Gopeng Adventure Trip Day 1

Posted by harbx in Day to Day, Life in Malaysia, Travel and Holidays on September 12, 2009 | one response

Honestly I went on this trip without really knowing what sort of activities were involved. All I knew was that I was going to Gopeng, and I was going to be doing some white water rafting, abseiling and caving.

Gopeng is located in Perak, just a short drive away from the capital of Ipoh – and is also home to the famous Gua Tempurung.

Freddie and Sze Lin were the main organisers of the trip, and the rest (excluding me) were MC and Jen and Eemee – making it exactly six of us. Freddie and Sze Lin had found out about this adventure tour in an exhibition and had placed a deposit on it before inviting us, so we actually have a bit of a discount from the promotion.

We set out nice and early (half of us from KL and the other from Penang) on Saturday morning to meetup at the Gopeng toll plaza at 930 am. A guide came over to meet us at the toll plaza to show us the way to our resort so we can check in first.

We arrived at our resort after about a 20 minute drive from the toll plaza, going through a small road taking us through a lot of greenery, a Malay village and a couple of small hills passing even rubber and oil palm estates. The name of our nature resort was Gopeng Rainforest Resort – a resort that is privately ran by a husband and wife couple who comes over here to stay as well when they have guests.

Our chalet turned out to be a traditional Malay style “kampung” house. It looked like it was pretty well maintained. We met the owner of the resort David and his wife, who showed us to our kampung chalet, which was the biggest one in the area and the closest one to the common area.

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Our mattresses were readily set out on the floor with a blanket and pillow for us each. The rooms and the floor in the house was quite clean and felt somewhat cozy and naturally cooling.

Here’s a shot of the toilet and shower room. They were pretty clean – in total, there were 3 toilets and 3 shower rooms. No hot water here though – this is afterall a nature getaway resort.

Our first activity was white water rafting – talk about going for the big one first! We were told by practically everyone we met that it had been raining cats and dogs the past few nights so the water level was pretty good for this today.

I decided I wasn’t going to be bringing along my camera for this excursion – I really wasn’t going to risk it getting wet or damaged.

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MC brought along an old disposable waterproof point and shoot film camera – and the guide told us there will be someone taking photos for us (which we can buy after the trip).

The center for the white water rafting was actually quite close to our resort, a mere 5 minute walk away. We picked up life jackets, helmets and our paddles – and the guide gave us a safety briefing. At this point we were really getting nervous – especially since we could hear the sound of the river nearby!

One of the important things we had to remember was the use of the term “Boom Boom” – which meant we had to get down low on the raft when there was going to be a “drop”. голова болит секс

After we were briefed and signed away our lives on the indemnity forms, we all picked up the inflated raft (sits a maximum 6 people excluding the guide) and walked to the launch point of the river about 30 meters away.

The river water was a yellowish “teh tarik” colour, and at the launch point, the river looked pretty scary!

Without further ado, we hopped in and after some warmup – going “forward” and “backwards”, just to familiarise ourselves with the commands from the guide, we finally set out on the 10km river journey.

Here are some of the photos that our safety officer has taken for us (which we need to pay for if we want the full versions).

The highlight of the river journey was definitely the “Boom booms” and the halfway rest point. The rest area was a non rocky area which had a shallow edge on side of the river, which a few rafts could “park”. The more adventurous and able swimmers could then attempt to swim across the river to a tree – in which one could jump down into the sweeping river.

The guys in my group, MC, Freddie and me did attempt to swim across (all of us making it across safely) and we jumped into the river below after from a tree branch above.

Our lunch was some rice with side dishes economy rice style. I was quite surprised by the quality of the food, everything was still warm, and freshly cooked. I’ve had packed food at some trips before that tasted really crappy and felt like they’ve been prepared many hours before, arriving cold – but the lunch here was pretty good and enjoyable.

Seeing that we were all starving (which made the food even tastier), needless to say we dug in and finished pretty quickly.

I managed to snap a picture of this awesome orange coloured lizard outside the resort. Definitely one of my favourite pictures of the day. It was very happy to pose there for me without moving.

Here’s David – the owner of our resort and Kyms our guide who arrived at around 2 to take us to the next activity – caving.

Kyms fetched us with a van to the nearby Gua Kandu – we took a picture of us before going in knowing we’d be coming out looking quite dirty.

We opted to take the higher entrance of the cave first, so we hiked up a rather steep trail.

The entrance of the cave looked rather scary. Kyms explained to us that the communists used to hide out in this cave during the communist time – and they stored stocks of their opium (in Malay it’s known as “candu”) in this cave – and the locals called it Kandu back then. Thus the name Gua Kandu.

Looking out from the entrance of the cave – gives you a rather surreal kind of feeling, especially with the green outside and the brown and darkness inside.

There was an old “Flying Fox” area here – the cables were still there, but the group running the activity has discontinued it due to difficulties in maintaining the place. The view from this place was also pretty breathtaking. Apparently there was a lion head shape rock behind us (which we discovered only when David showed us some extra photos) at this area, but we somehow missed it.

There were quite a few areas where we had to climb up or down some steep places with the aid of ropes that had been placed there by the rangers.

Compared to Gua Tempurung nearby, this cave definitely has more climbing parts and I would rate it to be more difficult in this aspect.

Although this is a dry cave, there were quite a few areas that had stalactites (both forming or formed) and stalagmites. This is my favourite shot of the formation of the stalactites. Managed to get this shot after a couple of tries. Thanks to MC and Jen for waiting there for me while trying hehe.

We were told not to touch any of the forming stalactites so that we do not corrupt and interfere with the natural formation. Some of the forming stalactites and stalagmites have “died” after visitors had tampered with them.

Here we are at the end, all sweaty, dusty, tired but still in high spirits. The entire caving trip took us around 2 and a half hours. When we came out it started to rain – we were wet, dirty and really in need of a shower again.

While waiting for our turns at the shower amongst ourselves, we played ping pong…

… and also had a chat with David who told us a lot more about the Kinta Valley area – which surprisingly to me, is really an under rated holiday area for both locals and foreigners.

Our dinner was an excellent spread of curry chicken, deep fried “ikan tengas” – a local fish from the river, deep fried tofu with sweet and sour sauce, “orang asli” style bbq chicken, two types of stir fried vegetables, and another “orang asli” style BBQ corn with freshly cut watermelon for dessert.

Here’s David and his wife – the head chef responsible for our awesome dinner spread.

After dinner, David showed us a couple of videos of some past groups that visited the resort and the sort of activities they did. There was also a rafflesia tour, and some people even hiked to Cameron Highlands from here (which took a few days!).

David and the wife were really awesome hosts and we chatted with them quite a bit.

Well after dinner, it was card games, beer and snacks!

We played until 11 something before adjourning. MC and myself had some more ping pong while the rest went up – rearranging the main hall to become a common sleeping area.

Our mattresses were all arranged in the main hall – Jennifer continued snapping photos while I was playing ping pong below.