A Charmed Life: Life's a Play!

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From Malaysia to Singapore to Batam island in Indonesia.


My visa-stay in Malaysia was again running out (and I was being pursued by the authorities for overstaying and alleged illegal work! -- kidding, hehe) so I had to run to Singapore!


Arriving in Singapore, after much walking and sweating looking for a cheap place to stay, I found a hotel where I met a couple of extremely interesting people: A guy from Chile with a very dramatic and amusing life-story, and a recently separated Korean young mother who equally had a very interesting but a rather mournful life-story to tell. Their stories were very long and despite the tiredness and stress of that day, meeting them made my one night stay in Singapore very memorable. Their stories could definitely be written down into novels to entertain the world but I won't go into that.... Ok, what I'm saying is; looking back to that night, and how I happen to randomly hook up with 2 very contradicting personalities, who, after a mere couple of minutes of meeting them, opened up to tell about their most personal lives - I found it very odd, and very heart-warming at the same time.



Anyway, that night, the Korean lady mentioned that she wanted to go to a really beautiful beach resort island part of Indonesia which is less than an hour away from Singapore by ferry. I was intrigued and I thought I'd go with her since staying in Singapore is expensive for me anyway. So the very next morning, we bought our tickets and off we went, excitedly, to an adventure in Batam island, anticipating to see white sand beaches and hunky boys, hihi.



Arriving at our destination, however, we were met by surprise and great disappointment. We arrived at a dingy, dusty, depressed-looking, overpopulated city with no trace of fellow travelers, or hotels, or tourist destinations. My friend insisted that we're supposed to be in a touristic area with excellent resorts and white sand beaches! The locals didn't know what a guesthouse or a traveler's hotel mean. They didn't have an idea what we were looking for or why we were there in the very first place. They gave us the look: "who are you and what on Earth are you doing here?" To boot, nobody spoke English! You either have to speak Chinese or Bahasa Indonesia. (My little knowledge of Bahasa Malaysia helped us through).



It was both our first time to set foot in Indonesia, and ignorant of the very low value of the local currency (US$ 1 = 10,000 Rupiah), we thought we were just being blatantly ripped off. And my companion, specially, became very aggressive in arguing with the locals. She even started to quarrel about taxi fare with the taxi driver who became intimidated by her. After a couple of hours being shuttled from one old, dark, rat and cockroach infested hotel room to another; and prices that don't contain less than five zeroes, we almost lost hope, and darkness was fast approaching. We were strangers in a very strange island. The island inhabitants didn't speak our language and we didn't speak theirs.

But, to the local people's credit, I hasten to add that nobody tried to harm or seriously cheat us. They had been all nice, friendly and helpful. One hotel owner even offered us 50% off, that would make a dirt cheap 50,000.00 Rp/night for the 2 of us. But we declined because we could not stand the dimly lighted rooms and corridor, a leaking bathroom, and my friend shrieked when she saw cockroaches. They even made all efforts to find the only guy in town (it seems) who spoke English - a young Indonesian man who learned English by formerly working in a resort somewhere else. He was very helpful and very sympathetic towards us -- we, scared, but very demanding, very confused and disoriented-looking chicks ( i mean, we really looked like lost baby chicken squawking).



To make the story short, we settled to consider ourselves lucky to have finally arrived to this one resort near a lead-colored seashore at a discounted price of Rupiah 250,000.00 /night. Compared to all the hotels we were brought to within the city limits, this one looked very decent, had a nice sea-breeze, and it has a swimming pool at least. It was not peak season, the manager said, that's why we could stay at such a discounted price. Being an experienced hotelier, the manager somehow understood our shock when it came to money matters. He calmly and soft-spokenly explained to us, with a calculator, the currency conversion. And he spoke some English and was kind and understanding; and we felt finally at ease.




These were the only photos I managed to take of Batam island. We were too scared and nervous at first so that only after we settled in this resort (PT. KTM Indonesia Hotel and Restaurant) that we managed to relax and take photos.




















The next day, we spent all time enjoying the swimming pool, and then finding no other thing to do in that island, we took the afternoon ferry bound to Johor Bahru, Malaysia.



The hilarious thing, which we only realized after we left the island, was, we were supposed to go to Bintan island and not Batam! Huge difference! Bintan island was the beautiful resort island my friend spoke about. Batam island is another island which only old Casino-playing Singaporeans go during weekends!

