white water rafting trip KL 30/4/05 - 2/5/05~

..welcome back to singapore natsuri san! I'm talking to myself..so sorry.heh. I just reached Singapore last night from a rafting trip to KL.Erm.as for exact location, I really cannot remember. I would think it's in a small town called Kempar or something like that. I'll check it out and update if i can remember. Here goes my itinery for the 3 days 2 nights trip:

Day 01: 30/4/05
I met up with the rest of the tour mates at Kranji MRT station at 7am..such an ungodly timing rite. I had to wake up at like 5.30am to get ready and do some last minute packing.( and I can't believe that after 2 hours of packing the night before and last minute packing, I still brought the wrong clothings and forgot my toothpaste lor. Not to mention that i brought a sling bag which really killed my shoulders and my bag was one of the bulkiest.I look like I'm going for a 5 days trip or something...sianz)

We took the 170 bus to the customs, but ended up walking to the customs instead as there was a mega jam. hot, hot, atsui, humid, taihen atsui ne! and guess what. I was wearing jeans and a tank top. jeans..nice body hugging jeans with sneakers and I look like I'm going town for a shopping trip. I wonder why. By the end of my walking, the jeans were stuck onto my legs and i could barely walk with my shoulders dying.

The clearing of customs was surprisingly smooth since i thought the whole of singapore should be scrambling out of country for this long labor day weekend,ok..maybe not so early.
Waited to no avail for bus 170 and we took cab instead. Our group mates started hailing cabs in the middle of the road junction with many drivers, fingers hovering just above there horns. It's stupid lor..(i went to the side of the road where it was safer,fyi)...they flagged a cab finally and what did they do? instead of getting onto the cab, they asked the cab driver to fetch us as we were further front (duh. again endangering their lives. abunai yo!).
Reached Larkin at 9am and rushed to get our breakfast and hopped onto the bus at 9.30am.We finallybegan the long bus ride to KL. In between, we stopped at Yong Peng for meals n our toilet break. My friend complained that the toilets were cannot make it.But trust me, they're way better than china toilets. So not much for me to complain on that. I feel quite contented actually.heh.

5pm- The bus pulled up at about 300 m before our hotel.Expected. There was a mega jam.Again! kaoz. Aruite again lor. Our hotel was situated above KL's bus station and god,it was like entering an oven when i stepped into the station. People people and more hito!Made our way up to our hotel and settled the accomodations and stuff. We created a small commotion when one of my tour mate wanted a change of room number coz we were given room 913..(aka inauspicious number according to her la... i got no idea). and bingo. since it was an inauspicious number, of coz nobody will want to change with us rite. But coz it was just the first day and none of us knew each other very well and all still paiseh and courteous towards one another, we managed to swap the rooms without much explicit objections. keke. Just a lot of rolling of eyes and bitching behind the doors.

5.45pm -We gathered at the lobby for our dinner.Aruite (again) to Sungei Wang shopping centre to makan. We had dinner at this place called "Tong2 Luo2 Wan1" where they serve HK dishes.I ordered Shrimp Dumpling Noodle soup... (psst...sharon san: it was good..but i still think the sydney chinatown one is still the best!oishii ne!) and a drink upon translation is called "purple stockings milk tea from Macau" ..which was so so good. Enough about food! now to shopping.
Sungei Wang was a huge complex and the time allocated wasn't enuff to even shop the 1st level! but still managed to get a pair of shoes from Vincci (the local shoe brand-the shoes are cheap n comfortable and they have a few outlets in singapore as well). Then began our trip to supper and we headed back to the hotel at 11 plus. that pretty much sums up the day n I gotta go and take calls now!! (working graveyard shift!! (-_-)ZzzZZzz ... will update later.

Day 02: 1/5/05

Our day began at 6am and bus fetched us at 7am prompt.Today is when we'll so our long awaited rafting! I haven't tried it before and was so excited.BUT the van journey was terrible. We had 12 people but the van only had 11 seats. sucks man.And 4 girls had to share a 3 seater. Guess what. I'm one of them. Not even half my butt was on the seat and I can really feel the curved edge of the seat jabbing into my back. One of my gals even had to sit upstraight in a yoga pose so as to make more space..thanks gina. The van was considered ex as we paid $50 ringgit each ( I think it's ex coz it's m'sia and petrol is so cheap lo). Somehow nobody in our tour group noticed that we're squeezing in the bus.Nobody asked whether we feel ok or what.Even if nothing can be done, it's nice to just ask. We would feel much better lo. No. The guys slept like pigs.During the break, I even had to ask if they could swap seats with us so that we could take the longer 3 seater behind. We still had to squeeze a bit though, better than nothing.
By the way, the trip was like 3 hours. (-_-ll)

We reached our rafting destination at about 11am,only to be told that we are scheduled to Raft only at 1.30pm.!! it's crazy lor..then they gave some stupid excuse that they thought we wanted to do tubing so they arranged for us to come at 11am, do tubing then do rafting.Rubbish, we told them we not doing that the night before. still..... great, we were sitting around in the hot sun shoo-ing away houseflies (dunno where they come from also..alot lo) and perspiring like mad.
After 1 hour or so, the rafting operators came and asked us to go for lunch first in the town nearby (it's like 1/2 hr drive) and after that it'll be just nice for rafting at 1.30.sounds good rite. We finished our lunch at 1.15pm and the restaurant people refused to let us go coz the operator needs to come down to settle the bill first (coz lunch was included in the package). Waited till 2pm for them to come down and can't see nobody. Fed up, we just got the driver to drive us back. Noone was there when we returned. We just waited again from 2.30 to 4 before we saw signs of our raft. we complained to the operator coz we waited super long and demanded some sort of compensation but they just avoided the topic by saying with enthusiacism " oh yeah, let's raft!" pissed pissed pissed.

Actual rafting began only at 4.15. and guess what. It began drizzling.! kaoz! irritated!!
luckily the rain ceased after a while. However, this rafting thingy was graded a 3 out of 5 coz the waters are more for beginners. Well, I had a souvenir out of this rafting. I fell out of the raft and right onto the rocks of the waters.S.U.A.Y. The rocks crashed right into my face. lucky i had a helmet on, if not i would have suffered from concussion. haha..good thing my group mates rescued me in time though and that I had paid attention to the safety briefing before the rafting so I knoew exactly what to do when i fell over.heh.

It ended after 1 hour 15 min and the van picked us up at about 6pm.Sighz. a whole day of waiting and for this 1 hr of rafting. Such a waste of time ! the horor was that the trip back was another 3 hrs and with my wet clothings in aircon, it was super uncomfortable sitting in the cramp van. The driver drove all the way without stopping as he was in a rush to go home and this delay wasn't expected at all. Managed to reach KL at 9pm and had our dinner. gosh.hungry...wet and tsukaremashita ne.

Since it was going to be our last night in KL, my room mates and I stayed up to roam the streets awhile... had real nice teh tarik at a roadside stall and then ate ramly burger. It was so good lor! all should try! yummy! at about 2am..we went back to our room and retired for the night after a rambutan yakking session..hehz

Day 03: 2/5/05
Shared a cab to KLCC to have our breakfast.Wowed at the amazing architecture of the Twin Towers and snapped super alot of pictures there, followed by shopping spree at my fave vincci again (chked out singapore's vincci for the shoes i bought, and it was cheaper! yeah). Had the famous roti boy for lunch and head back to Pudu Raya Hotel (missed out the name of the hotel) to catch our bus at 1.30pm..
okie..think i'll end it here.. didn't realised how long my post is! and this marks the end of my work as well! yippe...knock off time in 45 min.... zZzzz