My Little Paradise

After lingering around Gua Musang town, we continued our journey to Kota Bharu. We left the town at around 11.30am and headed straight to our first stopover, Dabong. It is here where you can find the tallest waterfall in South East Asia, the Stong Waterfall, with 270 meter tall.

As we were driving towards the waterfall, we could already see a glimpse of the waterfall from out far. I was excited to see such a magnificent view. The road leading to the waterfall was narrow. It is basically a small trunk road cutting through the thick jungle. Interesting enough though, there were a few kampung houses just besides the trunk road.

Surprising enough, this place was rather commercialized. Well, commercialized in a sense that there is a guard house at the entrance and also a resort besides the waterfalls. But I am not sure, the resort although looked quite grand, it seemed to be not well maintain. In fact, come to think about it, the resort might as well have been abandon. Not even a soul could be seen.

Anyway, back to our main subject, the waterfall. There are two parts to the waterfall. Travelers could either stay at the foot of the waterfall or hike the hill to a higher ground where they can have a closer encounter with the waterfall. Unfortunately, only the self-proclaim Lord and I decided to hike the hill. The two remaining heavenly kings remained at the foot of the waterfall.

The hike itself was not difficult. However, there were leeches all over. Yes, I have this thing about leech, I loath them. The hike seemed to be taking forever as I could see leeches eagerly waited to suck my blood. But we got lucky; our blood is safe for now.

Once we reached the end of the hike, we were presented with a magnificent view. This is really like heaven. I am not kidding. I have been to many waterfalls throughout my life. This is the best one yet. The first thing we did was to explore the area. It was pretty huge. The landscape was pretty diverse too. There was a cave, smaller waterfalls, huge rocks, streams, trees etc. It is truly a small paradise. So we chatted, drank beer, took photograph and above all enjoy the surrounding.

What really amazed me was that once we hiked back down and reached our car, it was already 6pm in the evening. It was unbelievable. I really though that we were only about 3 hours max at the small paradise. Instead we were up there for more than 5 hours. And can you believe it? In that period of 5 hours, we did not even dip ourselves in the water.

I will probably plan another trip here again. The serenity, the quietness and the surroundings make it worth the visit despite the long journey.