The Kampar Chronicles

Pastor Dennis Balan a.k.a. Driver!

My church organises youth camps annually during the March holidays which unfortunately upsets those whom are pursuing their tertiary education as there is no such thing as “March holidays” for them. Some might take a few days off from college to join the younger youths but most would forgo it as they consider education more important. Perhaps some would forgo the camp for other personal reasons. Due to that, we college going youths do not have the opportunity to go for camps together, to know each other better as well as to foster friendship. We do not encourage relationships more advanced than friends =p. Besides missing the annual camps, some of us college going youths are separated as we hold leadership positions. We do not meet in the same cell group on Friday nights. You might argue that we could at least make it a point to meet outside church time. Don’t fret. We do play futsal together once in a while but yet again, not everyone is into the same thing. Everybody is unique!

Realising the difficulties for us college going youths to go for a vacation together, we decided that we should organise a camp specially for ourselves. Planning was done a few months prior to the actual date. It was nice of our dear pastor to organise the trip for us. I guess my sister helped too but I am not too sure about that. The destination Kampar was chosen from a wide array of places. On the side note, this year’s youth camp was organised there too. Even the the venue was the same! The Grand Kampar Hotel! Wonder whether the management was worried when they saw FGA USJ again in their reservation list! Heard stories about our youth camp =]. Weeks before D-day, we were talking about the possibility of bringing our game consoles together as there seem to be a lot of free time on our hands. However, a day before the trip, I had a talk with Nicholas and decided that we should not bring them as we already have our cameras to lug around! Sorry to disappoint the others but in the end we still had fun playing other games!

Li Teng, Assistant Coordinator

D-day was on a Friday – had to take a day’s leave from work. Finished packing on the day itself too. I did not know exactly how many change of clothes I should bring but I made a guess anyhow – which was exactly the amount I needed to survive the trip! Instead of bringing my camera gear in the huge bag which I normally use, I decided to downsize so I would not have a hard time carrying it – especially during meal times. The only downside of the downgrade is that I have to carry my flash unit and not have it placed in the bag. Loaded all luggage including my sister’s into the trunk of the car. We were supposed to meet at FGA USJ before leaving for Kampar, and so we did. We were the first to arrive there at a time of 9.40 AM or so. A few minutes later, pastor came in the office and gave us our assignments moments later! We were required to find 30 books of the Bible from a long passage! I did this before but I couldn’t recall. The Ho coalition managed to complete the task before the rest arrived! With the help of someone of course =].

People started to arrive one by one soon after. We grouped together to pray for the journey and the vacation we were about to endeavour. We made our way down the stairs and into our vehicles. We had a total of 16 people for the trip. Common sense would tell you that no single vehicle could accommodate all of us right? We had to group ourselves into groups of 11 and 5. The first would have the privilege of the van while the second would sit in the car, driven by Jonathan Loh – it’s his parents’ car by the way. Tian Pei Yi who had plans of snapping us guys in our slumber had her dreams dashed. She was in the group of 5! That’s good news for us guys! I tell you she’s guy crazy – maybe only sleeping guys =p. However, it’s also not fun not having someone to disturb us while on the road!

Jade and Citrine, both sisters

Our driver was Pastor Dennis, whom has been driving automatic transmission vehicles for a long time. The church van was a manual one. Due to the sudden change, we were all treated to a “horse ride” as pastor kept forgetting to press the clutch – or did he do it on purpose? On the highway, we did not have anything to do other than have a short nap or small chatters. No shouts or screams of joy! With Jonathan tailing the van, we, the guys decided to disturb them a little! Used Nicholas’ camera equipped with the 55-200mm lens with my circular polarizing filter (CPL) to shoot the “unsuspecting” driver and passengers! Unfortunately no one was caught sleeping in the car! Besides that, the inside of the car turned out dark as there was no source of light – even so, we could determine who’s who from the picture. All thanks to the mighty CPL! It cuts reflections off surfaces by the way. Other than shooting, Aung Ren Yau “mocked” them by showing them a notice that reads “This seat for children below 25kg!”. The bloggers were busy snapping our pictures – Song Ee Leen and Tian Pei Yi. We stopped for a short while at one of rest areas before heading to the Grand Kampar Hotel.

