[This is a multi-part series describing in gory detail my 10km race through the treacherous mountains of Padawan, Sarawak.]

Previously:
Part 1: Crossing the chasm of death

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PARENTAL ADVISORY
Disturbing content, coarse language
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The Zillipede

When I first saw it, I screamed like there was no tomorrow.

Nanny Wen and I both stopped in our tracks, frozen in horror.

In front of us, on a flat piece of rock, was a giant millipede.

About eight inches long and maybe 1.5 inches wide (almost as long as my forearm), it was yellow and black and white.

Nanny Wen called it a zillipede because it was inconceivably larger than a mere millipede.

It occupied about half the rock, which we had to step on to get past, because surrounding the rock was thick vegetation. We were on a very narrow trail.

It should be noted at this point that even regular household bugs make my skin crawl, so this zillipede totally thrashed me.

The little hairs on my nape and face tingled fiercely as I stifled a faint, swallowed bile and willed my heart to slow.

I held my breath and stepped on the rock, placing my foot as far away from it as possible.

Time slowed to a stop.

During the moment I was neighbours with the crazy psychedelic bug, all my senses came afire and screamed in protest. I resolutely avoided the cinema in my mind that was playing a movie of the millipede pouncing on my feet.

And then I was home free, a dizzy spell attempting to overwhelm me.

Plagued By Bugs

There was a giant oval-shaped bug which looked like a cross between a beetle and a slug, about six inches long and two inches wide (shorter but fatter than the zillipede).

It was bright orange with black stripes and its body looked smooth and glossy (like a beetle’s). It looked cute and terrifying at the same time.

I swear I am not exaggerating what the bugs look like.

We came across this tiger-beetle thing twice in our journey.

There were also random harmless insects that were simply annoying and flew around our faces. Tons of irritating buzzing flies. You know those that go bzzzzzzz around your ears and sometimes even brush your ears and cheeks?

We were so annoyed by them after a while that we started cursing at them.

“Fuck you, fuck off my face!” we would scream in frustration. It was that bad that we had to resort to cursing the insects out loud.

There was one persistent fly that actually followed me for, like, 20 minutes. It nearly drove me crazy, especially during the moments I was concentrating on not falling to my death while manoeuvering obstacles.

First Bee Stings

And then there were bees.

I was climbing an almost-vertical rock face with very shallow footholds that were part roots-part indents in the rock, and which were too far apart when, suddenly, I felt a very sharp sting on my ankle, followed by another very sharp sting on another ankle. It felt like big injections.

I screamed and brushed my ankles furiously with one hand, the other hand holding on to something, a root or branch, I can’t remember. And then I felt a swarm of flying things around my ankles, and another sting.

“Ow, fuck!” I cried and climbed faster to get away from the swarm.

Next thing I know, Nanny Wen screamed. She was below me, and it was the first time she screamed that day (me being the screamier person), so she must have been hit by something remarkable.

I shouted down, “Don’t stop! Keep moving!”

She yelled, “Oww! Pain! I got stung!!”

I yelled back, “I got stung, too! Keep going! Get away from the swarm!”

“Oww! It’s very painful!” she cried.

I reached the top and looked back at her. “Come up here,” I urged, “Don’t stay there!”

She finally reached the top and showed me her arm.

THERE WAS A FREAKING HUGE INSECT STUCK TO HER ARM WITH A THING POKED INTO HER SKIN LIKE A FREAKING SYRINGE.

Ignorant City Girls

I didn’t know whether it was a bee or not. Every insect in the damned jungle looked like it came from outer space.

“Why the fuck are you letting it sit on your arm?!” I cried in horror.

“How?!” she cried, “I dunno! I think we’re not supposed to pull them out, right??? Aaaaaah! It’s very painful!!”

“I don’t know!” I spluttered helplessly, staring at the bee thing on her arm sucking her life away. I wished I had read up on deadly insects before the trip.

She made a decision and plucked the bee from her arm and flung it away. There was a white welt with yellow pus oozing out the middle. Or maybe it was broken skin, I couldn’t tell.

