Amazing experience
I'm a bit stuck for a topic today, so I'm going to talk about a holiday we took in 2004, specifically one part of it.
We went to Malaysia, staying with Saffron (Ele's sister) in Kuala Lumpur. Whilst there we also went on a road trip to the Cameron Highlands, Penang, and took a few days in Thailand in Hat Yai, Phuket and Ao Nang. Phuket in particular was fantastic. But that isn't want I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is camping. Camping doesn't sound exciting. It promotes images of Cubs and Scouts sleeping in WWII-era tents in fields, cooking sausages and playing games. Or the same thing, but with the Cubs and Scouts replaced by a family of 5 plus a dog, with a tent pitched next to their people carrier. Most sites have wash facilities and toilet blocks; all mod cons.
This was not that sort of camping. This mixed powerful 4x4's (and even a 6x6), a three million-year-old rainforest, huge machetes, illegal chemicals (no, not that sort!), CB-radios and plenty of beer. The sort of stuff every man would enjoy.
The crew consisted of Me, Ele, Jess, Chris (Ele's mum), Saffron (Ele's sister), Vicky (Saffron's husband), and several of their friends, whose names I probably won't spell correctly: Atek, Keith, Stu, Sean, Len-Ho and Lee.
We had a convoy of 5 vehicles, A Land Rover 110 twin-cab pickup ("Two-Blue") with a huge V8 belonging to Keith and driven by Vicky with me, Chris and Ele as passengers, a Land Rover 90 ("Gazelle") owned and driven by Saffron with Jess as a passenger, a very odd Volvo 4x4-truck-thing ("Thunderbird-1") , a very odd Volvo 6x6-truck-thing ("Thunderbird-2") owned jointly by Keith and Stu, and driven respectively by them, and a Jeep Wranger ("Crap Jeep thing, buy a Land Rover lah!") owned and driven by Sean. The rest of the guys were distributed amongst these three vehicles.
We set off from Vicky's workshop mid-afternoon. The first amusing incident came when the police pulled up alongside Keith in Thunderbird-1. T-1 was not licenced for road use, but was being driven there anyway, given that things are not quite as strict (i.e. the police are more bribeable) than here. As they pulled alongside, Keith was simultaneously smoking a cigarette, drinking a can of beer and on his mobile phone. They had a look at T-1, gave him an appreciative nod and drove off! We stopped off at a petrol station and loaded up with basically their entire stock of bottled water, cigarettes and ice. The ice was put into the big coolboxes containing the drinks (4 of these full of cans of beer, 1 with non-alcoholic drinks!). We drew quite a bit of attention, especially from kids, with our convoy of heavily equipped vehicles. Some more police pulled into the station, so the Volvos made a quick getaway, lest they be discovered for being unlicensed!
We eventually arrived in a small town where we stopped for a quick bite at a suprisingly large restaurant (although that term is possibly a little grand!), and then headed off the beaten track into the jungle. By now it was dark, so Vicky took the lead as he had been there before. We drove down an old logging track for a few miles, forded a river, climbed the bank on the other side and made our camp. Camp consisted of a huge tarpaulin strung up between a tree and one of the Volvos. Under this we setup chairs and camp-beds and sat down to drink lots of beer. At some point Atek arrived, and he and some of the guys went off for a play in the 6x6. An hour or so later (at about 1am), Sean wandered back into the camp asking for some help... the rest of us piled into Two-Blue and set off down the track. We soon found them, stuck at 45 degrees sideways in a ditch... they were rescued quickly enough! Soon after we went to sleep, although I was rather unnerved by the hand-sized moths attracted to our light.
The next morning we were able to see our site by daylight for the first time. It was stunning. We saw monkeys in the trees, even. One thing that couldn't be missed in daylight was the bridge over the river. Vicky had just thought it more fun to drive through the thing rather than take the easy bridge. We had a wash in the river and packed up camp, before setting off deeper into the jungle.
Soon the relatively smooth track gave way to a rutted path. We came to bridges that were made of literally three tree trunks - one on one side, two on another - that crossed ravines deeper than I'd care to fall down. We inched over these, with one member of our party acting as a navigator by standing on the other side and guiding the drivers across. Hair-raising stuff. One slip and you'd be tumbling down. We drove up a steep track littered with HUGE boulders. Every obstacle I saw had me convinced we would not be able to get past it, but we did, due to the capabilities of the vehicles and the skills of the drivers. A couple of times we stopped and waited for the others to catch up. It was eerily quiet. The rainforest has this ability to absorb all sound. I couldn't hear the other vehicles until they rounded the bend.
