An Article

no idea if i have posted it before, but this is an article which was writen quite a while ago in the star newspaper. me and boss jeremy took some of the camp5 memebrs for climbing, i took some photos and they were used in the article. quite crappy photos if you ask me. anyway here goes.

Saturday July 12, 2008
Climbing at Batu Caves
By LEONG SIOK HUI


Bored of the climbing gym? Go for nature’s own at Batu Caves.

Clammy, my hand thrashes desperately about to find a hold. The other one is jammed into a crack and clinging on for dear life, and my legs are beginning to wobble like jelly on the tiny ledge.

Suddenly, I lose my balance and — whoa!— I’m airborne and falling.

Luckily, I am tethered. Sitting on my harness and swinging like a pendulum, I take in the hills yonder which are like dots on the horizon. Yeah, it’s great to be outdoors again.

My friends and I are at the Nyamuk climbing site near Batu Caves, Selangor. Camp5, the largest climbing gym in Asia, runs an outdoor climb every third Sunday of the month for members.

Regular Camp5 climbers at Nyamuk climbing site.

A mere 15 minutes’ drive from the city centre will take you to these craggy limestone hills in Kg Melayu Wira Damai, Gombak. On weekends, you’ll see human spiders clinging onto the rock faces 30m high. The cliffs are popular with local and Singaporean climbers.

Camp5 director Jeremy Peet and staff Noel Yung set up the routes for us on the day of our climb. Today, there are 11 climbers, most of whom are familiar faces from the gym. It is like a picnic outing with time enough for socialising and lunch breaks in between climbing.

There are more than 60 climbing routes in Nyamuk, ranging from beginner-friendly 5B to expert-level 8A — the hardest route found in West Malaysia. This is based on the French grading system, which starts at 4 (beginner’s level) to 9B+, currently the world’s most difficult routes, located in Spain and Mexico.

The Camp5 pioneers make it a point to preserve the rocks and natural environment as well as respect the rocks’ natural lines. That was why we had to scramble over rocks and lush vegetation just to get to the climbing site.

Nyamuk’s long, steep routes vary between 12m and 33m. You get a good blend of jagged edges, cracks, overhangs and big rock slabs.

“The outdoor climb is an extension of Camp5 and gives our members an opportunity to enjoy the natural climbing sites in KL,” says Peet, 35, a climbing instructor and outdoor guide from New Zealand.

The climb here is free for term members while “casual” members pay RM24 a day (general entrance rate at Camp5).

“It’s more like a social club’s atmosphere as opposed to an instructional course or guided climb. We expect the climbers to have the prerequisite skills to look after themselves,” says Peet.

Since Camp5 opened about three years ago, the gym has trained thousands of beginner climbers.

Jeremy Peet, operations director of Camp5.

“You get a more well-rounded climbing ability by combining indoor and outdoor climbing,” explains Peet, who has more than a decade of mountaineering experience behind him.

“The techniques differ. For indoor walls, the holds stick out from the wall. On an outdoor rock face, it’s the opposite — the crack or ledge goes into the wall. You can easily tell if a person is an indoor or outdoor climber from his climbing style.’’

If the popularity of the outdoor climb increases, Peet says, Camp5 will consider doing it a couple of times a month.

A family affair

On our climb, we meet a family of Dutch expatriates, the Latours. Though the family are regulars at Camp5, this is the first outdoor climb for Marc, 13, his sister, Sophie, 11 and their mom, Ineke. Father, Henk, is an experienced climber who has scaled Mont Blanc in France.

“It’s a pity there weren’t many children climbing, it would have been more encouraging for our kids,” says Ineke, 48.

“Yeah, it’s boring because I had no one to talk to,” Marc agrees. Despite his first time on a rock wall, Marc found it “pretty easy.”

“You don’t always have to find the same colour footholds (like in a climbing wall); you can choose from hundreds of possibilities,” says Marc who also surfs, scuba-dives, plays golf, baseball, soccer and softball.

“It challenges you to do more with your strength and tactics. I have to find the easiest ways to get to the top without tiring myself out. I guess you have to have the right people in the group to make it fun, but overall I like it because I get to be very strong,” he adds.

“It was tricky finding the holds and scary to climb a real rock,” his mother chips in. “But I felt safe because the route was set up by Camp5 staff, and my husband was belaying me.”

Yup, for those of us who have yet to learn lead climbing and how to set up our own routes, Camp5’s outdoor jaunt is the next best thing for now.

o Camp5’s next outdoor climb is on July 20. Early reservation is advised as space is limited to 20 people.

