all that i can say.

Now about the first phase of my 10 week expedition!

A 10 week expedition is split into 3 phases each lasting 19 days each.

The 3 phases for this expedition would be
Adventure: 12 days of trekking in the jungle and 5 days diving.
Community: Building a Community Learning Centre in a village OR building a gravity water feed system as well as a sanitation unit(i.e toilet)
Environment: Spending time in Class 1 protected forests helping the rangers out.

The order of which phase you do first is basically unknown to everyone till the morning where your new groups are announced alongside which project you will be off to.

The Adventure phase was one of the most feared by most to be the first phase to be embarking on as 12 days trekking in the jungle sounds super duper intense. That is 12 days of trekking to a different camp each day with all your belongings on your back. Which also includes the group kit stuff and ALL your food. Okay well not all, 6 days worth at a time. Really can't imagine how heavy my bag would be with 12 days of rations in it, even 6 split evenly between everyone was heavy enough as it is. Also considering that the bag was like half my weight standing up with it was always a challenge.

Sorting the food out proved to be the toughest part as everyone had to consider how much weight it would all actually add up to. We basically had to decide right there and then how much and exactly what we would be having for all meals. As while we would all have liked to bring a nice comfortable amount the thought of carrying so much weight for a long trek each day meant we had to cur everything down to the bare minimum. Suffice to say that everyone in the group lost weight after our 12 days in the jungle.

Alpha 6!!

Setting off the first morning. With rucksacks packed to the max.

No day to day account but a typical day on trek in Long Pasia will run like this.

6am: Wake up and start packing everything. Collect water, make fire, boil water, have breakfast.
8am: Leave camp.
Trek trek trek trek trek trek trek. Usually for 4 hours. With a couple of breaks in between with everyone collapsing on the ground and sharing a packet of ice gems/banana chips.
12pm: Reach camp and start unpacking the radio, get water from the river(cause the chlorine pills take 30minutes), start a fire.
12.30pm: LUNCH. Everyone's starving so every last crumb is consumed.
Laze about. Maybe a shower if the weather is nice, and by shower I mean a dip in the nearest river.
6pm: Dinner prep which mostly just consists of boiling noodles and heating up the meat/vege.
7pm: Food time. Usually followed by a hot drink.
8pm: BED. For most people.
I usually stay up till 9ish writing in my journal or chatting with whoever is awake.

Rinse and repeat for 12 days. By the end everyone's spirits were dampened because well I guess 12 days of trekking with minimal food in the same set of clothes will get anyone down.

I would have liked to write a longer post on trek but honestly no matter how many words I type out it still will barely describe the experience.

So here instead are the top 5 things I learnt!

1. Everything gets wet in the jungle. One night I left a pair of dry socks out and by the next morning it was damp even though it didn't rain that night. So put everything away in a dry bag.

Welcome to the laundry area. A lot of us dried out stuff over the fire but take note that everything will smell of smoke and may have scorch marks. 

2. There are gonna be leeches on you no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. If they haven't started sucking just flick them away. Otherwise just 'massage' them till they curl up into a ball then flick them. Try not to burn or pour salt on them cause they may throw up into your wound which may then get infected. Wearing longs while trekking does help though. 

3. You will drink lots of tea/coffee/Milo especially when it rains. So try to always keep the fire going to boil water cause it's easier to keep the fire going than to start a new one. And also drinking chlorinated water on it's own is not exactly the more pleasant taste.

4. Get a walking stick. Even if you don't own a nice proper walking pole, you can ask the guides to find a nice sturdy stick for you. It really helps with the going up and down hills. And believe me when I say there are A LOT OF HILLS.

5. Duct tape is the solution to everything. Haha. Leaky tarp? Tape it. Broken cutlery? Tape it.

My conclusion?

Yes trek is hard. But if I (who does absolutely no exercising at all), can do it. Anyone can.

It's more about adapting to the jungle life than it is about being fit. 

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moonlight.

Onto the first week then.

Now considering most of the projects would be deep in the rural areas of Sabah where there is absolutely no cell service much less internet connectivity how were we to keep in contact with FieldBase? It's important to maintain contact so that at all times our movements were to be accounted for and also in case of an emergency they would know where to find us.

