A Date At Nuang

A week before our 14th wedding anniversary, I texted Zaini and asked him "how about going to Nuang on Sep 4th?".

His reply was a big thumbs up. ^^

Never mind it will be just a few days after him doing a full marathon at River Jungle Marathon. The wife tarak give chance punya.

We arrived rather late, at 9am. We weren't too concerned about starting late as we were not planning to hike up all the way up to the peak. Heck! We didn't even plan to hike up to Kem Pacat!  Our plan was to stroll up for 3 hours and walk back.

At the entrance. As we were there on a weekday, we were to only visitors there. Saw a couple of "mat salleh" ladies and a vet taking photos (he was waiting for a bird that's migrating to Nuang) here.

We had no plan on doing any trail runs. Just walking and talking, photographing, goofing around and stuff like that.

With plenty of stops to take photos of interesting subjects.

Like these "pacats". Hahaha

I thought I was spared because I wore my long compression pants but turned out two managed to sneak into my socks. I got a pretty nice red scar now.

With the day being a weekday, we had the trail all to ourselves. Which was nice as we did want to have the day just by ourselves.

We were arriving Kem Lolo after walking for almost 2hours, which meant we still had time to continue up if we wanted to. From the entrance to Kem Lolo was about 5km and if we continued our hike, we probably could add 1-2K further (or not) but we couldn't continue on.

Well, we could've to, I guess.

But Blackie and Tweety (no guess which is which, right) were looking so "garang" and despite us standing our ground; they stood in the middle of the path we wanted to pass through and was barking furiously.

Actually, the two dogs had ran pass us earlier and were pretty much ignoring us and was speeding ahead a motorbike.

What to do? Both Zaini and I don't really know how to react with dogs. We just shrugged and retraced our steps. Now, these two dogs are good mountain runners. That day, they decided to give us their undivided attention,  "assist" us and accompanied us back all the way back to the entrance!

Me & hubby laughed and bitched about the two dogs. They were very alert and would zoomed into the shrubs whenever a noise was heard. Then, they would run back and walked with us. Blackie would usually lead and Tweety was either behind us or beside us. Whenever we'd slow down, Blackie would stop, look behind as if to say "hurry up, won't you?" Hahaha

I accidentally smacked those two's snouts with my camera and they'd whimpered,  kept a distance for a while and then came back near. Sorry doggies! Who asked you to be so near, when you saw me happily swinging stuff while walking?

There were times, I'd "scold" them for standing mid-path and made me stop. LOL Kesian those two dogs. Kesian us also la... We also dunno how to react to them, kan?

Some not so interesting stuff seen on the trail. That "tapak kasut" was the 8th one I saw that day! Why are there a lot of people missing "tapak kasut" hehehe

And people, if you can lug around a full bottle of water up, why can't you lug an empty bottle down???

We arrived back around noon (being paced by those two dogs made us walked faster) and the rangers/caretakers (I know the dogs' name but I forgot to ask the guys' name!), remarked at how early we came back. One, we didn't hike far. Two, we didn't stop for a rest. Our stops were  mostly stops to take photos of interesting "mountain specimen".  ;-)

We also told them that the dogs didn't seem to allow us to proceed further and they said there must be some animals that could harm us nearby like snakes or monkeys.

You see, both dogs are trained to go up and down the Nuang trail and they'll walk with hikers too. A guide, kinda. Tweety is getting weaker but Blackie can still  run up to the peak. There was another dog, a brown puppy too. We saw it running behind a motorbike up the mountain.

We'll bring some treats for them the next time we visit, that's for sure. 

Chatted with the guys who work there for a bit before making our way home. We only managed about 10K but I was happy. Zaini was satisfied too. This was our first time up Gunung Nuang so we didn't want to be greedy and aim to reach the peak or anything. Our aim was to spend time together, doing something special.

A pretty good way to celebrate our anniversary. Looking forward to celebrate the 15th time next year! ^^