White Water Rafting + Caving + Hot Spring Soaking
Ipoh, Perak, West Malaysia
29th - 31st December 2006
Posted on 9th January 2007.
Updated on 28th January 2007.
I still remembered my first white water rafting escapade with a veritable younger brother Thian Huat, his wife, and a few other adventurers way back in January 2005. That was easily 3 months before I registered Team Spreo as a business. The amount of fun I experienced really gave me the impetus to start this adventure firm with a view to bring affordable adventure trips to many others.
After a few false starts and a couple of wrong turns, chuckle, I finally managed a return to Sungai Kampar where it all started. Amazingly, with the help of Ai Hoon, a fellow BATCian, I managed to gather a very adventurous group of people for our December 2006 white water rafting trip. They were warriors all, and none more evident as when they got into the thick of action!
The real exciting moments during the white water rafting must be the rapids, some of which gave you the stomach churning sensation as you drop in height rapidly, followed by a huge splash of frothing white waters right in your face, guaranteed to awaken any tired soul, and drive away whatever timidity you have left!
Alas, this time round, we only managed to capture those moments on film as our digital camera was not adequately protected from the wet, wet, wet river to shoot those scenes. In our next trip, we promise to bring back raw, exhilarating, moving pictures of the rapids as we negotiate them!
The rafting took slightly more than 2 hours. After that, we had a splendid lunch at Murni Camp. At 2:00pm, we embarked on yet another adventure, caving in Gua Kandu, a former Communist hideout.
The cave was really dark and even with the headlamps turned on, most of the videos had to be digitally brightened. The flying fox routine took quite some time to finish. All 20 of us went through this rite of passage and boy, the presence of mind shown by some was truly admirable. These brave folks were able to shout new year greetings as they descended in less than 5 seconds!
A slight drizzle greeted us as we made out way down the slope to our truck. By the time we reached Murni Camp, it was a torrential downpour. We had to adjust our itinerary to skip the hot spring for the night. We cooked and ate our dinner before retiring near midnight.
The next morning, on the 31st of December, eve of a brave new 2007, we rose early at 6:00am to prepare breakfast and break camp. We were able to set off at 9:00am to our natural hot spring location at Kuala Kubu Bahru which we only reached around 11:00am.
We lingered there for an hour and the folks merely soak their tired feet. The weather was scorching hot and not altogether ideal for hot spring soaking. It would have been splendid to soak in the hot spring on a cold night. While awaiting the return of our vans, we conducted a lucky draw. 5 lucky folks (Ai Hoon, Ai Leng, Hwei Hwei, Kwok Chow, and Michael.) went away with a travel pouch worth $10 each and 1 super duper lucky guy (Tuan Woon!) went away with the grand prize of a water bladder worth $20. =P
Our drivers came for us around 12:30pm and by then, we were all famished once again. After a quick lunch at a nearby town, we started our long 6 hour journey back to Singapore.
What a wet and refreshing way to end the year and what could be better than getting watered down in order to usher in the Chinese Lunar Year of the Fire Pig? Once again, without our trekkers, there would not be Team Spreo. So a big “Thank You” to all for helping out for this trek and for being so brave, sporty, and understanding! (”p)
Allen Tan
Team Spreo