The main form of communication would be our radios. This was no basic walky-talky kinda thing. It was a proper radio system which we had to learn to set up. Setting it up involved firstly putting up the dipole antenna which always proved to be the most difficult/annoying part as you had to get it up a certain height and aiming for a branch on a three was clearly not a skill that was required in our day to day lives. The rest of it was a breeze with just having to plug things in into the main unit. We also learnt radio speak which is well awkward as you are trying to use as few words as possible while sounding official. I did find it fun though with learning the phonetic alphabet and all.

Next form of communication would be using the satellite phones. Which we never actually did use at any point because the radio always worked. And when the radio didn't work, neither did the sat phone.

And of course with Raleigh being very careful about things. There would have to be an in case of emergency option. The PLB. A Personal Locater Beacon. Basically just a big red button to push that would then bring emergency services in. But only in case of dire emergencies. Like if everyone was dying. Not dead. Dying. Grim but true.

We also covered some basic first aid. Always important when the nearest hospital could be hours away. Although there would always be a medic with us during projects that were more remote. So really, no worries cause the medics are well prepared. Other important things we learned were stuff like how to set up our bashers(involving putting up the hammock, tarp and mosquito net), where/how to dig our long drop(toilet a.k.a hole in the ground) and the etiquette behind it to avoid accidentally walking into someone doing their business

So after all the theoretical learning, it was now time to put out knowledge to the test!

We had all been split into different groups and my group Delta 5 got to be one of the first to go for our practice trek alongside two other groups. Packing wasn't such a chore yet as we were only going for one night so there wasn't really much to take. So after dividing up the food and group kit such as cooking tools, radio(which in total weighed 8kg), shovel, jerry cans(for water), we were off! There was also the matter of the group tarp also known as the sausage which two people had to carry at all times. It was heavy beyond imagination and carrying it for just 10 minutes over the uneven terrain was a test.

My first basher. Please excuse my socks they needed drying out. 

The group leaving. 

It was quite a challenging experience. What with me not having gotten my jungle legs yet. There was a lot of slipping and sliding along the way as while we did follow a sort of path, it was still a venture into the jungle. And for those who know me know that I tend to trip and fall even on completely flat ground for no reason whatsoever. Considering that, I think it was a pretty good trek with nothing broken or sprained. Haha. I did end up with lots of bruises and scratches though. 

With that done and dusted, I had gotten my first taste of the jungle life and while it wasn't the easiest thing, it also wasn't the hardest. 

I think I must also mention the first day of team building exercises. Not for the exercises themselves but for the conditions that we were to do it in. Let's remember that the end of the year is monsoon season over in Borneo so we were having downpours pretty much everyday. So the first time we were out on the field doing some team building thing it started pouring down and of course our first instinct is to run inside for cover. However, we were ordered to march back out by our PMs(Project Manager) and continue because rain will and should not stop us. The idea is that even while we are trekking in the jungle, we aren't gonna stop and seek shelter when it starts raining so we were gonna have to get used to being completely soaked through. 

Overall the first week was quite a learning experience. But that would prove to be only the tip of the iceberg because we still had another 9 weeks to get through with many other difficulties which meant a lot more learning about the jungle, our fellow group members and ourselves. 

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little lights.

Time to blog about my jungle experience!

If you didn't already know, I spent 10 weeks on a Raleigh expedition in Sabah last year. This was an experience unlike any other and as much I will try to describe it here in detail, only those who have been will really know what it's like to live the simple life.

Let's start at the beginning then.

Got on the plane early Sunday morning as we were told that we had to be there by 11am. And by 'we' I mean the HCVs(Host Country Venturers), basically the Malaysians. The internationals were only getting in a day later. This is mainly cause we get the training and briefing a day earlier so that we can learn at our own pace as the English may not be everyone's first language. We were taken to Field Base which is a house somewhere on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu where everything is coordinated from.

Met the rest of the HCVs there as while 5 of us had flown in from KL, there were another 5 who were from Sabah. Right before we had lunch, we learnt one of the most important things to remember while on expedition. Three bowling. What is this you ask? For the whole duration of the expedition, it would be drilled into us to always three bowl before and after a meal. Three plastic bowls would be set up with the first for soaping up your eating utensils, the second with clear water to rinse and the third with water and a capful of bleach. So that would be soap rinse bleach after a meal and bleach rinse before a meal. This was to be the preventive measure against D&V(Diarrhea&Vomiting) seeing as living in the jungle isn't exactly the most hygienic of places.

