was a wonderful experience!
Kayaking was fun! besides the fact the wAter off pulau ubin leaves much to be desired (lol:o i had nowhere to look but at the sea. I shall describe it briefly - you can see brown foam - most probably diesel from motorboats that ply the channel. You can also spot bits of styrofoam with algae growing on it, food wrappers etc. If you're lucky, you'll catch the remnants of a dead fish). i'm so glad we kayaked cross island (not to Sembawang sea sports centre), partly because of the distance, and the other part because we got to kayak though the river and mangrove systems of pulau ubin - which was really beautiful. lol. it was easy to get caught in the branches of some of the mangrove plants though. and to add to the experience, we had to navigate ourselves! cool! my partner was the navigator, and i must say it wasn't an easy job at all. The map that they gave us was completely outdated (various elements had caused new features to be formed, previous ones to be eroded). We had a hard time deciding which inlet to enter, which turn to make etc. A few times, we had to rackie (is this how you spell the word?) to confirm a route. One thing about this route is that we had to beach-up and carry our kayaks over land 2 times before we finally reached camp. It was completely exhausting, and the kayaks were heavy... (ok. i'm useless) We kayaked for around 6 hours before we finally reached an ulu camp site on the north of pulau ubin.
We had to construct a raft there - given 4 empty barrels and 8 pipes. Seemed easy enough. We constructed the 'tried and tested' model of a raft that had the 4 barrels as the base, overlaying the pipes on top to form a square base. We proudly named our raft the fantastic float - and boy, it was 'fantastic'!
the fantastic float!the ulu camp was nature. nothing more. nothing less. we had toilets with a sea view. we rinsed ourselves, complete with our life jackets, in the
quarry. supposed to be clean because it is rainwater. But i guess with batches of OBS participants using it, the water wasn't going to be as clean. lol. i developed rashes after the quarry dip... And how do we get into the quarry? Correct! we plunge in. It was quite traumatising, considering that I had slight hydrophobia, and I did not know how to swim. During the interval between jumping in and finally emerging from the depths of the water (thanks to the life jacket), I panicked slightly, and hyper-ventilated. But this time, it wasn't as bad as when we did the capsize drill for the kayak.
During the 2 nights we camped out, we had to cook ourselves. The first night, we decided that we had more time, so we decided to cook rice. And we learnt a
valuable lesson - never attempt to cook rice without a rice cooker, or a proper stove at least where you can control the fire. Haha:D It was one of a kind, and the taste is something that you'll never forget. Soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside. With this distinct, slightly charred flavor to it.
cooking lessons
cooking rice! heeWe had instant noodles for the second night, and it was good! complete with chicken curry:) yummy.
Oh yes!
sentry duty was nice! pity it was short... i got up at ard 2.20am to do a 20 min shift together with Melissa. and besides looking out for strangers, we had to look out for hogs. They will ruffle through our bags to find food. Smart aren't they? Throughout the night, we had life entertainment from the fishing villages out at sea. There was music blasting, and we tried to provide explanations for this - Mambo night? Or probably to keep the morale of the fishermen out of sea high. lol
The sea expedition was good. But we had to endure land ex too.. complete with our barang barang which weighed around 8 - 10kg. We trekked to the highest peak on pulau ubin - puaka hill (75m high). It was a 4km trek, and we drank loads of water to lighten our load. And it was worth it! The view of the largest quarry on ubin was superb.
view from puaka hill
raja @ the summit:)A lot of other things - like scaling the inverse tower, trust fall, going through a tunnel alone in complete darkness in the middle of the night - made this OBS really memorable as i faced some of my deepest fears, and pushed myself to the limit. And most importantly, the friendships forged:)
Raja rocks!:)
A memory is what is left when something happens and doesn't completely unhappen. And I'm glad that OBS did not unhappen.
pictures courtesy of kangyi
