I have just gotten back from church camp in Kuantan. It was another 8-hours coach up north.

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It wasn’t easy to convince my students that water-rafting was a fun and must-try-once-in-your-life kind of sport. Natasha and I were pretty worried that we couldn’t get enough participants to go on this trip.

But thank god, the numbers were more than we expected!

We spent 1 night on the coach. Departed at 10pm and reached Perak at 6am! Frankly, I have never taken such a long-hour coach before. My previous record was 4 hours. This was double!!

We reached at Gua Tempurung at 6am. But because it rained cats and dogs the day before, the water level in the cave was higher. We waited for the water to subside.

We went through gruelling tour that took us to the icy cold underground stream, climbed muddy paths, leopard-crawled though water and rocky holes, and slide down slippery stones…Man it was exhausting! But it was ALL worth it.

We climbed a long flight of stairs (263 of them) to get to the top of the cave! Like what my student said, it was a “stairway to heaven”. My legs were so numb that I slipped…and fell. *blush*

Sliding down..

Before…still very dry and fresh!

After..drenched and muddy…butts!

After lunch, we were all ready for water rafting! As I mentioned before, my favourite part of the trip was the lorry ride to the upstream of the river.

The lorry travelled through narrow and bumpy terrain with durian, rambutan trees at both sides. The air became fresher and cooler as we travelled higher and higher.

The most exciting part was to dodge and duck !Imagine, 30+ people stood at the back of the lorry….It was almost like playing an arcade game. When someone shouted “DODGE!!”, we had to duck or shift to left-right immediately to avoid hitting our faces on branches and huge leaves.

Getting ready..

Drill – learn to posture and to tackle the rapid.

Raft stuck on the rock

More action!

This river was a grade-2 river. But according to the instructor, it was just a “warm-up river” as compared to those in the east Malaysia. It is better for beginner actually.

Compared to this picture, where Natasha and I first water-rafted down the Padas River, Sabah (grade 4).

You can’t see me in the picture because I was already in the water.

“Ta-da”…We made it!!

Because Alastair spent a fortune in the disposables water-proof cameras and photo developing and scanning fees, all of us get to keep these photos as our wonderful memories. Thanks man!.

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