SAMANTHA! :D

Friday, March 14, 2008

LTC AT PERAK WOOOO!!~

Day 1:
Reached school at around 7am. I was Day 1 leader so I had to take attendance. We taught of the group name and haha, we're Ampere! Group B is Behnana, C is Sissy and D is Dingdong. Left school around 7.45am. There was a traffic jam at the second link. It was so bad that like we moved 1cm every 10mins. That super suck. The people at the back of the coach were singing songs like "Umbrella" and "Jenny" to past the time. Haha they were purposely picking songs that were totally out of their singing range! Quite hilarious actually. We came up with the group cheer. It sounds funny at first but, yeah, its ok once you get used to it:) Stopped at Yong Peng for about 20mins to grab a bite. I ate my oreos!^^ Ok that's lame, but really I did eat oreos. Oh we went to the toilet before eating. There was this cubicle where some female some time ago had some bowel problem which somehow "angered" the toilet, therefore there's some (i mean a lot!) sai on the walls and the squatty part. It's a 1 of a kind toilet bowl! Then it was a 4hour journey TO THE TOILET BREAK STOP THINGY!! Still got a long way man! Skip the toilet break... blah blah... After about 10hours altogether sitting in the coach, woo we were finally there! (well sorta...) We alighted at this place and we sat in the shelter to wait for the van to pick up our bags. What did we sit? Haha we say on a lorry! Pretty much the kind that WWII Operation Sook Ching used. It was quite an experience. We got on when the driver started driving, we all went "WOAHHHHH!!" Along the way we had to duck, squat and dodge from fallen branches or leaves or election banners. We saw animals like cats, ducks, dogs, cows, goats, chickens etc... It was quite a fun ride. Arrived at Murni campsite at around 6pm. We unloaded our luggage and went to our bunking hut. The guys pitched their tents. It was not easy squeezing 16 girls into 1 hut. The place was oh so crowded. We got our stuff for bathing time. Ms Lim gave us until 7pm. Let me just say that the toilet facilities suck! The whole thing is just a block of cement divided into males and females and a few cubicles each, and there's no roof so if it rains, too bad. I really don't see the point of having showerheads when there's no water coming out anyway. After all that waiting, I gave up and just washed my hair in the sink. But hey look on the bright side, the meals rocked! Everything is catered. For a camp, that's really good. It started raining while we were dinnering. Everyone was thinking about whether the night walk will still be on or not. Fortunately, the rain stopped just in time. We proceeded with the night walk. They first brought us to the starting point which was somewhere in the forest. Really dark lol. Then one group by one group they made us find our way back to base camp with a candle as a light source. It wasn't easy keeping the candle lit as there was a strong wind blowing. Anyway my group managed to reach back, although some wax did drop on my fingers. Then there was just a short debrief about Day2 itenary before we hit the sack.

*just so you know our camp guides are SUE and VINCENT*

Day2:
My eyes opened at 5.30am because of some really loud noises. Officially got out of my sleeping bag at 6am. Got my brushing stuff and went to that nasty toilet. The sky gave a breath-taking view. The whole sky was covered by a blanket of stars. If I brought my camera there I would've taken a photo of it. So I brushed and looked at the sky again and again before going back to prepare for the activities of the day, which was caving and white water rafting. Again breakfast was catered. Yummy breakfast. Then AB set out to our caving place in the lorry again! CD waited for theirs to come. We went, "AB BOMB, AB BOMB, AB BOMB TO CD BOMB!" before saying "BYEEE!" Haha it was rather cute. When we reached the cave, there were 2 other guides to show us around in the cave. It was quite dark inside. He showed us some figures made by the pointy things (I just dono how to spell it) and other spaces. Things like KFC chicken wing, duck, monkey driving a car and clapping hands. At first everyone was like "Huh?", but after going through a second time everyone went "Oh..." It was at least a thousand steps of the staircase thingy bafore we reached the adventurous point. Now that place was super dark. We slid down some slope. The last bit was vertical so it was a little scary. There were also some other tourists and we cheered them on. After the sliding, the guide told us to go down this hole in the ground. It was pretty small. The guides supported us in one by one. Upon going down we were stepping in a pool of water slightly above ankle-high. We ventured further in to the darkness and soon there was this part where we had to crawl as the top was too low. Our bodies got completely submerged in that extremely cold water. We went on and on and on, bending and crawling and ducking. Everyone was helping everyone else in this whole thing. We took a group photo when we finished. Outside the cave, we had a very nice lunch, again! Then we played the number guessing game while waiting for CD to arrive. Who knew? We actually waited almost 3hours for them. By then our clothes were already dry. When they finally arrived they said that white water rafting was fun and they asked us if caving was fun. We said that it was "FUN" and "EASY" and "RELAXING". Lol as if they will fall for that. Actually in the end they didn't manage to do caving as later on it rained heavily and the place was flooded. Woo lucky AB! Just before we set of we bombed them again. It took quite some time for us to reach the white water rafting place. Yep this is the part where it started raining like siao. We took cover under a tree, which didn't really help as we were already wet like seriously soaking. And lucky again, the rain stopped. We put on our rafting gear and the instructor brief us about safety and how to save someone who is overboard. I was in the same raft with Rayneth, Ivan, Kaiyang and Jiayi. There were 2 captains in our raft. One of them was the "boss" of the others., therefore our raft always went first. It was a really fun experience moving down the rapids. You really feel as if you are on a mini roller coaster or something. After each rapid we would stop to wait for the other rafts. Occasionally some rafts, including ours, would get trapped on the rocks. This is when the instructors have to get of and pull the raft off. It is also the time where we bounce on the raft like bunnies to help the instructors. There's one particular rapid that the instructor mentioned. It is known as Double Decker because there are 2 layers. Our captains told us to paddle forward at the first deck, then grab on to the raft rope at the second deck. I didn't quite gettit. In the end I didn't grab hold of the rope, but luckily I didn't capsize. I only fell within the raft. The subsequent rapids weren't as thrilling, but they were still fun. Along the way there were some activities, like falling off and climbing back in, and also capsizing and swimming to shore. There was an in between break. We splashed and played and dunked each other in to the water! Haha. Continued with the rafting. Soon after it started raining heavily. It was cold and wet and freezing... I also had some muscle ache and orh cheis. We bumped into this side rock and everyone flew forward, especially Jiayi who was sitting behind me. Finally when we reached the end we carried that oh so heavy raft up. It kept bumping on my head as I was too short to carry the thing. Believe it, the sky turned a pleasant blue with nice white fluffy clouds after we finished our rafting adventure. Just my luck to miss a perfect opportunity to tan myself! We stood on the lorry on the way back. I enjoyed the ride as always, but was too freaking cold to react to anything. When we arrived, CD was all ready for dinner. They had showered nice and clean and even had their debrief done. We rushed to bathe while they helped us to take our food. I bathed with Nisha, Jolene, Jieying, Huiwen and Zhiyu in the big cubicle. It so wasn't easy as only one out of the four showerheads had water. What's worse is that the water was just barely dripping out of the showerhead. To me it felt like hell. After bath time it was our debrief and Sue and Vincent taught us how to wear the harness for abseiling. They also asked if we wanted to buy the Uhuru shirt at 40RM. Many people bought but sadly I couldn't because I can't find a money changer.

