Okay, so it's been a week since the Rainbow Falls trek and I still haven't finished my blogging posts about it. Yesterday, I went out with the peeps to have a formal dinner. Okay, not exactly formal, but something that's not very ordinary. Everyone was expected to dress up but the only few people who truly dressed up were Raymond and his girlfriend. Then Krystel too. Oh, I was in such a dilemma yesterday. It's like, I told them I'll be wearing a skirt. But then I fumbled and was thinking if I should wear this skirt or that 'cos I was going for English lesson first at school, and I didn't want to turn up in such a nice frilly outfit. So I just settled upon a nice tee, jeans and a light green denim jacket. It looks alright... I think. But I wore wedges. So that oughta made up for not wearing a skirt. I thought I'd be the only girl who will be wearing pants. But it turned out that majority were in jeans! Like, ELizabeth, Steph, Christine, Eileen... so I was like, phew! But Krystel wasn't too happy about me breaking the deal. I told Elizabeth beforehand and everyone of us were... "jean-ed" so... HAHA. Whatever!

Dinner at Tony Romas was WHEE~ great! I did not purposely but in actual fact in coincedence actually saved space in my stomach for the dinner. Well, I woke late and had brunch at 11 in the morning, so I didn't eat till dinner. Haha... Oh well. It was a good thing 'cos my dinner was absolutely... filling! I had honey pork ribs and bbq chicken with baked potato and cole slaw. But wow. Dinner was great! Haha... My combo meal costed $29!!! Krystel kept saying I was so greedy lah!!! 'Cos Jocelyn told her I wanted French Onion Soup. NO LAH! There's beef inside and I can't eat that. NO BEEF. Jocelyn was the one who wanted it BADLY. - it feels so bad to be innocently maligned with something so crappy - oh heck, I'm spending LOTS of money this month... REALLY.

First the $70 for Rainbow Falls, $19 for the water bag for the trek, RM50 I lost at Mcdonalds, $35 for paintball next next Sunday, Halloween Dinner which I would most probably attend... about $12 excluding costume rental! Then... last night's dinner and the piano bar drink, which costs $9! AHHHH~ the horror... I'll be spending lots of money this month. So unlike me! Plus... I want to watch so many movies!

1. Talledega Nights
2. Rob B Hood
3. The Prestige
4. Scoop

ahhhh~

It's crazy...

So... I'm a bit afraid to count the total. But everything comes from my own pocket money except the RM50 I lost... and $20 these 2 weeks on my ezlink card top-up... OH MAN!

Okay... so I think the piano bar at the Grand Copthorne yesterday was pretty relaxing... though it got a little boring. But it's okay at the end, I got to talk to Jocelyn and Steph. I was in between Elizabeth and Akira for the most of it and I didn't have much to talk to them about. GEE... Haha... It's okay. I think the experience was quite nice. I tried a mocktail, Shirley Temple. And then a few sips of Steph's Bloody Mary (I'm not sure about the name - I think it's that. Some tomato and celery thing. IT'S NICE LAH!!!). They all didn't really like it and then thought I got drunk after a few sips.

. . . (=.=)

Anyway, let's continue on the

Rainbow Falls Part Three!!!

Which is SO EXCITING RIGHT?
I think I've gotta end the trilogy here, today. If not, it's not gonna be a trilogy. It's gonna be a four part thing. Lets see how it goes~

So we spent LOTS of time in the river bathing... and I got so shivering cold. But it's alright 'cos when we got out of the river, all that lethargic feeling and sleepiness just went away. After climbing out, we made a grand entrance to our campsite. Our group members were all busy cooking already and they asked if we all floated downstream and got lost or something. Haha!

-nope, we were just enjoying bathing in the river (sniggers) -

Take a look at the snapshot I took from our campsite outlooking the hills!


