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3rd November 2006. The day after exams finishes. And the day which practically every Form 4 science class student has been waiting (well…the boys mostly). I think I spent like 3 hours plus packing for that day. It was only one night but I took quite long to decide what to bring. Maybe I overpacked. Lol. Oh wait…I haven’t said what was the occasion. It was our field trip for biology. A one night stay in Taman Pertanian Shah Alam or Bukit Cereka (I think). The theme this time was Back To Nature.
Initially, I thought it would be boring and uninsteresting. But I guess I was wrong. It was far more interesting and fun than what I had expected. Although my legs are aching now especially my thighs.
I reached school around the usual time, 7:25am. Went to register and collect my name tag (more like a dog tag). Lolz. Anyway, we got onto the bus around 8:30am and left for Shah Alam. During the bus ride, they made us sing the theme song which was composed by KY and Sarah. It was entitled Our Mother Nature. Well, the song was pretty okay, not that bad.
We reached the place around 10am. The entire place was surrounded by huge and tall trees. And yeah, the insects there are many times bigger than what we see here. The mosquitoes are like huge, I can see their body parts clearly and the ants too…like a 50 cent coin. So, we gathered in the hall where we had ice breaking and light briefing. Then, we got sorted into our chalets. My friends and I already knew we were in the same chalet because one of our other friend was in charge of the sorting. We got Rumah Perlis, and the other group of girls got Rumah Melaka. The chalet was much nicer than what I expected. Except for the bathroom…eww. There was about 14 or 15 of us and only 10 mattresses. So we had to share which was okay.
After settling down, we were called back to the hall and separated into our activities groups. I was in the Toxic/Venomous Animals group. There were 12 in a group. Six guys and six girls. Guess who else was there? CM and Jega! How coincidental! It must be Lady Luck who really has taken a liking towards us. Many people were sceptical that we got into the same group because of pure luck. Even a teacher asked if we cheated or something. But seriously, it was really coincidence.
So with the groups already settled, we got our first task which was to find this person, Pak Alang in Parit Buntar. We had absolutely no idea who or where was he. We ran up and down the entire place searching. The boys found the place later and we were the last group. =.= Oh well. No surprises there.
Around 1pm something we had lunch. I don’t really remember what did we eat but I know there was rice. Haha. We elected our group leader, Cheong Hong and then prepared ourselves for the jungle trekking. Now comes the fun part. Hehe. We had three guides. Brother Jo, Encik Alif and I forgot the other guy’s name. Lol. There were about 72 students and a few teachers. We were split into two groups and I was in the second group. We only had one guide with us and lucky us, we got Sir Willeam. I felt safer with him there. One of the guide briefed us before we started and from the way he talked you would have thought that it was a walk in the Amazon jungle. He made it sound so scary and difficult. With stories of people getting lost and leeches. Ugh.
We had to wait a little while for our ride to come pick us up and send us to the place where the track starts. It was kinda like an open roof bus. The ride was pretty fun. It was bumpy and rough. The way I like it. The first group had a 15 minute headstart so they were in advantage because before we even reached the place it already started raining. By the time we entered the jungle it got pretty heavy and there was lightning and thunder.
Earlier that day, my friends and I were already equipped with mosquitoes and insects repellent. But most of all, leech repellent. CM brought two bottles. One for her and the other one for four of us to share. We sprayed wherever we could, including inside our shirts. It did pay off. We never got any leeches sucking our blood except for Krys and Jie Yi who were in the first group.
I did something pretty stupid during the jungle trekking. I was wearing a cap and most of the time I had my eyes trained on the ground because it was all muddy and slippery. There were a couple of times where I did not look where I was going and my head hit the tree branches. Hard. It hurt a lot and I think I blacked out for a few short seconds. The first time happened when we were crossing over this huge log and when I looked up my head knocked hard onto a tree branch. For a few seconds I was dazed and blurred. I think I had a minor concussion. It took several seconds for me to compose myself. Then I hurried over to CM and told her what happened. She said she did the same thing too and I felt relieved. Lol. At least I wasn’t the only one. The second time happened when I was telling Sarah who was behind me to look out for tree branches and as I was turning in front, my head hit another tree branch. Ouch. So much for me trying to give out advice when I couldn’t even take care of myself.
Two of the many times when we had to cross this really muddy and slippery patch when I had CM in front of me holding my hand helping me and I was almost falling and I reached out my hand to the guy behind me. (it was a different guy for each time). He was a little hesitant to hold my hand. Inside my head there was screaming going on saying "Just take my hand! This is my life we’re talking about!"After a few seconds when Jega shouted at him, he took my hand. Oh god. Some guys are just a little too conservative. I mean what’s wrong with holding a girl’s hand when she needs it really badly. Especially when it involves her life. She could have lost her life just because the guy was too shy to take her hand. Her entire future would be gone just because he was so conservative. OKAY. Maybe I’m being a little too dramatic here. Lol. Nevermind that.
The track was about 7km long. It took us maybe 3 hours or more I don’t know. I lost track of time while in there. We emerged all wet, muddy and unrecognizable. The last thing we had to do to get out of the forest was to slide down this muddy slope. We had to lie down and slide down. So our backs got all muddy. When we came out, I never felt so happy to see daylight again. It was so dark inside. Even darker when it was raining. We were like drenched rats. If you had seen me on the street I don’t think you would be able to recognize me. Totally messy, uncomposed and unsexy. Lolz.