We reached Kampar a few hours after midday. Instead of heading straight for the hotel, we decided to look for lunch first. Pastor Dennis, equipped with “information” on a hawker area led the pack around the marketplace and past a pork market! Not only once but twice, ha ha! Pastor stopped the van in the middle of the road with Jonathan stopping too. Made a call and asked for him to lead the way. Guess what? There were cars piling up behind us! I do not think that they honked at us but only a stare as they passed by us. Small town is great! Finally we made our way to the hawker stall selling the famous beef ball noodles – so it seems. We certainly gave the owner a boost for the income of the month of June! Imagine 16 hungry people at one go! Food was really cheap and that was a good thing.

Nicholas, attempting to replicate the “heavenly” feel

We checked in after that and stormed the rooms! We were all living on the same floor, something that is impossible in youth camps – the guys and girls must be separated at all costs! Not for college going youths though! Envious? We had a total of four rooms. One for the two pastors and the other three for two groups of five girls and us guys. Three of the rooms were literally next to each other while one of it was far away comparatively. We guys were not the outcast! Directly opposite our room were the girls’ and on our right were the pastors’. A minute or two checking out the room, our assignments were delivered – find all 30 books of the Bible in the passage! Well, as I did mention, the Ho coalition has already completed it. Guys being guys, did not rush the assignment but took time to relax instead! Nicholas and Jonathan both chose the only two single beds, leaving me and Ren Yau to share a king sized bed. It is not that I wanted it either! Ha ha! We unpacked, relaxed a little and tried some portraiture styles before heading for the rooftop. Nicholas and I brought our cameras just in case an opportunity to shoot comes across. However, we spent the whole time playing ping pong with Li Teng and Ren Yau! Li Teng is much more experienced than us – she practically creamed us. Those who brought swimsuits, well, almost all took a dip in the swimming pool of four feet equipped with CCTVs. Pei Yi was only dipping her feet into the swimming pool due to circumstances stated in her own site. She however joined us for a game of ping pong after that.

Time went by quickly as we enjoyed ourselves on the top of the hotel roof. The girls in the pool didn’t have the privilege of having the pool to themselves for long. A bunch of kids stormed the pool together with their mischief! They were splashing water at each other as though as they were firing real life guns, shouting “Reload!” every few seconds. Of course when there’s a “war”, there tend to have “collateral damage”. The girls had to tolerate the chlorinated water coming for them from the other side of the pool. Not for long though as we soon made our ways back to our hotels rooms. I didn’t take any pictures, sadly. Even though I was playing ping pong for only a short time, I was sweating enough to wet my t-shirt. I had to change into a new pair of clothes and was quite worried that I will not have enough t-shirts for the whole trip. Anyway, we had our baths and made our ways down to the hotel lobby before scavenging for dinner.

Nicholas Wong, shooting the Grand Kampar Hotel

We had no idea where to look for food as we are not familiar with the area. Jonathan suggested that we ate claypot rice. Since Nicholas and I knows of someone who is currently studying in UTAR, we contacted her and asked her of a place to eat claypot rice. That someone is an author of this site, known as God Strength! The landmark for the claypot rice shop was Watsons. It seems easy to find a modern franchise in the middle of a backward town but it actually isn’t! We made rounds and contacted our informer as we attempted to locate the shop. We found the shop at last, situated at the corner of the junction of the road leading to Kampar Baru (that’s the location of the Hotel)! Yet again, we did give a boost to the shop’s income for that month. Food was great, no complains from me other than the burnt rice – I know that it is supposed to be the nicest part of the dish but I just don’t like it. We went next door (Watsons) to buy some snacks for the three days we will be spending in the hotel. We made our way back to the hotel after that.

