_Together

I am finally back home, back to my soft and springy bed, back to my clean and bright bathrooms and of course back to civilizations. This blog entry will be my 3000 word report as well, so what you can expect is a super ultra long post. Please have some patience and take your sweet time to read through it. Haha. For the time now, there's is no pictures. Wait till Andre uploads them, then you all can have an eye feast.

In the first day, half of the day is spent of traveling to Mawai, which is located near Kota Tinggi. After the hours of bus ride, which most of the people spent their time sleeping, we still have to cross the river, Sedili River, by a motor boat. The river is 20m deep in the middle and is rich of flora and fauna. Dangerous creatures dwelling in the river could be the giant cat fish, which has teeth like the sharks- unable to let go the prey, and of course in most river, crocodiles.

Upon reaching, the first thing we did is to set up our beds. The bed is modified from what the Malaya Rangers use to sleep. It is something like a hammock, suspended in the air. The different is that our beds are supported in 4 corners. The bed is a cloth, slot into 2 poles, tied onto 4 sides. It has to be really tight to give maximum comfort and of course, the bed has to be be tied tightly so that it is able to support our weight. The guys' bed is something like ours just that they only required to open up. However, their bed is smaller and according to them, it is not as comfortable as ours. Because we have to setup our bed from scratch, we also get to learn something as well. One good thing is, we got a real metal roof above our head which will shelter us from rain and shine.

After some strenuous work setting up the bed, it is finally meal time - LUNCH!!! But the lunch, was quite a disappointment. Probably, it is the first day and i have not get used to it. I still remember lunch as rice ( our daily staple food), chicken ( our daily staple protein), mutton ( but i did not get any) and long beans. The long beans, is only half cooked, hence there is a very strong "green" taste which wasn't that appealing to my taste buds.

After lunch, it time for water obstacle course, which once have destroyed by an elephant and her jumbo but repaired. It was really fun but tiring. The course is made up of different obstacles and all the obstacles have one objective which is to get across the other other side without getting wet. In certain courses we have rope to us to balance ourselves, by touting and leaning backward, while walking on the rope or the branch. Sense of balance is a must and the principle of stability- low CG mus be applied also.

The hardest course is the one that we have to walk across the "bridge", with length of 4 long branches( probably 3m each), without any balancing help except for ourselves. The hard way is to walk while the easier way out is to sit across by moving the butt. The most deceiving one the bridge with water barrels in the middle. The barrels made the bridge really unstable or either u ran through it with momentum or crawl through it. The one that required the most teamwork is the bridge that is not only walking straight but there was the ascending and descending part and it was in the air. Hence everyone hold each other hands tight for support and walk step by step and finally made through it. The most easy one is the beehive bridge, which one walks on a rope but there was support on both sides. However the supporting ropes are quite sharp and i got quite a few splinters over it. My splinters are still the small case one, the splinters that others get from the monkey bar course really hurts.

After the water fun, it's the mud volley ball fun. The water inside was really mud, grey or brown just like milo and together with the grass, it looks really like soya milk + ching chao. Lols. As it was muddy, we can;'t really moved around. There was holes everywhere and it is difficult to move around as we are stucked in the mud. Taking the advantage of having a volley ball captain, we won. Haha!

This water course is more like a confidence course. One need to have the courage to walk across, the confidence that enables one to stay composed, the concentration to keep focus, the determination to complete, the perseverance to continue again when one falls into the water, the teamwork to support and cheer for those in need.

After all the water activities where we get muddy and dirtied, we decided to get ourselves clean. Unfortunately, the bathrooms ran out of water. It was such shocking news. In order to bath, we went to the guys’ bathrooms instead. A waterless incident like this made us realize how important and precious water is.

It was mealtime again. We had dinner, which is more delicious than lunch. After filling our stomach, we proceeded on to our night activity- stargazing. I have leant how to differentiate the constellations by looking at the star chart and various knowledge about the stars. In that night, there was the Orion, the Greek hunter, and his 2 dogs, minor and major canis and others.

It was time to sleep and prepare ourselves for the next day. Though the bed was designed for maximum comfort, I still think that my bed is the best as subsequent nights I have been having neck and back aches. However, one still has to adapt to the surroundings so that we will be able to get enough rest. Finally, that was the end of day 1 and 3 more days to go.

May time freezes @

9:43 PM