“Help me pull out the sting!”

“Fuck!” I said.

Being terribly squeamish, I gag when I see wounds and people in pain. And here, I had to inflict pain on my friend to save her arm.

For some reason, an image of Sara Tancredi in Prison Break performing a non-anesthesized operation on her own arm to dislodge a bullet flashed in my mind.

Gritting my teeth, I picked at her wound. I couldn’t see the sting amidst all the pus. I didn’t know if I was tearing her skin or plucking out the sting. Feeling the pain for Nanny Wen, I tried not to gag.

After a few agonising attempts, I think I managed to pick it out. I don’t know if it came out fully.

We were both in pain. I felt at least three stings around my ankles. But I think mine weren’t as painful because I had gotten rid of my predators fast. At least, my welts weren’t as big.

We decided we had to go on. It was too far to turn back. I said, “Can you walk? Let’s get to the next checkpoint fast so we can get some help.”

She nodded and walked resolutely on.

Getting Help

We continued climbing the neverending steep mountain and plodded on woodenly.

Nanny Wen described her sting as receiving an injection and feeling the fiery warmth spreading around the injected area, with a pulsating pain afterwards.

Mine felt the same, except less intense.

It took us a while but we finally reached the 3km checkpoint. The checkpoint leaders were expecting us.

“Are you the girls who got stung by bees?”

Apparently, a few other participants who had passed us at our time of crisis had heard our cries and reported it to the leaders.

They checked our wounds and confirmed they were bee stings. They rubbed some green ointment on them and the pain slowly abated. Since they didn’t seem overly concerned, we assumed that it wasn’t fatal or anything, so we proceeded in relief.

But it was a heart-sinking relief. We were only one-third of the way. It felt like we had already done twice that distance and goodness only knew what other evils we were going to have to face.

The trail kept getting harder. There were some rare moments of reprieve when the trek stopped being perilous for half a minute and actually became a decent jungle trail that ordinary people could walk on.

Luxurious normal trek.

For us, those moments were as luxurious as soaking in a hot bubble bath and sipping champagne, but they were always short-lived.

Still, those moments helped to stabilise our morale before they plunged to the depths again with each obstacle we faced.

I really needed all the soothing I could get to help me deal with an incoming leech attack.

(To be continued…)

[This is a multi-part series describing in gory detail my 10km race through the treacherous mountains of Padawan, Sarawak.]

The Challenge

On July 5 this year, Nanny Wen and I faced an impossible challenge (although we didn’t know it was impossible at the time we signed up).

We had been invited to take part in the BHR Padawan Nature Challenge 2009, hosted by Borneo Highlands Resort in Sarawak.

It was to be a 10km race through the jungles of Padawan.

(Padawan, in this case, is a geographical locale in Kuching and not a Jedi apprentice.)

The logo looked deceptively family fun friendly.

According to the website, the challenge “gives an opportunity for nature lovers and adventurous individuals to be close to Nature and to experience the eco-tourism aspects of Padawan”.

What the website neglected to inform us was that, if you didn’t grow up being a jungle ape, you will have an 80% chance of killing yourself in the challenge.

Unsuspecting city girls.

When I first asked the organiser to give me more details about the challenge so I could prepare myself, I was told to “just have fun and enjoy the unexpected”. I googled but there was hardly any information to be found.

So I assumed that it would be like the trek in Bako National Park which I had experienced earlier this year.

This was the only piece of information we were given:

Now that I know better, Bako National Park was Disneyland, in comparison.

Last-Minute Decisions

Just an hour before the race, we were given the option to forget the challenge and, instead, enjoy a VIP media tour on a buggy to scenic spots of the resort.

Nanny Wen and I thought about it but decided to carry on as planned since we had already signed up and we were hyped about it, despite the fact that I had slept only one hour prior to the race due to our hectic itinerary.

(Nanny Wen managed to catch a bit more sleep because she’s a sleeping bag. Literally.)

