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Home » Archives » 14. September 2007

Janda Baik Adventure

Friday, September 14, 2007

 Last Tuesday our team had an offsite teambuilding at the highlands of Bukit Tinggi, where the famous Genting Highlands is also located.  The morning activity was held at Colmar Tropicale, a French-inspired resort hotel.  It was weird to have an offsite on a weekday, but later on we learned that it was our team's first anniv that day thus the reason they set the event on that date.  Wee!  Belated happy birthday to B2Bi CC!

The morning activity went fine.. and then prepared for the outdoor activity later on the afternoon.  Last March, when we attended our first all-hands, the outdoor activity they organized was raft-building (and a race in the sea while on it).  It was a first for me, and it's great… Now on our second all-hands, they organized a river tubing activity.  It is like a semi white-water rafting, but the raft is a rubber tire, which they call 'tubes'. 

 

We are to race along a 1-kilometer stretch of the Janda Baik river, thank goodness the water that day is perfect — not so fast and not so deep. Before going to the actual stretch of the race, one of the facilitators, Bryan, gave each one of us a minute or two of hands-on training with the tubes.  It was during that hands-on when I started getting nervous, watching my teammates on it while I'm waiting for my turn.  The training site of the river was shallow, but the water was fast enough to drag us.  Good thing my tube did not get to the critical area.  I earned a bit of confidence. 

So off went our team (there are 5 teams of 10 people each) to the actual stretch.  We rode on a 4×4 provided by the facilitators, and arrived at the start of the race after several minutes.  Armed with lifevests, helmet, and paddles, we took our tubes and lined to the river bank.. Us being the terrified first-timers, we really haven't thought of any strategy on how to get to the finish line fast, but just to survive the waters and get back to the hotel alive for the French dinner later haha! 

Well, it turned out fantastic actually.  I was able to balance well in my tube, battle some rocks on the way and pass through the rapids just fine.  There was a certain moment when I got stuck in a mild rock, but got myself freed some seconds later,  great paddling that was!

 

River tubing at Janda Baik  

Our team turned out fast after all — 2nd place to the race.  Oh di ba, wala pang effort yan! haha!  It felt really good… enjoying the rapids and trying to avoid the rocks on the way.  It is something that I would want to do again – maybe next time I could handle a much stronger current!

 

Posted by kel at 6:05 am | permalink | comments[1]