After returning from the 10 days training at Brunei, I was seriously dead beat! Looking back at the things I did, I could hardly believe I overcame the training. The climb up Mount Biang was the ultimate killer experience. One would be faced with a slope almost close to 80 degrees to the horizon, climbing up such 'common' slopes required one to be on all fours, any slip proved to be injury-causing if not fatal. To top it all up, the route up and down the mountain was not as direct as it seems. It was full of ups and downs for the ascension and descension, causing you to wonder whether or not have you progressed up the darn mountain. Along the way, we faced wasps attack and ended up with 4 casualty. 3 of them were alright while 1 of them got pulled out from the exercise due to the serious swellings all over his body. Trust me it’s extremely horrifying to see someone being attacked by a swarm of wasps. It was then tougher as everyone have to share the load of equipments and moving on with less manpower.

Doing of river crossing was pretty fun at first. It was like swimming in ‘ice-milo’ trying to get the equipments across the river. As we approached the middle of the river, it starts to get real deep and your muscles start to ache as you struggle against the current. It’s kind of worrying cause even thou you’re tired you cant afford to stop at all else you’ll swerve away from the end point. The weird thing is leech bites doesn’t hurt at all. All they do is to suck your blood and drop off by itself after sucking. It was until harbouring then I saw the 2 leech bites when I change my trousers.

A lesson that I have learnt from this trip was that water is seriously precious. We had to collect river/stream water because 3days 2 nights of walking and climbing took a toil on our personal water supply of average 4litres. The water collected was cooling to the max! Just seconds after filling your bottle, you could see water droplets forming on the surface of it. Of course, Puritabs were added to the water to kill off any bacteria present, making the water potable. It was truly a cool experience...literally.

Everyone looks forward to 5pm because it is then when we settle down at a suitable harbour site to rest. Deep in the vegetations, it starts to get dark very early and that’s the reason why we had to get settled down before sunset. Hammocks then sprout up like mushrooms after a rain, and bonfires were a frequent sight. For me, I derive great joy in cooking Maggi Mee with teammates when I harbour. The feeling of surpling down warm noodles and sipping hot soup was the ultimate killer concept. Temperatures at night and in the early morning was cool. It was like being in an air-conditioned room.

Here comes the most ludicrous part of the exercise. 8am we set of from harbouring site expecting to finish the last stretch to the end point within 6 hours. We were too confident at that point of time and we actually burn off all rations we had to lighten up the load. The unexpected then happened. We lost our way while trying to take a different route due to bee attacks cases on general route we’re taking. The price to pay was painful, we ended up bashing thru thick vegetations where you get cuts all over due to the thorns everywhere. It was raining heavily and made it really tough for us to climb up steep knolls. I’ll never forget this experience when we ran out of water, few of us who are totally exhausted made the desperate move of trying to take a sip of water by sticking out our tongue to quench our thirst using rain water. That’s how desperate the situation was. Upon reaching the end point, the boat was there yet they told us they couldn’t get us back to camp as we missed the timing. Our pre-planned 3 days 2 night expedition was then prolonged to 4 days 3 night as we spent another night sleeping on muddy ground while it rained for the whole night. The wintriness at night was horrendous as we shivered thru the night in starvation. Nonetheless, tough times don’t last, tough man do, still, we’ve gone thru it and got ourselves a memorable experience.

Last day of the trip, they prepared a one day tour in Brunei Darussalam. Taking a tour bus with a tour guide introducing us to the local Mosques, Water Villages, Museums, malls but still the best part of it was LUNCH & DINNER BUFFET at one of the hotel. Make us suffer for 9 days then give us good food just before going home so that we won’t complain so much. How smart~

That concludes how my 10days in Brunei were spent and it has definitely gave me a memorable experience. If given a choice, I’ll climb Mount Biang for the second time..

MY ARSE~