It was then onwards to the swimming test! As part of the expedition we were going to get our PADI certs(diving cert) which meant that we had to be able to swim 200metres and tread water for 4 minutes. Thankfully swimming is one of those things you never forget as the last time I went swimming was probably 3 years ago.

After that we were taken to Base camp. It was about 45minutes away from KK so not as 'ulu' as you might think it is. This would be where we would live for the first week learning all the essential things like how to use the radio, use a parang(machete for the non-Malaysians) and basically how to survive the jungle.

Home at base camp.

Static bashers are surprisingly not that bad to sleep in. 

*TIP* Never ever ever put anything on the ground. Hang everything off the end of the bashers, including shoes. Something we learnt the first night there as it started pouring down in the early AM and everything that we didn't get off the ground in time got soaked cause the place floods. 

Bamboo hut. Where we would eat all our meals and get daily briefings. 

Another view of base camp. 

Normally it serves tourists as there you can go ziplining and white water rafting there. 

One thing that seemed so insignificant at the time was toilets. The toilets you say? Over the course of the 10 week expedition, base camp would be the only place where we would get flushing toilets as pretty much everywhere else it was a hole in the ground that you could perhaps flush with a pail of water or it would literally just be a hole. It would also be the only place with showers! And not rivers or buckets of water. Oh the little things you don't realise are luxuries till you don't have it. You don't know the joy of being the first back at base camp after a phase and being able to take a nice shower and wash your clothes in water that didn't smell like jungle. 

That night we learned how to make dinner using trangias(portable spirit stoves). 

Useful to know how to use. 

However we never actually used it over the 10 weeks.

It is a bit of a slow method especially when you're trying to cook for 10+ people at a time. 

Our first encounter with Raleigh rations.

At first what went through my mine was how can I eat the same kind of food for 10 weeks!?

But then you tend to get really creative with what you can make and I had some pretty good meals that you would never think to make. 

On that note I shall tell you a little about the meal plan for 10weeks.

Breakfast: Porridge today. Porridge tomorrow. Porridge every morning for 10 weeks! And not the rice kind of porridge that I like but rather oats. It's not so bad once you learn what you can take it with. My preferences are peanut butter and chocolate spread(the snickers combination) or condensed milk or Milo. Or when we run out of peanut butter, chocolate spread, Milo(because there is a limited supply but high demand) then it's raisins and sugar which is still okay. Honestly it was a bit weird to eat something sweet for breakfast as the Asian in me is more used to things like roti canai, wanton mee, or basically savoury things. 

Lunch: Crackers, cheese, tuna and chicken luncheon meat. A cold lunch so to say cause it requires a lot less effort and time. Although it sounds quite boring to eat for 10 weeks, this simple combination was actually enjoyed by everyone right till the end. Some of them found that just mashing everything together made you feel like you had more to eat and that it tasted better.

Dinner: The one real meal of the day. A very carb heavy meal though as being on rations meant that we couldn't use as many tins of meat that we would like. So it was a lot of noodles, pasta and rice with a side helping of vegetable and meat.

Overall in terms of food it wasn't that bad. And if it ever did get boring, someone told us to remember that "Raleigh rations are fuel not food".

That's all for this post.
More about our one week of prep before we set off on our projects in the next post!

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fixer upper.

Normally I would blog about my trip to Denmark(went with my mum) but really in terms of sightseeing we didn't really do that much. And also my hands were too cold to want to take any photos. We did go and see The Little Mermaid statue(because Hans Christian Anderson was from Copenhagen) which is quite some way out of town and not quite worth the effort since you can't get close to it because it's out in the water. Also went to see Tivoli gardens which is one of the oldest amusement parks around. It was really nice and pretty but it is still an amusement park where the main attraction are the rides and we all know I am no a fan of roller coasters and such so it was just a nice stroll round. We did do a day trip out to Elsinore Castle because the lit student in me insisted on it. For those who don't know, that's Hamlet's castle. Hamlet may be most famous from Shakespeare's play but he is based on a real individual and walking round the castle had me imagining all the scenes playing out.

