Camping Adventure

Last weekend, I was with a group of students to Hutan Lipur Kawang, Papar as part of their environment management’s project. Actually, I’m not the ‘supervisor’ (just helping my colleague who’s can’t make it) and I’d had never joined this kind of student’s project before, so its kindda ‘new’ experience for me, but a pleasant one.

First thing to do after arrived, taking picture!
But sadly, the background view is not the 'prettiest' one. My student told me later, that that part of the hills had been sold to the palm oil company, so now they 'clean-up' the hill to plant the palm trees.

This is a management office aka our 'tent' for the night... We are so lucky to get a permission to use the place, coz the toilets were very very clean! Because I'm their 'guru pemerhati' (like supervisor la...), I got to slept inside a room but still fill with students stuff, bags and all. All the students have to slept in the hallway...



Look at our kitchen...all the cooking essentials were provided! Of course, that girl is part of our 'kitchen crew'. There is a small waterfall infront of the office. Even it small, I mean it's not that high, but the sound of water dropping through the rock was AMAZING! Its so refreshing that all of us wake up early even though we were so tired from the 'hiking' (read below) and games we played the night before.

One of the activity we do there is 'jungle tracking'. I thought we just go to the jungle and walk through the trees, and see the bugs and leeches (in fact we saw a lot of them, and make all the girls screams like kindergarden kids) and visit a bat’s cave (as pix above). This 'jungle tracking' turn out to be a hike to the top of the hill. OMG! It took us 2 hours to go up, and the trail is not like what you see in the pic above, it just for the first 10 mins. The trail was so slippery from the rain last night, and causes many of us to fall on our butt several times. But once you on the top, the view were breathtakingly beautiful and silence our tiredness.

I thought (AGAIN!) that view was totally worth it. But the journey to go down is not an enjoyable experience, it took us 2 hours more! Again, the trail was very slippery, I fall many time like ‘nangka busuk’. The ‘suppose’ to be the last 30 mins from the end of the trail…rain came like cats and dogs. Plus, we have to wait for one of the student who’s suddenly got cramp leg. 30 mins turns to an hour ride down, and it was dark already during our journey + rain = NIGHTMARE!

But after all that hiking experience, I still felt happy and fun coz I know this is once in the lifetime kindda thing. Besides, the students were all AMAZING and fun to be with. I’ll treasure this experience forever. Thanks TEAM GENESIS!!!