White water rafting @ Kuala Kubu Bharu

The whole rafting idea was conceived when a colleague came back from their Mulu expedition. Next in our friend's to-do list is rafting. Obviously, this person has given a real thought to come with such list. I may not have such detailed list, but I really want to try out bungee jumping, skydiving (tandem) and skydiving (solo). In that order. At this point of time, I don't think I have the nerve to do pull the cord all by myself. Rollercoasters is also in the list but you can't cross it off because there's always the biggest / fastest / tallest one every single year. There's also my Places to Visit list, which consists mostly all of the top destinations one could think of. I'm better off with a Places that I have visited list. That'd be a much, much shorter list :P

After a failed attempt early last month, the idea was brought up again at the start of last week. We felt that it was now or never. If we postponed it one more time, I don't think it would ever materialized. "Another lifetime" as one colleague put it. Amazingly, instead of just the core of 6 people, we managed to gather 12 people for the trip.

Let's fast forward to Saturday...

We were supposed to be in KKB at 8:30am, but we only left our RV point (Petronas Taman Melati) at about 8:10am. We were technically still in KL, some 60KMs away. Yikes! Salah sapa ni? Sila Angkat tangan (Raise your hands if it was your fault). Don't look at me. I played my part by showing up on time ;)

We reached KKB town about an hour later. Fortunately, the person whom we had arranged the rafting with told us that it had been raining the day before so there was no need to worry about the water level. They've continued to release water from the reservoir upriver.

The Kuala Kubu Bharu dam (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

Once we were briefed on the safety issues and the rafting terms, we split ourselves evenly to form 2 groups and boarded our rafts. Each raft was accompanied by 2 guides.

Safety briefing

All aboard (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

Our encounters with the first few mild rapids gave us the chance to familiarize ourselves with the rafting calls. Paddle forward, Back paddle, Over left (everyone to the left side), Over right (all on the right side), Hold in (lean towards the middle) and my friend's favourite (a.k.a default) position - Sit in, where we'll be kneeling down on one knee inside the raft :D

Waiting for the other raft

After the first couple of major rapids, we took a breather and got the chance to try out body surfing. We parked our rafts by the river bank and walked back up some 50-100meters in the forest. We convened at the rocks and one and one by one we jumped into the river and let the current wash us back to our rafts.

Our guide was showing us how it was done. You could see our yellow raft in the distance

The first guinea pig... he fared better than all of us

Another angle of the body surfing activity (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

I had videotaped myself throughout the whole thing, but with the camera strapped to my writst, the clip was mostly underwater. When I got myself stabilized and raised my hand above water, I'd lose balance and go under. This happened twice and then towards the end, it was mostly me trying to make it to the river bank. Check out the video below. It looked as if I was wrestling a crocodile. All it's missing is red blood in the water. Haha.

After everyone had the opportunity to do it once (a few did it twice), we got back on our rafts and continued downstream. After a few more rapids, we came to the next major one - the Chicken Drop. Up until now, we didn't have anybody thrown off our raft yet, unlike several guys on the other raft. But our clean sheet had to stop at one point, and this was where we had a man overboard.

Any second now (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

Wheeeeee! (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

Whoops... man overboard!

Me and my friend's sister looking for a friend who went overboard. And checkout the "Sit in" guy :D (pic courtesy of Yusuf)

The other raft tackled it nicely. For a moment there, I thought they were going to topple over, as seen in the below video:

I believe this was the time where we stopped for a deserving break at a very cooling waterfall. Twiggies (the local's version of Twinkies) never tasted so good.

Arriving at the waterfall

It was very, very cooling

We didn't bother to take off our helmets :D

We then came to the last leg of the rafting. Something very dodgy happened. As we were about to navigate through this one unnamed rapid, our skipper yelled out "Over right". Without any questions, we crowded the right-hand side of the raft. But something was amiss. There was no "Back to normal" call to command us to get to our normal position. Before we could blink an eye, our raft had flipped over and all of us were thrown into the water.

At first we were clinging on to the raft, but we were told to let go. With a paddle in my hand, I was floating downriver when I saw a friend on the rocks. I held out my oar and he reeled me in to join him on te rocks. We were now stranded in the middle of the river. 3 more guys and a guide were on the right bank. Another guide went after another friend who had gone downstream.

Those guys on the right bank came to pick us up and we steered the raft to get to the last two. When each one of us was all accounted for (one oar missing), we found out that they purposely flipped us over :P Okay-lah. It was an experience. We were also told that we shouldn't be hanging on to our paddles in the water.

After clearing the last few (mild) rapids, we arrived at the calmer portion of the river. We jumped into the river and floated lazily all the way to the end point. So peaceful. Me likey.

Kasi can lah :D

Of course, I won't do this without a life vest on.  hehe

While having lunch in a restaurant in town (although we were kinda expecting lunch by the river), it started to rain and we were already running late to go jungle trekking to Chiling Waterfall. As an alternative, we went to the Dam's Info Centre to wait out for the rain. When it had turned down a couple of notches, we headed to the Chiling River. It was already half past 4, and according to the ranger, it's a 45-minute trek to the waterfall. That meant we couldn't possibly be meeting the 5:30pm deadline to return to the entry point. Instead, we just hung around by the river. One friend decided to go for a dip and most of us followed suit. I wouldn't say the rest of the afternoon had gone to waste.

The dam seen from the Information Center

The reservoir

Chilling at the Chiling River.  The current was pretty strong although it didn't look like much from here

Once we changed to our dry clothes, we stopped for teh tarik (tea/coffee) at a mamak at KKB. Punya la riuh. We wrecked havoc at the restaurant with our laughters, recapping the day's events. I'll be lying if I said I didn't have a good time. Well, I didn't just have a good time. I had a frakking great time! The company made it even sweeter. If only we had time to look for a big van for the trip. Sure lagi kecoh (It'd be a riot)

What's next? Perhaps not sky-diving. Not just yet. We have to check with our colleague and see if there's anything that's enticing :)