and the experience was actually quite great. i might have said that it felt like the chalet, but there were some ups and downs as well so dont really expect it to be pure fun and luxury.
first reassureance. you get to bathe on most days and most days have toilets. however, someplaces really do not have lights
second, this is utterly not bullshitted and i will try my best to give a proper account of what happened.
ENG SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!! our great watch. we obviously dont look like we are dying here right? btw i just googled eng soon and came up with nothing. can someone tell me what this guy is famous for?
obs was really fun and pretty enjoyable.
and yes.
http://www.waitlonglong.com/ does exist
now i shall attempt to elaborate as much on obs as i can
DAY 1
as promised, the school provided transport. but as usual, there was a catch to it. 60 + ppl in one bus. sigh. and the bus went all the way via 52's route, over the toa payoh flyover until CTE then after many more random turns before turning into pungol. Thus we were late. everyone had really cramp bags and many did not bring sleeping bags, which proved to be an unwise decision as i will elaborate on later.
the ferry ride is quite short, considering that pulau ubin is only 2 km away from singapore. well, but its not well maintained as you can see toxic black smoke spweing out from behind the boat.
OBS Camp 1 was the nicest camp that I had ever seen in most camps so far. this is the one i would describe most as like a chalet. the facilities are mostly clean and new and the place is maily a large building. pretty urbanised compared to the typical camps with one large field and many toilets. they even have a souvenir shop there and a proper canteen. ICs are not really needed. i didnt bring any form of identification and nothing happened. all they did was to collect it and safe keep all our valueables. all food and edible medicine was confiscated.
we were given a store which contained most of the equipment needed for our course, which included tents, ponchos, entrenching tool etc and there were proper shelves and racks to keep these things. however, it was quite small and was right on top of a hill. food rations given were pwnage. we had tons of canned food like anchovies, curry chicken, lucheon meat, tuna, white bread, bread with fillings, tons of museli bars and oreos which we sadly lost. there were some random drink powders as well that some decided to concentrate and see how it tasted. my watch instructor is quite friendly as well. thats the person (introduced as CJ) trying to strangle himself with the paddle in the group photo
yes, we did have the intro to kayaking and we were indeed swept away by the current 800m in 1 min. note: current is strongest in early to mid afternoon that thus caused us to get swept away. we were 45 mins late. so we did pitch our tent in the dark and cook in the dark. the stupid tent key holes were filled with mud. thankfully, however, we were given dome tents which were much more stable than A frame tents so there was less chance of it collapsing on us.
we were eating halfway and then we had a fire drill which allowed the guard dog to attack our food........
ppl die of lack of O2 in 4 min. we assembeled in 6 min. but dosent school usually take a much longer time than that?
end of day 1. this is very incoherrent. coundnt sleep well but thankfully i had a sleeping bag
DAY 2
the catered breakfast nearly caused hypertension which i shall not elaborate on. packed for the 3D2N expedition and had the intro to high elements. belaying. so nothing new. trekked approxmiately 1 km to camp 2 with super heavy bag packs. well, the poncho causes it to be very heavy and is useless except to be a cushion on our kayaks. teh bag packs are shared. 2ppl to 1 bag as well. i think this varies from watch to watch. thankful that the bags have really good padding so the bag strap does not cut into our shoulders and is quite comfortable despite the heavy load. once i got used to it, it felt like carrying my 2 math files to school on a normal day. OBS camp 2 is your typical camp with some lodges, which is mainly like an open shelther? like camp christine, except with less camping grounds. but it was still quite spacious. cooking was a little disastrous but still came out fine, except that we were a little late. God was merciful with the weather. the skies were cloudly most of the time but it did not rain. so we had shade and did not have to brave any rain either. infact this was the kind of weather faced on most days so all of us came back without any tan at all. whee. only my watch mark remains...
i kind of volunterred to help plan out the sea expedition. 2 ppl per watch to help plan. Eng Soon was grouped with the Dhamabalan watch. whee. we were told the really lame guppy joke which Elijah had told before so i knew the joke but everyoneelse was pretty amused by it. lalalaal. packed lunch for kayaing that mainly contained of wrapped food cos these dont get wet. ziploc bags are important. the kaykas are open topped as well so long pants are needed.
slept really well despite Jojo saying that a wild boar attatcked her camp site.
DAY 3
forced everybody to wake up really early and unpitch tents in the dark. (this is something that we had to get used to anyway.) ate rations for breakfast and helped transport stuff to the jetty. the indtructors were nice and helped to ship our bags via motor boats to the next campsite. we only needed to carry our ponchos and other stuff essential for kayaking. came to some secluded beach and found the kayaks waiting there alreafy. this beach was filled with sand flies. i was glad though, we were on shedule and ready to go. we only had to wait for herng yi to come for he left every night to go home probably due to his night blindness condition. i helped out as the starboard and did a lot of stupid things. the current was pretty mild at 8am and we reached the meander much faster than expected. i was supposed to watch out for some sharp rocks in the sea which i think i happily went accross without realising cos it was high tide. at one point, i felt something beneath my kayak. maybe those were the rocks. no damage done though.
