Lünersee

Last weekend, Joey and I did a weekend getaway (friday till sunday) at the scenic Lünersee in Austria. From the place where we stayed in germany, it took us around 3.5 hours to reach the place. Coming from germany, we had to buy an "entrance sticker" for our car, which cost 9.90€ for 10 days (nope, they don't have anything lesser) that allowed us to drive into Austria. Guess we didn't get to utilize it with our 3-day stay. 

We stayed at a cosy hut called Schattenlaganthütte which was privately owned and run by an austrian couple. Think we spent overall about 50€ per person per night. The only hassle was that this hut is situated below the cable car and a few KM away from Lünersee  itself. And the ticket of the cable car wasn't cheap - 21.50€ for to and return. What bothered me the most was the cable car stopped at 5pm. So the next time I would prefer staying "up" the mountain - ideally at Totalphütte.

After a day of driving around scenic routes and taking pictures, we decided to challenge ourselves with the toughest trail at Lünersee - a 10,5km hike and over 1300m elevation to Schesaplana, peaking at 2964m above sea level, the highest peak around Lünersee.

scenic view of Lünersee with mountain ranges at the back. Swimming not allowed but fishing yes.

All the trails at Lünersee are clearly marked (same as many other hiking trails in europe). What I find useful is that the signboards also indicates the difficulty and duration of the hike. Also, one can't really get lost as the internet connection was surprisingly stable despite the elevation - shame on you, Germany!

The trail to Schesaplana was at the start of the hike pleasant. As we ascended higher and higher (luckily we did not experience any altitude sickness), the trail started to become snowy. We managed to hiked up to Totalphütte without any hiking sticks and gloves but had to stopped there as the snow were too much for us to handle.

Totalphütte (2385m)

Even the snow almost reached my knee level at Totalphütte (2385m). 

We were told by the lady working at Totalphütte that it would take us another 2 hours of hike to reach Schesaplana. Upon hearing this we decided not to continue because 1. it was lunchtime and we were hangry  hungry 2. even if we managed to hike up to Schesaplana, we wouldn't been able to catch the last cable car on our way back.

that knee-level snow

Despite that, it was still a memorable hike. One that would definitely wanna do it again - this time with more planning and preparation to hike up Schesaplana. Maybe in 2024. Stay tuned!

Mulu Pinnacle - The First Attempt

WARNING: this is an emotional post that I have been procrastinating for almost 2 years 😱

As the hike happened in Sept 2023, some of the memories of the hike might have faded away but the feelings I had of the hike still lingers within me till this day.

It all started on a sunny day when we landed in Mulu from Miri with MASWings. If it wasn't for this trip, I would have never heard of MASWings - it's basically very tiny plane with propellers at the side, for the entire flight lasted just 25mins.

Notice the arrival information (white)board on the right.

Anyhow, after we landed at Mulu (very tiny) airport, we were picked picked up by our guides (from Borneo Tropical Adventures) and driven to the Mulu National Park where we had to register ourselves.

After the registration, we then took a "sampan" (long wooden roofless motor boat) ride that felt like an eternity to the start of our hike. I don't remember anything special about the boat ride e.g. the appearance of an anaconda - except for how hungry I was because it was close to noon.

The comes the first part of the hike - a 9km (almost) flat rainforest hike. 

Not that I have never done this before, just that I was probably too excited and started (or rather tried) walking as fast as my legs could take me. In hindsight, one of the guides challenged us to read Camp5 (that's the place where we would overnight) before XPM (forgot the details here) or rather, before it starts raining as the weather was forecasted to rain sometime in the afternoon.

This is where the problem started to creep in. Everything was still ok/normal when I reached Camp5. It was only after dinner when my left foot felt funny - the achilles of my left foot felt loose. I tried ignoring it, thinking that this would eventually go away on its own after a good night's sleep but boy was I wrong because the next day I woke up with a swollen achilles. A hiking buddy of mine who happened to have some pain killers gave me some so cope with the pain. It helped for the first part of the summit hike but the effect of the pain killer eventually wore of.

lying on the wooden bed, contemplating over the choices I made in life.

