Caving at Gua Tempurung
Posted On Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at at Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by SharonIt was a very very early morning for all of us. Too much pressure from having to wake up before 5 in the morning, I hardly received much sleep the night before. I think my brain was just about to go into the deep sleep mode when the alarm rang and I had to get up FML
We met for dim sum at Maxim's in Pekaka by 6 in the morning, everyone still in their Fuck-I-hate-myself-for-waking-up-so-early faces. A lot of energy will be needed to last us till after caving so hungry or not, we stuffed ourselves with dim sum before starting our journey towards Gopeng.
The journey took us a little less than 2 hours. It was shortly after 9 when we reached. Parked our cars, everyone got down and changed shoes, shirts, got our torchlights ready and whatnot to get prepared for the journey.
The organizer buying the ticket at the counter
while the others lingered around talking and shared a joke or two
The sticker they made you stick on your clothes/body, perhaps indicating which group of tour you belong to. We took the grand tour, which set us back around RM22 for a 'supposedly' 3 and a half hours of cave exploration.
A group picture before embarking on our journey
This was our tour guide, looking blur and was indeed very blur. If I had a customer satisfaction form to fill in, I would have failed him... VERY BADLY
And so the journey began! It was mad dark in some parts of the cave so torchlight is a definite MUST! Make sure the batteries are new too, you don't want to find yourself stumbling on rocks or walking clumsily in the dark.
Another part of the cave. It was almost impossible to take a decent picture in the cave -_- I had to put in a lot of saturation in this picture to show 'something' from inside the cave.
To be honest, the guide has no use except to lead us to the right way. The whole tour was ridiculous! In the beginning, he brought us 'jalan jalan', walk up some stairs, stopped to look around the cave and told stupid stories. Stupid stories not about how stalagmite and stalactite were formed but something like shining his torchlight to a certain area of the cave and went
'See the formation over there? It looks like a face'
'And that one looks like a man driving a car'
'That looks like a pregnant woman'
WTF?! Do we really need to know which part of the cave looks like something? Tell us some amazing history, when and how the cave became what it is today, the amazing stories of the bats bla bla, not some cave-gazing activity to see which part of the cave look like what
What's worse, when he realized that none of us was really amazed with what he had to say, he just stopped talking and lingered around the cave, while we just stood there sweating and bullshit to each other.
Then the more 'adventurous' part came. We had to climb up some pretty slippery cliffs, of course with the aid of some
showoff
brave guys. Then the route took us to some stream where we had to wade through knee length water with rocky bottom, then up on a rocky path, down into water etc etc until we finally reached the end of the route.
Took another group picture for making it safely to the end.
Looking for gold/diamond?
Foot snapshot
Different people have different perception on what to wear for this expedition. Some opt for sandals, some opt for tai chi shoes, while I went for my old Nike despite being warned that my shoes could spoil in the process but it didn't, good investment!
In this case, I'd say, go for the wrap sandals, at least it's easier to shake off the sand and rocks instead of carrying them around
Cavemen shadow
Typical lame shot of Forward DB team
The 4 of us (one more MIA due to workload); sweaty, wet and sexy? hahaha
Vandalism
The hole we went back in to continue our journey back out, also the last picture I took with my trusty old camera before it kaput for good
The journey back was far more interesting; where we had to SLIDE, yes SLIDE down a pretty steep cliff FOLs It was quite scary in the beginning, to watch others do it. I mean you have ppl down there waiting to catch you and whatnot but the more you watch, the scarier it is.. should have just gone ahead and slide the heck down with closed eyes and let the guys down there catch your foot to stop you. That, I have to say is the scariest part of the entire journey.
The rest were just.. well wading in the water; either on foot, or on all fours. I love the part where we had to go through this really tiny hole where you practically had to go down on all fours, let the water do its job and you just kinda float automatically and crawl with your hands in the water, legs floating and let the water swept you through the hole
There were a lot of crawling in the water so knee pads and gloves are recommended too :)
So that's it, the 'official' report on our caving expedition at Gua Tempurung. I personally think we could have completed the tour in about 2 hours but the fact that we stopped frequent whether to take pictures or talk or listening the tourguide telling stupid stories made the whole journey longer.
It wasn't as tough either, I don't know what I expect but definitely more than what we went through, more climbs and slides maybe or perhaps more encounter with guano (bat poop)? Now that will be interesting :D
All in all, it was not a bad spelunking experience for a first timer but I'll definitely be interested to do something more than this.