post continues from here
the meander is really cool. kind of reminds me of the amazon jungle though not theeming with as much wild life. i saw a pretty large monitor lizzard and tried to point it out as a crocodile but sadly no one noticed. lots of random fish and insects around. some ppl saw the fish jumping out of the water. ok, then there were two parts of the route which we had to disembark and carry our kayaks up. the instructors described it as a mud bath/ bank or somthing like that. now that i have mentioned it, think of your impression of a mub bank. a huge lump of mud i suppose? well, that was my first impression so it was quite a surprise when we reached the first one. THIS ONE HAD A DRINKS STALL ON IT WITH A PROPER ROAD!!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL haha. you can see this on the street directory. see pulau ubin and follow the jelutong meander or wadever it is called. we kind of got lost a few times despite bernard being a good navigator because the map was done by satelite and thus did not show a lot of stupid dead ends in the meander. well, but we still reached on time. i feel that we got stuck in the mud simply because we were too early. when we crossed the first one, the tide was at its lowest os some of us got stuck. well, but it was okay. we had a mass peeing session that caused high tide after that. XD the second mud bank was a pile of shit. as in seriously. the soil was the rich black dark brown on the top but he ground was super soft and steping inside and lifting your foot up would reveal a light brown squishy layer below that looks like shit. maybe its shit. who knows? i didnt bother to smell it. we got lost once more and finally found the metal gate that led out to sea. because im pro, my boat didnt crash. (whee highly disputable fact but i was sitting at the back after all)
saw the broken jetty and finally reached kekek or what ever you call it. we were all relieved, only to find out that we were locked out of the campsite for we reached 1.5 hours ahead of schedule. so we ate more food like prunes and rasins, fell asleep on life jackets and became very bored.
this campsite is relatively rocky which is WHY A SLEEPING BAG IS ESSENTIAL. there was no toilet here except for a secluded part of the beach. one end for each gender. duh! but we did shower. and in the most pwnage way you could ever think of. in the quarry of course! the water there is super deep and super clear. the result of 20 years of collected rainwater. the instructor threw a stone inside and it sank all the way down until we could not see it. no one saw it reach the bottom. we kind of did a quarry jump, similar to the jetty jump that we would do later. the water was very clean and refreshing and alot of time was spent dunking each other under water. soo sososososososo cool. i wanna go back again. dont worry we all had our life jackets on.
set up camp and pitched tents. slept super early.
DAY 4
trekking was pretty tiring though i was carrying the tent which was lighter than the bag packs. the stupid strap cut into my shoulder and hurt my shoulder like crap so i was blackfaced most of the journey. one thing though, i found out that i could kill insects with hy's mosquito repellant. reaching camp 1 at about 12 noon after setting off slight earlier than 8. we were super fast! but we had checkpoint 0 which was in the camp. we nearly gave up finding it as we were in camp 1 already and just wanted a rest after travelling through the valley of mosquitoes and randoming around. funny how familarity can lead to us nearly giving up. so close yet so far.
we had rock climbing after that which i did not really do much cos my shoe sole fell off and i was super tired. many others reached the top though. 12 panels in total and the external rockwall is harder than the internal one.
today, we opened a super lot of canned food and had a feast. i felt really full for the first time throughout OBS
camp was on hill top 1 which pretty much explains itself. we saw signs of wild boar. (patches of over turned soil arounf the path showed that the boars had been scavenging for food nearby) some roots and slightly elevated ground but i still slept quite well.
DAY 5
unpitched at 5am and waited to be brought down back to camp 1. had jetty jump which was much like the quarry jump except the the water was not as cool and nice. sea water obviously is not as refreshing. packed up the store and washed the toilets. found a single crushed packedt of oreos and never kenw what happened to the rest of it. kind of realised that we stole alot of our buddy watch's stuff by accident as well that caused them nearly to freakout. split the remainder food after that among ourselves so our bags were much heavier than before we came.
waited around and played a mind degrading game called MRT involving a formula where all station numbers are added together and multiplied by 2, divided by 3 and square rooted and watched the other groups jetty jump. (for all irrational numbers, say punggol)
BOUGHT MY OBS SHIRT MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. ALL I WENT TO OBS FOR WAS TO GET THE AWESOME SHIRT YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY.
reached punggol before 3 so we were advised to walk around the field 5 times and get the bus sweaty. but everyone bought coke instead. i wonder why. most of us dont really drink coke regulary. why the sudden craving?
offered the remainder oranges to miss chua which we ended up giving to the bus driver instead. many people went to KFC afterwards.
came home feeling pretty normal. both places feel pretty comfortable for me.
i dont mind going again. :D
do remember to bring loads of plastic bags and an extra change of clothes if you dont want yo reuse some. sleeping bags are essential as are long sleeves and shorts. do bring a mozzie zapper for fun to kill mozzies though it wont help much. kekek is facing malaysia so do tune in to the jungle disco accross the sea which plays random indian music (i talked to one of my cell mates who went for obs in january and she claimed that they played umbrella) . there is a tunnel activity on the second day but i shall not spoil it for you ppl. it can be pretty lame. i should have brought a disposable camera. forgot to buy one.... haha i didnt bring my proper one either. do bring a hat, not just a cap incase of intense sun so all areas of your head are protected. drink as much water as you can during kayaking to cause high tide (yeah right) and get use to peeing in bushes. just dont share one with a wild boar. a certain stuff-toy male cow with udders on a walking stick might claim to be smarter than you as well.
the end of a really long incoheerent post that is probably too late for group 2 ppl
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