White Water Rafting & Caving Trip

Every single time I come back from a MAPs trip, you guys will have to hear me go, "Oh my god~! I think I just had the best day of my life!!!!!!!!"
Please don't ask why I seem to have so many "best" days because when you are in that state of euphoria, you are no longer able to reach a dimension called logical thinking. This is the third trip I’ve been with them and up until now, I haven’t regretted a single one of those trips. This time, we went caving at Gua Tempurung first then white water rafting at a river near some place called Kampung Chulek.
For the caving trip…. Wait! I want to use the word “spelunking”, it sounds a whole lot cooler. So, on the spelunking trip, at first we had to go on the normal road which was basically a whole lot of stairs that went up really really high so it was kinda boring. At one point I actually felt like sleeping and MShern complained why the steps upwards seemed to be never ending. God bless his stupid mouth cause a while after he said that, we reached a never ending downwards trail. *sigh* But later on the trip, we reached the end of the “civilised” road and so I thought, “OK, finally I can find a proper place to sleep.” Little did I know that the show was far from over. Right at that moment, we went off-trail and into the unknown.
Fine, not exactly unknown cause we had guides with us but saying “we charged head-first into the arms of the dark night” sounds a whole lot cooler. That was the point where all the fun started. First, we had to crawl under tunnels (really small ones, mind you) and slide down almost vertical cliffs. Then we had to leap (more like take a huge step but like I said, I’m trying to “cool-erize” it) into this tiny hole on the floor where we officially entered the underground pathway. It was awesome!
Then we had to get wet and all too and stumbled upon this underground waterway and we again had to crawl under tunnels but this time it was a lot harder and exhilarating because there was water and the whole place was pitch-black apart from the tiny beams of lights shining out from our torch-lights. For some parts of the trip, I felt like I was in the movie “The Descent” (I hope you guys watched it!). Oh, except for the fact that I was wearing sandals and there wasn’t really any evolved-human-creatures out to kill us. Dang it! If only we had to fight against something! I was fully prepared to clobber anybody to death with the ginormous box-light MShern brought along!
We had a lot of photo opportunities and trust me, we took all of it by the throat but I can’t post them up yet because I have to wait for Wen Yen to send me those pics.
After that which took about 2 hours plus, Amil came to pick us up to lead us to the white-water rafting site and get our lunch but unfortunately, this 72-year-old Scottish guy (whom I presume do not know any Bahasa Melayu) got lost and we ended but turning and U-turning around the same area until Wendy came to our rescue. Although the getting lost part was kinda frustrating, the adrenaline from the previous activity had me up on cloud nine and a matter as puny as that couldn’t possibly get me down anymore. OK, fine, I admit that I did get a little pissed at the dangerous way Amil was driving but hei, all’s well that ends well, right?
Later on, we got to the white-water rafting site and had our lunch and again, the mere sight of water had me so excited that for a brief moment, I actually became anxious. Heng Kai brought us into some jungle-like area where we reached the starting point of the rafting trip and Wendy gave us the 411 on necessary rafting and life-saving knowledge and let us do some body surfing. Without a moment to lose, we were on our way down the river with my adrenaline level on “Extreme” and my lips stretched in a smile to the highest degree.
As for the rafting part, it’s hard to put those awesome moments down to words because I doubt my brain was operating on a normal level at that time and everything seems to be so jumbled up but all I can say is, “I can’t think of anything else I could have done today or this whole week, for that matter, that could have compared to the fun I felt down that 1 and a half hour trip.”
The reason I didn’t say whole month is because at the end of August, MAPs is organising an off-road mountain biking trip and hopefully, I’ll get to go and who knows what will happen there, right?
Some of the more memorable points down the river was when as we were trying to avoid a rock at the center of the river, we paddled too hard to the right and went crashing into a tree that was lying low over the river. Yes, no exaggerations. We literally crashed into it, bang bang boom. Since it was like a very low and badly-set up canopy shielding the path which our raft just so happened to travel, I was basically dragged under the tree for that whole “impact-moment” which seemed like probably 5 minutes to me but I think it only took like 20 seconds. I don’t know why but when Wendy shouted “Duck!!” and all of them shrunk into the raft, I just so happened to be the one lying on top of them face-up so I had to shield myself with only my arms to protect me. Just my luck! The first time when we went under a less dangerous area, I had Wendy to shield me but this time when I could have seriously scrapped-off the skin on my forearms, nobody was there! Well, at least I didn’t bang my head on the branch sticking out like Chu Leik did. By the way, did you notice our friend on the trip had the same name with the kampong I mentioned earlier?
After we gallantly emerged from the stupid “canopy area”, I guess all the dirt and stuff from the tree must have rubbed off on my hands and face because they said I was literally brown in colour after that. And I had a ton of sand (and most probably dirt too, YUCK!!) in my mouth!
So, we reached our end point and very unfortunate under circumstances that can be fully blamed on the weather (which was really clear) and other forces unknown to us, me and Farhan’s raft lost to the one Mshern was on. But like I said, the factor of our “unexpected” results is to be blamed solely on the time and tide, not the fact that we none of us could have paddled successfully even if our life depended on it. And do you remember the 72 years old gramps, Amil, who I was talking about? Though he may look frail and white-haired, this guy is probably the grandfather of Hercules man! He is so cool and practically saved our raft from being stranded on the river numerous times!
On a more serious and heartfelt note, every time after we finished our activities, the MAPs people will sit us down and ask us how we felt about that day and our feelings and try to reach in to a deeper part of us -- our heart and souls. And every single time I wanted to tell them this but never got the courage to do so:

Ever since I learned how to dream, I’ve been dreaming about going on these activities but never had a chance to do so. Ever since I learned how to plan for my future, I swore to myself that one day I will find the time and means to indulge myself in such activities but I never figured out how that would work, until now. And I think that having been lucky enough to stumble upon this MAPs group is truly the second best thing that happened to me after basketball and I can’t thank all of them enough for bringing that part of the world into our lives.