OH MY FRICKING GOSH!
I can’t believe I’ve actually made it home all in one piece with no broken bones or cuts and bruises. Praise the Lord for he brought me home safely. Okay, for those who have no idea about what I am talking about – I just came back from a 3-day weekend camping trip in Temburong. It was a programme set up by Outward Bound Brunei Darussalam (OBBD) for people of all ages – I guess...

First 5 things I did when I got home:

1. Hugged my mobile phone (mobile phones weren’t allowed at the camp)
2. Took a dump (never did for the whole 3 days I was there)
3. Took a nice warm shower (I was going to take a cold one, but then I was damp for most of the day since it rained)
4. Had some GOOD food (Pork steak and fish sinigang (sour soup))
5. Got a full body massage from my cousin...

Okay, so I’m going to be blogging about the 3 day trip from my point of view and bear with me for I’m only trying to remember everything from the top of my head. I was going to write it in my notebook that I had brought along with me – unfortunately I couldn’t find the time to even spare just five minutes to write. So here it goes...

Day 1 – Friday, August 22^nd 2008
My Dad came back to Brunei from Indonesia at 5:30pm – too bad I couldn’t pick him up.

I woke up to the blistering sound of my alarm clock at around 5:30am all pumped up and excited about my weekend in Temburong. I had my morning breakfast after my morning shower and I was off to the jetty by Kampong Ayer. I met up with my friends as we all waited for the rest of the campers to arrive. There were about 38 of us in total excluding teachers – Mr. Toomer, Ms. Hancox, Mr. Klein and Ms. Tracy. I think there were about 10 or less than 10 other students who didn’t join in our expedition but still had to do something else, which was helping out with this thing called ‘Special Olympics.’ It’s about helping the disabled in Brunei run a series of sports seeing as the highlight of this year is the Beijing Olympics 2008. Anyway, back to my Temburong trip; we left the jetty at around 7:30am and reached the Outward Bound Centre at about 9:00am. By that time we were separated into 3 groups – these groups represented the people that we would work with for the rest of the 3 days. There were 6 boys and 8 girls in our group plus our instructor, Haji Roslan. The guys were as follows: Arjun, Azim, Janrius, Jeff, Rais and William while the girls: Ms. Tracy, Allison (me), Ann, Jia Min, Nisa, Siobhan, Sita and Yesmean. First, we had a tour leaded by our instructor of the campus after which we gathered onto the third floor of the Outward Bound Centre and had a little exercise to get to know one another. We had this stuffed dog that acted as our microphone as we introduced ourselves, say our race and tell the group what out favourite fruit was. Somehow Arjun’s was pretty funny – maybe it was just the way he said it and his tone, because everyone laughed when he said it! “Hi I’m Arjun, I’m Indian and I like Bananas...” Not funny to you right! It was hilarious though.

After the getting to know each other exercise, we had a short check-up at the medical centre that was followed on by a short talk from the medics about safety regulations. We had a quick but mediocre lunch after which we were all issued items from the storage room – items such as a camping rucksack, ponchos, water bottles, white-water helmets, etc. We had no idea what was going on so we just packed our rucksacks thinking that we were somewhat going to be camping out that night. It was nerve-wrecking since we hadn’t the slightest clue where our instructor was not nor were we told what to do. We were then able to settle into our cabins (like put all our belongings there). Our cabins were across the Outward Bound Centre and the only way to get there was to walk over a suspension bridge. When I crossed through it for the first time I was pretty scared since during the talk about safety regulations it drizzled a bit which made the wood surface of the bridge a bit slippery.

After putting all our stuff back into the cabins we got a head on to start our planned activities the Centre had for us. The first activity that we started off with was the pitching tent exercise. We had to know how to pitch a tent seeing as the next day we were to camp outdoors. It took us about 10 minutes to pitch one tent up which was, according to our instructor, not so good because there were 14 of us so it should’ve been quicker. After pitching up the tent we had to take it down as well – trust me, it took less minutes to do than pitching it up.

