| Wednesday, 22-Feb-2006 12:34 |
|
Cappy Goes Camping!
|
|
The leeches has sucked me dry. The days of going without bathing has left me with grimy, filthy skin that's flaking off like snakeskin. My hair and teeth are falling out due to malnourishment. I nearly drowned in the torrid, rain-flooded river-rapids several times while trying to save my squad-mates' lives, but failed. Search parties have turned out nothing. We're afriad half of our platoon have been the victims of tigers and rabid tapirs.
I have just returned from my very first camping trip. O_o
...
Heheh. Gotcha at the rabid tapirs bit, huh? ;)
My uni has this co-curriculur program we call 'Kesatria' that involves a lot of marching, marching, and oh gosh more marching every Saturday, which is compulsory for First Semester students. I'm in my Second Semester now, but since I was so marvellously clever in my first sem to drop the program, I had to repeat it this sem. =P
One of the programs we had to follow while in Kesatria is a camping trip (which we get six credit hours for -- which means I don't have to march for three weeks! =D Whee!), which took place from the 17th to the 19th this month.
This year, the camp was at this preserved rainforest called Taman Rimba Komanwel, all the way in Rawang, which is like 1-2 hours drive from my campus. We would spend 3 days, 2 nights there, not bathing, cooking our own food, marching, sleeping in the rain, and essentially roughing it til we're rescued and taken back to civilization. =D
You can tell I'm ridiculously high-maintainence, eheh. ;)
We set off after class at around 3pm, and as soon as we arrived we had to set up camp. It was the very first time I've pitched a tent, and I only almost poked people's eyes out with the spokes! Go me. It was a wee little tent the colour of flouresent bananas, and it was absolutely rubbish in keeping out the rain. More on that later. Each tent had around 4-6 people squeezed together like the sardines we had for dinner, pitched on a small square of sandy area scattered with 'beluang' to keep out poisonous insects and snakes. =)
Our patch of ground was way, way, WAY at the edge of the campsite, bordering the edge of the forest, far away from the nearest sources of light. We thought it was pretty cool to have one of the more isolated tents, thinking we could truly sensationalize the camping experience by being right next to the forest. Yeah, it was pretty cool the afternoon we arrived, but as soon night fell, I began to regret not bringing a torchlight. Or a few candles. Or a kerosene lamp. Or a Las Vegas casino sign. o_O
The entourage of over 60 students were divided into six platoons, and I was in Platoon Six, along with ten other kids. I volunteered to be Assistant Platoon Leader, being the glamour-hound that I am, knowing that 2nd in command gets all the perks without carrying the responsibility. ;)
We had an ice-breaking ceremony that night, and the most popular question that crept up when people introduced themselves up front was if they were still single or not. I guess people take this camping trip in a completely different view ...
Later, we found out each platoon had a "sentry shift" throughout the night, which meant that we had to take turns getting up in the middle of the night to guard the camp, doing rounds through the camping grounds, and around the forest border. This sentry-thing makes sense when you're in the army, and you have to guard the camp at night from enemy ambush, but it didn't seem so serious in our case. However, it was tremendous fun being a sentry. =D Going round the forest at night, armed with merely a torchlight, and nearly dying from pneumonia as you zip your not-thick-enough windbreaker until your chin to fight the vicious, rain-sodden cold (have I mentioned how god-forsakenly cold it was at night?), listening to silence and watching the darkness make shapes in the trees is definitely an experience I'm not forgetting anytime soon. It was awesome, and the best part was, my platoon was assigned with the last shift, which was 5.00 - 6.00 AM, which meant we didn't have to face the mess of getting up and going back to sleep again. I guess the best shifts are the first and the last, because those in the first shift (12.00 - 1.00 AM) can also get a good solid chunk of sleep before waking.