That takes care of the sights. The difference with this trip and all my other Euro trips is the food. Got to eat in some really good places this time round because I wasn't on a student budget. Mainly I got to experience my first ever Michelin starred restaurant, in fact it was just awarded it's second star just before we ate there.

Geranium
Per Henrik Lings Alle 4
Kobenhavn, Denmark

It's actually located in an office building which is right next to a football pitch which is slightly strange. The chef Rasmus Kofoed has won bronze, silver and gold medals at the Bocuse d'Or which is considered one of the important culinary competitions.

On to the menu!

Branches of sea salted cheese.

The black stuff on it was ash from some vegetable.

Carrot and sea buckthorn.

It was like a candied carrot shell. 

Jerusalem artichoke and walnut.

Wild pea sprouts and gooseberries.

This was really nice and fresh. 

Dried flowers and dried apple.

By far the strangest thing I ate that day. Honestly it felt like I was eating potpourri. 

Cep soup and pickled egg yolk.

A nice shot of mushroom-y soup.

Jellied ham and tomato water.

Quite nice and light but full of ham flavour at the same time.

Razor clams.

Really liked this as the 'shell' was wafer like. 

Mackerel in burned juniper, frozen horseradish and pickled cucumber.

Sashimi Danish style. 

Bread with emmer and spelt.

Sourdough bread is my fav so having these fresh out of the oven bite sized ones were really good.

Onions, chamomile and melted hay cheese.

Salted beef, milky cheese and juice from fermented carrots.

Enjoyed the salted beef but the milky cheese and fermented carrots not so much.

Charred potatoes, smoked lard and unripe berries.

My favourite of the meal because how can potatoes cooked in pork lard be anything but delicious. 

Also despite it looking burnt on the outside, the insides were nice and fluffy.

Tea from vegetables, beech leaves and pine.

Had this while getting to go inside the kitchen and watch the chefs at work. 

Well mainly just the plating side of the kitchen but you could see just how much time and effort were being put in to plating each dish so delicately. 

Flora danica rhubarb and crystallised thyme.

Green egg.

Only the eggs were edible and were actually made out of chocolate.

No photos of the accompanying juices but the ones we had were

Algae, cucumber and apple.
Bio plum.
Elderberries.
Blackcurrent.
Rhubarb and roses.

Overall you could see a lot of thought and effort had been put into the preparation of each dish and although I felt like I was eating a garden at some points it quite an experience. I can see why they were awarded two Michelin stars. I think there was also only like 10 tables in the whole restaurant so the tables were quite spread out which I liked because some times restaurants tables can be too close to each other that you can just hear everyone's conversation. But due to that fact and also the fact that there is almost no turnover as the tasting menu takes 2-3 hours, I can see why it costs more. But worth every penny I think.

So for my first Michelin star experience I'd say it has set the bar high.

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say something.

Happy New Year one and all!

How weird is it to think that it's already a new year. 2013 was quite a year for me. Yes graduating from uni was quite a big thing but yet at the same time so much else happened last year like eating at my first ever Michelin starred restaurant and going to live in the jungle for 10 weeks.

I suppose I'm going to slowly catch up with all my backlog cause even though I may be blogging about things that happened some time ago, it's better than not noting it down at all. Even if no one else is interested in it, I'll be able to look back on it in years to come. One thing that I do from time to time is read my old blog posts (not all at once), just random posts and it just feels so weird to read about my life in the past that it doesn't quite feel like mine.

It's those times that you think you're never gonna forget when they happen but a year down the road it's almost wiped from your memory because more pressing matters are arisen. So being able to read about it five years in the future makes it seem like you're reading about someone else's life.

Or maybe that's just me.

Anyhow, more blog posts to come!

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20/20.

Feeling conflicting emotions.

On one hand I feel like I am returning home. After one full year away from KL, it's nice to think that I'd be able to go back and have some chilli pan mee, nasi lemak and teh tarik. As well as have a car. And air conditioning.

