This Precious Life

It was easy to look out for the National Park office at Kahang. I missed the signboard by mere inches, it was nothing that a little reversing in busy traffic couldn’t solve. Once we had registered and made our payment here, we sat for another 10 minutes to wait for the arrival of the 4WD. The way in was not as treacherous as we had imagined, there were others who drove in in normal cars. There is a chance, however, that it may rain which it did on Sunday night on the way out. When it rains, your car’s tyres may get stuck in the mud. Without the ability to use all four wheels to push yourself out, you will have to wait for a kind passer-by to tow you out. (There are very few passers-by in this area).

The bumpy ride goes on for about an hour and a half. If you need a toilet break along the way, you can offer to help fertilize the oil palms. Why are you looking at me like that?

We got there, got the keys to our 3-room chalet, laid down our bags and walked out to the boathouse to pick up our raft.

At the boathouse, we were surprised to be told that we will be rafting without a guide. None of us had ever rafted before. We were not taught how to do it either, we were quickly told about a jetty 30 minutes downstream, and that when we catch sight of it, we were to paddle in.

Well, what bad could possibly happen? We bravely strapped on the helmets, pulled on the floats and pushed off. It was surprisingly easy to maneuver the raft as the river is gentle and without any rapids. Slowly, we meandered down as the current carried. Occasionally we would splash the paddle to steer towards the right or the left where the river bends.

We didn’t bring our camera out as we thought rafting would be a wet and wild activity. In hindsight, we should have brought one as none of us got wet and as we quietly drifted downstream, we met a wild elephant!

The advantage of rafting instead of boating is that without the loud whirr of an engine, wild animals were not scared off. A huge, brown and wrinkly elephant came down the river bank.

You know how you can tell a dog is smiling by the way it wags its tail? The elephant flapped its left ear at us, it felt as though it was winking at us! Perhaps it wanted a slurp of the river, perhaps it even wanted to dip in for a bath.

After half an hour of rafting, we spotted the jetty and paddled towards it. The guy who released the raft for us had biked here to wait for us. He pulled us in and helped us to hop off. We went back to our chalet, prepared dinner and played a game especially designed for lovebirds. :)

We took out the Conversation Starter for Couples from Marriage Central and took turns asking each other very private questions. I didn’t realize there were so many things we should have known about each other which we didn’t before. It brought all of us closer together. Our bond tightened overnight.
The next day, our journey out to Upeh Guling Waterfall and Tasik Air Biru (Blue Water Lake) was scheduled to start at 8am.