Sleeping in the tent was hell, by the way. The ground was rough and littered with little stones, everything was soaked, and I got about 2-3 hours sleep the first night, tops. =D
The next day started with an uphill trek to this place they call the Commonwealth Park, where we performed a series of humiliating exercises to the Black-Eyed Peas' "My Humps" and that annoying "Numa Numa" song,marched while lying on our backs (don't ask), and did what we called 'Ribena Jumps', because we leapt up like little Ribena berries on caffiene. Um. Yeah. You probably couldn't tell if we were university students or still in kindergarten, but whatever. =P
Throughout the afternoon, we played a series of competetive games between platoons, and my platoon nonchalantly came in first for most of them, to our bemusement, mostly because we hardly worked for it. =P Just say we were born fabulous.
The day passed with not much event, because that night (our last night there), each platoon was to put on a performance for everyone.
I have to make note of Platoon Four's sketch: it was HILARIOUS. They parodied Kesatria's marching-culture, and re-created a marching exercise and took many comedic liberties. The most memorable character had to be the ditzy, air-headed commander who gave all the wrong commands in an annoying nasal voice, instructing a platoon of clueless, stoned students who marched backwards and in circles. =D Very the funneh. I wish I made a recording, because some of the jokes were priceless.
My platoon's sketch was titled, "Romi and Romeo", in which we sang Can't Take My Eyes Of You in Malay, and popular Malay-Indonesian song Mungkin Nanti in English, while the only two boys in the platoon acted out lovey-dovey scenes together that would put Brokeback Mountain to shame. =P You probably had to see it to believe it.
That night, my tent-mates and I decided to sleep in the Surau (or prayer-house) because our tent was practically flooded -- like I mentioned, our flourescent banana-yellow tent, though it was pretty and cute, was absolutely rubbish at keeping out rain, and the inside walls were practically dripping with moisture. O_o
Doing sentry rounds that night was a somewhat heightened experience, because througout the entire evening, the commanders kept on reminding us, over and over again, that we shouldbe careful ... not because of cold or poisonous plants or dangerous insects, but because of the forest's 'other' residents. O_o Malaysia still remains a very superstitious nation, and there are still very strong beliefs that the forest is inhabbitted by other strange creatures that aren't animal or human.
Here are a few things they warned us to never, ever do while in the forest:
1) shine your torchlight towards the treetops
2) boast, or speak too highly of yourself
3) pluck leaves, or take anything that is still attatched to the ground
4) laugh too loudly
... you could attract unwanted attention. O_o *shifty eyes*
I mean, I probably have heard dozens of scary stories about these fearie folk, so as I did rounds about the forest, I expected to see white shapes floating about the trees or hear voices or whispers or laughter. However, after half an hour, the only thing I seemed to be guarding the camp against were stray cats, which took the adventuresome fun out of it all. =P
We would set off the next day, but we would have lunch first. Now, all cooking on camp was done by student volunteers, who had to cook for the rest of the squad. I'm particularly proud of myself, because that afternoon, I volunteered for kitchen duty, and cleaned and cooked chicken in army-like quantities, cut watermelons and generally made myself useful in the kitchen for the first time in my life, heheh (told you I was high-maintenence). =P And when everyone ate the chicken that I cooked (okay, okay, with the help of other student volunteers, sheesh =P) and drank the cordial I mixed (it's true, I mixed it myself), I must've either thought, "Oh God, these poor food-poisoned souls," or, "Gosh, what tasty chicken! I wonder who cleaned and cooked it!" =P
Hee. Fun.
So yeah. That was my very first wonderful camping experience. Of course there were sucky bits, like almost every five minutes they'd have a roll-call and we'd have to dinkily get into line and report, and not having make-up and looking like a pockmarked gargoyle for three days, but the other bits were fun. Like bathing in the river and not bathing for two days, treating the commanders like our peers because they really are our peers (two of them were our classmates, and whenever they gave us hell on the marching ground, we'd give them hell of it), getting bitten by a leech for the first time (yes, I consider that as one of the fun bits. It was both dramatic, fascinating, and funny at the same time =P) and, cheesy as it sounds, making new friends. =P There was this ickle Part One kid that kept on latching onto me, which was both annoying and sweet at once, like having a little sister. =P
MENTAL NOTE: If I'm ever foolish and unstable enough to go farther than three kilometres away from sweet civilization, remember to bring torchlights (with batteries, mind you), candles, kerosene lamps, water, waterproof matches, and leech socks. Especially the batteries. =P
|
|
