IP3 Leadership Camp ; Paka River Camp (PRC)

Tong … tong … tong …

Disclaimer: Photos taken aren't of very good quality.

I’m back, yes we are all back from the IP3 leadership camp, also known as, Paka River Camp (PRC). I’m only blogging now because I have been slept till 6.00pm on Monday. Haha, oh my that’s more than 12 hours of sleep. After that I rushed down to school for volleyball camp.



Karma’s a bitch. I tore my ligament during the last part of the camp. It hurt like fuck. I had to be ferried all the way to a 24-hour clinic because my dad didn’t see the point of going to a hospital. There, I waited for about an hour in agony before the doctor saw me. I went home, took some pain killers and slept till early the next day where I went to CGH for a check up. The doctor was randomly throwing out a lot of terms in which I didn’t really understand. There was the mention of a meniscus and apparently a part of my bone got ripped off when a part of my muscle got pulled or something. In layman’s term, I tore my ligament.

This sucks because I will have to miss house comm. camp. I hope this won’t jeopardize my chances of getting in. My mother has officially imprisoned me at home till next Monday because I can only move around with the aid of crutches. Sighs, anyway I shall blog about happier things, namely the camp!

First Day.
Boo hoo, it was a sad sad sad way to celebrate my birthday, a very sad way indeed. I spent the morning in front of LT5 loitering around with the rest of the 70 plus of us who were going. Once we were all set, it was a 9 hours ++ bus ride all the way to the camp site.



The bus ride was amusing the say the least. I slept for 2/3 of the way there and spent the last 1/3 of it pigging out, cam whoring and talking. I named our bus the brothel bus because the pink curtains and other little details that made it seem like a brothel.













We only managed to get there by around 8.00 or 9.00 at night and by than, it was too late to carry out the ghost-busters night walk. So we only had dinner, set up the tents and hammock like beds before heading off to shower and sleep.





The communal shower was/is scary ass; thank god I didn’t use it at all when I was there. You can see people’s silhouette at night for Christ sake.



The accommodation sucked at the beginning. We had a 4 men tent with 6 people to squeeze into. But after we approached the trainer with our predicament, we were split up into 3s and Wilbur, Aaron and I had this nice huge tent with a make shift balcony to hang our clothes. The ground was terribly uncomfortable, so I gave up my warmth for comfort and slept ON my sleeping bag instead of IN it. The girls were lucky because they got the hammock like beds for 2 days while the guys had tents for 2 days.







Second Day.



Persevere started the second day with orienteering which I personally found mind numbingly boring. We learnt how to properly use a compass, how to take bearings etc. The trainers than brought us on this hike up some hill to collect dry stuff to burn for our backwoodsman cooking later in the day.












Results of orienteering.

It was fairly entertaining to look for dead twigs, branches and leaves to burn on the hike. Yi Rui plucked out this dead tree, Oo. The route was quite taxing and my dead plants went bald when we finally came out into a clearing.







We had a lesson on how to start fire with the dry stuff we collected. My group got fire in a matter of minutes thanks to Wilbur and his blowtorch. Haha, cooking proved to be exigent because we had to cook the sweet potatoes, rice and fish properly and before we cooked the fish, we had to gut it.



















The fish was the hardest to cook but we managed to get the flesh white in the end, haha. I would say that the meal was pretty good. The rice was well cooked and the sweet potato went well with the rice. The fish tasted surprisingly delicious too. However, it turns out that there was lunch provided already in case we screwed up our cooking, haha.





After lunch, we had a course in kayaking.



They taught us how to peddle and gave us some fun facts about kayaking, such as where it originated etc. When I say fun, I actually mean pointless, haha. We were than taught how to capsize and how to save ourselves when we capsized. There was no point in attempting to dry off after that because the next activity was raft building. Still, it was nice to sit on the pier watching other people capsize and attempt to flip their kayaks over.

Haha, I felt useless during the next activity because I had no clue what to do, so I just stood around yanking at ropes to make the knots more secure. Well at least I didn’t prove to be such an eye power as someone else. Our raft ended up sinking but I believe we had fun desperately trying to peddle our way to shore.

The ghost-buster walk at night was an experience. To hike up a hill at night with only one powerful torch light and one weak one is not an easy feat. The solo part was fairly fear-provoking, I have to admit. I got lost! Haha, thankfully I ran into Daniel amidst my wandering around. I was back tracking the wrong way. God knows where I would have landed up if I didn’t run into Daniel, haha. We were both lost and managed to find our way back eventually because we ran into a teacher. Haha, how pathetic, I know.