Day3:
The same routine as always. After breakfast we took the lorry to the waterfall. One of the belayers demo-ed how to abseil. Then we grabbed the gear and trekked up to the waterfall. It was seriously steep. I almost fell lol. We waited for our turn at the top. Haha so heng I took the middle line. The right on was too dry and un-fun while the left one was had too much water so people who took that line kept slipping. It was quite scary at first when the belayer told me to lean back. The surface of the waterfall became gradually steep like no other. Soon I got totally drenched. I looked down a little and it was oh so high despite only being 15m. When I reached the bottom Ms Lim asked how was it. I told her that it was wicked and the water was freezing!~ It was quite boring after the abseil as there was nothing much to do. We cheered the rest who were coming down. After that there was a very nice lunch! AB left first towards the Tamil school, our CIP venue. AB did painting, C did tutoring and D did the library. Let's face it, Ampere's mural sucked! Behnana's was way way way nicer lo. Partly because the good artists were in that group. Anyway we had fun. Woo after CIP we went to The Excelsior in Ipoh instead of the Murni camp. I bunked with Jasmine in Room 1312! Nice number eh? Haha. Then we had bath time and then they brought us to a nearby shopping centre called Parkson. There was 2 1/2 hours of free and easy. I went with Jingyi, Huibing, Kailee, Fion, Rina, Shiqi, Fionella, Amanda, Taiyang and Tamara to Marrybrown for dinner. Jingyi helped me pay first as I had no money. We split up to walk around the shopping mall. I went with Jingyi, Huibing and Shiqi. We went from shop to shop to look at the clothes and stuff. Then we saw this shirt that irked everyone. It's got a photo of a girl acting super cute by placing the camera near her face and making that big eye look. It was damn sick lah. I don't think anyone bought that shirt. Soon, the 2 1/2 hours were over. Awww. We went back to the hotel for debrief. Lights out was at 12am so Jasmine and I slacked and chat and gossip.

Day4:
We checked out of the hotel. There was breakfast at level 5. It was not bad, but I didn't eat much because I was too sleepy... We waited at the lobby with our bags for the coach to bring us to the hot spring. It was a long wait. On the bus some people were playing Blackjack and they were dealing with money. It was really noisy and I bang my head against the window 3 times really hard. Eventually there's an orh chei on the spot. It was at least an hour drive to the hot spring. Vincent showed us around the place. We really played and forgot about our worries. Then we went to the cold pool. There was this slide and we slid down like superman and all sorts of funny poses. Then we went to the deeper end to play catching. Those who were caught had to go inside this mini waterfall, and the rest had to try and rescue them. We left the place around 12.30pm or so. This is the time where we headed back to Singapore. Along the way we stopped at this place to eat and just walk around. Nothing much. Then we stopped at a store of some town. The store reminded me of NTUC. Yay I bought seaweed as they allowed Sing dollars! They even written the exchange rates on a vanguard which was on the wall. It was also there where Ms Lim announced the best day leader. For female it was Pearlyn, for male it was Zihao. Woo claps for them!! It was a long ride back to Singapore. Arrived back in school about 10pm. We did some cheers for Sue and Vincent and of couse for ourselves too~ "HIP HIP HOORAY!" We also took a group photo with them.

Ok so even though I'm back in civilisation with proper water, technology and other amenities, I think I really miss camp. And yep, I'm totally going back again next year if there is one.

*uhuru... uhuru... uhuru... XD*

11:22 PM