Ok, I had spent a little bit of time everyday over the last few weeks doing my log of the jungle survival course that I went to last month. I was starting to forget the sequences of events etc. so I decided to set everything down while I still could. It's finally done so here it is. I'm sorry it has taken so long -- I know quite a few of you wanted to read it.
As most of you already know, I have this "thing" with the jungle. So when I found out that there was a group of former Special Forces military guys who were teaching a practical jungle survival course, could I resist?? Noooo.
Of course that meant talking other people into going with me!! Har Har. I wasn't going to go through all that fun (or misery depending on who you talk to) on my own. Anyway, after lots of negotiation with everyone -- Malaysians, Singaporeans -- we have our team. There are four of us mad people; Mingde, ChongMing, Faisal and myself. Axel decided to abandon the trip because he had a guest visiting and was scheduled to go to Cambodia with her.
We set off via bus on Friday morning. Of course, our great friend Murphy has to show up almost immediately on our trip. We were scheduled to meet at Lavender MRT station since Faisal and Chong Ming had not been to the Kallang Bahru bus terminal before. However, since I got a lift from a friend, I decided to head directly to the bus terminal, thinking that Mingde would be there to show them the way. When I called Mingde to tell him about this, I find him breathing rather heavily and sounding a bit panicked. I then find out that he is still in a cab in Ang Mo Kio!! So off I went to Lavender trying to round up Chong Ming and Faisal. We got on the bus ok thankfully!
So we leave at 10am in the morning and the travel was uneventful. It was good to have the bus trip as I gave me the chance to learn a little more about ChongMing and Faisal. I had known Mingde for a slightly longer time as we had done a few hikes together and had quite a few dinners. ChongMing and Faisal were however totally new to me.
Anyway, as we neared KL, the skies opened up. When I say that it rained, I mean it RAINED. Australians have no idea what rain means. When I first when to Australia, I would get people (and the radio) warning me to go back home because a storm was brewing. So thinking that the locals knew better, I hopped off home, waited for 2 hours and the "storm" was over. Err ... sorry but that is not a storm. A storm is when it rains for days on end and you feel the raindrops hurt when they hit your face while you run. Although I must admit that Australia has the WILDEST winds I've ever encountered. But rain -- nah, you guys don't come close to knowing what a real rain is like. So anyway, it started pouring in KL and we realised that we were going to be in for a real treat -- it was obviously going to rain on us all 4 days of the course. Great!! Jungle survival in the rain! I don't know whether I was worried or excited.
So anyway, we finally make it past the peak hour jams (4pm) jams in KL and hire a cab to take us to Hentian Duta which is the other bus station we need to get to. We meet our instructor at Hentian Duta together with some of the other guides and people on the trip. There are 6 of us all together. We met Thushan, a hulking 6 foot tall Sri Lankan and Kevin, from Malaysia, the last member of our group. So we get ushered up the KL-Perak bus, only to be shooed off because apparently, the buses were all delayed and we had boarded the 4pm bus when we were due to catch the 6 pm bus. So we had a couple of hours of waiting at the bus terminal and we landed up studying. I read Maria Lugones, which ChongMing eventually stole off me, while Mingde read Cortez. And of course, we had some great conversation about Levinas and Lugones once ChongMing and I were both done with the Lugones paper.
We set off eventually at about 8.30 in the evening and arrive in Perak at about 11pm. Our instructors let us have a coffee and they were going to take us to another place for dinner. As luck would have it, when we piled into this minivan which was going to ferry us around, the driver finds that he can't put the van into reverse. Murphy has struck again!! Anyway, they resolve the problem after a couple of minutes and we get ferried to this place where we have the BEST bamboo rice and rendang ever. Then it was off to Base camp.
Base Camp:
Base camp is an unfinished structure on a piece of land at Ulu Terong. Basically it's go the foundations, roof and the wooden framework of a house and nothing else. There are tarps affixed to the wooden battens and those were our walls. We go in and appropriate a bit of space for ourselves and we are instructed to unpack everything in our packs for an inspection. The instructors come around and start confiscating our gear. I was left with: one extra set of clothes (shirt, pants, sock, panty), first aid kit, torch, my groundsheet (had to chose either the groundsheet or my sleeping bag -- I chose the groundsheet; the sleeping bag would have been useless in the rain without the groundsheet). We were then issued with a parang, sharpening stone, 5 matches, 1 small candle, 1 half of a hexamine tablet, 4 packets of instant noodles, 1 orange and 1 tin of sardines. I was stripped of my swiss army knife (I never felt more naked in my life!! I mean REALLY -- that must have been the first time I've spent more than a day without my swiss army knife.) and my survival kit which had firestarter, signal mirror etc. etc. So ok, this is not going to be one of those situations where I am going to have the assurance of my backup gear.
We sleep at about 1am and at 5 am some irritating alarm goes off -- we think the instructors might have set it to disrupt our sleep so that we are pushed a little physically.
1 comment:
Well, I'm easygoing, easygoing people are often fashionably late.
And don't talk about the 4pm bus, initially I was siting next to this cute chinese girl and really didn't want to move. Man! Those few hours waiting at the bus station was boring.
I was drifting in and out of consciousness during the night bus trip. It was actually kind of soothing to be traveling on the highway in the rain at night. My time spend staring out the rain-sloshed window yielded a occupying observation about the washing-machine weather. Heavy rain that pours straight down, no visible wind, and a regular interval between rain. Yup, going to be wet all the way.
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