A Short Trip To Batang Ai

I happened to go to Batang Ai, an area which is about 83km from Sri Aman. Thanks to my 2nd auntie who drove us all the way from Sri Aman to Batang Ai just to bring us there to take a look at one of the very famous place in Sarawak.

I believe most Sarawakian heard about Batang Ai because this is a place where Sarawak's only hydroelectric power plant is located. Besides that, Batang Ai is also a tourists attraction center because of its beautiful scenery. You can find Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort there.

[The rest house and the fish sculpture at Batang Ai]

Anyway, for our short trip to Batang Ai dam, we didn't pass by the resort. We just stopped at the rest house at a high level area. This is a place where tourists can park their cars, relax and taking some meals. You can see a fish sculpture at this point, but I am not sure what family of fish is this.

[Fish sculpture at Batang Ai from another angle]

From here you can also see a very amazing scenery of Batang Ai dam. There are specially made staircases for tourists to walk down to the lake area to feel the very heart-touching scenery.

[Specially built staircases to allow tourists access to the lake]

I was really impressed by the scenery along the lake especially the green and clear lake water! It was really an amazing experience seeing such clean natural water! All these while I can only see the yellowish Rejang river, that made me curious about the green-in-color water at Batang Ai.

[Nice scenery of Batang Ai lake]

Thus I asked my auntie, "Why the water color is green ho?". My aunt asnwered me with just a simple sentence, "Because these are mountain water and haven't being polluted yet!". What my aunt said really reminded me how river water suppose to look like. Yeah, human really did too much of damage to the environment. Our future generation may thought river water naturally should be yellow in color! What a shame!

[This is how clear and unpolluted water should look like]

[The "green-in-color" lake water]

When we were there that day, there were still some renovation and construction going on. From what I saw, they must be doing some expansion to the existing platform for tourists along the Batang Ai lake.

[Platform expansion construction was in progress]

[Another view of the construction]

After enjoying the scenery there for about half an hour, my auntie later brought us to another corner of Batang Ai dam. This time, we reached exactly on top of the dam! Actually the route to the dam top was blocked, but somehow we still sneak in successfully.

[Route to dam top was blocked]

The view from dam top was nice as well. From there you can feel how amazing the dam's construction is! High and concrete wall (dam) had been built to block the mountain water from flowing away. These water will then be released through a special channel to move the turbine thus generate electricity.

[On top of a Batang Ai dam]

I felt so lucky because my aunt drove us to another part within the Batang Ai dam where we could see how and from where the water flow down from the dam. The structure is really amazing! This experience certainly opened by eyes wide!

[The dam and the hydroelectric power plant]

I would like to thank my 2nd aunt for her kindness and efforts to purposely bring us to Batang Ai hydroelectric dam just to let us felt the beautiful scenery there. I really enjoyed this trip so much!