Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Weekend Jungle Escape!

As stated in my previous post. I was unavailable for the weekend. I actually went backpacking for Taman Negara, Pahang. You can read more about Taman Negara by clicking here. The journey was by bus and seriously, my ass was in hell after numerous potholes we went along the Jerantut village road. The trip was organized by the RSC (Royal Selangor Club) Hockey Section and since my dad was the hockey convenor, he asked me to tag along.

Day 1 (Friday, 25th July)
The bus left for Pahang from the RSC Sports Annex, Bukit Kiara around 8pm. First off, I thought the journey was to be smooth sailing. It was at first: back seat of the bus, tons of cold beer. What could go wrong I thought. Everything was fine until we hit our first pitstop for the night: Jerantut. We reached our destination at about 11.30pm and headed straight for supper (late dinner for some) at a nearby restaurant. By 1am, everyone was in their room sleeping since the RSC hockey team has a friendly match with the local Jerantut team.

Day 2 (Saturday, 26th July)
I got up at around 8am and washed up for breakfast. The dim sum I had was like heaven in this laidback town. However, not everyone was up and while I thought we'd be heading for the hockey pitch, I was wrong. Our next destination was TO BREAKFAST! Geez, if I knew that I wouldn't have had dim sum. I had my usual teh peng and opened up my novel while waiting. Hell, I swear that they dumped like half a glass of condensed milk into my tea. Either that or they're trying to kill me with sweet stuff. Soon after, we headed over to the field. To my surprise, the RSC hockey team were to be having a hockey clinic for the local school kids in the area. They had banners and everything! The clinic went on for about an hour or so. I was busy taking videos so I didn't actually kept track of the time. Soon, the game started and by that time my Sony Handycam was almost out of juice; about 20 mins left of battery life. I decided to take a break and watch the game instead. However, my trigger-happy fingers urged me to take pictures instead. So for the rest of the game, I was snapping non-stop. The final score was 6-4 if I'm not mistaken with the winner being the RSC team. After the game, we were greated to a beautiful spread of durians and mangosteens in the parking lot by the field. As usual, I had my can of 100plus and a can cold beer. I deserved it. Soon, we were off to lunch and back to our guesthouse to pack up for the trip to Taman Negara. The trip from Jerantut to Taman Negara was a lot more smoother than I thought. With a beer in hand, I dozed off to sleep until we reached our destination: Persona Village Resort. After checking in, I plugged my Sony Handycam into the wall socket into my room and I was back in the reception area waiting for the rest. Our first activity for the day was jungle trekking and cave exploring. The jetty cum floating restaurant was filled with noise the minute we set foot in it. I can say that 90% of the noises came from us. The boat ride however, which took around 2~3 mins was simply cool. The trek through the jungle to the entrance of the cave was around 1km and the guide said it would take an average of 45 mins to 1 hour to get there. Hell, we got there in record time: 36 mins and still have time for beer! The route we took was seriously the most hell I've been through. It was slippery, muddy, wet, leeches at the most unimaginable places. I've actually had one crawl up my leg. The trek back to our landing spot was actually faster than I thought. Everyone had mud on their body one way or another. Some even had leeches inside their shoes! But to my surprise, there weren't that many mosquitoes in the jungle. In fact, I've seen more mosquitoes in the city than in the jungle! By the time we made it back to the jetty cum floating restaurant, it was already past 6pm and by the time we made it back to the chalet, it was already 7pm. After bathing, we headed back to the jetty cum floating restaurant for dinner. Beer and whisky was a plenty (as we brought our own) and by the time we got back for bed, I was feeling as dead as ever.

Day 3 (Sunday, 27th July)
I woke up around the same time as the day before. The activities that were to be done before heading home was the canopy walk and rapid shooting. We headed back to the jetty cum floating restaurant to catch our boat for the canopy walk. What we saw broke us into laughter. After yesterday's drinking ordeal, they posted up NO ALCOHOLICS signs all around the place. So we were like: "We kick the drunkards out and we can continue drinking!" and yes, the sign was actually supposed to say NO ALCOHOL. So they can't spell. Anyway, the canopy walk was seriously a sight to behold. It's a walk across a 400 meter man-made bridge, separated into 10 or so segments connected by trees. Suspended about 20 to 40 meters above the ground, sometimes even higher. It's the longest canopy walk of its kind. After the long walk, we headed back to the landing site along the riverbank to continue on our activity for the day: rapid shooting. This got everyone wet. And I do mean getting drenched over and over again. One of my dad's friend asked the guide accompanying us: "Sini ada buaya kah?" to which he replied, "Dalam sungai takda, tapi atas darat ada banyak!" to which got a whole bunch of us laughing. Hope you understand the pun here. If you don't then try asking around. Soon, we were at an orang asli village and the had demonstrations oh how to use the blowpipe and how to start a fire using their ingeniously made apparatus. By the time we headed back to the chalet, it was as good as 3pm in the evening and it was time to pack-up as we'll be heading back to Jerantut for an early dinner. By 6pm we were already on the road heading back home to the RSC Sports Annex.

The experience was fun, exciting and also hell at times. More pictures posted at my Facebook profile. As for the videos, I'll see if I have the time to do some editting. My mom already had headaches watching them last night when I hooked up my Sony Handycam to the TV as there were a lot of camera movements due to my hand shaking. Kinda like watching Cloverfield.

For those of you who have Facebook accounts and wanna have a peek at the photos, click here to access my Facebook profile. The photos I've uploaded on Facebook only covers the Taman Negara part of the trip as I'm seriously lazy to post up all the 100 odd random picture shots taken in Jerantut during the hockey match/clinic.

Anyway, enjoy as this is by far my longest post! Cheers to me! =P

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