At 6am sharp after breakfast (forgot what I had for breakfast), we started our hike to the summit / the Pinnacle. What makes the Pinnacle hike different from the rest of my previous hikes was that this one comes with stringent checkpoints - meaning you would have to reach each checkpoint at the allocated latest time, if not, you would be asked by our guide to return back to Camp5.

Oh yeah, did I also mentioned that everyone was forced to carry 3L of water for the summit hike? It has to be 3 water bottles and not a 3L water bladder because you will eventually have to leave 1 or 2 bottles along the different checkpoints during the ascent. Like seriously, they would do a spot check. Anything less then 3L, you go back to Camp5.

look mum, I made it to the first checkpoint!

There were 4 checkpoints (including the "Summit") in total but due to my swollen achilles, I only managed the 1st checkpoint. I wasn't the only one who was sent back to Camp5 though. With me, there were 1 Austrian lady and a French guy. The rest of my hiking buddies continued and reached the Pinnacle without me the other day.

Of course it bugs me till this day but that's not gonna stop me from hiking or returning to Mulu again for a 2nd attempt in the future. But rather, I was kinda proud of myself (?) for knowing my physical limitations on that day and decided to be safe rather than dead 💀

Anyhow despite the failed attempt, I still enjoyed my time at the Mulu National Park. Actually, besides the Pinnacle, the national park has lots to offer. For one, I got to witness bat exodus near the Deer Cave. Millions of bats leaving the cave in the evening to search for food (I think it was around 5:30pm) that looked like they were dancing in the sky. 

Cherok Tokun Nature Park

Ever since I moved to Penang, I've been hearing a lot about this huge tree with its roots 3 times bigger the size than human. That's probably why the Cherok Tokun Nature Park is famous for among the locals - nope, didn't get to see a single ang moh (foreigner) today.

As usual, most of my (local) hikes are pretty spontaneous - I didn't study and check which trails are there and decided to "follow the crowd", which proves to be a waste of my first 1 hour. I will share this in a bit later.

Parking is plenty and free - if you arrive early enough. I arrived around 07:45am and most of the spaces were filled. Most cars were then gone by 09:30am.

Right at the start, there are 2 different hiking paths to choose from: either left or right. I did the mistake of following the crowd, taking the left trail. All in all, the hike wasn't that impressive - steep asphalt road all the way up with no pretty pano view. This path is crowded with locals jogging and cyclists but the road is wide enough to maintain SOP.

Seriously though, I would not recommend this to anyone, especially those with serious health conditions.

I'm not a big fan of asphalt road.

Now the other trail, the "right" one (pun intended), is the highlight of this post. This trail is full of greens, soil road, and most importantly: the pathway to the biggest buttress tree in Penang. Overall, it's an easy hike (about 20mins one-way hike to the famous big tree), suitable for monkeys school kids too - we actually saw a few along the hike....and monkeys too.

The trail on the right - path is narrower but less crowded.

Though lesser people, this trail is marked all the way, it's hard to miss the big buttress tree.

The trail actually doesn't end there - it actually goes all the way to the Mengkuang dam. Due to the time constraint (and mum), I shall leave this for the next hike :)

Attempting to lift the tree.

Moongate Trail

Greetings people!

I know, I have been MIA for the past 2 years...as my life has made a slight detour and given me the FOREVER in a lifetime opportunity to explore Malaysia. Flashback the past 2 years, all I could think of was the covid-19 pandemic. Needless to say, I was busy quarantining and social distancing - this includes keeping my fingers away writing.