Third Day.
Oh dear, day 3 was a nightmare. It was the day where Persevere had our hike up the waterfall. It was definitely a huge testimony of our physical and mental ability to push our limits. The hike up and down was a total of 875x2 metres. I got somewhat infuriated along the way because it seemed like a never ending torture that we were all being put through.



























However, there was one silver lining to the terrible hike, and that would be the dip in the upper pool at the summit of the waterfall. Haha, the water was nice and cold. The rocks were really slippery so it took a while to get under the gushing waterfall. There’s only one word to describe the feeling, SHIOK! It was like some sort of natural Jacuzzi.





















After taking some photos at the summit, we proceeded with our hike down the waterfall. We really slowed down during the descent because Ser En was injured and was struggling a lot. You're only as strong as your weakest member. The trainers were definitely anxious to get us down fast because nightfall was approaching. It got really dark when we were somewhere near the bottom. Fortunately three of us brought torchlight and the three just happened to be really powerful. So with the aid of the torchlight, we managed to get to the bus in one piece.

That night, the guys moved up to the long house where the hammocks like beds were, and the girls moved into the tents. Haha, oh my god the difference was huge! I slept really well that night, even with people talking downstairs.

Video of the waterfall. (You'll have to tilt your head to the left to view it.)



Fourth Day.
It’ll be a long time before I ever kayak again. I was actually looking forward to this activity, but as they say, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. (33 KM to be exact) The kayaking started off okay, in fact, at one point of time; YY (my partner) and I were in front of the pack. Haha we had to fall back because the trainer scolded us for going too fast. People who couldn’t keep up were getting towed and I guess that was what did it for me. While kayaking to the second checkpoint, I felt slightly demoralised and we started to lag behind. However, we missed getting towed by quite a bit. So when we left for the third check point, I switched to a single kayak and was right at the back of the pack with Crazy. Haha, we were trying to shake off the photographer who slowed down every once in a while to wait for us.

The two of us managed to reach our goal of getting towed and we were towed for quite a distance. It was hands down the best part of the day. Lying on the single kayak with all four limbs in the water and the wind blowing in your face, it doesn’t get any better than this. We reached some beach where there was a nice view of the South China Sea. I wouldn’t say that it was breathtaking, but it was an experience. I collected 17 sea shells from the beach, haha just for kicks.



We had to change before we went back on the bus. It was the first time I changed in front of so many guys, Oo. Haha, okay enough said, we headed towards the villa at night. Finally, hot water and a nice comfy bed to sleep on!







There was a nice buffet laid out for us during dinner, but it wasn’t that fantastic. In fact I thought that the food we had at the camp site was better. I guess the only plus side was that we didn’t have to wash up after ourselves.













Campfire or "camp-water" was interesting. I didn’t know half of the songs that we were singing but I had fun trying to follow. The performances put up were interesting too! I’m glad there wasn’t any mass dance because I believe that everyone was exhausted.



My villa consisted of Yi Rui, Zong He, Martin, Aaron Ng, Zhang Yang, Daniel and I. Our air conditioning was out of order and it took over an hour before someone was sent to help us fix it. I didn’t suffer to severe sunburns, even though I did turn very two toned.



Most of us stayed up till 1.30 in the morning to bitch about stuff, haha my first time bitching with guys. Shared a King sized bed with Zhang Yang and fell asleep almost instantly.

Fifth Day.
Today was the day of many lasts on the trip. We went to some roadside hawker center for our last breakfast.





We headed back to the villa for our last round of reflections. Than it was another long bus ride home to Singapore. Along the way, we had our last lunch and dinner. Lunch was a $5 meal at pizza hut which was pretty hurried because we only had 15 minutes to chow down our food before we rushed back to the bus.





Dinner was seafood and it only cost S$6. Food in Malaysia is really dirt cheap. At some point in time, many of our brains stopped functioning properly and our English went down the drain. (Ownself remove the bone, haha!)








Nicole's flash from the past.

I didn’t sleep as much on this bus ride and spent most of it talking and cam whoring, again.


Not a very well taken photo but I still like it.


My busmate throughout the entire trip.



Nicole's attempt to eat a chip without using her hands.

First attempt.



Second attempt.



Third attempt.



Final attempt. (It was successful)



Playing a prank on Xiao Xian.



We reached back VJC at 11.30pm, haha bringing home a lot of memories and truckloads of experience. On the whole, I would say that the trip was an enjoyable one.

Sighs, I hope my leg heals quickly. It’ll be a while before I can walk normally again. And who knows how long it will take before I can squat and jump and run. Cries*

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