So we got changed in the tents, wiped up and got down to cooking. Well, not me actually. Eileen and Stephanie went back to grp 1 so it was left with us Krystel, Loisa and I. We sat at the ground sheet but Loisa and Krystel were assigned to cooking pasta while I, sitting behind them, couldn't reach the cooking stuff and had to watch them do all the work. GARH! I got bored, and just slept there will they continue cooking. I offered to help, but Loisa just asked me to watch. WATCH?! No thanks. I just dozed off behind them while they did the pasta. The others had a lot of stuff to cook too! I'm not sure who but one of the seniors said that the people in Rex's group would have good food 'cos he's full of ideas when it comes to dining. Even out in the wild. HAHA. That's good! But honestly, I think we got the best food. We even got an ice-box! Such rare pleasures. We had ice cold Green Tea, rojak-ish potato carrot thingy, curry with bread, nice fattening cheesy pasta, some kinda fish and ... I'm not sure if there're more. But then, it's totally considered a feast already, in the condition that we were in! Amazing lah.

So our dinner was nice and we needed to pee. Jean brought us to the "loo" which is a few metres from the campsite. It was not exactly dark so we had to go further. No one could see us from there and we all squatted in a row and peed! It was pretty gross but we gotta make do with it. It's the only way we could do it! Haha.. not in the river.

Yeah... so, after that we went to wash our hands at the river and 2 guys from our group were going to bathe, so they chased us away. -bleh!- There was a man-made bridge that overlooks the river and we wanted to go up there to take pictures but realised they wouldn't want us taking pictures while they bathed, so we said, "later". But we didn't get a chance anyway because it got dark REALLY QUICKLY. When we say, "dark", it's completely DARK. Without a fire, or a lantern, we really wouldn't be able to see a thing.

After washing our hands, we went back to the campsite to offer our services to wash the mess tins and cutleries. So we brought those stuff to the river and after washing, it got really dark. When we went back to the campsite, it got really boring... After packing some stuff and getting our torches and everything, we went to pee again. It has been about an hour or so anyway; that means we took super long washing our utensils. No wonder the sun was gone...

We went into the tent to put our stuff, then came out to sit on the groundsheet and wanted to just, hang out. BUT!!! DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA!

HUGE Flying ants were just dropping from everywhere onto anywhere. Our heads, slippers, body, there were COUNTLESS, especially in the dark, we couldn't even see where the ants were. Our only source of light was the thing attracting the bugs to our campsite and we had to turn off the lights.

The bugs were everywhere so we just switched off everything and seek refuge in out tents. The girls all hurried into the tents but the floor of the tent was really prickly. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We just started battling the bugs that were in the tent. Mostly small ones, but then there were a few large ones anyway. But we have a WEAPON . . . Loisa the bug hunter! She was the one who was least timid so she started using tissue and catching all the flying ants and throwing them out. In minimal light. The torches were rather dim except for mine, 'cos mine was that really powerful white light torch with many bulbs. It was good stuff! I didn't dare switch mine on because whenever I did that, all the tiny bugs just irritatingly swarmed around my hand. *eek alert*

After awhile, we devised some methods... first, the guys cleaned up the electric lantern and rid it of bugs. They turned it off, then brought it into the tents for us. Then we zipped the tents. After turning on the light in the tent, we lured the bugs in our tent to that source of light, and passed it to the guys outside. HAHA... But after everything was settled, it was around 8pm or so. We had to wake up at 3am the next day, but we were just.. not sleepy after so much ACTION! Battling bugs~

A moment later... Sebastian asked us if we wanted to go see fireflies. Well, DUH! I haven't seen them in all my life so of course I wanted to see them. But the bugs outside? A bit hesitant then... but Loisa and I wanted to see them badly. I just followed and then the girls, seeing us all go out, also went out. We stumbled about in the dark and couldn't find our slippers. We had to off all the lights 'cos we didn't wanna risk getting all the bugs in our tent again. So... we head off after finding our slippers... into the dark path to see fireflies.

WHAT A BEAUTY.

