no proper water supply, no electricity
DAY 1
horrible.
arrived on the stupid island in a ferry spewing out toxic chemicals. got sick riding it. stumbled onto the jetty with a heavy bag stuffed full with clothes to find myself in front of an old worn out building saying OBS. looked pertty shitty. was then introduced to instructors blah blah blah the usual stuff. this wasnt not that bad yet.
there were bunks but we were not allowed to sleep in them. then we were given this freaking small store at the very top of a seriously steep and tall hill just to keep our bags. the store contained musty tents, ponchos etc and smelt quite bad. the instructor said that there might be rats around as well so all food was confiscated. so was edible medicine. its supposed to get worse. lunch sucked with overly salty food which i feel can be taken, dried and will be preserved for a few years or so. the drink provided tasted of plastic. slime sums up everything. then we were rushed to change into wet attire to be introduce to kayaking. i was happy. but only for a short while.
as most of you should know, singapore seawater is not exactly very clean. pulau ubin is worse. rubbish floats around everywhere and a closer look allows you to see oil spills. the stupid boat launching ramp is full of barnacles as well. apparently there were string rays hiding under the surface of the water so we had to be careful. but it was still scary. i think i nearly stepped on one.
the water was super salty and pretty green. kayaking was an epic fail. they tried to teach us how to capsize. so we went out 2 boats at a time. and the 2 boats that went out took a super long time to come back. the current was very strong. 1 min of recovery caused them to be swept about 800m away from where we rafted up. so we kind of baked under the hot sun and watch as rubbish floated by, anchored to a rotting life buoy of course. we saw slippers go by, dead fish go by, sea weed go by, and even fried fish go by. oil spills stained our kayaks. so by the time the 2 capsized boats came back, we were a good 45 minutes late. so we cooked in the dark and pitched tents on super muddy ground in the dark. couldnt sleep.
im trying to be positive already. but its really bad and i cant help it.
DAY 2
packed our bags for 3D2N expedition. we were forced to put ponchos inside which were super heavy and utterly useless. we already had a tarp to keep our bags dry from rain.
intro to high elements was okay, and i had more or less done it before during adventure camp. we then treked one whole km to camp 2 which was also the old OBS campsite. bags were super heavy and everyone was super tired. this camp is worse than the first one and it was promised that it would get worse and worse each day. well, by the time we reached, it was quite late and we had to pitch our tents and cook in the dark again. sigh. our rice was burnt at the bottom and soggy at the top.... Joanna said that her campsite contained a rampaging wild boar and the story spread, causing everyone to freakout because we had absolutely no store for our bags and our ration could get taken away anytime by either wild boars or the guard dogs. the sign outside the camp saya beware of guard dogs. thats not to warn trespassers but campers because the guard dog dosent really have much to guard. it just steals your food instead. another sleepless night.
DAY3
woke up at 4.30 am unable to sleep well. we were kayaking today.lugged the stupid poncho and lifejacket all the way to some secluded beach infested with sand flies. current was still as strong as day 1 and it was very hard to paddle. the meander was worse. it was super muddy and we spent more of our time getting stuck than actually rowing anywhere. what more when we had to lug some our dumb heavy kayaks across some land. lunch was in the water and the meander,being super narrow, forced us to go in in single file and caused much congestion. oh goody.
when we finally reached our campsite, we had taken a feaking 6 hours and were all baking under the hot sun because we were locked out of our campsite. the key came only a few hours later. this place was even more secluded than the island itself. the toilet was the beach and the only camping space we had was kind of like 3m by 4m so our tents were super packed together. there was an ant nest we had no choice but to pitch on. pretty miserable. we were even forced to do a stupid sentry duty at night, which disrupted our much needed,deprived of rest time. and all i did was to wake up and feed the mozzies....
day 4
we packed up again and lugged our super heavy bags about 7-8km back to camp 1. this was the worse of all and the tent i was carrying was heavy and badly injured my shoulder. even as i am typing now,, if anyone touches my shoulder, i will feel pain. and we had to walk like that up and down hills, through undergrowth filled wilderness, backed tracking etc. i was feeling super fustrated and by the time we were back at camp 1 everyone gave up and stopped, despite that we had a checkpoint 0 in camp. felt really shitty. we were then given a miserable 1 hour break to eat and change for high elements, which weas rock climbing. and due to my wonderful shoe sole dropping off, by the time i pulled it off in hte toilet, most of the bread rations had been eaten up so i was left with only biscuits for lunch. felt super hungry and didnt have the strength to climb the rockwall. finally pitched and cooked in some light. but now our crappy campsite was at the top of a hill so we had to lug our heavy tents all the way up to pitch.day3 was super rocky ground. day 4 was elevated ground with many roots. gahhhh.........
Day 5
jetty jump was super scary with it nearly being 1 storey high. and doing it in the water made it cold and it sucked. i think i saw a jelly fish near by. water was super salty and then we had 0.5 hours to bathe and choing breakfast, which the canteen was to close at 7.30am. we spent the rest of the morning cleaning up useless equipment and the stupid store.
finally, we left at 2pm and the school bus was late.
the end.
btw, OBS here stands for obviously bull-shitted story
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