At the starting line, when we saw that most of the other participants were going for the challenge empty-handed, I decided to foist my little pink backpack (holding precious supplies such as camera, phone, water, energy gel, insect repellant, plasters and antiseptic wipes) on poor George, a fellow media guest who wasn’t taking part in the challenge.

It turned out to be a good decision because the backpack could have killed me by weighing me down.

I am eternally grateful to George Fu for gallantly volunteering to babysit Little Miss Pinky at severe risk to his reputation and inadvertently saving my life.

Hello, Jungle

The race started off easy enough. We flagged off in a large field and ran up a gently inclining road.

Two minutes later, we hit jungle.

And then it was hell all the way.

It was five kilometres of pure savage jungle before we reached the halfway checkpoint.

It was no ordinary jungle. It was a wild jungle on a freaking mountain with all kinds of jungle hazards excepting giant killer apes.

I found out after the race that the tallest point we got up to was 3,500 feet above sea level. It was the halfway point of our race and it took us two hours to get there, not because we didn’t have the stamina to run fast enough, but because it was impossible to run at all.

The jungle was thick and treacherous all the way.

The trail was also wet and muddy from the rain in the past two days. Merely 500 metres in, I had to entirely ditch my city distaste towards dirt, mud, moss and strange insects.

For the most part of the 10km journey, I had to use both arms and legs to propel myself forward, many times literally crawling on all fours to reduce the distance between myself and the ground for safety.

It was that steep all the way, not to mention slippery.

Inclines were treacherously vertical, with narrow, sometimes non-existent, and muddy footholds. I would use my arms to pull myself upwards, either clinging on to disgusting mossy branches, icky muddy rocks or random orphan roots.

Declines were equally steep but more treacherous. I had to squat down and slower lower myself foot by foot while my arms clung on to anything (tree trunks, roots, rocks) I could find along the way.

It was like rock climbing on a vertical wall without convenient anchors and a safety harness, with a few-thousand-metre drop below you to give you a new respect for life.

Rock climbing is a piece of cake compared to the damned mountain.

Can’t… Let… Go

The mountains and jungles threw us obstacle after obstacle, unrelentingly.

The worst obstacles were those in which we had to move sideways along steep, muddy mountain walls, with narrow, slippery footholds or, sometimes, no footholds at all. We would have to dig our own with our feet.

Sometimes, I had to literally hug the mountain to move myself, grabbing on to protruding roots and rocks, using only the strength of my arms to prevent gravity from taking me.

If a root or rock had come loose, or my foot had slipped, it would have meant an endless drop to the bottom of the mountain, so thick with thorny jungle foliage that you can’t see a bottom at all.

Sometimes, we had to do tightrope-walking on narrow tree trunks bridging chasms, with nothing on the sides for our hands to hold on to for balance.

The Chasm of Death

The biggest chasm we came across was about 40 metres long. The tree trunk bridge was about half a foot wide. You couldn’t stand on it with two feet together.

It was so horrifying that I thought I was going to die or go mad with fright.

Fortunately, Nanny Wen isn’t afraid of heights like me. Ever resourceful, she found a stick for me to hold on to while she held on to the other end and walked ahead to lead me across.

That was kind of a silly and useless safeguard, but it helped very much, psychologically.

I swallowed my fear and turned off my runaway imagination. I had no other choice. We couldn’t turn back for so many reasons.

We were making good progress when, midway, the stick broke into two and my heart flipped. Nanny Wen said “uh oh” and stopped walking, worried for me.

My mouth was so dry I couldn’t even swallow but I refused to allow paranoia to set in. I can be quite rational, sometimes. Steeling my heart and numbing my senses, I narrowed my mind to one single thought — get to the other side.

Ditching the stick and grabbing Wen’s hand, I calmly asked her to continue. Foot by terrifying foot, we managed to get to the other side without further incident. I could have dropped onto the floor and kissed the muddy, insect-infested ground.

I’m glad I didn’t, though. Because, shortly after, we came across a worm almost as long as my forearm.

(To be continued…)

There’s a baby lizard living in my bathroom.

