Not Chilled After All

Last month someone said he wanted to go to Sg Chiling because he wanted to take his girlfriend there to see the waterfalls. I told him to come to my State to check out Jeram Toi and even send him some pictures of it. He said that Jeram Toi was not "nature" enough for him.

This made me want to check out the waterfalls in Sg Chiling. Steve was online, so I messaged him if he knew anything about this waterfall. He gave me a this link.

I didn't think much of Sg Chiling until after my trip to Kuantan (27-28 March).

Last week, 5 days after Kuantan, Steve said he will do a recce on the coming Monday, 6th of April. Did he plan to go with someone special or was he going alone, I wondered? So I asked him. His answer was simple " If no one go with me, I go alone la". I asked if he minded if Mctc and I tagged along. He said no problem.

We made plans to leave Seremban at 8.30am. We were supposed to meet Steve at his house. Guess what? Mctc's car battery died on him that morning. Steve has to come and pick us up and at the same time collect a new battery from Eddie's shop before fetching us out.

Our plan was to have beef noodles in KL for breakfast but since we were so late we went to Yi Poh, Seremban to have pork noodles.

Officially, we started our journey at 10.15am (after breakfast), and reached Kuala Kubu Bahru (KKB) town at about ... slightly after 12pm. When we passed the town, one of us suggested to have our late lunch here after the hike. Mctc suddenly remembered that there was a patient here in KKB, in a place called "Rumah Ehsan" (Ehsan House). He had not visited him for a very long time and said that if we had time later, we could go and see this patient.

After KKB town we came across the Sg Selangor dam. It was so beautiful, I couldn't take my eyes off the water. We stopped by to have a closer look and to ask for directions to the Sg Chiling waterfalls.

A map of the Sg Selangor dam.

Not far after the dam, we reached this bridge and saw a few cars parked here. Thinking that this could be the entrance to Sg Chiling waterfalls, we stopped and asked someone. He told us that the entrance was further up along the road. I think he was some sort of a guard because he told us that someone was drowned in this river two weeks ago. When we spoke to him, he was keeping an eye of a camp below which he said did not registered with the authorities.

And so it was. The entrance to the Sg Chiling waterfalls, also known as "Santuari Ikan Sungai Chiling" (Sungai Chiling Fish Sanctuary).

And you know what? It was closed. It says here on the signboard - open from Tuesday - Sunday 8am - 6pm, closed on Mondays except for public holidays. I couldn't believe my eyes. This was part of nature. Who gave them the right to close this place? Later I realized that they did it for the safety of the campers.
We went back to the car and saw the same person who told us where the Sg Chiling waterfalls entrance was. He said the we could still go in despite of the entrance being barred.

So off we went. As we go past the signboard, we felt like trespassing.

The pathway's wide and easy. We walked till we reached the wooden gates.

It was closed. Sigh. There were holes in the gates where the lock was and I quickly snapped a few pictures of what was beyond the gate. It was good to know that there were toilets there.

We turned away from the gate to go back out. We saw an opening to the river and checked if we could get to the waterfalls using this way.

The river water was deep (we had my Mt Kinabalu stick with us and used it to gauge the water level) and moving too fast. We dropped the idea of getting to the waterfalls.

Going back to the car, I thought, what a waste, to come all the way from Seremban and not see the waterfalls. But hold on.... I still have plan B. Check out the next post.