Rock sport climbing with alien friends and huge trees in Merapoh in Malaysia (December 2025)

From Gua Musang we went to Merapoh which was close by and a village known for being close to the biggest Taman Negara (national park) in Malaysia and the caving possibilities.
The first climbing sector we visited was called Gua Lima (“cave five”).
In the beginning of our time in Merapoh, the rain created some ponds we had to cross to reach the climbing routes.
Especially Racki attracted a lot of these leaches in different sizes. I only got a few.
At the end of our stay, or was all dry again.
In the beginning the crag was partly wet but dried up more over the days.
Climbing was awesome 🥳
The highest routes went up to the top of the wall 🧱
From up there, the view was amazing 🤩
As a belayer, we were always accompanied by different insects. Of course, there were mosquitos everywhere but we liked these jungle nymphs the most.
This impressive little one is a jungle nymph in its last stage. It looked super alien 👽
Gua Bekong was the next climbing sector we visited.
It was very nice but most of the routes were out of our difficulty range. We built up our climbing capabilities and felt really good and fit 🥳
But we did the easier ones and learned a lot.
Some days we met up with Alex who bolted all the routes in Merapoh. It was an interesting guy with a lot to do and a lot of motivation for bolting and sharing a lot about the process of bolting.
One day he took one of his friends and us to the newest climbing sector Gua Layang.
It was a nice big wall looking like a big wave. The approach was already easy climbing 🥳
The weather was nice all the time which was super good after the days of concessive days of rain 🌞
On our walks to the different climbing sectors we saw a lot of beautiful Malay homes with beautiful gardens 🌺
Impressions.
And big, big cows with a whole lot of skin 😀
Our first apartment after the camping in Gua Musang had an ac which we used to dry all our stuff.
This was our tower for the water kettle because its cable was too short 😁
The sink had an interesting outflow which led straight on the ground 🙃
Our second accommodation was the cheapest we could find: five Euro per person and night. It was just on the main road. The toilets and showers were public and in the next building. We were the only guests and had the public space of this little Hostel all for us. Even though they had not officially opened their hostel, they let us stay for a discounted price and we were the first western tourists they ever hosted.
The nights were strange. Most of the evenings a karaoke show was going on at one of the little restaurants next to our hostel. But there were barely any guests and we could really not join the singer because the songs sounded so weird to us. Sorry brave singer friend 🤗
In our room, we had this mosquito net. We called it the Käseglocke 🤣
Breakfast we always made ourselves and dinner we mostly had at one of the many small restaurants.
After some days we found our favorite ones. And the locals were always very curious about us because they did not have so many international tourists there 🎉
One day we went into the famous Taman Negara which is the biggest national park in Malaysia. On the way there, we passed a lot of Plantages …
… what made the beautiful rain forest even more beautiful. Because of the rainy season, only the tree top walk was open but it was absolutely worth it. The walk was massive.
And the highest platform was 32 meters high 🤩
This was one of the biggest trees seen from the top. It was massive and very impressive. The photos can’t transport how big it was. One of the branches at its top was the size of an ordinary tree in Germany 😳
These trees grew up to 80 meters 🚀