Morning of Day 3..
The previous night, we decided to split into two groups for Day 3's activities. One group to trek to the 1433m high summit of Gunung Stong and the other to just relax and explore the other waterfalls.
I was supposed to join the summit group, but the guide made it sound like it's some gruelling holy grail.. "malaysian standard, 4 hours up, 3 hours down.. I dunno about you all".. everything was like a race against time and we had to make it back in time to pack up everything and descend the mountain before dark. So I thought twice and joined the other group instead. This is meant to be a fun and relaxing trip after all.. even if there were interesting sights along the summit trek, would there be time to enjoy it?
And it turned out to be a wiser choice personally speaking..
Catching remnants of sunrise.
Sky brightening up..
Everyone thought the best was over and left.. and suddenly the lighting conditions turned a warm glowing shade of lovely, with only a couple of us catching it.
Off to the waterfalls.. this first one after a brief trek. Sadly Iris got some phobia of the big round rocks and didn't join us.. would have been fun.
Suddenly I was everyone's best friend. They did everything they could to get my attention and take photos for them.
The slightly crazy girl as demonstrated here. From where I was, which was way below, the place she climbed up to looked seriously dangerous. I didn't have the heart not to take a shot for her.
O.D.A.C. All along I was actually trying to delete crappy photos from my cam to free up some space but they keep waving and shouting at me for photos.. most disturbing.
Happily under the falls.
Making our way to another waterfalls.
Looks like we were rapelling down the cave.. pretty fun.
Sadly, that was where the last of my 4 battery sets went flat. damn sad.
The summit group made it to the peak and got back ahead of time. Singapore Boleh! Their trip was somewhat disappointing though.. what good is a summit view if it's obscured by trees and shrouded by clouds? I'll take the base camp's 400m++ high viewing gallery anytime.. and of course we can't help rubbing in how wonderful our waterfalls were.
And so hours later, we packed up our tents and descended down Gunung Stong. The down trip was soured by my impotent batteries. The camera turned into a piece of rock stuffed into my bag.
Noteworthy incident.. one of the girl had an asthma attack halfway down the mountain and she strangely did not bring her inhaler to the trip. it got pretty serious and eventually the guides had to carry her down somehow; some parts of the trek were vertial drops of a couple meters high. she got down somehow and was sent to the hospital/clinic in a car .. luckily she ended up okie.
We bathed at the 'resort' area.. bought drinks and some pirated ramly burger at the makeshift roadside stall. Ice was ferried up from the village on a motorbike. The same vehicles then brought us back to the station area where we had dinner at a coffeshop.
Took the night train back to Singapore, where once again we made a hell lot of noise and incurred more than a few irritated looks from the malaysian passengers.
Till the next trip,
Goodbye and goodnight, Dabong.
Monday, March 5, 2007
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