12. a little slice of heaven @ awan mulan

it was friday night; me and a group of friends had decided to visit a place in the middle of nowhere in seremban called awan mulan. following the directions of google maps, which took us everywhere through kampung roads, we finally ended up in said place. after 10 phone calls to friends who arrived there first, and 5 u-turns after realizing gps coordinates were a bit slow, we finally arrived to a quaint little bungalow on top a hill.

imagine a secluded little place to call your own, up in the hills. it's so perfect and cool. would you believe it, the above said picture was taken around 4 pm? (stolen from sha's camera). the featured star, the hammock, was later broken by big nas :(

the kitchen, living room and balcony/patio co-existed peacefully. we spent 70% of our time here. most of us even ended up bunking here.

the breathtaking scene because it really is that beautiful. the pictures don't do it enough justice. imagine this, just 180 degrees from left to right.

if you looked towards the right of the patio, you can see the top two floors of the bungalow. we occupied two rooms for fourteen people (eventually only 10 came).

amir, sarah and me. on our last day :( none of us wanted to go back. amir wanted to wake up at 7 to pick rambutans (succulent delicious fruits) but he ended up waking at 11 plus, fail.

with may and ikhsan, the awesome people that planned this trip. there was a lot of setbacks but thank you to these two for introducing us to this beautiful place ♥

with hawa in one of the toilets. see how beautiful it is? you shower under the open skies! hawa likes to photobomb people's photos idgi.

this is pup, the guy that broke our lovely hammock :( i didn't even get to sit on it, booo.

this is judge. thank god for his carton of cigs. the weekend was filled with just chilling, smoking, eating, laughing, drinking, eating, smoking and more smoking.

the dog that underwent so many name changes. eventually, the group decided on dobby. she's so adorable and friendly. she doesn't bark and is trained to sit outside the house.

i suppose the house is built on an 'organic', environment friendly concept. the materials we used was "raw:" (ok honestly idk wtf raw is supposed to mean but cemented floors, cemented sinks); recycle bins; no air cons (we didn't even turn on the fan - it was that cooling); lots of recycled materials used for decorations (like bottles as wall dividers), yanoe, that sort of thing.

part of the girl's bedroom (i didn't take the picture of the double bed). on friday night, i crashed in this bed for four hours. on saturday night, i ended up sleeping "fifteen" minutes (which eventually turned into 5 hours WTF) on the couch in the living room.

one of the beds overlooking the scenery in the guy's bedroom downstairs. can you imagine waking up to this every morning? perfect.

BBQ on a lazy saturday afternoon. the bbq-ed chicken teriyaki was awesome. the owners of this place were awesome; they gave us fresh papayas (which was mouthwateringly delicious - that's saying something cos I HATE papayas) and salad dressing.

the perfect pool. we spent saturday night swimming after the BBQ staring and gazing into the night sky. it was brilliant, you could see all the stars, a satellite (according to Sarah wtf) and maybe a planet.

lovely picture destroyed by amir's finger.

the sunset. you can't really see a spectacular sunset, especially with the mosquitoes biting you. but it was still nice to see the gradients of pink, blue and white mingle and crash into black.

our rented bungalow was called "teratak bonda". for fourteen people, two nights, each of us paid around rm 200++ which was quite okaylah considering the amount of serenity, peace and calm you'll get during this trip.

if you're interested, visit:

official web-site: http://www.awanmulan.com/wp/

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/awanmulan

e-mail: serenity@awanmulan.com

phone number: +60187020021 / +60122712260

PLEASE BEAR IN MIND:

1. try try try to travel by daytime. most of us travelled after work on friday night; the place is quite hard to find in daytime because of how deep it is located in the jungle, let alone nighttime. most of the roads are narrow, unlit and dangerous to travel by nighttime.

2. you can travel via GPS whatever, but the best route would be to just set your gps to kampung bharu pantai, ask where's the balai polis, go to the police station and ask them or the locals where is the chinese schools and malay schools. there's a road there that leads directly to awan mulan.

3. the couple, mr and mrs teng, recommended us to visit between april - june, as that's when autumn is, and all the trees will be yellow and beautiful. there's also durian season, i forgot when WTF. mr and mrs teng (and their son) are extremely lovely, gracious and patient people btw - thank you thank you for the sack of rambutans!

4. get all your bbq stuff/snacks/whatever before you enter this place. seriously. the nearest town for atm machines and stuff is like 30 minutes drive away. that's not counting the winding road all the way from awan mulan back to civilization.

5. please leave the place as you found it; spick and span. do consider others who will be staying there. there were other guests staying around us that night, but we put on soft music, so apologies if we did sound a bit crazy that night.

6. it's a place of serenity so yes. think book, cards, chilling, swimming. think of an escapade away from the city. i brought along one of george r.r. martin's books, a storm of swords, the 3rd book from a song of ice and fire collection but ended up reading only 3 pages -__-

7. there's an optional hiking expedition if you want to go. it's rm 70 per group and yes, you'll get bitten by leeches. a local will take you around the forest reserve and even the waterfalls. we opted for this option, but it was raining heavily so we decided to paddle around in a nearer and shallow pool/waterfall like a boss.

8. be aware of the fact that there are plenty of stray dogs around this area. i'm no dog expert but this trip was really perked up by the fact that the dogs were there. they're just so calming to pat and play with. i think these strays have already been trained not to attack you and not to enter the house. they're really friendly, and they don't bark or make noise.

i would not mind visiting this place again, simply for it's sheer simplicity, tranquility and serenity. god, i miss it already.

other blogger's take on awanmulan:

1. kinkybluefairy.net - nice instagrams and stories on the place.

2. crustz.blogspot.com - lots of pictures; you can see how the place is.

3. the-kins.blogspot.com - pictures of pool and hammock T__T