Peaceful (until Gladys showed up) and beautiful Tasik Biru in Bau on a beautiful Sunday morning.
Bev sms me from out of the blue suggesting that we go and kayak at the Blue Lake (Tasik Biru) in Bau now that the water there is no longer arsenic (hence the blue colour). Tasik Biru was formed from an open cast gold mining pit know as the Tai Parit mine, operated by the Borneo Company from 1898 until it was flooded in 1921. It became a popular recreational and picnic spot. In fact Tasik Biru is the prime attraction of Bau although there was concern about people fishing and swimming in it due to the arsenic content of the water. Although no cases of arsenic poisoning has ever been recorded!
Top Pic - Gladys, Joo, Annna, Maryani, & Bev. Bottom Pic - Annna, FH2o & Gladys.
There was a boat rental service operating in 1977 for those who want to paddle on the lake but that stopped following the bus tragedy of 1979 when a busload of students and trainee teachers plunged into the lake killing 28 students and a trainee teacher.
Then in 1990, the lake was de-watered by a mining company with the intention of extracting gold ore from the bottom and sides of the former gold mine. The lake was closed on account of this and was only reopened to the public in 2001.
In 1988, it was claimed that three “monsters” – strange huge figures about three meters long swimming just below the surface, were spotted at Tasik Biru and attracted large crowds. The “monsters” (as well as the crowds) disappeared after some talismans were burnt around the four corners of the lake as instructed by the local medium to get rid of the evil beings.
Despite of the above and probably ignorant of the history(!), Anna and Gladys took up my invitation to go kayaking there on Sunday when we had a chance meeting at Star Bucks, The Spring on Friday evening. Bev brought along her friends Maryani and Joo when we met there on Sunday morning.
Bev had told me that there was a waterfall and we paddled there to check it out first. It’s not a big waterfall but it was still great fun to discover a totally unexpected waterfall at the lake which we never knew of. But even the sounds of the waterfall was not enough to drown out the noises made by Gladys. I love this girl!
As the lake is only about 19 acres overall, it did not take us long to traverse the circumference of the lake; so when I spotted a road that went into the lake(!) we went there to check out this country road and where it would lead to. It led to a Chinese Temple – the Bong Low Sian Tze temple as I found out later.
It was like a nature’s walk and we saw interesting things along the way – such as big fat worms; with Annna and Gladys behaving like city bumpkins …
Then it was back to the kayak and a short paddle back to where we parked our cars. As we lifted the kayaks out of the water, we discovered that Tasik Biru should now be re-named Tasik Minyak as our plastic kayaks now have a nice oil ring around them! *sigh*