After that activity, we headed on to do the flying fox and I must say that even though I’ve already been on it twice (like way back in Year 6) I was still freaking scared when I went down it – actually it was the anxiety of waiting to jump off. I screamed my head off for like the first 8 seconds and when I was halfway through, I just talked to myself saying ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god’ repeatedly. When we all got through the flying fox, we did an activity called the ‘trust game’ where the other group members held out a mat and you had to jump of from something high and trust that your team mates will catch you when you fall. It was scary yet awesome. To be honest, we as a group wasted a lot of time getting ready for the next activity and so because of that we didn’t get to do the white water confidence exercise like the other two groups did. But because it is a must, we were told by our instructor that we would do it the next day with dire consequences – late lunch. To me, that wasn’t much of a ‘dire’ consequence. Anyway so I think us girls hung out at the cabin for a while until dinner time which was at around 7pm. After dinner we headed back onto the third floor to do another exercise and that was ‘what animal represents you.’ I hadn’t the slightest clue about which animal represented me so I just chose a fish, and since we had to report back about why we chose that particular animal, I just said ‘because I like to swim and obviously fishes swim...’ After that, our instructor told us how to read a map and get directions from a compass. This was because, even though our instructor was coming with us on the trek, he’s somewhat invisible to our group and only visible when there’s an injury at steak. He told us that if we’re lost, he isn’t going to tell us that we’re lost and as a group we’re gonna have to overcome that problem and trust those that are leading the way. After all the talk, we had a question and answer session to mentally and physically prepare us for the trek and outdoor camping.

By the time it was over, it was 10pm and supper was served. After supper, Nisa and I rushed towards the toilets to take a nice cool shower after a long hot and sweaty day. And plus, the showers were pretty empty since the other girls bathed already after their water activity. After our shower – the WORST ever thing happened to us that had me shout swear words out loud not even caring what the teachers would say. It was painful and it had me in tears. I was like saying ‘FUCK’ repeatedly as I hosed down my feet with cold water. I know, you’re probably thinking I wonder what could’ve possibly made Ally swear and cry and the same time. After Nisa and I had our shower, we walked back to our cabins – since it was dark, we couldn’t really see where we were stepping, but we could see the cabin in front of us. Because we could see where we were going, Nisa and I trampled on an ant hill and instant pain from the ant bites caused us to curse and swear as we cried. Fucking shit it was horrible and painful! After Nisa and I calmed down a bit about the whole incident, we started to pack our rucksacks ready for the next day. By then we all went to bed by 12 midnight. Oh yes – and have I mentioned that the toilets are freakishly crappy and so were the cabins? I mean there were no beds nor were there any mattresses. We had to use the sleeping bags they had issued for us to use and there weren’t even any pillows so I used my backpack instead. It was so un-cool – neck pain and stuff... And that was it for Day 1.

Day 2 – Saturday, 23^rd August 2008
HAPPY 14^th BIRTHDAY to my Sister Angela!

All was well when suddenly there was a fire alarm drill at 5 in the morning! At first I thought it was someone’s alarm seeing as we had to be up before 6am that day. For some reason, when I heard it, I only heard ‘Alarm’ and strangely enough, I looked at Ann Lee – don’t ask me why because I seriously have no idea! Then it only came to me that it was a fire drill when Yesmean jumped out of bed and started screaming ‘life jackets! Life jackets!’ It was hilarious though I was pretty dizzy when I jumped out of bed! All the girls managed to get out and to the assembly area as we stood for almost 5 minutes just waiting for the guys to come out of their cabin and because the guys hadn’t come out from the cabins, the guys at the camp said, “fire, Fire, FIRE!” The first two guys slowly paced themselves down the stairs without their life jackets. So we all yelled at them to get their life jackets as they ran back telling the other guys (who were just getting out of their beds) to get their life jackets. Surprisingly after 15 minutes all the guys arrived at the assembly point and it’s not that the guys from the camp were mad at the guys, they just said that whenever there is a fire or flood alarm we should be able to gather at the assembly points in 2 – 3 minutes. Somewhere earlier on in the morning, I talked to some of the guys about what happened during the fire alarm drill and I got all sorts of responses. Some said that they didn’t hear the alarm while others admit to hearing the alarm but couldn’t be bothered to get up because they knew it was just a drill. Sheng told me that when the guy repeated the alarm again, Adam got up, turned on the lights and pulled everyone out of bed as he shouted out, “GUYS FIRE!” Mr. Klein told me that he thought the guys were say “Hola! Hola! Hola!” And he told me he was totally confused about why the guys were greeting everyone in Spanish. It was fricking hilarious to know all sorts of things that were going on in the boy’s cabin that morning. Anyway, to get back on track, since we were already up by the fire drill, we headed back into our cabins to get ready and bring our bags over the suspension bridge to the OBBD Camp Site and ready for the flag raising ceremony at 6am. While the flag raising was going on we had to sing the Brunei National Anthem – which I had no clue how to so I just stood there smiling, LOL.

