Can you guess what is this?

Please post your answer in the comment section. The first comment gives the correct answer will get a set of 8 different types of Alternanthera plants. The closing date for this quiz is 6 Jan 2008 11:59pm.

Good Luck.

The Answer (posted on 13/01/2008)

This picture was taken at 7:25am in the morning.

The sunset time is about half and hour slower compare toKuching.  This is because East Malaysia and West Malaysia are different in longitude but they share the same time zone.

Ipoh is called “ShanCheng” in Chinese or it means “the city surrounded by mountain”.  The mountain or hill has blocked the view of sunrise actually, and when the sun is visible, it’s too bright already.

You may ask why the sky is too bright but I still take the picture with the above effect. 

There are 2 solutions for me:

1.  Take the photo before the sun is visible directly.  Although the sun is behind the mountain, the sky is in dark orange or dark red colour.

2.  When the sun comes out of the mountain and the sky is too bright,I adjusted the camera exposure to make the sky looks darker.

Yes, there are other solutions like using a lense filter or edit the photos in Photoshop.  But I prefer original photo instead of “photoshop” them.  And I can tell you that most of the photos (actually all of the photos) that I have posted were originally produced from camera and were not edited with photoshop, except with a little bit of cropping, resizing and adding of the word colinjong.com.

There are different types of grass on the Kledang Hill.

The yellow seed grass.

The red-flowered grass.

There are pitcher plants on the Kledang Hill too.

There are also different types of fern (”Paku” in Malay).

The star-shaped “Paku”

The net-shaped paku.

Siew Peng said that this “Paku” looks like a ship.

There are different types of leaves on the Kledang Hill.

And a variety types of plants.

“What is that???!!!” There are Buddhist and Taoism statues on the Kledang Hill as well.

The statues are located behind one of the pavillion. We can’t understand why they put them on the ground.

Foot reflexology stones are also available on the hill for people to experience the effect of this foot massaging method.  The management is also kind enough to provide a list of explanation next to the stones to enable visitors to understand more about food reflexology treatment.

We also saw a big red centipede as we went up the hill.

The tortoise were very glad to see us.  The swam to the surface as if to greet and welcome the climbers of the hill.

There were 3 persons, exploring the Kledang Hill on a hot sunny Wednesday noon. - Colin, SiewPeng and SiewPeng’s sister. We left our footprints on Kledang Hill. Till the next time to climb up this hill again, SiewPeng’s sister will check out another entrance of the Kledang Hill which is more challenging because it is a jungle tracking path.

It’s a tree without leaves on the cliff. It looked lonely and poor. It is looking at the other side of the mountain, and I think it has something to tell us. I was asking myself why does its leaves all gone.

Is it because of too dry? Or was it infected by disease? Or is it now the season for it to drop its leaves? Winter? (Not in Malaysia as I know because of the tropical climate.) I keep on guessing.

I’m afraid that it comes to the end of the trees’ life. Will there be a chance that the new leaves will grow again? I am not worry about the trees that drop their leaves in winter, but here is Malaysia, a country with 4 seasons. It will be more changllenging for them to survive. They are supposed to be evergreen in tropical climate though.

With or without options, the trees have to give up their leaves like humans turn bold headed when the time has come. However, the trees are still looking good and special without those leaves. Do you notice that they actually look like a big bonsai among other trees in the forest?

Tree with white-coloured leaves.

The younger generation nowadays like to dye their hairs into all sorts of colours. For trees, the higher their altitute are, the more different colours they’ll have.

The tree on the bottom left corner has yellowish leaves.

Human has different jobs and responsibilities, trees also produce different fruits.

I wish the leafless tree good luck and have all their leaves back as soon as possible. I would like to remind the tree, if it were going to have new leaves, don’t forget to dye them into red colour like this tree, so that I can notice them.

We found the alternatives routes to go down the hill, all began from discovering of this garden on the hill.  There are chairs and special tables for people to rest.  The potted plants are very beautiful.  It is a Chinese style garden.

There is a Chinese chess printed on one of the tables.  Chess players can play the “Xiang Qi” and at the same time look at the beautiful scenery to make his mind clearer to think about his next steps.

Futher to the other end of this garden, that’s our starting route to go down the Kledang Hill.  There are 3 different types of stair cases, and 1 red soil desert to go through before we get out of this hill.

Different types of stair cases.

This is the place where the stair case meet with the tar road at the meteorology station, but it is not the end of the stair case path.  Some more stair cases to walk down, and this section of the stair case starts on the left side of the meteorology station.

Before reaching the meteorology station, there is a sign board that tell us that the stair cases path is called “Dare You Track”.  In Malay it’s called “Jejak Cabaran”.

Someone left part of his shoes in the middle of the sandy stair case.  I guess the “Dare You Track” must be very challenging for him.

This stair case section is the longest compared to the previous two.  It is sandy, and we started to notice that the colour of the soil was different now, it’s in reddish orange colour.

After we finished the stair case, the red soil desert was welcoming us.

With the green plants around it looks more like an oasis.

There is also a rocky part in this desert.

Next, this lizard or may be a camelion make me feel that I was in the Jurassic Parks.  There are more than one, SiewPeng and her sister found 2, and I found another one.  They were afraid of us and ran away.  I only managed to take the picture of one of them.

Let’s see more photos on the red desert / oasis.

Rocks and the green plants are everywhere.

I believe this is a human made red desert, but the layering of the road is cause by the wind and rain and it creates a beautiful natural shape.

Finally we saw a big drain.  It was dry and we can walk inside.