-End-

kinda sucky that they didnt credit me. damn...

Slack Line and Cats

as said in a post before, camp5 now has a slackline!

here are some pictures taken yesterday.


here is one of me.



this is one of kammy



and a last one of andrew



cool eh? it isn't as easy as it looks. actually takes loads of practice. the pros can even do summersaults and land right on the slackline. but sadly noone in camp5 has reached that level yet. its only been what? a week since it was first set up?

for those of you who are interested in trying out the slackline, camp5 sets them up around the end of the day if people want to do it. but they will soon set up a set time when they will set it up.

next up, is about cats. well more of kuching. i leave for kuching in another 6 hours time. and will only be back on the 15th of july.

i'll be going for the rainforest world music festival!!

besides the music festival, ill also be going to kuching to visit people and get intouch with my roots... lol! i like the sound of that. well its cuase i haven't been back in like what? 7 years? around that i think. so its about time i went back for a visit. for those of you who didnt know, i was born in kuching and lived there for about 6 years before i moved to KL.

anyway, im also hoping to do some climbing there. managed to get a contact from a friend of a climber in kuching. hope all goes well and i can go climbing.

gotta start packing now. till the next time i post! hopefully with more pictures and more photos.

p.s. my sister will be leaving for perth on the 20th of july. she will be the first bird leaving the nest. hope all goes well...

i might be back

well today i had my first long climbing session since i started to slack off in december.

finally i managed to bring myself to keep climbing. managed a 5 hour day today. i even managed to finish 2 of my project routes. well only one actually, i didn't clean the other one.

anyway, it feel really god to be climbing again. at first i started the day with just taking some climbing photos (like what i normally do), but because i didn't have the bosun's chair, it got really uncomfortable sitting in the rope. so i decided to stop taking pictures and started climbing.

so right now, the joints on my middle finger hurts, cause i've had such a hard days climb.

it really amazes me that im still able to climb. even tho i never climb consistently anymore, which is like hardly once in two weeks, i am still able to pick up from where i left off a few months ago when i was still hardcore climbing. only thing now is that i dont seem to have the super stamina anymore. looks like its time to train up :D


so anyway time to talk about something else.

hmmm... lets see...

ah yes! my brother inigo found this huge stack of DVDs outside someones house the other day. they were all original and it was a mixture of moveis and other shows like lost. coolest thing is that there was the whole trilogy of the lord of the rings!! not only that, its the extended version!! looks like i'm going to be spending alot of time watching is.

besides all that,i'm now currently blogging from the comfort of my bed. how? well my sister got a lap top the recent PC fair, and i'm using it. its such a nice thing to have, your own lap top comuter which you can take anywhere.

ok i guess thats all for this edition of a mixture of white chalk and hidden laughters. i'm off to watch somelord of the rings :D

hopefully i'll post some pictures soon. maybe from sunburst or maybe the left overs from phuket.

a trip to the jungle

some time ago i went along with some of the guys from camp5 to sungai chilling, which is in kuala kubu baru. the reason we were there was because we were going to bring some kids from the alice smith school for a trip.

so off we went in the car. there were 4 of us, me, zak, andy and aqmal. on the way to sungai chilling, something happened. it involves a lorry, a rock and our car. to sum it up, here is what happened.

had to switch the picture to b&w, because it was overexposed. i accidentally took the photo in the wrong settings. here is another, with colour!


when we got out of the car, we could hear the glass cracking. and it continued to do so. in the end we decided that we had to kick the windshield out. JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES!!

but sadly, it isn't as easy to kick it out like in the movies. in the movies, when they kick the windshield out, it comes out as one nice piece.

ours came out in pieces.... damn those movie directors, giving us false hope of an easy way out.

so anyway, we cleaned up the mess and went on with the show.

sungai chilling or otherwise knows as chilling river, is a really cool place. its a trek along the river with 6 river crossings before you reach the waterfall at the end.

so we headed there and briefed the kids on the safety and stuff. it was pretty cool watching 20 or so kids with huge backpacks walking into the jungle and crossing the rivers.

here are some of the river crossings


as you can see, the kids are quite small, and the current quite strong at some areas, therefore we have to make a human wall to keep them from being swept away. oh btw, when i walked into the water for the first time, my balls literally shrank!

the water is COLD! but its fun la. loads of fish in the water too.