One hiking trail in Penang (where I am currently stationed) worth writing about, is the moongate trail. This trail is an easy one and best suited for newbies and for those who does not have proper hiking shoes. Though it is not clearly marked not marked at all (compared to hiking trails in europe), the trail is pretty straight-forward as there is no forks along the trail. The highlight of trail and also my favorite part: please continue reading till the end ;)

This trail begins at a grand entrance - a majestic gate with an entrance shaped like a moon...full moon, as the name already suggest. This iconic gate is so famous that many hikers use this as a point of reference for gatherings / meet-ups if they are planning to hike around penang hill area.

An entrance hard to miss.

Once you've passed the majestic entrance, the trail is filled with stairs and flat trails. I personally reached the end of the trail in 40 minutes, while taking pictures along the way. Those that love to challenge, I have seen people running up and down the trails in running shoes and jogging pants.

A trail filled with lots of greenery. Remember to bring anti-mosquito spray!

Also along the way you will be encounter some monkeys aka the permanent residents of the penang botanical garden. According to locals, they can sometimes be fierce and show no remorse in stealing your food. I made the mistake of bringing a banana to the hike but was luckily spared.

The evening sun ray is just mesmerizing.

Rainbow staircase is a rare find.

 

Once you reached the pride-colored staircase, that's when you know the trail is slowly coming to an end. The highlight of this trail and also why I would recommend this to everyone: FREE coffee and biscuits *you know you won't die of hunger hiking this trail*

 

Mambo Nr. 5 ;)

Cups are provided (loan) - no need to bring your own.

 

Besides coffee and biscuits, there are also exercise equipments (don't know what they are called) for public use. Sorry I had no pictures of the equipments but they do look well maintained in my opinion.

Hiking the Dragon's Back

Hong Kong dramas used to be a part of my weekly entertainment when I was younger - back in the days when K-drama and their k-pop soundtracks were just debuting. Depending on what I was currently watching, I would want to be that profession, which ranges from police officer to solicitor to being a sushi chef.

Just last week, I had the opportunity to fly to Hong Kong and experience the whole TVB drama "live" myself. For a start, there were a load of people wearing black shirts cough*protesting*cough greeting me upon coming out of the arrival hall. All in all, the whole floor of the arrival hall was filled with black-shirt people, most of them sitting on the floor and chanting together. 

HK is pretty mountainous. 

The journey from the HK airport to my hotel was pretty simple. I was staying at North Point and lucky for me, my hotel was very close to both MTR (similar to London tube) and a bus stop. Taking the airport bus is definitely a cheaper option but if the bus have to go through central, you have to think twice. I made the wrong choice of taking the bus and ended up arriving the hotel almost 3 hours later. Why? Because I had to make a toilet stop in the middle of the traffic jam. This actually required me to take my luggage and leave the bus as the bus wasn't equipped with a built-in toilet *roll-eyes*

Make sure you board the bus with an empty bladder!

One thing that I've noticed is that bus takers were queuing in a line at every bus stop. There are even markings on the ground to indicate which queue line is for which bus line. So you don't have to ask queuers every single time. Hint: most of the bus drivers do not speak english or knows the street name in english. So make sure you learn how to pronounce the street names in Cantonese. 

HK was rated 4th densely populated countries in the world on worldpopulationreview.com

HK has long being known as the "New York" of Asia: skyscrapers, finance hub, people hustling each other everywhere + loud restaurants. I was dining with some newly-made friends, shouting was the only way to converse in the restaurants. Was surprised that with all the beer and shouting, I still had my voice the next morning. Germany has trained me well. 

Dinner at 金妹记 (Gold Mui Kee - the english name is pure gold)

HK wouldn't be HK without Yuen Yeung - a tea-coffee combi drink

Sadly I wasn't able to explore much HK due to the time constraint and the protest. But I managed to do was to hike the "dragon's back" trail - after I saw picturesque photos of the trail on google. Also, it is also said to be the easiest hike in HK and since I had half a day of free time, I figured why not. 