Several students got leeches on them. Too bad for them. Lucky me I got none. Probably because I was with CM because she practically bathe in leech repellent. Leeches wouldn’t even get within 10 feet of her. Haha. And yeah, two girls lost their shoes in the mud. One lost the right shoe and the other lost the left one. Lol.
After jungle trekking we were allowed to go back to clean ourselves up and rest. There was a tiny problem. Only one bathroom and about 14 girls. And you know how long girls take to shower. So some of them decided to just shampoo their hair first while waiting. I saw them and thought why not. There was this part of the chalet where there were holes on the ground, we decided we could rinse our hair there since it falls straight to the ground below. We used two big water tumblers to collect water and pour over each other’s hair. It sounds funny when I think of it now. We would stand there with our bodies bent and hair dripping with shampoo while someone pours water from water tumblers over our hair. But it was quite a good idea. As usual, we were the last to gather.
We had dinner and then we had several activities. Two of them had us blindfolded. For the first one, our leader wasn’t blindfolded. He had to give our instructions for us to move in order to form a single alphabet. Our group had to form the letter U, which was pretty easy. The next activity involves everyone blindfolded except the AJK (all were students), each group would be led blindly by an AJK to God knows where. Then, we had to squat down and wait. CM was making so much noise that she was the first one to be led somewhere else. I was the last one among the three of us to be led somewhere. I had to squat down and wait and wait and wait for such a long time. And it wasn’t very pleasant since my feet and legs were hurting from the jungle trek earlier. But sooner or later my turn came and I was led somewhere and was asked to hold the shoulder’s of the person in front of me. Then we were taken somewhere and then questioned where do we think we were. I had absolutely no idea and just simply guessed. My guesses were wrong. But someone took me and led me back to the hall. By the time it all ended it was already 11pm. Time for bed. I don’t think I’d want to go into the details of that.
Anyway, the next day we woke up at 5:30am. At 6:45am we were at the hall. We had to carry out some experiments on the pH of the soil and water sample we took from the jungle trek. It was pretty dull work. After that we were taken for a short morning walk and when we got back Sir Willeam told us some stories he had. It was mainly about his time in the army. It was pretty interesting to hear.
Storytime ended and it was time for our explorace. We had to get to 6 checkpoints. Each checkpoint would have a task for two people on the group to do. The two people are only allowed to participate once. The first task was to make a lantern out of bamboo sticks. It was pretty hard. We let the guys do it. Second was to make a paper lantern out of circles, this time two girls did it and it went pretty well. Third was erm…making a model of anything out of straws and sticks. CM and Jega took part in this. They made a model of the Petronas Twin Towers. Lol. Later when teacher took it out to let everyone else see and guess what it was. No one could recognize it as the Twin Towers. Lol. Oh well. The fourth task was to catch 3 fishes in a pond. This was no easy task. None of the groups caught a fish at all. So nevermind. The fifth task. The task which chose me. More like the teacher chose me. The task requires the two students to ride a bicycle under this wooden house and weave in and out of the wooden stilts. The teachers in charge were males teachers. They didn’t allow two guys, it has to be a guy and girl. =.= Like they wanted to see girls fall. Ugh. So I had no choice. It wasn’t so easy because the ground was all sand. It was hard to cycle. The rules are to cycle straight to the other side without your feet touching the ground until you reach the end. And when you reach one end, you have to cycle back to where you started without stopping. The first time I fell down. Ow. I had to start again. My group members were great. They were really supportive. They kept cheering on me and the other guy. The third time I had to start again, I heard the teacher say three minutes have passed and the record time was 1 minute 35 seconds. So I thought to myself, "Fuck, I have to get it right this time" And guess what? I did! On the ride back to the starting point I was concentrating so hard so I wouldn’t fall and start all over again. And I didn’t. Phew, I was so glad I made it back. Our time was 4 minutes. Which the teacher said was not bad, the longest time was 8 minutes, but I felt I could have done better. Oh nevermind. The last task was to make a kite. The remaining two members of the group had to do it and we ended up making a bee kite because were we toxic/venomous animals and bee was a stinging animal and it flies. We were the second group to finish the race. I was glad though I enjoyed it alot. It was fun and exhilarating. It makes your adrenaline pump.
When every group has finished, we were allowed to go back to our chalets to pack and get changed for the closing ceremony. It was pretty sad to see that it had to end. Just when we were properly enjoying ourselves it had to end. >.<
During the ceremony, speeches and prizes were given out. Our group won nothing. No surprises there again. And yeah, our principal came too to check on us. It was pretty good of her to come all the way just to see us. She lunched with us and then left. The last agenda was to visit the four season house. It was late autumn that time. It was about 7 celsius to 12 celsius. So it was pretty cold. I was freezing and my nose had turned red frm sneezing. I’m very sensitive to temperature changes. There wasn’t much inside there just some plants to see. Well, can’t really expect much. The ticket to go in was only RM3.
It started raining and we had to run back to the bus. It was the second time in two consecutive days we got drenched. By the time we board the bus with our bags and belongings, we looked like we just got out of the shower. My hair was dripping and I was freezing. The journey back home was quite short. It’s always like that, the journey going to somewhere always feels longer than the journey back home.
It feels a little weird to be back. We just managed to get used to living there and then had to leave. I felt a little sad to leave. It was fun. But on the way back we passed by Midvalley and I thought, "This is where I truly belong" Haha.
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