Taking your breath and other things: Telaga Tujuh

Telaga Tujuh (literally Seven Wells) is located on the southwest corner of the island of Langkawi, close to our resort Berjaya. The seven wells are up at the top of about 700 steps which the locals tell you will take about ten minutes to climb. Yeah, right, if you're an 18 year old surfer, not an overweight, pushing 50 year old, more like 45 minutes plus, and you're going to want to make sure you take water with you (we didn't).

We started our trek up the falls by stopping at an ice cream shop so Rita could get a cone. As we started up the asphalt road (why can't we just drive up this part? enquiring minds want to know), a couple of westerners passed us (remember the 18 year old surfers...these two could have played that part). The girl warned Rita to be careful with her food, as the monkeys were aggressive, and would try to steal it. Up till this point we hadn't seen monkeys anywhere near us, but these seemed to be the magic words because no sooner than the warning been issued than a troop of about seven came out of the jungle and started closing in on us. It looked like a mother and several yearlings along with one other possibly female about the same size as the mother. I was amused to see how they had absolutely no fear and walked right up to us. They started to cluster around Rita's feet, eyes on nothing but what was in her hand, so she decided the best thing to do was to chuck her barely started ice cream cone across the drainage ditch. The mother was across the ditch in a millisecond with the cone in her hands, eating as well as any child would. As we watched, she deftly removed the paper cover so she wouldn't have to eat that, and continued to devour the cone, not sharing with any of her kids. We left the monkeys to their meal and continued up the hill on our "ten minute" walk.

The hill is a pretty steep incline, maybe 30° or so, but it's paved asphalt (makes the engineer in me wonder what admixture they used to keep it from slumping in the tropical heat, but that's another story), and occasionally a motorbike would roar past us, making me wish we'd rented one of those instead. The bottom of the road was closed off to vehicle traffic, but bikes could get around. To the right of the road was a set of stairs that Rita wanted to get onto thinking it'd be easier going. I thought the stairs were a good idea, but because they were currently below us, I wasn't about to lose altitude to get to them. I figured they'd eventually catch up to us, and I could save the heartbeats necessary to climb down then back up to where I already was, altitude wise. Make sense? Me either, but when your heart's pounding in your ears due to the exertion, that's the way your mind works, or at least mine does. We quickly realized we were in for more of a hike than we'd bargained for, but I've long since learned that you sort of walk yourself into shape in the first few days of vacation, so I wasn't going to let a little thing like a giant hill deter me. The builders thoughtfully included benches every 50 meters or so to rest on, and by about the third or fourth one, we were resting at every one, sometimes in between depending on the relative steepness. About halfway up, Rita was ready to quit and go back down. I was too, but wasn't ready to admit defeat, and the slightest indication that we could go back down hill would be jumped upon by the distaff side of my family, so I pretended to be OK as best I could. I'm sure the incessant puffing, red cheeks and dripping sweat were not any indication of my condition. Besides, we hadn't brought any water with us (stupid, stupid, stupid), and I knew there was water to swim in at the top, and by now we were closer to the top than the bottom, so why not go on? This wasn't helped by a couple of (German?) ladies who we met on the way back down from their visit. One seemed enthused by her visit, but the other when I asked "is it worth it?" replied, "it's not to die for, and if you miss it, you won't know what you missed". All this did was anger me as she obviously expected me to keel over of myocardial infarction or something, so I was more determined than ever to get to the top. Along the way a Malay guy came running UP to us, running in leather cowboy boots, long pants, but no shirt. He stopped while he caught his breath in the 20 seconds or so that took (another surfer wannabe I guess) and explained to Rita that we were a bit more than half way, then he took off again running. I watched him run up the hill, then noticed that he too had to stop and really catch his breath, maybe I'm not the only one who fakes things? At long last we got up to the top of the falls, and it was quite the sight. Again my engineer brain was asking how in the hell did they get all the materials up here to make two bathrooms, an observation tower, concrete walkways, etc? Most likely some poor bastards had to carry the sacks of cement up on their backs because the asphalt road had ended about 1/3 the way up,and all that was left was the stairs and the pipe. Somehow they'd carried up tons of cement, 18" pipe (the wells actually supply water for villages below), plus all the lumber to make railings the entire way up, etc. A large undertaking in equatorial heat, although it was actually quite pleasant under the jungle canopy, if a bit buggy.