For the past few weeks, sometimes when I open the bathroom door and walk in, I will see it get startled and then scurry behind the toilet bowl where it is hidden from sight.

I always wonder what it had been doing before I barged in on it. But it never remains in plain sight long enough for me to observe its actions.

I have always liked lizards, especially baby ones, because I think they look cute with their tiny beady eyes and little webbed feet.

But I’ve never come across the same lizard more than a few times, until this one.

I’m starting to feel some affection for this baby lizard! Maybe I will give it a name!

So cute and little, it’s been showing itself regularly for weeks. It has even grown a little in size since I first saw it.

I wonder where its parents are. Do lizards have family units?

I wonder if my baby lizard is helping me keep my bathroom bug free. How cool is that?

And, best of all, the Goonfather hates lizards, so I am having a great time annoying him about it.

One day, I walked into the bathroom and I said very cheerfully, “Hello there!”

The Goonfather heard me and he said, “You’re shen jing bing (mental case) talking to a disgusting lizard!!”

I’m going to be sad if I stop seeing it one day. =(

The Goonfather and I were at The Cathay when we walked past Jitterbugs, where a pole dancing class was in progress.

We watched for a while. It looked fun and the girls all looked so sexy. So I said, “I want to learn pole dancing too!!”

Immediately, the Goonfather said, “You cannot learn pole dancing.”

“Why?” I demanded to know.

I thought he was going to say something like he didn’t want guys gawking at me or something.

He beckoned me closer to him so he could whisper in my ear.

Conspiratorially, in a serious tone, he said, “Because… If you learn pole dancing, you’d be the pole.”

I’m a little tired of blogging about my activities.

I have many activities left unblogged, like my durian trip, Kuching experiences from half a year ago, a TVC shoot and a restaurant visit.

Activity blogs are very easy to write because you can post a whole bunch of photos with captions and people seem to be satisfied with that. But doing it that way bores me. I hate writing templates. Like:

Today I went here.

[Picture]

I saw this.

[Picture]

This is me (obligatory camwhore shot) being in this location.

[Picture]

Here are my friends making faces at each other because they are so thrilled to be enjoying this activity.

[Picture]

And here is a paragraph of text describing how I wrestled with an orang utan who had escaped its cage because I had made faces at it, causing it to think that I was a banana. Blah blah blah.

[Picture]

I have this compulsion to make every one of my posts interesting by finding different ways to write them. But, after a while, there are only so many ways you can innovate with a certain kind of posts. Also, it’s very hard to be creative and out-of-the-box every single day.

When I find myself starting to write templates, an aversion to writing will develop and I will get a writer’s block. And that’s when I force myself to do something different.

Which is why I’m kind of just talking rubbish today.

If you’re a long-time reader, you may have noticed that my writing and blogging styles change with time (like how my fashion style changes). It’s a conscious effort to not allow myself to become stale.

Yes, I do differentiate writing from blogging.

Writing is just writing words. It’s the technical skill of linguistics and expression.

Blogging has more to do with layout. It involves more elements. It’s how you clap together a bunch of words and photos to entertain the reader, making sure there’s a right mix of each. And maybe spice things up with videos and other interactivity options.

That’s what my kind of blogging is about, anyway. And that’s why blogging is so much harder than mere writing, for me. Blogging is writing and more.

Writing is so easy. I just have to tap on the keyboard and the words come out.

Blogging requires a lot more work because there must be photos and videos. The average Internet surfer does not want to see walls of text. If I don’t have photos for a particular entry, I have to draw something. And you can tell that I can’t draw for nuts.

The average Internet surfer also does not want to read graduate theses, so there must be economy of words. Every word in an entry must have a reason for existence, the reason being to offer the reader something, whether it’s information or entertainment.

I have a self-imposed rule: If I don’t enjoy writing it, no one will enjoy reading it. DELETE and start over.

All those wasted words in the virtual bin. I could cry.

But, for me, that’s part and parcel of being a blogger who cares for her readers. At the end of it, my only hope is that my readers care enough back to leave a comment.