They were just flashing and flashing in a tree... flash flash flash... There. Up in the trees.

Many of them. It was just... beautiful!

After a while, they slowly disappeared 'cos I think they sensed us coming. But we kept REALLY quiet and switched off all the torches. They appeared AGAIN! SWEET~

Heading back to camp was quick and we got into the tent, about 10 of us squeezed in to play a few games. Playing heart attack, then moving on to Bluff! with Loisa's UNO cards. It was FUN! Then we were introduced to a modified version of bluff by Louis.

sidetrack a little...
Loisa is a girl, the Loisa who's my friend. I don't know if I told you all beforehand.
But Louis is a guy, one of our group mates. It's so funny when those seniors started calling Louis and then Loisa answered, "Yeah?!". We had to say, "not you! not you!". Then she'll, "huh?! OH!!!".
It's pretty funny...
And when trekking, they were partners so Louis kept calling Loisa "Louis" while Loisa kept calling Louis "Loisa". Okay. That's confusing.

Bluff was pretty fun! We played till about 10 plus or 11pm... and then we had a visit by Lijing, a girl from another group. By that time, we were playing "truth or dare" for the 3 losers of the game. It was William, Krystel and Loisa. (HAHA) The truth was... some question I'll elaborate later and the dare is damn funny. The person had to take the lantern out of the tent, switch it on, hold it high above his/her head and wait for all the flying ants to come swooping down. Haha. Of course, no one chose dare. Truth was, "Which guy/gal impressed you the most during the trek?". William was ultra hesitant to answer and it was really crappy. They had to change the question to "Have you ever had a girlfriend/ Do you have a girlfriend?". SO LAME... I can't tell you guys the answers to those though. They said, "what is said in the tent dies in the tent and what is said in malaysia dies in malaysia", in terms of the game of "Truth or Dare". :)

Anyway, we went out to stand around for awhile then they guys went off to the trucks while we gals went back into the tent after telling them that we wanted to stay out and talk the night away. (haha.. oops!) So we went to sleep at around 11pm. The 5 of us gals in the tent. I think the guys came back and were like, "diao... they're sleeping already?!!! I thought they wanted to talk?!" -haha, I say again, OOPS!-

Sunday, 15th October, 2006.

I think I slept like a stone. Loisa said I was all stiff and heavy when sleeping. But it was a good night's sleep. I was the first to wake! I think, I heard people walking around, then I heard 2 really loud *bangs*, like they shot a gun in the air or something. Definitely got a fright then. Then someone came to our tent to wake us up. I was the only one awake so that fella just went off seeing that I had already sat up. So i shook Loisa and then asked her to wake the others. I shook Krystel and woke her up but then everyone went back to sleep after waking up! I was like.. ". . ."

what the...

So I kept making lots of noises. HAHA

And finally sat up to pack my stuff. We had to go already. I think I made quite a din! So they woke up... HAHA... Yeah!

We quickly packed up, peed again and... hey, went off and loaded our stuff in the back of one of those 4wds. A bit shuffling here and there, the guys un-pitched the tents, kept it, and we headed off. Actually, we girls were supposed to get back to the white lorry and sit outside. BUT NO WAY!!! To have branches slapping us in complete darkness? We do worry. That's a no-no. So they guys surrended their seats and we girls squeezed into one of the 4WDs. Ours was the first car to drive off. It was ultra-squeezy and super bumpy the whole 2hrs ride back to civilisation...

I think Loisa had it the worst. She had to sit on the floor cos she kept falling off her seat. We were so worried she'd puke. But we didn't even had breakfast or anything. I mean... but I think she had a hard time. :( really. Sorry I couldn't do anything to help. My "feng you" and sour plum was in my backpack which was in another vehicle.

I think the driver was really fast lah. I didn't check my watch but he made it back real quickly. Then... we had a hot drink each at the Sungei Lembing coffeeshop. It was... WHOA, good! I think we waited more than 30 minutes before all the other cars arrived. I don't know what was the situation but I heard something cocked up somewhere...