To get to the start of the hike: take bus 9 from MTR station "Shau Kei Wan" and get down at "To Tei Wan"

Boy, how unprepared I was thinking that it was just an easy hike. Despite an easy hike, I would urge anyone who will be attempting this hike to wear proper hiking shoes and a hat and most importantly if you're going there in july/august - bring plenty of water! This is not your average forest hike, this is an open trail with little/no shades. Also, though it's just a 2 hour hike: start your hike as early as possible to avoid the sun! 
But the reward though, makes it worthwhile :)

 
Would definitely come back again to explore the rest of HK!

To The White Mountain - Mont Blanc

Heeeyy y'all, how is everybody doing these days?

I had an amazing weekend last weekend as I spent 4 days at the top of Europe - that is if you don't include the caucasus mountain range. Why only 4 days you ask? Well, I'm glad it's just 4 days as everything there was super expensive, just like in the swiss. I'm talking about paying over 2€ for an instant cup noodle. 

As you may already know me - I travel in tight budget. So the only option for me to travel from Germany to Chamonix was by bus. The price of Flixbus was alright. But on the day of travel, my friend and his girlfriend almost died of hunger due to a strict (and rude) driver that didn't allow any of his passengers to eat in the bus. This kinda reminds me of my night bus from Tbilisi to Yerevan where I also almost died of hunger. Long story short, they were somehow in better situation as we had a short 10 mins break after 4 hours of drive where they could breath in their McD burgers.

Upon reaching Chamonix the next morning, we were greeted by dark and cloudy weather. This was not surprising as we knew the weather was going to be bad the whole weekend. What caught us by surprise was that the apartment we booked didn't come with free wifi. 

The first hike we did on the day we arrived was called "Le Chapeau via the Sources de L'Arveyron". I know, such fancy name but really, the hike was not impressive and it felt more like a stroll in the park. The highlight of the hike is this pano view of the valley but too bad it was cloudy and the peak was not visible. 

The second day is the climax of the trip and imo the most memorable one. We attempted the Grand Balcon Sud + Lac Blanc Lake on the same day. This includes taking a cable car to Plan Praz and hiking all the way to Tre Le Champ as the Le Flégère lift is closed due to maintenance. According to our plan, this 13.5km hike was to be completed within 6 hours. But since our hiking skills were a little rusty - it took us 12 hours to finish the hike! 

There were a number of reasons for the extended hiking duration. 

• First of all, we could not start our hike earlier than 9am as the lift to Plan Praz opens at 9am.
• Secondly, we took our own sweet time in taking pictures and flying the drone a few times in almost every step we take. Here are some of the picturesque scene I took along the way.
• As we reached Lac Blanc, it started to rain and hail so much that we decided to spend another hour and a half in a restaurant hut drinking hot cocoa and lemonade beer. 
• Last but not least - the Le Flégère lift is closed. Damn. We couldn't even ride the lift even if we have the money.

The moment we reached reached the top - Plan Praz via cable car

A frozen Lac Blanc

That few minutes before the rain hits us

After that all i could remember was just being drenched from the rain. As we left Lac Blanc towards Tre Le Champ, much of the hiking path were still covered with melting snow. 

See the "crack" between the ladder and the snow? You can't even see how deep it goes. I still jump on it anyway - C'est la vie

.....and also taking tons of ladders as this (at that moment) seemed to be the shortest route back to the mountain bottom. It is only then I realised that I have a slight fear of height, especially when I know that one careless mistake will cost me my dear life. My hiking buddy on the other hand, was racing to the bottom to avoid having to hike in the dark. I wonder how she does it - my knees were basically jelly the whole way down. And she didn't even bother to wait nor look out for me *wailing*

My hiking buddy chasing the sunlight 

Feelings aside, we managed to reach Tre Les Champ before it turned pitch dark. Luckily it was easy to get a taxi - one of the hostel guy helped us order it. 
The 3rd day was a smooth sail - we make full use of the other lifts available. This one is my favourite. 