After a few hours we arrived at the second campsite. This was not that far from the first (stupidly I didn't take a GPS with me to log the trip, but I suspect the overhead foliage would seriously have messed up the signals anyway). It was probably only 4 or 5 kilometers, but that was quite deep into the jungle, really. This camp had last been visited a couple of years ago, and had completely grown over in that time. The rainforest grows very quickly. A path to the river was made by bashing a clearance through with T-1. We then had a lovely spot by the river to camp in, after all the grass had been flattened by force-of-vehicle, and sprayed with DDT (that's the illegal chemicals I was talking about!) to keep the insects away. We had a BBQ'd dinner of sorts, and plenty more beer (although plenty had been consumed throughout the day anyway!). A big fire was lit to keep away the nastier of the animals prevalant in the rainforest and slept, this time under mosquito nets.
I awoke in the morning to find three nasty-looking gigantic fly-type things had somehow gotten through my net and were buzzing around my face.That woke me up pretty quickly! Some of the others had gone off early to explore (by 4x4, of course), so the rest of us put our camp-chairs into the river (more of a very-wide stream here, really as it was very shallow and not very fast flowing), and sat there chatting, eating, smoking and drinking for most of the morning. After a while we realised the others were taking a long time, and we couldn't raise them on the radio, so we hatched a plan to pack up some of the camp, leave the girls packing up the rest, and the guys would go off and try and find the missing others, or at least get to a point where they were raisable on the radio. Just before we were about to set off, they came back, though.
So we set off back to civilisation, except this time I was driving! It's a scary business and hard work! The vehicle was very powerful, a 4-litre V8 (although it wasn't running great), and in low-range it will just shoot up the steepest and bumpiest of slopes as if it wasn't there. Somewhere along the route we met up with another batch of 4x4ers. It was pleasing that on one steep downhill section I made it down without trouble, and one of them got really stuck. Beginners luck, presumably. Two-Blue had started to exhibit some reluctance to work properly (nothing to do with my driving, honest!), by misfiring and being very reluctant to start. Vicky took back the controls when we came to the first tree-trunk bridge, fortunately. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be writing this today...
At one of the log-bridges, Stu, in the 6x6, decided to go last, as it was looking a bit rickety and he was in the heaviest vehicle. When he was going over, there was a loud crack and the back of his vehicle dropped alarmingly and slid off to one side. The look on his face was a picture - of terror. With some clever winching he was hauled off, just.
Eventually we made it back to the first campsite, where we washed the mud off the vehicles in the river. Stu, the resident mad Australian then saw the slope between the exit-bank of the river, and the track leading to the bridge. It was at least a 70 degree angle, but he reckoned he could drive the 6x6 up it, so he did. It scrabbled for grip at the back and then launched itself into the air before crashing back down to earth. Quite impressive!
We drove back to the small village, with Vicky doing some rally-style driving at speeds that were surely far too quick for the terrain, and had dinner in the same restaurant (where fish is literally an entire fish, head, tail, eyes the lot, served up on a plate), who didn't seem to mind that we were all filthy dirty. Well, some had washed in the river. As I had to unload the vehicles back at the workshop I didn't bother. We then set off back for home. At some point we lost radio contact with Saffron, who had also been having a bit of car trouble. We doubled-back (it was just Vicky, Ele and me at this point, as Chris had joined Saff and Jess in Gazelle) and took a different route to see if we could see them. We couldn't, so we concluded they were Ok, but we were now approaching a toll-road that we didn't want to be approaching. Vicky therefore did the only sensible thing, and reversed down the 6-lane highway, to a point where we could drive over the central reservation. This central reservation was quite high and made of concrete, but we were in a capable vehicle. We bounced over it, but this had the affect of doing something nasty to the car, and we pulled over on the other side of the highway, immobile. This time it was more seriously broken and it took Vicky over an hour to get it going again. Worse, we only had one beer left and it wasn't even cold. Eventually it was fixed and with some more interesting driving (in the UK it would have resulted in road-rage, in Malaysia it was practically standard driving behaviour anyway and dismissed with a wave of the hand).
We finally made it back to the workshop. We used some metal ladders to drive Saff's car out of the workshop where it had been stored (there is a 2-foot concrete ledge to get up), and then it was decided to just drive the 4x4's and the 6x6 up the ledge as it was easier, so we laid the ladders down onto the ground. The 6x6 was the first to go up, and its wheels flung the ladders back about thirty feet across the carpark. Quite a spectacle!
We made it home at about 2am, where I had possibly the longest shower I've ever had in my entire life. We chucked all our things in the laundry room Saff had for the maid to deal with the next day (big benefit of living in Malaysia!). Believe me, that room did not smell very nice!
All in all it was an amazing experience, and one I'd like to repeat at some point. The fact that I remember it so clearly nearly three years later proves that. I normally can't remember what I did last week! It is also the only time I've ever done my "business" in a jungle with a hole dug in the ground. You haven't lived until you've literally shit in the woods.
