In Thian Huat, I am truly blessed to have a veritable younger brother who is also a Physical Education teacher at one of Singapore's neighbourhood schools. He is an adventure race veteran and he represented Singapore in Eco-Challenge 2002.

What more, he is an Ironman and was the fastest Singaporean in the year that he competed! Hmm... I guess he would rather that I said in the year that he participated. Yeah, that's my bro for ya, affable yet serious, and never competitive for the sake of just being competitive.

So when he asked me to go along for a recce (short for reconnaissance) to Gunung Belumut, I literally jumped at the opportunity. At 1010m, Gunung Belumut is supposed to be the nearest mountain to Singapore. Now that all depends on how you define a mountain. But in general, and somewhat arbitrarily, it seems that it has to be at least 610m or 2,000ft.

We met really early at 7:00 AM at Woodlands Immigration Checkpoint and once we crossed over to Malaysia, we had a lengthy breakfast while a torrential thunderstorm threatened to derail our scaling ambitions. We left for Gunung Belumut, situated in Johore near the town of Kluang, around 7:55 AM and reached the location after 2 hours of driving. As it was a recce trek, we spent some time scouting the campsites near the foot before beginning our climb at a tardy 10:30 AM.

The first half of the climb was pretty manageable. However, we soon faced slopes of at least 70 degrees for much of the second half. Depending on your level of optimism, that is a good thing for it meant that we get closer to the summit with every step taken! (”,)

We had lunch at a bare patch of land at 910m. The summit was shrouded in mist and was in plain view but we decided to call it a day as we were running out of time to get to the foot of the mountain before dark. We would have required at least another 30 minutes to reach the summit. When we visit the next time, we will skip breakfast and take a quick lunch. I am certain the summit will be within reach then!

Going down was swifter but harder on our knees. Still, we managed to reach civilisation just before 6:00 PM, much to the relief of everyone. A durian feast served as appetiser before we had a sumptuous dinner at a restaurant. All of us managed to get home before 11:30 PM and it was a truly worthwhile recce trek. Thank you Juying teachers for such a wonderful time!

Allen Tan
Team Spreo

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