I packed up my stuff and made it to the station and met up with Kim and Fatima, where we waited for the train.
The announcement was poor and nobody else seemed to be going there so we missed first train. Fatima managed to get alternative tickets and we got the next one.
We walked in the hot sunshine to Sojourn guest house, and dropped our stuff there (too early to actually check in), and then grabbed some lunch at the nearby hawker center.
Once we had eaten enough, we headed to Bukit Maxwell, which took us through the lakes, and past the area where I had taken photos of the monkeys on my trip to Ulu Tupai. We didn't see any monkey this time around though.
Once we made it to the hill, since the plan was to trek to the top, we didn't take and of the landrovers or jeeps from the bottom, and instead just headed up the path.
Part of the way up, it started to rain quite heavily, so we stopped under the trees for about 50 minutes waiting for the weather to clear.
We continued on our way, making a couple of stops to rest and eat, and on our way up, we encountered a Binturong. It didn't seems to be too nervous of us, though Fatima didn't want to take any chances. None of us had seen anything quite like it, but because of the lighting conditions, there was no real chance to photograph it without a flash, and I was reluctant to use a flash.
We continued on, stopping by a waterfall for a photo opportuity, and we then made it to within 100m or so of top.
At this point, we were in the clouds, and there was no opportunity of a view, and it really started to rain very hard.
Kim convinced us that we should go back at this point, using the aforementioned reasoning, and we agreed without much argument.
On our way back down, still fairly near the top, a kind soul in a Hilux passed and offered us a lift in the back.
We gladly accepted, knowing that without the lift, it would be after 10pm before we made it back in to the town.
Once we were at the bottom of the hill, the driver advised us that there was another thing to view in Taiping, that being the Mangrove trees. We all mis-heard though, and teased Kim about his passion for Mango trees, as he had mistaken some trees back in Ipoh for those.
Once we made it back to the town center, we headed to the hostel and freshened up. It was at this point that we all realised that we had managed to pick up leeches on the trek, and it took quite a lot of cleaning up to fix. I was pretty glad that I had experienced leeches in Ulu Tupai previously, as it looked like a lot of blood, and without knowing what it was, I suspect I would have become rather panicked!
We headed to the same hawker center we had had lunch at, and I ordered some fried Hokkied Mee, before heading back to the hostel to rest.