Since Wei Ling was around town, we decided to meet up and have a little chat. When we reached the hotel, a stage was seen on a nearby field. They have started construction early in the evening and everything seems to be ready to rock at night. I taught that there was going to be a major event there and kept my hopes up high. Everybody went up to their respective rooms. The rest except Nicholas, Ren Yau and I met in a room to play some games. For us, we went down to the hotel lobby after receiving word that Wei Ling is already waiting for us there. We went for a walk, noticed that things were started to get heated up on the stage and didn’t decide on a table to sit. Instead, we walked to 7-11 to get some drinks. Walking back towards the hotel, we met Pastor Dennis enjoying the performances on stage. In between performances, messages regarding unity were mentioned. Well, it’s obvious that it was orchestrated by the government. I was hoping for a rock concert but instead we have dangdut! I was dancing to the music and attracted more attention than the performers on stage it seems. Ha ha! We bid farewell to pastor and Wei Ling before returning to our rooms. We didn’t remain there for the whole night but joined the rest of the group for games.

As for games, we played taboo, bluff, fishing, heart attack and hand tapping! The girls wanted to play a traditional guys versus girl format! However, we guys were outnumbered 2 to 1, hence we could not form two teams with equal numbers. Therefore, we joined randomly into existing groups. We guys were ridiculed during the taboo game! Li Teng acted out how guys would attempt to explain the word written on the card! Have to give it to her as we did imitate her but as the game progressed we got better and also calmer! I don’t think that I was flapping my hands around that much! Correct me? Taboo was fun, especially when observing people trying to describe a word. Next was bluff. Bluff is similar to the game Cheat! in neopets. At first I did not resort to cheating my way to victory but in the end, I pushed my luck and cheated. I got caught a few times but escaped a few times too! Li Teng was always on the prowl to catch people cheating! Due to that, she had so many cards, as though she had a complete deck. We were playing with two decks by the way. I guess there’s no need to explain fishing and heart attack! Just that I only had one chance to smack everyone’s hand during heart attack and missed the chance. As for hand tapping, I do not know whether it is a common game or not. Everybody crossed hands and placed them on the floor. Someone would initiate the movement by tapping their hands once. The direction of the movement is to the left every time a person initiates it. A double tap would result in a reverse. Those who disrupts the movement will have their hand drawn! I had my hand drawn three times, twice because I was confused as to where is the left of Tze Mien! Li Teng started off well actually but in the end had her hands one of the dirtiest~! Only at 2 AM we decided to call it a day and went off to bed!

Nicholas Wong and Jessica Chua

It was 6 AM. I could hear Homer Simpson’s d’ohs on my hand phone. Yeah, that’s my alarm alright! It is loud and annoying! We took our baths and were ready for devotion at 7.30 AM. I had only a four hour sleep which proved too little. My brain seemed to be half asleep but my body was alive and kicking! The whole lot of us adjourned to the hotel’s cafe at the ground floor for our breakfast buffet! There was not much of a choice to choose from but it was enough to satisfy. I had a little bit of nasi lemak and ate a half-boiled egg with porridge. Yummy!

The main agenda for the day was caving at Gua Tempurung! There were four tracks to choose from, from the easiest to the toughest. Our pastor bought us tickets for the hardest track there was – the Grand Tour. We didn’t bring torch lights for the caving and bought them at the shops there instead. Of course, it ain’t gonna be cheap when people are “desperate”. Many of us brought bags to carry our change of clothes as well as cameras and valuables. However, we got to know that we will be wading through bodies of water and we will definitely get our whole body wet. Lucky for us, we were able to store them in Jonathan‘s car. Ren Yau however decided to bring his bag along. Bottles of water were in them in case we get dehydrated, which eventually we did!

Aung Ren Yau, posing!

