Gua Musang railway station, Kelantan, Malaysia

Anyone who has been to Gua Musang in Kelantan, Malaysia, will know that the town is surrounded by limestone hills. The main street of the old town is quite scenic with a backdrop of a large karst tower at the end. Between the end of the street and the hill is the railway line. The old Gua Musang railway station is particularly iconic, but has now closed down and is no longer in use. The new station is about 1 km to the south.

One of the best known caves in the area is also called Gua Musang and to reach it, you have to walk along the railway platform and cross the lines before climbing the hill. See my blog on Gua Musang cave.

On a recent visit to Gua Musang town, we stopped for breakfast at the food stalls right by the old station and I used the opportunity to take some photos of the now abandoned station.

Merapoh 2013 - Baja caves

Oct 1 2013 I was with Habli, Juki and Zainudin at Gua Baja. Baja means fertiliser in English, and the hill probably has this name as guano has been taken from the caves. We explored 2 caves and named them Gua Baja Bawah and Gua Baja Atas.

Gua Baja Bawah is a ground level cave. It has some large chambers and passages, nice formations and has been extensively dug for guano. There are several entrances, this is the main one we went in -

 

 

There were plants and snail shells at one entrance -

There was also a lot of graffiti.

There are many pits left by the guano diggers and in one is the dried remains of a bird, presumably a raptor

We then left this cave and Zainudin joined us and mentioned a cave higher up. He then cut down a long thin tree and led the way to a place further round the cliff, with Juki and Habli carrying the tree. They then struggled to get it securely in place against the cliff.

 

I didn't fancy the climb up, so I waited at the bottom whilst the boys in blue went up to explore the cave, Gua Baja Atas. They were gone a long time and eventually came back, full of excitement as it was a very big cave, with huge high chambers and passages, and lot of entrances, some with good views over the surrounding hills.

 

Juki had taken lots of photos with my camera, so I could get some idea of what the cave looks like.

 

 

© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission

Merapoh 2013 - more cave drawings, Gua Lima area

At the end of Sept 2013 I was back in Merapoh. We spent a couple of days caving in the Gua Lima area, which is just outside Kpg Merapoh. We found a few more caves with black drawings on the walls. They are similar to those at Gua Badak in Lenggong, Perak, although those have more recognisable objects such as people, animals, bicycles, trees etc.

It is not known if the Merapoh drawings are the same age as the Lenggong ones, but the latter have deteriorated over the years and are now really faded. It is thought the drawings may have been made by the local orang asli.

The first ones are on the wall of a long rock shelter, Gua Gajah Gosok, this is near a cave we named as Gua Empat Tingkat.

Some of the drawings look like people -

Various human like shapes can be seen as well as one set of squares -

There were also sign of elephants having rubber along the centre hanging rock -

From here we moved onto another hill in the area

and we named the cave Gua Jambatan Batu from this bridge -

There were drawings in the upper section

The one on the top right looks like the sun

One the next 2, the left one looks like a deer from outer space, the one on the right Habli said is a tiger eating a person!

The cave has some nice formations -

 and a few bats -

One wall was blackened from soot from fires. Outside I found a piece of pottery

A short, but interesting cave.

Another cave in the area with drawings. This is Gua Lima, aka Gua Terowong Felcra. I first visited this cave in 1996 but missed the drawings then as they are on the upper level above the entrance. I also came back in Sept 2013 and again didn't know the drawings were there.

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See Feb 2013 blog of Gua Seribu Cerita for more cave drawings.

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October 16 2013, Noel has now blogged about this rock art on his site, SEAArch, and put forward interesting suggestions. See Rock Art from Merapoh, Pahang.

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Blog on Batek orang asli who may have done the drawings

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© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission

Gua Kajang graffiti, Lenggong, Perak

Gua Kajang is a short tunnel cave through the hill Bukit Kepala Gajah, at Lenggong in ulu Perak. My last blog about it was 2 years ago in Sept 2011.

Since then, the Lenggong Valley has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is now more than 1 year since the listing. Little has changed in the area. The main changes have been negative things such as graffiti, broken structures and lack of maintenance.

I went back to Gua Kajang in Sept 2013 and I was saddened to see fresh graffiti in the cave.

Some of the graffiti was quite high. Although I took the next 2 photos on my recent visit, when I checked my older photos I found this graffiti was there in 2012

There is a large piece of rock missing from the wall near the back door, I don't know if it is new, but I don't recall seeing it broken on previous visits -

The sign board in the pondok is broken and several tiles are missing from the roof -

This is the pondok when it was new in Aug 2012, just 1 year ago -

There were large clusters of butterflies in the entrance. Normally when they group like this they are after salts

 

 

This lack of maintenance is not, especially considering that the area is supposedly getting extra visitors now that it is a World Heritage Site.                                                                                 

 

                                                                                    

 

 

 

Stal at the Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

One of the newest attractions in Singapore is the Gardens by the Bay, located by Marina Bay Sands. Although I have been to MBS, I haven't been to the gardens.

When a friend told me that there is a lot of large stal on display, I was curiously concerned. My friend said it had been imported from China.

So I googled the gardens and see there is a Chinese Garden in the Heritage Gardens. There are some photos on this site, and I also found this blog that shows some of the stones. They seem to be large pieces of rock rather than actual speleothems. I just hope they have come out of a quarry or were "free standing" stones - I hope they haven't actually been removed from any caves.

But then my concern grew when I continued googling and came across this blog Singapore Actually . It mentions a Crystal Cave and shows photos of stal - click on the link and scroll down to see the photos. The photos show some huge pieces of stal sitting on strangely shaped stands. They look totally out of place.

I continued googling and found these videos on youtube, by liberto , E. Pua and another by Pua showing the Crystal Mountain at Cloud Forest hall. There are mirrors around the hall to reflect the stalactites and stalagmites, see this blog by Alicesg . According to Wikipedia, "The Cavern and the Crystal Mountain contains exhibitions of mineraology and caves".

I don't know how these stal were imported to Singpaore, whether it was done 'legally' or not.
In the past there have been various exhibitions of speleothems in Malaysia, the supply presumably coming from China, or even Philippines.  See more on my website .

© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission