The DOE Camp in Janda Baik,Pahang - The Grand Finale

Later that night,we had our dinner ( was not that filling as we had instant noodles and biscuits ).I ate as much as I could to fill up my hungry stomach as we had burned a lot of carbohydrates considering the trekking we had done for the day ( view previous post ). After dinner,we gathered and had a campfire, But first we had to look for wood in the shrubs as there was no real firewood in this part of the world.Even if there is, it's probably used by the expatriates here,in my country. Back to the camp, our so-called campfire was kind of dull as the head of the whole camp had no idea what she wanted to do,so the trainers came in and helped cheer us up.

They surely did well, as they thought us this move,which they called the gorilla dance where the "lucky" ones were chosen to perform.And oh boy,did we LAUGH!!!!There was this particular girl in our group who was small in size, and with the oversized wind-breaker on her, she looked like a cute little kid dancing in joy.

After the campfire we were given a short briefing on the next activity, SOLO DROP.In this event, we were supposed to trek into the jungle and be dropped one by one along the trail, and spend some time alone in the jungle.We were given passwords to make sure that no one else would interfere with our activity at midnight.

I was dropped off half way through the trail we were walking.By the way, I forgot to mention that we were not allowed to bring any stuff that would emit light ( eg. torches,candles,handphones).So, that guy came up to me and said "ok, sit here...put your hand in here..grab a handful and put it around you..and sit tight"

After the guy left, it was kind of dark and I was quite sleepy after all the things we had done for the day.Here's how it went...

I thought I saw something white in front of me..so I freaked a bit ..but then I thought it was just my mind running wild..so then I started listening for the sounds in the forest as it was very dark, and every single thing was rather indistinguishable...then the creepiness which was about to wake me up from my about-to-begin slumberland was disrupted by this thing known as .......KARAOKE!!!It was so loud that I got fed up of listening to nature and the sounds in it..:-(
I kept on dozing off every few minutes, and after about 40 minutes the guy came to pick us up on the trail one by one...yawn....

(Well, for the uninitiated, karaoke is this thing which is quite poolar in my country where, people sing along to popular songs by looking at the song lyrics on TV.)

Back at camp...I ate a bars of powerbars before cuddling up in the tent and aimed not to kick anyone in the tent...and also occupy only what minimum space I require to sleep...

The next morning, I got up at 7 and much to my surpise,the rest were virtually asleep and all my group members were already awake..I was so proud of my group as the night before, we had been asked to be more punctual..and we did keep the deadlines ..well done WHATEVER FOR!!!

We were ready by 8.30 and were told that there would be 4 activities for the day.Our first was,abseiling..yawn..only difference was that it's from a tree this time..and a very tall tree......when my turn came....I already had problems as the full-harness was painful to my appendage.....and when I got up there..the guy jus told me to hang on to the rope...and leave the tree..was not so confident at first as I thought I was going to fall but managed to abseil down..but IT hurt so bad.....

We proceeded to the next game,which was more of a thinking thing..as we had to use our brains...to use a firm piece of plank,a long twig,a young bamboo shoot,some string and a metal hook to retrieve a water bottle in the pond without getting into the pond...was quite difficult as we got the lighter people to sit on the plank but they couldn't sustain the weight of the twig.We managed to complete the task after many huff's and puff's ....phew...but they worst was yet to come...

Next, we had to get across the river by sitting on plastic barrels using planks once again to get from barrel to barrel.It was no easy task but we sure had to trust each other as we held on to each other to get across, we managed to get to 2 barrels.We had fun as the side of the pond was muddy and I had to hold on to the rope, to get my mate across,as she held on to my head(because she was standing) and she did manage to get across to the second barrel.

Finally, we had to build our own raft from, bamboo and doughnut balloons.And we were thinking abit too much about how to do it and the trainers were getting impatient..we did make our raft and considering that we had heavy members...we fell in to water a couple of times and the trainers told us to just let 3 of us get on the raft and get the flowers from the other side of the pond.

Then we had our baths,washed up,had lunch,packed up and left.

THE END...