We went to Malaysia, staying with Saffron (Ele's sister) in Kuala Lumpur. Whilst there we also went on a road trip to the Cameron Highlands, Penang, and took a few days in Thailand in Hat Yai, Phuket and Ao Nang. Phuket in particular was fantastic. But that isn't want I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is camping. Camping doesn't sound exciting. It promotes images of Cubs and Scouts sleeping in WWII-era tents in fields, cooking sausages and playing games. Or the same thing, but with the Cubs and Scouts replaced by a family of 5 plus a dog, with a tent pitched next to their people carrier. Most sites have wash facilities and toilet blocks; all mod cons.
This was not that sort of camping. This mixed powerful 4x4's (and even a 6x6), a three million-year-old rainforest, huge machetes, illegal chemicals (no, not that sort!), CB-radios and plenty of beer. The sort of stuff every man would enjoy.
The crew consisted of Me, Ele, Jess, Chris (Ele's mum), Saffron (Ele's sister), Vicky (Saffron's husband), and several of their friends, whose names I probably won't spell correctly: Atek, Keith, Stu, Sean, Len-Ho and Lee.
We had a convoy of 5 vehicles, A Land Rover 110 twin-cab pickup ("Two-Blue") with a huge V8 belonging to Keith and driven by Vicky with me, Chris and Ele as passengers, a Land Rover 90 ("Gazelle") owned and driven by Saffron with Jess as a passenger, a very odd Volvo 4x4-truck-thing ("Thunderbird-1") , a very odd Volvo 6x6-truck-thing ("Thunderbird-2") owned jointly by Keith and Stu, and driven respectively by them, and a Jeep Wranger ("Crap Jeep thing, buy a Land Rover lah!") owned and driven by Sean. The rest of the guys were distributed amongst these three vehicles.
We set off from Vicky's workshop mid-afternoon. The first amusing incident came when the police pulled up alongside Keith in Thunderbird-1. T-1 was not licenced for road use, but was being driven there anyway, given that things are not quite as strict (i.e. the police are more bribeable) than here. As they pulled alongside, Keith was simultaneously smoking a cigarette, drinking a can of beer and on his mobile phone. They had a look at T-1, gave him an appreciative nod and drove off! We stopped off at a petrol station and loaded up with basically their entire stock of bottled water, cigarettes and ice. The ice was put into the big coolboxes containing the drinks (4 of these full of cans of beer, 1 with non-alcoholic drinks!). We drew quite a bit of attention, especially from kids, with our convoy of heavily equipped vehicles. Some more police pulled into the station, so the Volvos made a quick getaway, lest they be discovered for being unlicensed!
We eventually arrived in a small town where we stopped for a quick bite at a suprisingly large restaurant (although that term is possibly a little grand!), and then headed off the beaten track into the jungle. By now it was dark, so Vicky took the lead as he had been there before. We drove down an old logging track for a few miles, forded a river, climbed the bank on the other side and made our camp. Camp consisted of a huge tarpaulin strung up between a tree and one of the Volvos. Under this we setup chairs and camp-beds and sat down to drink lots of beer. At some point Atek arrived, and he and some of the guys went off for a play in the 6x6. An hour or so later (at about 1am), Sean wandered back into the camp asking for some help... the rest of us piled into Two-Blue and set off down the track. We soon found them, stuck at 45 degrees sideways in a ditch... they were rescued quickly enough! Soon after we went to sleep, although I was rather unnerved by the hand-sized moths attracted to our light.
The next morning we were able to see our site by daylight for the first time. It was stunning. We saw monkeys in the trees, even. One thing that couldn't be missed in daylight was the bridge over the river. Vicky had just thought it more fun to drive through the thing rather than take the easy bridge. We had a wash in the river and packed up camp, before setting off deeper into the jungle.
Soon the relatively smooth track gave way to a rutted path. We came to bridges that were made of literally three tree trunks - one on one side, two on another - that crossed ravines deeper than I'd care to fall down. We inched over these, with one member of our party acting as a navigator by standing on the other side and guiding the drivers across. Hair-raising stuff. One slip and you'd be tumbling down. We drove up a steep track littered with HUGE boulders. Every obstacle I saw had me convinced we would not be able to get past it, but we did, due to the capabilities of the vehicles and the skills of the drivers. A couple of times we stopped and waited for the others to catch up. It was eerily quiet. The rainforest has this ability to absorb all sound. I couldn't hear the other vehicles until they rounded the bend.
