road is a tiny median with trees, but I noticed it didn’t seem to matter which side of the median you drove on; not a lot of traffic aside from the occasional motorbike of wandering dog. The town had a nice feel to it. I wouldn’t say it was dead at all, just rather quiet. We stopped by a Chinese run bakery and had a look behind the scenes as they were making their “famous” coconut biscuits. After that, we had some drinks at a coffee shop and headed back home to Kuantan.
Saturday, Jo’s brother just in from Australia came to visit. His daughter is only two months older than Vivian, so they were anxiously waiting to meet each other. They had only ever talked over the net prior to this. They seemed to have hit it off well. They’ll be here with us until the middle of July. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing at the beach. We’ll leave for Malacca on Sunday (June 25).
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