Impian Lake

Sabah does not have many natural lakes. The 20-Acre Impian Lake (Tasik Impian) in Kunak is a very special one because it was a volcano crater about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Even though the volcano had long extinguished, the underground thermal activity is still carried on. There is a hot spring just behind the mountain.

Impian means “Dream” in Malaysia language. It is indeed a beautiful lake. The lake view is just not so “Sabah”. Most lakes I saw around Sabah are small, murky and covered with green algae (due to pollution).

Impian Lake also plays a part in shaping the human history of Sabah. If I heard the guide correctly, this lake was used to be a river, but later its exit point was blocked and it became a lake. The water stopped flowing to a very important archeological site of Sabah, i.e. Tingkayu, one of the most advanced civilizations during that time. The Tingkayu Lake dried up, so the people was forced to move to Madai.

Impian Lake is inside the Mostyn Oil Palm Plantation, a private land under Sime Darby. The company turns this area into a golf course and builds a resthouse (Lake View Resthouse) for the members. They do a great job to maintain the area. However, I am thinking who was the idiot government officer who sold this nice lake to a private company. I have no doubt it was Land & Survey Department, the worst government department in Sabah. They think forest is just trees, hill is just rock and river is just water. Very often it takes Land & Survey Department decades to process the land application of Sabah natives, but only a short time to approve the land applications by big private companies from West Malaysia. This foolish department even approved the sand mining in Kinabatangan earlier.

The yellow floating plant looks very pleasing. However, it is an alien aqua plant species which is causing problem to the lake, as it depletes the oxygen of the lake water, threatening the fishes and aqua-animals in the water. They are trying to remove it.

Thanks to Sime Darby for keeping this lake and didn’t destroy it for development.

You would see a big crocodile skull inside the Lake View Resthouse. It is facing the Impian Lake, where it was belong to. The older generation still remember that in 1966, a white man jogged around Impian Lake and saw a white crocodile. He took out his rifle and shot it. After the white crocodile died, it rained so heavily that this area was flooded for 2 days. The people of Borneo believe that white crocodile is the avatar of the supernatural force and they should not harm the white crocodile (or they will be punished by natural disaster).

Photos taken in Kunak, Sabah Malaysia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 1:40 am and is filed under Wildlife & Nature, Kunak. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.