After a few hours we arrived at the second campsite. This was not that far from the first (stupidly I didn't take a GPS with me to log the trip, but I suspect the overhead foliage would seriously have messed up the signals anyway). It was probably only 4 or 5 kilometers, but that was quite deep into the jungle, really. This camp had last been visited a couple of years ago, and had completely grown over in that time. The rainforest grows very quickly. A path to the river was made by bashing a clearance through with T-1. We then had a lovely spot by the river to camp in, after all the grass had been flattened by force-of-vehicle, and sprayed with DDT (that's the illegal chemicals I was talking about!) to keep the insects away. We had a BBQ'd dinner of sorts, and plenty more beer (although plenty had been consumed throughout the day anyway!). A big fire was lit to keep away the nastier of the animals prevalant in the rainforest and slept, this time under mosquito nets.
I awoke in the morning to find three nasty-looking gigantic fly-type things had somehow gotten through my net and were buzzing around my face.That woke me up pretty quickly! Some of the others had gone off early to explore (by 4x4, of course), so the rest of us put our camp-chairs into the river (more of a very-wide stream here, really as it was very shallow and not very fast flowing), and sat there chatting, eating, smoking and drinking for most of the morning. After a while we realised the others were taking a long time, and we couldn't raise them on the radio, so we hatched a plan to pack up some of the camp, leave the girls packing up the rest, and the guys would go off and try and find the missing others, or at least get to a point where they were raisable on the radio. Just before we were about to set off, they came back, though.
So we set off back to civilisation, except this time I was driving! It's a scary business and hard work! The vehicle was very powerful, a 4-litre V8 (although it wasn't running great), and in low-range it will just shoot up the steepest and bumpiest of slopes as if it wasn't there. Somewhere along the route we met up with another batch of 4x4ers. It was pleasing that on one steep downhill section I made it down without trouble, and one of them got really stuck. Beginners luck, presumably. Two-Blue had started to exhibit some reluctance to work properly (nothing to do with my driving, honest!), by misfiring and being very reluctant to start. Vicky took back the controls when we came to the first tree-trunk bridge, fortunately. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be writing this today...
At one of the log-bridges, Stu, in the 6x6, decided to go last, as it was looking a bit rickety and he was in the heaviest vehicle. When he was going over, there was a loud crack and the back of his vehicle dropped alarmingly and slid off to one side. The look on his face was a picture - of terror. With some clever winching he was hauled off, just.
Eventually we made it back to the first campsite, where we washed the mud off the vehicles in the river. Stu, the resident mad Australian then saw the slope between the exit-bank of the river, and the track leading to the bridge. It was at least a 70 degree angle, but he reckoned he could drive the 6x6 up it, so he did. It scrabbled for grip at the back and then launched itself into the air before crashing back down to earth. Quite impressive!
We drove back to the small village, with Vicky doing some rally-style driving at speeds that were surely far too quick for the terrain, and had dinner in the same restaurant (where fish is literally an entire fish, head, tail, eyes the lot, served up on a plate), who didn't seem to mind that we were all filthy dirty. Well, some had washed in the river. As I had to unload the vehicles back at the workshop I didn't bother. We then set off back for home. At some point we lost radio contact with Saffron, who had also been having a bit of car trouble. We doubled-back (it was just Vicky, Ele and me at this point, as Chris had joined Saff and Jess in Gazelle) and took a different route to see if we could see them. We couldn't, so we concluded they were Ok, but we were now approaching a toll-road that we didn't want to be approaching. Vicky therefore did the only sensible thing, and reversed down the 6-lane highway, to a point where we could drive over the central reservation. This central reservation was quite high and made of concrete, but we were in a capable vehicle. We bounced over it, but this had the affect of doing something nasty to the car, and we pulled over on the other side of the highway, immobile. This time it was more seriously broken and it took Vicky over an hour to get it going again. Worse, we only had one beer left and it wasn't even cold. Eventually it was fixed and with some more interesting driving (in the UK it would have resulted in road-rage, in Malaysia it was practically standard driving behaviour anyway and dismissed with a wave of the hand).
We finally made it back to the workshop. We used some metal ladders to drive Saff's car out of the workshop where it had been stored (there is a 2-foot concrete ledge to get up), and then it was decided to just drive the 4x4's and the 6x6 up the ledge as it was easier, so we laid the ladders down onto the ground. The 6x6 was the first to go up, and its wheels flung the ladders back about thirty feet across the carpark. Quite a spectacle!
We made it home at about 2am, where I had possibly the longest shower I've ever had in my entire life. We chucked all our things in the laundry room Saff had for the maid to deal with the next day (big benefit of living in Malaysia!). Believe me, that room did not smell very nice!
All in all it was an amazing experience, and one I'd like to repeat at some point. The fact that I remember it so clearly nearly three years later proves that. I normally can't remember what I did last week! It is also the only time I've ever done my "business" in a jungle with a hole dug in the ground. You haven't lived until you've literally shit in the woods.
posted by Nej at
1:35 pm
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