Berkelah Trip

It had beed 2 weeks since coming back from my virgin trip to Berkelah, as a trip leader. Wanted to blog about it but been busy since, though i had a few other entries...haha

I was actually quite worried for the safety of some of the participants as the terrain is rather slippery, for me myself fell a few times coming down from Berkelah. But the trip turned out to be more enjoyable than my recce as all my worries was unfound, except for a few hiccups during the trip.

The trip started off with buying food at Woodlands Seng Siong, where we met the Jerangkang trip people. As mid autumn festival was near, all the groups were buying candles and lanterns while me, weisong, weizhen and kanghong were looking at some tou sha bing and mooncakes which we did buy afterwards. Just when we were paying, weizhen suggested we get tea leaves as well, to make a full package of mid autumn festival celebrations. Hahaha...

After buying food, off we go to larkin. The bus was quite punctual, in fact, it arrived even before 12midnight. So happily, we load up our bags and board the bus only to realise the seats allocated was taken. WTF!!! How can my seats be taken when i had the bus ticket with the seat numbers clearly imprinted on them?!?!? Luckily Munir was around to help me ask the driver what other seats were available. It took us 15min to finally settle down. Pissed off with the Msian bus system.

Reached Kuantan in the wee hours. I brought them to breakfast after washing up and once again met the Jerangkang peeps. Chee Keong was bragging about how nice the fried brinja was and they had already bought all available. ZZZZZ. Neway had a good breakfast and off we go to Berkelah. One of the cabs hollanded and end up on an "adventure trail" engaging a steep slope as the peeps in the cab described. SO EXCITING!!! Anyway, they made it back safe and sound to meet up with the rest, to my relief.

After a light warm up, we started on the trek. The first part was a concrete trail leading to the first waterfall. But there was something strange about Berkelah that morning. I only realised it when i reached the mini river crossing point. THE WATER IN THE RIVER HAD DRIED UP! So was the 2nd river crossing point. But it didnt dampen the morale of the people, and they were making jokes out of it, asking questions like, "what if there is no water at the waterfall?" while weiloong was saying in my shoes,"Hi, welcome to the first waterfall, it was still here one week ago."

So as a trip leader, i had to assure them the waterfall will still be there though i was not sure. hahaha. Much to our joy, the first fall was still there though the water level was rather low. Heard from Abu it hadn't rain in Kuantan for 4 days. I had only intend to rest for half an hour. Everybody was lazing around the boulders while jason and weiloong was attempting to climb up and sit at the waterfall. The more adventurous ones like weisong and kanghong climbed up the waterfall from the side not knowing there is nothing to see up there, and we would be passing by that place on the later trek. Haha NOOB! (I also climbed up there during recce.)

It was only after a while that me and weizhen felt the participants looked lethargic, so weizhen suggested spraying water on all of them. IT WORKED! Most of them started to look alive. Spraying water, swimming in the pool etc etc. So we spent a good hour at the first fall. Along the way to the top, i had only intended to rest at another 2 checkpoints but ended up with numerous checkpoints. A choke point = A rest point. And everywhere they also took photos. ZZZ. I had wanted to prevent another sunburnt cos we would be trekking another 1++ hours under the hot sun with no cover, so i wanted to reach the campsite ASAP. Finally reached the campsite at about 1pm. 4++ hours of trek, but they seemed to be enjoying every moment, especially taking photos. (>.<) One moment JOY looked totally shag and the next moment u can see her with all smiles while taking photo. Ironic!

We had a chop chop lunch and everybody was eager to dive into the olympic-sized swimming pool. The water was chilly but shiok especially on a hot afternoon. After a hoo-haa for 1++hours, most people was lying on the rocks like dead corpse for a afternoon nap. Of course i was not to be left out. Yet, unlike them, i chose a spot in shade and slept comfortably for 2 hours and not knowing some of them were taking pictures of the "dead corpses". When i finally woke up, CK, Yixin and Serene arrived but they missed out the loads of fun we had at the waterfall earlier.

Despite that, i thought they wouldn't be disappointed by what's gonna happened next, unintendedly i would say. Dinner wasn't as spectacular as the week before where i had seafood steamboat, but still good. The biz mag peeps were having "BALLS" steamboat, while the pub peeps were cooking pasta and frying some other stuff. Not to lose out, of course, i cooked pineapple rice which i had learnt recently from serene lim with no hands on session. It would have tasted better with chicken floss. Not that i didnt buy, but it somehow went missing. The most funny scene during the cooking of dinner got to be weizhen and kanghong. While others were talking while cooking, the 2 was like filming a silent movie, not talking though they were cooking together! LOL...

Over dinner, weiloong was stirring some shit, the most notable victims being Yixin and Wee Hian. Apparently, he was "pissing" everybody off and his sub-commers wanted to "disown" him. We had a good laugh over it. And after dinner, we had a short ice breaker, getting to know people from other committees and weiloong was disturbing yixin again when guys introduced themselves as being "green". After that we had a game of charade. Somehow, there was some telepathy between the pub people whereas the biz mags were left pondering why they were lagging behind, at a point where pub was leading 8-3 before the log peeps plus VP decided to enter this compeitition. We caught up with the biz mag and overtaken them but the difference was too huge between us and pub and eventually they won 13-11-7.

As the night was still young, we went on to play with sparklers and lanterns. Heaven didnt seemed happy with us, as rain poured down and we could only hide in our tents. But i must thank the rain on the other hand for giving me an early night. hahaha...

I woke up at abt 7+am. Weizhen and a few others had also woken up and we started cooking breakfast. Dint know weizhen had a nutella craze till he started spreading nutella on almost everything, i.e chicken patty, hashbrown....(WEIZHEN!!! NOT EVERYTHING TASTE GOOD WITH NUTELLA!!! hahaha). We had some noisy sparklers left the night before and me and weizhen decided to wake the lazy bums up using that. It was quite successful except for one person-->weisong!!! I had an even more crazy idea. I decided to smoke him out of the tent with one whole bunch of sparklers. End result: He was still in the tent. I burned my thumb! TMD!!!

We descended at abt 10.30am and reached the foot at about 1+pm. By the time we reached town it was 2+pm and we had a bus to catch at 3pm. It was some mis-judgement on my part to push off the descend late and thus resulting in a rush for time. No time for lunch and i can only ask the participants to da-bao food. Reached Larkin at 8pm exactly and we decided to have dinner at secret recipe in city square. After which most rushed home to catch the Man U-Chelsea match....

Overall it was a good trip for me. I wasn't the ra-ra type so i was glad there was weiloong on my trip though he was "unwanted" by his sub commers. haha... A few hiccups that happened, like getting lost on the trek during descend, rushing to catch the return bus till i had no time to change my clothes. They were lessons learnt and I shall improve on it on my next trip.....