It was a long weekend and we wanted to be a little adventurous because you know, routine is the enemy. So, we decided to check out Bukit Cherakah in Shah Alam instead of the usual Kiara drill. After all, a few rounds around a humongous agricultural park would be a perfect start to the day – right? Wrong.
We drive to Shah Alam early Saturday morning, on the lookout for road signs – a fatally stupid thing to do knowing how dumb road signs are this part of the world. All of us Malaysians are well aware of our city planners’ quirky little tendencies. For instance, they love planting trees … right smack in front of road signs; they love placing signs a few feet AFTER the turning; and they love teasing hapless road users and leading them on. You’re on a road and you see signs with Jinjang, Jinjang, Jinjang and then you come to a cross junction and there’s no Jinjang sign. You take a stab at it and turn say, left. You’re fumbling in the dark when suddenly, Jinjang comes back again but instead of Jinjang, it’s Jinjong or something. Being Malaysian, you follow Jinjong because you also know that they love interchanging road names for fun. (Oh yes, they also love changing road names for fun – read my previous post).
Okay, here’s an interesting little aside: Bukit Cerakah is also known as Taman Bukit Cahaya. I don’t know why it’s no longer Cerakah. Our theory is that too many Chinese people who can’t pronounce the letter ‘r’ were calling it Celaka, which is like, you know, not a good word. And so they changed it to Cahaya.
So anyways, there we are bungling about Shah Alam to locate Cherakah. We find signs that say Taman Bukit Cahaya … few minutes down the road, we see a sign which said Taman Tasik Shah Alam. Um, is this the same place or what? In we were in say, Singapore, two different names most probably refer to two different places but not here. In Malaysia, two (or more) names can refer to the same place one, so who can ever tell? We continue driving and surprise! We see Taman Bukit Cahaya sign again … after a while, we don’t see it anymore. Instead, we see Taman Botani Shah Alam or something along those lines. Um, so is this Botani place the same as the Cahaya place or what? We take a chance and follow the Botani sign. Not too long after, we arrive at Taman Bukit Cahaya. Finally! So good lor.
But we get there only to be told by some dude that the taman isn’t open yet. What??? It’s bloody 8am! What kind of taman isn’t open by 8am?? Ya ya, I should’ve double-checked before we came but still!! Apparently, this taman opens only from 9am to 4pm, is closed on public holidays and costs RM3 to get in. Celaka. Excuse me, I don’t know who’s managing this place but come on, who in this country goes hobbling around some taman in the afternoon? Want to get skin cancer or what?
Long story short: we decide not to wait and head back to Kiara Hill. There’s no point letting a beautiful morning go to waste, is there? On the way out, I snap a pic of what I think is probably one of the longest road names ever. Well, at least something came out of this little detour.