That's it for today. Will blog bout the Cameron trip when I have the time to :)
Cheers~
We met for dim sum at Maxim's in Pekaka by 6 in the morning, everyone still in their Fuck-I-hate-myself-for-waking-up-so-early faces. A lot of energy will be needed to last us till after caving so hungry or not, we stuffed ourselves with dim sum before starting our journey towards Gopeng.
The journey took us a little less than 2 hours. It was shortly after 9 when we reached. Parked our cars, everyone got down and changed shoes, shirts, got our torchlights ready and whatnot to get prepared for the journey.
The organizer buying the ticket at the counter
while the others lingered around talking and shared a joke or two
The sticker they made you stick on your clothes/body, perhaps indicating which group of tour you belong to. We took the grand tour, which set us back around RM22 for a 'supposedly' 3 and a half hours of cave exploration.
A group picture before embarking on our journey
This was our tour guide, looking blur and was indeed very blur. If I had a customer satisfaction form to fill in, I would have failed him... VERY BADLY
And so the journey began! It was mad dark in some parts of the cave so torchlight is a definite MUST! Make sure the batteries are new too, you don't want to find yourself stumbling on rocks or walking clumsily in the dark.
Another part of the cave. It was almost impossible to take a decent picture in the cave -_- I had to put in a lot of saturation in this picture to show 'something' from inside the cave.
To be honest, the guide has no use except to lead us to the right way. The whole tour was ridiculous! In the beginning, he brought us 'jalan jalan', walk up some stairs, stopped to look around the cave and told stupid stories. Stupid stories not about how stalagmite and stalactite were formed but something like shining his torchlight to a certain area of the cave and went
'See the formation over there? It looks like a face'
'And that one looks like a man driving a car'
'That looks like a pregnant woman'
WTF?! Do we really need to know which part of the cave looks like something? Tell us some amazing history, when and how the cave became what it is today, the amazing stories of the bats bla bla, not some cave-gazing activity to see which part of the cave look like what
What's worse, when he realized that none of us was really amazed with what he had to say, he just stopped talking and lingered around the cave, while we just stood there sweating and bullshit to each other.Then the more 'adventurous' part came. We had to climb up some pretty slippery cliffs, of course with the aid of some
showoff
brave guys. Then the route took us to some stream where we had to wade through knee length water with rocky bottom, then up on a rocky path, down into water etc etc until we finally reached the end of the route.
Took another group picture for making it safely to the end.
Looking for gold/diamond?
Foot snapshot
Different people have different perception on what to wear for this expedition. Some opt for sandals, some opt for tai chi shoes, while I went for my old Nike despite being warned that my shoes could spoil in the process but it didn't, good investment!
In this case, I'd say, go for the wrap sandals, at least it's easier to shake off the sand and rocks instead of carrying them around Cavemen shadow
Typical lame shot of Forward DB team
The 4 of us (one more MIA due to workload); sweaty, wet and sexy? hahaha
Vandalism
The hole we went back in to continue our journey back out, also the last picture I took with my trusty old camera before it kaput for good
The journey back was far more interesting; where we had to SLIDE, yes SLIDE down a pretty steep cliff FOLs It was quite scary in the beginning, to watch others do it. I mean you have ppl down there waiting to catch you and whatnot but the more you watch, the scarier it is.. should have just gone ahead and slide the heck down with closed eyes and let the guys down there catch your foot to stop you. That, I have to say is the scariest part of the entire journey.
The rest were just.. well wading in the water; either on foot, or on all fours. I love the part where we had to go through this really tiny hole where you practically had to go down on all fours, let the water do its job and you just kinda float automatically and crawl with your hands in the water, legs floating and let the water swept you through the hole
There were a lot of crawling in the water so knee pads and gloves are recommended too :)So that's it, the 'official' report on our caving expedition at Gua Tempurung. I personally think we could have completed the tour in about 2 hours but the fact that we stopped frequent whether to take pictures or talk or listening the tourguide telling stupid stories made the whole journey longer.
It wasn't as tough either, I don't know what I expect but definitely more than what we went through, more climbs and slides maybe or perhaps more encounter with guano (bat poop)? Now that will be interesting :D
All in all, it was not a bad spelunking experience for a first timer but I'll definitely be interested to do something more than this.
That's it for today. Will blog bout the Cameron trip when I have the time to :)
Cheers~