After the flag raising ceremony, we got back into our groups and did a bit of stretching before heading off for our morning run. I started off alright but then I got tired after a few hundred metres because it was non-stop running. So I walked, then ran, walked, then ran until eventually I was like almost probably just under a 500 metres away from the rest of the group. I wasn’t the only one let behind though, because Jeff too was about 500 metres behind me... What can I say? I’m not THAT fit. At least I managed to catch up with the group when we walked back to the OBBD Camp Site. After our hour of morning run, we got ready to do the white water confidence exercise that the other groups did yesterday. It was awesome and refreshing at the same time because the water was nice and cold.

After the white water confidence exercise we had our late breakfast and started to finalise our packing before heading onto the longboat to Camp Seamut to start our jungle trek. The first group left from the OBBD Camp Site at 9:30am and trekked to Camp Seamut while we did the opposite. By 10:30am we were ready to leave by long boat to the Camp and only because a number of people could fit in the long boat, we had to wait at the Camp for all the boats to arrive before we could actually start our trek. So by 11am all team members had arrived and off we were to trek back to the OBBD Camp Site. It was hard task to do seeing as we each were carrying at least 10-30 kilos of things in our rucksacks, on our backs. There were a lot of steep hills which we either climbed up or climbed down. I stayed at the back because I knew I was the slowest and I would’ve held back any members that happened to be behind me. I wasn’t last-last for our instructor was last-last so that he knew that our group hadn’t ‘accidentally’ lost a group member or a member hadn’t lost the group. The trek consisted of areas with trees and some that had just been freshly bulldozed down to build a road. The bulldozed area was all muddy and a bit slippery and had slopes that were almost at 90^o – freakishly freaky! And it wasn’t just 1 slope; there were like probably 4-5 slopes at almost 90^o either to climb up or to climb down. By 12:30pm, we were able to meet up with the first group that had left at 9:30am from the OBBD Camp Site. Kristy had twisted her ankle and so she was brought back to the OBBD Camp Site for a cast and unfortunately she missed out on the camping outdoors and the kayaking. We had some problems with one of our group members for his shoe broke, and so were delayed by an hour just trying to encourage him to continue on and find him some shoes to wear. During this time, some of us had a quick lunch – I had buns and chocolate with some soothing pineapple tang juice. During our lunch break, the last group that left the OBBD Camp Site arrived and soon all three groups were at the same site having their lunch break. By 1:30pm our group was back on track – on the way I couldn’t breathe properly all of a sudden. And because of that I started to cry, by myself that is. I was too shy to show my emotions to the rest of my team members. But I managed – it was just a matter of taking some rest and taking off my backpack as it was the one that caused me to breathe irregularly. On the way, Rais experienced leg cramps like about twice but never gave up his trek. We were just a few minutes away from our last checkpoint where we were to camp when the sky became dark and the wind sliced through our skin. Finally by 4:30pm, we reached our camping area when it started to pour. It was disgusting really as we pitched our tents under the rain. We got so pissed off, that most of us were ready to give up and go home. It was horrible I tell you – soon when the tents were pitched up, the rain started to slow down a bit. Even though the weather started being a bit nice to us, our tents were still full of water and our rucksacks were all drenched from the rain. Well, our tents weren’t pitched up yet so we couldn’t exactly keep them dry inside the tents. When the tents were up, we placed our rucksacks under the water proof cover for the tent as there was a bit of space left just to keep the sacks out of the rain for the night. We had with us one 6-man tent and three 4-man tents – Ms. Tracy, Ann, Jia Min, Nisa and Yesmean shared the 6-man tent while Siobhan, Sita and I shared a 4-man tent. The guys were split into two groups: Azim, Jeff and Rais & Arjun, Janrius and William – our instructor had his own set up. Siobhan managed to pour out the water from our tents while I gave them the idea of using our rug mats upside down just so that we’d have a dry surface to lie on. Once I got changed into my dry clothes I never stepped out of our tent. By 5:30pm the other groups were making their dinner and since we only brought along with us 2 cooking sets – one for the girls and one for the guys, my tent had no choice but to wait patiently in our tents for the cookware to make our dinner. While waiting we talked a bit about ourselves and just got to know more about each other and as always, since we are definitely girls, gossiped a bit about some people. We also did try to lower our voices so that the other groups couldn’t hear us. Amazingly, though we were in our tents, you could hear what other groups were saying. By 6pm it was so quiet out and Siobhan, Sita and I were wondering what had happened – everyone was already asleep. We however, never did get the cookware for it was just left outside the other group’s tent, and so Sita was forced (by Siobhan and I) to get back out into the rain to get them. When we got them though, we realised that out matches were wet and Sita went knocking, metaphorically, into other tents and somehow the others hadn’t anymore matches with them. So we went to bed with empty stomachs – well not really. We had mee goreng that was crushed and seasoned with the powdered seasoning and we shared a packet amongst the three of us. After our so-called dinner, we went straight to sleep – and this was about 7-ish in the night.