Before entering the cave, we were assigned to groups of three! The Ho coalition was together once again! We were not alone for the Grand Tour. Tourists and people from other walks of life joined us too! Did I mention that one of our pastors joined us for the caving? We entered the cave about 10 AM. Our guide walked us until a dead end. Everyone climbed over the safety rail and into a underground stream. I was quite happy as my feet were still dry unlike the rest as the water level was quite low, plus my shoes were made of synthetic materials which does not absorb water. However, as we moved on to the next area, the water level got deeper – there goes my shoes. There were times the roof was very low with stalactites poking out. I had to duck but because I attempted to keep myself as dry as possible, I still did hit my head on them a few times. I was unscathed as I wore a safety helmet! On the side note, it was too small for me. My head only went in the helmet halfway. It wasn’t a big deal, just that it added at least an inch to my already tall frame. Ducked through the water, bent down a little here and there, walked some more till we reach a steep slope. There was no way we were going to scale down that slope step by step! The solution was to slide down! There were two tough guys waiting at the bottom of the slope to catch us. Don’t ask me how both of them got down there, they just did.

My turn to slide down the slope soon came. I guess the guys at the bottom misjudged my weight as I had quite a hard fall. Even though I look like a stick, I’m 75kg! Walked in the dark some more and finally stumbled across a “mountain” in a cave! It was really high! Perhaps three stories or more! Climbing up the cave was no easy task. Three quarters of the mountain had solid foundations for you to put your feet on. The rest of it was rather life threatening I would say. The slope then was quite smooth, no crevices for you to hang on or whatsoever. I lost my footing while trying to help my buddy up. I didn’t roll down the “mountain” like Jack and Jill. My hands and feet were glued onto the slope, imitating spider-man but to no avail. I was still slipping down! I managed to halt my slow descend anyhow. Li Teng was there to extend a hand! Phew, I was saved! Nothing much happened in the cave after that. Up and down we went,through tight spaces, water and guano. I was really relieved to see the break of light as we exited the cave! I told myself, “This has to be the first and last time!”.

Song Ee Leen, anxious to go home

We took more than 4 hours to complete the “Grand Tour”. Time was 2.30 PM, the queue for the bathrooms were uber long! Decided to clean ourselves back at the hotel. Of course we weren’t that stupid to dirty the seats with mud! Pastor Dennis had to sacrifice his the Star paper for that day! Ha ha! We replaced another for him as soon as we got back. Did I mention about lunch? When everybody washed up, it was nearly 4 PM! It was a very late lunch – it was a miracle my stomach didn’t growl. We didn’t leave Kampar Baru in search for lunch. We rounded the vicinity of the area and ended up at a stall selling chicken rice. Guess how far it was from the hotel? Just only about 200m. Heh. All of us were dead tired after the hike and as far as I am concerned, Nicholas, Ren Yau and I crashed on the comfy beds. Ren Yau and I woke up at 5 PM for gym! Burned some calories and into the pool we went! There were many “incidents” that happened in the pool. A young kid urinated in the pool! I ran out of the pool as soon as I spotted the mishap! Time passed by; Jonathan and Tze Mien joined us in the pool and subsequently played a game of monkey! We got bored after that and decided to just relax in the pool. Guess what? We saw the nosy kids that kept splashing water a day before again! This time Ren Yau and I started a “war” with them. We splashed water at each other. Eventually we became “friends” and worked together to create the biggest splash in the pool. Ren Yau was the bomb!

I didn’t bring any towel along to the pool (didn’t bother asking for towels from the management too) so I had to run back to the hotel room soaking wet and freezing! Not to mention that only one person could bathe at one time! No, I am not going to bathe with another person! Eww! Appointment for dinner was a little late that night as we had a late lunch. Didn’t have the luxury of vehicles to get us around this time. All of us simply walked in search of a fine place to dine. We dined under the moonlight and stars that night. I read the menu and realised that the English in Kampar has evolved to a much higher level. Honey has been replaced by the word “beep” and rice with nice. “I want to eat fry nice!”. For sarcasm, I even asked the waiter what in the world was beep sauce! He answered me in cantonese, which I already knew thanks to Nicholas the translator. Ha ha! I took a walk to some grocery shops to buy drinks and snacks for the white water rafting trip the next day. Went back to the hotel and played games similar to the night before. The only addition was the game “Mafia”. Simply loved it! Slept at 3 AM.

