Tag: Kedah

Domesticating The Wild Bees

Matsuda MashimaruLeave a comment

Sitting on the damp forest floor beside Zam, the leader of the Tasik Pedu honey gatherers, I watched a shower of golden embers burst from the Mentawan torch, drifting down through the dark Tualang canopy like falling stars.

In that quiet night air, a wild, ambitious thought struck me.

“Zam,” I whispered, my gaze fixed on the glowing canopy above. “Why can’t we just domesticate Apis dorsata? What if we put up wooden hive boxes on the high branches, run a high-altitude bee farm, and harvest honey all year round instead of waiting for the Pedu flowering season?”

Zam slowly turned his head. A dry, amused grin spread across his face. The exact look a veteran forest hunter gives a dreamer with overly creative ideas.

“Sally…” he chuckled softly. “You want to put a tiny wooden box out for a wild bee that owns the entire jungle canopy?”

Refusing to surrender my breakthrough, I answered with absolute confidence.

“Yeah, why not? Nothing is impossible, right? We just haven’t found the way yet.”

It was my defiant response to his skeptical grin. But as the embers faded into the darkness, I had to ask myself: was I actually onto a clever possibility, or was I fundamentally misunderstanding the wild mind of Apis dorsata?

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Would You Climb This Tree?

Matsuda MashimaruLeave a comment

From a distance, the tree looks almost fragile.

A pale, skinny chopstick stuck straight up into the jungle canopy. You’d almost think you could snap it in half if you tried. Then you step right beside its buttress root and realize the rainforest just played a massive optical illusion on you. Up close, the trunk is massive, so wide it takes three people with outstretched arms just to wrap around it.

The air down here is cool, dim, and smells of damp soil, while the top of the tree lives in a world of its own, high up in the bright sunlight.

Cranking your neck to look straight up, your eyes play tricks on you all over again. The highest branches look like delicate little twigs, and the huge, heavy wild bee nests clinging to the wood look no bigger than tiny mushrooms. In reality, those branches have been holding their place up there for generations, carrying the weight of the forest canopy, wild bees and everything else that comes with living twenty stories above the ground.

Standing beneath a living giant that has outlived generations, you suddenly become very aware of your own size. And looking all the way up, a rather practical question comes to my mind:

Why would anyone want to climb this thing?

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Hiking Gunung Pulai, Baling

Matsuda MashimaruLeave a comment

Okay, let’s be real … this time, we weren’t hiking, but we were rock climbing. There, I said it out loud. Gunung Pulai may look small from afar, but trust me, this mountain is about 95% rock, basically a giant chunk of stone sitting proudly next to another chunk of stone called Gunung Baling in the middle of Baling town. And yeah, climbing it? Way tougher than it looks.

If you’re like me, the kind who’s always craving a panoramic view of the town framed by the sea of Butterworth and the Penang Strait, then you have to do Gunung Pulai for the sunset view. I know, I know, it sounds a bit odd to climb in the afternoon, but curiosity got the best of me. I just had to see the sunset from the Butterworth-Penang side.

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Hiking Bukit Kodiang

Matsuda Mashimaru1 Comment

I first saw this place on Instagram, posted by my fellow photographer friend.

The view of the flat agricultural landscape during sunrise and sunset from the peak of Bukit Kodiang is gorgeous. A chunk of a giant limestone sits in the middle of acres and acres of paddy fields in Kodiang, Kedah. This small hill is popularly known as Bukit Mok Cun, named after a famous local TV series ‘Mok Cun’.

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Mong Gajah, Tasik Pedu

Matsuda Mashimaru4 Comments

I have explored the area around Tasik Pedu for more than enough, and yet this is my first time visiting Mong Gajah, another beautiful part of Tasik Pedu.

Mong Gajah is a place with a gorgeous view of nature. If you prefer sleeping at night, wrapped in total darkness while watching thousands of stars (with no light pollution) and waking up facing the waterfront of Pedu Lake, with gorgeous sunset coming out from the mountain range of Banjaran Kedah-Singgora then you would absolutely love this camping spot.

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