Sunny weather when we chill

What we regretfully didn't managed to do was to see the Mont Blanc due to the limited time. To do this, we would have to fork about 80€ (94€ round-trip) to ride a cable car to Aiguille du Midi. You know what this means - there will definitely be a second time when I finally visit Mont Blanc!

Caucasus unveiled - Svaneti Region

So after reading a travel blog of a friend of mine, my fingers started to itch and woila there you go, the very first post of my long abandoned blog. Don't bother searching for my previous post as I've already deleted ALL of them. And because I'm just too lazy to maintain my blog, I've decided to copycat my friend  adopt this simple habit of writing my travel stories. 

As the title already suggest, I have very recently landed myself in *drum rolls* Georgia and Armenia. All in all I've spent a total of just 2 weeks - 7 days in Georgia and 5 days in Armenia. Too long and too much to squeeze in everything into one post, I decided dedicate this post first to Georgia. Please do not missunderstand, not that I favor Georgia over Armenia, it's just that I landed first in Georgia. Armenia to be continued....perhaps in 3 weeks time.

Cutting to the chase, my journey started exactly at Kutaisi, which according to wiki, is the 3rd most populated city in Georgia. Why not fly to the capital Tbilisi you ask? Cos I'm cheapskate  a budget traveller - I opted for Wizzair for just over 72€.

Truth to be told, I didn't explore much Kutaisi except for the Bagrati Cathedral as Kutaisi was just a pit-over stop for Mestia. For those who fancy extreme sport, there is this cable car that flies over the Rioni river which looks super old and dangerous. 

Bagrati Cathedral 

Our first encounter with Georgian cuisine is the Khinkali. Basically it looks like the chinese dumpling but much bigger in size. Fun fact: the head of khinkali is not meant to be eaten. The proper way to eat a Khinkali is to grab its head with the finger, gently bite off the skin and suck the meat juice out before putting the whole dumpling into your mouth. Being an avid traveller who didn't do much research on food ethics beforehand, I was foolish enough to eat the whole dumpling while complaining about how "hard" the head was. 

Khinkali - brought to you by the Mongols

After a good night sleep in Kutaisi, we flew domestically with Vanilla Sky to Mestia, known to be listed in the list of UNESCO world heritage sites for the Caucasus mountains. As cute as the name Vanilla Sky sounds, the plane actually does not fit more than 15 passengers (and does not fly more than 30 minutes). Even the boarding ticket is a hand-written one. I repeat: a hand-written flight ticket in the 21st century. How cute is that?!

Scenic Mestia

Landing in one piece in Mestia, we went straight to what we do best: finding food to eat. My personal favourite is a dish called Shkmeruli. To put in simple words, it's baby chicken cooked with tons of garlic - together with bread this would make angels wanna piss in my mouth (as the dutch would phrase it). 

Shkmeruli

If you're in Mestia, you're in for a hike. We opted for an easy day hike (16km) from Ushguli to Shkara glacier, which according to google picture, promises an amazing view of the Caucasus mountain ranges. The road to Ushguli was winding and cliffy and....how to put it in word....full of living obstacles. See the video yourself. 

Only drive there yourself if you have the confidence of an elephant and a really good 4-wheel jeep/tanker. We paid 40GEL each for a to-and-back ride in a minibus. The only regret is that the minibus departed quite late from Mestia. As soon as we reached Ushguli (around noon), the sun was calling it a day. After 2 hours of hiking, the weather God then started to shower us with rain and thunder. 

Ushguli village - pretty much untouched

Despite the rain, we continued hiking untill we reached a stream of fast-flowing glacier water. That's when we decided we were wet enough and headed back to our minibus. 
So no, we didn't reached the Shkara glacier as planned - shame on us.  

The hiking path to Shkara glacier 

one last picture for a happy ending. This here is kebab. 

Stay tuned for the next post about Kazbegi.