We wandered around at the top of the hill, looking for a nice place to get out of the sun and into some water. There was a family camping up near the top, and they were washing dishes in the water which everyone else below them was swimming in, so we decided to walk upstream. We found a nice little grotto where the water was deep enough to sit in, if not swim. All I wanted to do was cool down anyway, so I plopped my butt in the water. Ahhhhh.... Rita did the same and we took some pictures to commemorate the occasion.

On the way back down, we stopped nearly as frequently as on the way up. The steps are so steep, and stopping your (or at least my not inconsiderable) weight with each step got tiring pretty quickly. Our quads and calves would hurt for a couple of days afterward. About a third of the way down, we stopped for a longer breather than we had been, and this is where we met some of the most interesting people. As we sat there, a number of people walked by, invariably asking "how much further?". One group walking up was a guy with a gaggle of kids behind him. He walked up asking "what kind of accent is that"? referring to hearing another American accent. This turned out to be Joe Rooney, ex-USMC aviator, and a Delta Airlines pilot on extended leave to sail around the world in his 54' ketch "Leprechaun" with his wife and five kids. We talked to him for a while, and at some point I lamented about my inability to find a sailboat to rent upon which he immediately offered his dinghy to us so we could go exploring. That sounded like a good plan to me, and we made plans to meet up with him the next day. Joe's wife had just left that morning to fly home to Spokane, WA for a month, so he was trying to figure out whether their first meal as "bachelors" would be hot dogs or mac & cheese. One of the smaller children pointed out that there were no hot dogs so mac & cheese it was. The kids wanted to move on, so we said goodbye with every intention of meeting up with them the next day.

Soon after Joe & family left to head up the hill, a British couple, John & Valerie walked up asking the standard question, "how much further?". They stopped and chatted for a while as well, and as they were heading to Singapore right behind us, Rita invited them to join us at her family's Chinese New Year there. We didn't really expect to see them, but you never know. As it turns out,we saw them that same night as we were having satay for dinner in Pantai Cenang (Cenang Beach). They stopped and chatted for a while and said they'd look us up in Singapore in few days (they never did).

While talking to John & Valerie, another westerner walked by drinking a Guinness. Presuming him to be from the UK, I asked him if he had another for me. He answered in halting English that he only had one Guinness, and it was mostly in his belly. He was obviously carrying more beer with him, so I teased him about being greedy. It turns out that he was simply being literal, I had asked for a Guinness, which he had no more of, but he was more than willing to hand me a Carlsberg, which tasted just fine,even if it was a bit warm. I think he may have been Romanian, or something close to there, he definitely had a Slavic accent. I was to pass this little bit of karma on when we were ready to fly out the next day by handing a British couple three beers we didn't want to try to get on the plane with us. As it turns out, Air Asia doesn't care if you bring them, you just can't drink them while on board. Of course I discovered this about two minutes after giving them away. Oh well, can't hurt to refill the karmic tank.

After we walked to the bottom of the stairs, Rita wanted a soft coconut to drink, and I was dying for some cold water, so we stopped at one of the hawker stalls. The Malay lady running the place had the coconut whacked open before I could even get the camera out. We sat at a table talking out the hike we'd just had and within less than a minute, we had a long tailed audience eyeing her coconut. The macaques are fearless, will steal anything they can get their hands on, and they're fast. We shooed him away, Rita finished her coconut and wandered off to peruse the stalls. I sat there drinking water enjoying the shade and soon enough, my little friend was back. He hopped up onto an adjacent table, obviously eying the coconut, and judging whether he could get it from me or not. Pretty soon he decided and in a flash, he was in the air on his way to my table making a scooping dash at the coconut. I'd expected that he'd try something like this and as soon as he jumped, I swatted at him with my Tilley Hat. This surprised him, and he changed direction in flight, landing on the far side of my table from me. Now, this table wasn't more than four feet across if that, so I had a monkey basically right in my face. He kept making slight moves towards the coconut, and I kept raising my hat to swat at him again. Pretty soon he decided to retreat a bit to a cage where they keep their coconuts (to keep the monkeys out). The staring battle devolved into a hissing, glaring and flashing of teeth confrontation...by me. He sat there for several minutes contemplating his next move and just as I thought he was going to launch another attack, he wandered off behind a tree. I thought, aha, he's trying to lull me into a false sense of security, and sure enough, he kept peering around the sides of the tree. By now it had occurred to me to get my camera into video mode, so I started filming him with the camera, but deliberately looking away like I didn't see him. He wandered around at the base of the tree for a while then simply wandered off. I was disappointed that he hadn't tried again, I'd have probably given him the coconut since there was little left in it.