Yay!!!!





I'd still say it was a cool adventure, something worth retelling, hah hah!

A friend of mine told me that it's his third time to join a three day trek to Mt. Ugu. I, myself tend not to repeat things I've already done, or go to places I've already been. My reason is because there are a lot of other things to try or many more places to explore, so why re-do, or why re-visit a place? Not unless, for some reason, I felt the first time was not enough, .



So I wondered why people, like my friend, do things over and over again. There were even some who joined the trek 8 times, within the consecutive 8 years this particular activity has been happening! And I never thought that my similarly physically active cousin ever joined the same climb as she never mentioned even the existence of this mountain to me! Not until yesterday anyway when she said she climbed it twice already.... Oh well. Back to the friend I mentioned above, his answer to my question as to why he did it thrice was that it was the best social-climb he's ever been.



"Social-climb" indeed, it was!


168 people participated. What to expect from such a huge number of mountain climbers? Honestly, at first, I had a bit of a hard time imagining how a big number like that could do a continuous three day walking in mountains. But we did it, without any mishaps. At most, I thought that real mountain-climbs should be limited to 20-30 people, with at least three guides with them. In this particular climb, there was almost no need for guides!



I understood why my friend called it "social climb," it wasn't really the serious mountain climbing I expected and prepared for. The trails were big enough and cleared. There was no Avatar-like (the movie) scenes and actions (to my disappointment :-)). I was expecting a jungle, at least a forest; but the mountains were bare. Some of my friends commented it was like walking in John Hay Park, haha. I haven't seen a single waterfall. I haven't heard or had a glimpse of a single exotic wild bird (which I can still see in my hometown, by the way).



It was a "social climb" because different people, who previously didn't know each other, meet and make new friends. It was a social climb because the climbers see the locals, and the locals get to be exposed to outsiders. It was a social climb because some people can get really loud in the middle of the night while tired fellow climbers were trying to get some sleep and rest; some people drink until they get very drunk and vomit in front of some other people's tents, failing to respect other people's spaces. There was a lack of discipline in some groups (i guess that's what happens when there are too many groups). Not to mention the so-called "mountain climbers" who "dropped" their pet bottles and wrappers along the trails -- an outrageous offense against basic mountaineering rules!



I'm not blaming the organizers of the event as I quickly came to understand that this event was not meant to be the mountain climbing that I know of. It was indeed a "social mountain climbing," as defined by my friend. And it was my introduction to this kind of mountain climbing.






All in all, it was good on its own merits. It could have been better, but who am I to say what should be or should not be when I was just another joiner?

I did have some fun.

Though my expectations, as a mountain climber, were not met, it was nonetheless a valuable experience.






















A "social climb" is indeed a unique experience for someone like me who have been taught and trained in the strictest sense of mountain climbing.


In my former mountaineering club, there were many no-nos. Apart from following the standard mountain climbing rules, among others, additional rules that we observed were: no drinking, no smoking, no engaging in romantic relationship among members, no bringing of radios/walkman (no mp3s then!) efficient and economized packing, etc, etc. The mother club of my former mountaineering club was even stricter: all members have to convert to vegetarianism! In my former group, we were not required to be vegetarians but we limited our meat intake.

But in this "social climb," chunks of meat, or "watwat" was the most famous and most anticipated food in the evenings!









I was initially a bit disillusioned about the kind of people who joined the climb. I really had been looking forward meeting and sharing with other mountaineers. It's been a long while since I was surrounded by the adventurous and dare-devil aura of my former mountain climbing friends. Turned out that in this climb, the situation was very different from my expectations. But it was not all about my unmet expectations, lest I paint a drab color for this climb, I hasten to mention that I did see some groups of very well disciplined and very capable mountain climbers, the ones I expected to be there. This was enough to stir the spirit of the past, when I was younger and loved taking dangerous stunts... For the record, in this time's climb, I was the first female to reach the summit, hah hah................. :-)












Oh, the best part of the climb for me was meeting my group-mates, ever helpful, accommodating, and generous. They carried mine and my friend's borrowed but dysfunctional tent. They generously shared their tent and food with us, because we did not bring our own food!




























Soon, summer will pass and I wonder what's next to do when it's gonna be raining and storming.





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