Jonathan Loh, tired

Woke up half dead the next morning at 6 AM. Thankfully devotion was at 8 AM. That gives us half an hour more to prepare! As fast as we were, the girls still beat us flat by being there before us! Breakfast as usual. For the white water rafting, I brought a change of clothes and a towel. I loaned my extra space in my bag to Ren Yau. The previous night I bought a bottle of Excel just for this occasion but guess what? I forgot to take it out of the fridge! Not everybody joined the white water rafting as some didn’t have permission from their parents due to safety reasons. Some people can’t swim! We were all pumped up for it! Took a drive in the van provided by the organisers to the rafting area.

First, we had to sign some consent forms so that the organisers would be cleared of any responsibilities in the event of any mishaps! Those under 18 would have to get their parents/guardians signature! Of course the “kids” in our group didn’t bother about it and signed on their own. It feels good to be above 18! After that, we split ourselves into two different groups as there was no way a single raft was going to house all nine of us. I was one of the “leaders” and got the privilege of having five people in my raft, me included. Geared up starting with a life vest, an oar and a helmet. Both our teams took different colours to distinguish from one another! Waited some more for the rest of the lot before the briefing started. The briefing took quite a while but I guess they had to to prevent us from losing our heads.

Tee Tze Mien, hyperactive!

Time to go! Carried our rafts down the road and into the stream. It looked light but it was seriously heavy! At first, we trained how to paddle the oars and also to get the feel of Kampar waters. It was really cold and deep. Took awhile before my body acclamatised. With everyone in the water, we moved downstream and stopped halfway to try out the body rafting technique. It looked quite easy as they raft masters demonstrated it to us. When it was my turn, I tried as hard as possible to maneuver but it was hard! Didn’t feel as though as I was moving in the direction I wanted at all. At least I didn’t hit the rocks with my butt! Nearing the end of the “track” was a rapid. Had to close my nose to prevent water from entering. I did that but as I went down the rapids, my leg went downwards towards the riverbed. I do not know whether it was meant to be like that or not but I injured my foot then! Had a nasty gash. The injury did not discourage me from going the second time! Did it duo with Ren Yau. It was hilarious this time! With zero maneuverability, we crashed into the rocks. Well, I was spared actually. Ren Yau had a butt massage.

The most exciting part of the rafting had to be the level 3 rapids. It was a vertical drop of about 4 or 5 feet. We screamed our lungs out, for the fun of it! Where the water was much calmer, we stopped for a little swim. Did some jumping stunts off a tree by the river bank. Getting to the tree was a huge task! Had to battle against the current and also hang on to the tree roots for dear life. Stepping on tree roots gave a disgusting feel! Made two jumps in total. Again, I think that the water was too shallow. Every jump resulted with me plunging to the river bed – even with the flotation device on! There was also a small girl who wanted very much to go up the tree and make a jump. However, she immediately started crying as her father coaxed her to jump from the tree. She did make the jump with the help of a raftmaster. Everybody took a group photo and off we went! Did I mention that we spent much time splashing water on the other raft as we got close to each other? Also, we did get stuck on the rocks a few times. Had to jump and do some weight shifting! Raftmaster told us not to block the tree branches with our hands to prevent our buddy from getting slapped. Well, there was one time when we were heading towards the riverbank abundant with bamboo plants. The shoots extended very lowly that I couldn’t go underneath it. Thus, Jonathan got slapped in the cheek! Ha ha!

Tian Pei Yi, hates stairs

We completed our rafting just in time. The rain started to pour then. We were sent back to the hotel with our lunches in the vehicle! Back to the hotel, we took a bath and packed quickly! Took a group picture outside the hotel! Ate beef ball noodles for lunch. Scurried for cendol but the shop was closed. With that, we went back to Subang Jaya along with our memories and also the hope of another College Camp! Those who took part in the white water rafting received certificates! Yahoo! Didn’t really take many shots during the whole trip. Cheers!

Additional Reading
http://poignantmelody.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/college-level-youth-camp/
http://adifferentorange.blogspot.com/
http://www.jonloh.net/archives/id=620

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