Out of the blue, the other three tents started to talk once again – Ann was even singing. Siobhan, Sita and I were still asleep or half asleep for we were kind of woken up by the chattering and singing from Ann. At one point Yesmean yelled out for the time, and since I was time keeper, I got up and looked the watch with Sita’s flash light. Of course, blinded by the bright light, I could see, so Siobhan helped. To her surprise, she yelled out, “Guys! It’s only 12:35am!!” And on a high pitched tone, I heard Azim yell out, “WHAT? ONLY!?” Even the other groups were surprised – they all thought it was 5 in the morning and they were all happy to know that we’ll be trekking back to the OBBD Camp Site. It was hilarious I tell you – I mean, even I kept on repeating this story to the other groups and teachers and they would always laugh! It’s was way beyond FUNNY! Anyway after a few minutes everything was quiet again – the other groups had apparently fallen asleep again...

Day 3 – Sunday, 24^th August 2008
Dad off to Philippines

We were woken up to the beckoning of Rais’ mocked fire drill from the other night at 4am. Rais was like “fire, Fire, FIRE!” Hilarious – like I mean seriously, it’s not funny to those who weren’t there to ‘experience’ it. I mean it’s so funny that it’s not even funny anymore when it’s overused – you know, an overused joke doesn’t appear to be funny anymore? Whatever... Anyway, back on track, we had buns for breakfast and when the sun raised we started to pitch our tents down. Rais once again was rambling on about how they had ants in their tents and that Azim squeezed himself closer to him and Jeff and apparently managed to sleep on half a tent – so it was like fitting 3 guys in a 2-man tent. Rais said that Azim was literally on top of him – it was fricking hilarious to hear about it! Oh yes – I’ll tell you this now, during our prep talk the night before we went trekking, our instructor showed us how to dig a shit hole – you know, a place to take a dump while in the jungle. Okay, so the guys were supposed to dig a shit hole (looks at Rais), but they never did. Plus I’m never comfortable to take a piss or dump in the jungle, so, like what everyone else did, we kept our pee in until we would reach the OBBD Camp. I was crossing my legs the whole night so that I wouldn’t feel like peeing and what’s worse was that I actually kept my pee in my bladder for over more than 24-hours. I know it’s not good, but I had no other choice and plus I felt so bloated. I had no choice because there was only to be one shit hole for the whole group – disgusting I tell you, I mean, just the thought of it creeps me out! *barfs* Anyway, we were able to get back on the track by 7:30am and man was in overly dangerous. Because it had rained for the whole night, the tracks were VERY slippery and the mud was terrible. My shoe sunk into a mud pile and my shoe nearly came off. The track especially near to the OBBD Camp Site was terrible for it was like rock climbing but without the ropes. You had to grab either on the vines or someone’s hand. If not, one slip and you’re dead – like seriously. I’m not kidding! If you had slipped, it was a highway to death for you were literally about 5 metres high above the river and if you had fell, you wouldn’t have splashed into the river, but on the river bed of stones. By 8:30am we had made it back to the OBBD Camp Site and were overwhelmed with joy that we all, as a team, made it back in one piece. I mean, I so totally thought I wasn’t going to make it out of the jungle after my serious meltdown during the trek yesterday, but I just kept on praying to God to protect me and of course my team mates and guide us back to the OBBD Camp Site safely. I love you God. But when we arrived at the Camp Site, we were told by our instructor that we have not yet completed our expedition. Since we started it, we have to wrap it up – and by wrapping up, he meant that we had to clean up all the dirty equipment, hang it to dry and counted to be placed back into the storage room.

