25 May 2013 - Kuantan Day 2: Sungai Lembing, Gua Charas and Pandan Waterfall

We had our breakfast at the Garden Terrace in the hotel this morning.  After our breakfast at about 10am, our group met up and began day 2 of our trip.  Our first destination is Sungai Lembing, which is a tin mining town northwest of Kuantan.  Translating from Malay to English, Sungai means River and Lembing means Spear.  Sungai Lembing was once a major producer of underground tin until 1970s.  After about an hour drive from the hotel, we reached the entrance of the town.

There are several suspension bridges across the river in this area.  We went to one of them and the children were pretty excited.  The scenery here was pretty cool.  Many villagers here travel on motorcycle and they even ride on this suspension bridge to get to the other side of the river.

As the bridge is a little bit wobbly, the children found it interesting and kept jumping on it to make it wobble even more.......

The weather today was extremely sunny and warm.  After walking for a while, most of us had to walk back to our car to get umbrellas.  I love the below picture where four kids share a little umbrella.  :-)

We then took a group photo here before leaving this place.  As we were driving back to the town, we saw a museum on a hill.  We decided to park our car nearby and visit the museum.  It was housed in an old bungalow once used by the mine manager.

The museum provides many information about the tin mining history of Sungai Lembing.  It also houses a collection of mining artifacts.

There is a room (one and only) with aircon in this building and everyone started to "camp" in it.  We spent around half an hour in the museum before driving to the town for lunch.  We went to a Chinese Restaurant or rather coffee shop and guess what, we waited almost an hour for our food.  Reason being there is only one chef here and there were at least 7 to 8 tables full of people.  While waiting, we bought buns (包子)to temporarily fill up our stomach.  Jerlene and Javier love the bun very much.  The bun really tastes good!

After lunch, our plan was to go to Sungai Pandan Waterfall.  Along the way, we saw a majestic hill appeared out of nowhere.  From afar, we vaguely saw a cave where we probably could enter.  After a short discussion, we all agreed to pay a visit to the cave.

It was a short drive through some dirt tracks before we reached the foot on the hill.  This is Bukit Charas (Charas Hill), which is a limestone hill 25km north west of Kuantan.  There is a temple cave in this limestone hill called Gua Charas. The cave is a holy site for both Hindus and Buddhists and their symbols and statues are dotted around the interior of this vast cavern.  By the way, there is a man at the parking area collecting RM2 per car.  And to climb up to the cave, it's adult RM2 and children RM1.

As Javier had fallen asleep and Tracy was too tired to climb up the steps, only Jerlene and me went up to the cave.  Initially I thought it's going to be a tough climb but it was actually not too bad.  In about 15mins, we reached the entrance of the cave.  This is Jerlene's second time to enter a limestone cave.  The first was in Perth last year.

The interior of the cave was quite huge.  As compared to all the other limestone caves that I've visited so far, I find this cave pretty untidy.  As we walked deeper into the cave, we could hear bats screeching.

Along the way, we saw statues of an elephant and a monkey kneeling before a Buddha.

And at the end of the cave, there is a statue of a Reclining Buddha (睡佛).

We spent about 30mins in the cave before going back to our cars.  All around Bukit Charas are Oil Palm Plantation.

As it was getting late, we gotta to rush our way to Sungai Pandan Waterfall before the sky turned dark.

This is a place where visitors come for a swim, picnic or do some jungle trekking.  The children were having fun playing with sands or simply splashing pine colored water.

Before we left this place, we decided to go for a closer look of the waterfall.  There is actually a suspension overlooking at the 100 meter high waterfall.

If we had more time, we would probably go for a swim right before the waterfall.  It should be fun.  We drove back to Kuantan town and had our dinner at Pak Su Seafood Restaurant.

After dinner, we drove up to the border of Pahang and Terenganu for late night turtle watching.