So we had a nice drink before collecting our bags and putting them in a clan building. Then we head off for BUKIT PANAROMA. Yes. The 2nd part of our trek.

finally? I still have lots to tell. Well, it was around 6.20am when we started to ascend Bukit Panaroma (Panaroma Hill). It was 800m worth of steep stairs and steep slopes. I wore my track shoes this time, DUH. No booties here! hehe. Okay, not funny. So, we started the climb after taking a few pictures with the group.




The leader of the trip was a pretty impatient and asked us to hurry. He said, there's only one right way up and one right way down. And I think he didn't want to miss the sunrise anyway, no assumptions. We stretched our muscles 'cos we didn't want to have cramps. I mean, 800m up steep! So, we started. I couldn't catch my breath after awhile, so I just stood at one side and let the people pass. I waited till almost everyone passed. Rex offered to help carry my waistpouch so I just "threw" it to him. HAH! THANKS. Okay, so this senior, a lady, helped me along the way. She was VERY NICE and super ENCOURAGING. She later on carried my bag, let me drink her tiny bottle of water, use her bandana to wipe my sweat and taught me how to breathe and all.

Krystel lost her camera and had to climb the hill 1.5 times okay! *honoured*
But I think it was really sad for her... But everyone searched and combed the area to no avail. sigh. All the pictures... :(

Anyway, it was awfully awful! The ascend. You know, I had wanted so much to just stop and take a break for awhile but the senior told me I can't stop and she just kept urging me to move on ahead... because if I stopped, I would lose my tempo and it'd be hard to regain it, making it even more tiring. WHAT A TORTURE! I was utterly exhausted when I saw so many steps ahead of me. But she kept telling me not to look ahead at how many steps there are ahead but to focus on the step that was in front of me, and to take one step at a time. WHA. She's real good. Okay, so I finally reached and saw the others there though Krystel was still not there yet. The scenery was good and the air was fresh. We took a few pictures here and there anyway.







Wow. What an accomplishment.

Although we sort of missed the sunrise, it's okay... along the way up, that senior kept talking about the famous wanton mee and about pooing... argh! Hey!

I wanted to poo and then eat my lunch later... stop repeating and make it such a difficult ordeal for me! Haha... okay.. whatever..

Going down was hard on the knees. But it was WAY better than going up. It was the slopes that were difficult. They're pretty steep anyway. So there was always the high probability of slipping and falling. Yeah... There was...

Oh this time, Rex offered to carry my waistpouch for me again. Haha. I graciously refused his offer. Now that I think of it, I should have let him carry it for me! Haha, nah.. I'm not so bad. Gee, I mean, going down wasn't as bad, it's just the knees that really hurt. Oh well.

I was dripping wet and stinky already. But I had lent my extra tee to Stephanie so I couldn't change when I got back to the clan. Anyway, after going to the toilet, cooling down, washing my face and drinking lots of water, the group of us went to the market to have our lunch. I had some curry mee 'cos the famous wanton mee was SOLD OUT! grrr~ Nevermind... then we walked around the market... which was selling lots of stuff, and then the guys bought some pop-pop which were actually ummm, some wrapped up stuff which bursts and gives out a really loud sound when thrown onto the ground. Then we walked one whole round around the place and... yeah, that's about it. After we went back to the clan building, we brushed our teeth and washed up, then sprayed on some of my body spray. Later, I changed out of my track shoes and wore my comfortable pair of slippers.

We got down to playing UNO! Then a bit of "heart attack", and we had to set off to Larkin... a six hours ride perfect for sleeping! -comfort!-

Okay, as much as I really wish to finish up this post, I really need to go! HAHA... So there's part 4 anyway. This has been a really long post... Not much left to go lar, but...

[TO BE CONTINUED!]

-stay tuned for the drama. Yes, more drama coming up.-