By 10:00am, the other two groups had arrived to the OBBD Camp Site on kayaks. They had kayaked from where our group originally started our trek which was at Camp Seamut. When they got back, they started cleaning up their equipment while we re-did our white water confidence exercise at about 11:00am for three of our group members hadn’t done it yesterday before our trek. Our instructor wanted to know that in case of a capsize on the kayak; he knew that everyone was able to swim. After our white water confidence exercise, we were taught the basics of kayaking – like how to hole your paddle and the different seating positions. We were even shown a demonstration on how to get back onto our kayak in case of a capsize. I partnered up with William – you know, I need a strong guy to be able to help me up onto the kayak in case of a capsize and most importantly someone who wouldn’t mind me taking a rest while he paddled by himself. So before we even started to kayak from the OBBD Camp Site downstream, our instructor made us do a capsize drill just so that he’s aware that we can manage to get back on the kayak with no problem at all. Unfortunately, Will and I were the first ones up to perform the capsize – I screamed my head of when our instructor turned our kayak over though it was expected – like wtf right? After we all did the capsize drill we were off downstream for a nice hour and a half kayak. Nothing much happened during our kayak until the very end. Apparently Janrius and Ms. Tracy’s kayak got stuck in a log that stuck out from the river. The were set free for Rais and Nisa’s kayak had knocked them out, but unlucky for them, they were the one’s that got stuck and capsized at the same time. Nisa told me that the kayak was literally above the heads and they couldn’t breathe for sometime until they were able to swim away from the kayak. It was hard because you couldn’t really open your eyes in the water to see where you were going. When we all got to our stop safe and sound, we formed a chain from the river to the road to carry up the kayaks to the truck. When all the kayaking equipment was on the truck, we headed into the bus that was waiting for us at our stop to take us back to the OBBD Camp Site which was around 2:00pm.

We got changed back into our navy-blue IB CAS shirts and had our late lunch. After late lunch we cleaned up the rest of our equipment to find out that we had lost a few of the items that we were issued – 1 water bottle, 1 waterproof tent cover and 2 waterproof bags which apparently cost the whole group $137. But it wasn’t that bad as the WHOLE group had to pay because it was a group responsibility thing, and so we only ended up paying $10 each since there was 14 of us – they even earned an extra $3 out of us. While we were trying to sort out our lost items, it started to rain miserably again. Before we headed on back to Bandar, we filled out an evaluation sheet about the whole trip and there was one question in particular that I wanted to point out because it made me laugh when I heard Siobhan say it. The question was, would you recommend this programme to friends, family and relatives? Siobhan: Yes. Why? Siobhan: Because I want them to suffer like I did... LOL. After that we got onto the bus at about 4:00ish as we said our thank yous and goodbyes to the Outward Bound guys who helped us throughout the programme. By quarter to 5 we reached the jetty and we were all drenched while we waited to collect our bags from the truck. Lucky for me my bags were just near the end of the truck and so I got Mr. Klein to just hand them to me and I ran off into the shade out from the rain. I felt so sorry for those who had their bags all the way at the front of the truck and had to wait in the rain for everyone else to collect their before they could even get to theirs. After everyone was able to collect their bags, we boarded the boat that took us back to Kampong Ayer, Bandar. On the boat, Tharindu, Amirah, Hui Yen and I couldn’t stop laughing about the funny moments we had during the trip and stuff and we literally kept most of the people awake on the boat for those we were sleeping from out belts and snorts. By 5:30pm we reached the jetty at Kampong Ayer and it was HOME SWEET HOME. The first five things I did when I got home have been mentioned above and I was oh-so glad to have a nice soft bed to sleep on for the past 2 nights I’ve had a hard wood surface and a backpack as a pillow and on the second night a uneven surface and my wet clothes in a plastic bag as my pillow – total and complete grossness!

-END OF TEMBURONG TRIP-

toodles♥!

Ps: since this was pre-typed on MS Word, I just wanted to let all of you know that it totalled to 8 pages of font size 12, Times New Roman – AMAZING! LOL.

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