But yet, I've also feel like I'm leaving a sort of home in the UK. From the time I've spent in Manchester has been filled with lots of fun and memories. All the nights out, the traveling, the laughs with friends. And also the past 3 months in London. It may not sound very long, but when you've lived in a place and had to do the cooking/cleaning/grocery shopping/laundry it really does feel like home. More Manchester home though, cause I've never done any of that back in KL. 

I suppose I'm not really going home quite yet cause after just 3 days back home I'll be setting off for a 10 week Raleigh Expedition in Sabah! Community work, biodiversity survey, jungle trekking for 10 days straight and diving. Looks to be what is to be the most challenging 10 weeks of my life! 

Anyone who knows me is going to think that I've gone completely mad signing up for it. Me, who does not like doing any sort of exercise(expect dance, cause that's actually fun) has signed up to live in the jungle with no internet, no showers and no bed for 10 weeks. Even to myself it sounds a bit mad. 

But I feel like if I don't do something that places me out of my comfort zone now, it's never going to happen. People may think that there's plenty of time for all this traveling and volunteer work later in life. Yet I feel like many people get stuck in their working life, which they may not necessarily hate, but somewhere in the back of their minds they want to go out and explore the world. 

I guess I just wanna try living the simple life. To see whether there is more to life than chasing the buying of the next car/house/child (okay fine you don't exactly buy children but they suck more life and money out of you than anything else can).

P.S Seeing as I won't have any access to the Internet while on the Raleigh expedition, you can keep up with the going ons here

http://www.raleighinternational.org/ri-blogs/raleigh-borneo/

Also feel free to write me letters (the old school way!)

Loke Weng Yee (13K)
Raleigh House
PO BOX 14182
88848 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah
Malaysia

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erase everything.

Continuation of my Portugal trip.

Day 4

Next day we set off for a day trip to Sintra. From what I read online it is meant to look like it came straight out of a fairytale. It was quite simple getting there as we just had to get a train and then a bus. All in all just follow the tourists.

No photos from Sintra as it was pretty. But just very green in general. So taking photos using my phone wouldn't have done it any justice.

After that we decided to head towards to westernmost point of Europe. Just one bus ride away  (bus 403) from Sintra. They only run once every hour so we just sat in a cafe opposite the bus stop to kill time as we were too tired to do any more exploring. I swear that's when you know you're growing old.

Beautiful scenery. The weather on the other hand. So windy. We were totally not prepared for it.

Also saw this couple taking their wedding photos there. From Hong Kong I'm guessing as their photographer was speaking in Cantonese. Honestly I pitied the bride as she just had to grin and bear the biting wind. The moment a picture was done the groom would pass her a jacket. All that suffering for some photos. Beautiful things always come at a cost.

Nothing to actually do there so we took the next bus out to Cascais. Did some snack shopping there for out long train ride the next day to Faro. There was also this other group of Singaporea/Malaysians there who we didn't really speak to at all. The funny thing is that the 'kepoh' in us really wanted to and we could sort of tell that they wanted to talk to us as well as we took the same train back to Lisbon. Even walked the same way after we got to Lisbon, but none of us did. So our nosiness isn't that strong. Haha.

Day 5

Leaving Lisbon to Faro. Got to the train station quite early so we played this new card game called Fluxx which was quite fun but ended too early. And then we just went back to Famajoe cause we are all that competitive that we wanted to be the overall winner.

The weather in Faro was not what we signed up for as we wanted to get some sun and sea. What we got instead was really strong wind. The others wanted to do some sort of water activity and while I was at first reluctant, I got peer pressured into going kayaking with them the next day.

Kayaking was sort of fun. Easy for me to say cause I didn't actually have to pull my full weight in kayaking anywhere as my partner is an experienced kayaker who knew what he was doing. Thanks Justy! (If you're reading this). Andrew and Sonia fared quite well as well. Ashley and Cassie as two girls on the other, found it more difficult. So the lesson learnt is that always have a guy in the kayak. Got to lay about in an abandoned beach for a while which was good. However, we all got SUNBURNT! Basically the area between our knee and our ankle cause that was most exposed to the sun and also the salt water which did not make things any better. All our showers later that day were a painful affair.

That pretty much sums up the Portugal trip. Came back to tanned that my foundation didn't match me any more. And neither did the BB cream that is suppose to be two shades too dark.

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