It’s been quite some time since I ascended the 1.4 Km Gunung Lambak (510 metres above sea level). We’ve got another one Gunung Lumut (1010 metres above sea level) slight up north east of the town.

For Gunung Lambak, I was quite shocked to see it being transformed into a “resort” recreational forest in such a short span of time. It took them only about 1-2 years to level out quite a huge portion of land and have it converted into resort houses, water park and various other man-made buidlings.

From someone who is quite familiar with the landscape of Kluang, it’s not hard to imagine the decision of converting Gunung Lambak into a tourism spot.

First, the Taman Tasik project is a failure. It was situated in the middle of busy traffic, and it has been converted from an already popular jogging spot. Right now, it’s an ugly scar that reflects how human can destroy an area of lush green forest into an artificial nature’s product.

Kluang is well-known for it’s plantation of oil palm and rubber. Tourism spot is scarce. We don’t have any ancient forts to put any cannons, nor any archaelogical remains of any weird species. We used to have the ghost house besides the Convent school, rumoured to be a bloody clinic during the Japanese occupation. Even that was cleared out to give way to housing development.

Gunung Lambak will have to be sacrificed to bring in toursim ringgit, at the cost of turning the entire natural habitat of ferns and wild beetles into plastic elephants and mushroom fountains.

I am not sure how much more will this little patch of rainforest be commercialized, I might find a little casino on the peak one day, but one thing is certain- We are losing the last few remaining wildlife habitats to the act of human…