so the trek each way is about 30 minutes. after all that hard walking, you finally get rewarded with a nice waterfall!


next, is a picture of the crew, minus aqmal. he decided to take a nap on a rock.

just a note, i didn't bring my remote for the camera then. so i had to put the camera on timer. only had a few seconds to scramble up some rocks and climb up that log before the camera took the picture. i was really proud of myself! lol!

with so much rocks and boulders lying around, what do you think a climber would do?


i went bouldering! found this killer route near the waterfall. good thing i brought my shoes along.

so after playing in the water and having our lunch, we headed back down stream. it was a really funny trip, cause at every river crossing, there would be at least 5 kids that would fall over and take a plunge into the cold water. there was even this girl megan, she carried this bag, and because she fell into the river so many times, the bag was practically full of water. so she actually carried the bag full of water and stuff all the way down stream. really hilarious.

anyway, here is a group photo.

great trip. i would definitely want to go back there again.

after we left the kids, we headed down to the nearby town to get our car vacuumed as there were glass everywhere!

the town seems to be a really old town. there are buildings from the colonial days when the british ruled us.


so yeah, it was quite cool.

after we got the car cleaned, we headed back home. its so cool to have a car without a windshield, because there is no need for air conditioning, everything you look at seems to have more colour, and its just the IN thing you know.

so anyway here was the picture of the day. hope you like it.

left to right: Zak, Noel, Aqmal, Andy.

The trip up north

so i already got the pictures from hannes.

well the day started with us needing to wake up like super uber early, 5am, to meet up at central park by 6am. met up with brad and company, but they were late. like freaking 20 minutes late! argh!!

anyway we went on our way. the drive to ipoh was really boring. my butt actually became really numb after a while. all i saw during the drive there was this.


when we arrived in ipoh, the first thing we did was to look for a place to eat.

guess what we had?


we had dim sum!

it was real cool. there were loads of us, so we could afford to try allot of dishes.

after the really satisfying breakfast, we headed over to a motel that is located really close to the water park. its called sun inns. after we checked in, checked out the rooms, jumped around a bit, we were off to the water park for some climbing!

we took a group photo right before we entered the park.


person missing, marrianne.

the usual entry fee if you want to go climbing is 26.90 ringgit, and thats freaking hell expensive man! but lucky for us, we were camp5 members. so we get a 5 ringgit discount. all we paid was 21.90 ringgit, which was still FREAKING EXPENSIVE!

come to think about it, why is the lost world of tambun charging climbers so much, when they did not even contribute any money to the bolting of the routes?

but never the less, they were quite nice. we pay the same price that every other people who wants to go to the water park, but we get a free can of 100 plus. not bad huh?

but still pretty expensive.

anyway, we walked till we saw the infamous needle of tambun.

marrianne and hannes took a really cool picture.

click it to enlarge it. it looks so cool! okay, its just cool, not so cool. i exaggerated a little.

so anyways, we set up base on some benches, but decided to move them because they were out in the open, in the sun.

hannes and marrianne decided to go do some lead climbing, and me and the other guys went to go bouldering.

there is this huge cave which has boulders and stuff round it. some really cool problems there.

so yeah we went bouldering.

and bouldering some more.

this was quite a cool problem. loads of under clings, slopers, and crimps.

after alittle climbing, i decided to head over to base and take a nap. when i woke up, it was climbing time!

guess what, i on sighted a 6c+.

thats the route i climbed.

don't know what an on sight is?

an on sight means climbing the route and finishing it without resting on the rope, and without any prior knowledge of how the route goes.

after my climb it started to rain, so we decided to head back to the water park. had alittle food there and just hung around while deciding what to do.

because eujinn, jordan, and chee khan was heading home that night, they decided to jump into the water for a swim. what did me, brad, hannes and marrianne do?

well we sat around and decided to head back to the hotel for a nap.

i don't know why, but time seems to pass by really slowly in ipoh. since the curtains were close, and it was all dark, i thought we overslept or something.

anyway, after the nap we headed over to brad's grand aunties place. she was a really nice talkative lady. she took us out for dinner and all.

after dinner we headed back to the hotel and lazed around abit. me and brad decided to head over the RUM JUNGLE, which was a club that has a jungle theme. it was just right beside the lost world of tambun.

when we got there it was around 1015. there didn't seem to be many people there. so we thought that maybe ipoh was a really dead place. so we sat down, got some drinks and waited. then suddenly, around 1100, a surge of people came in. the band started playing and it was actually quite nice. there was loads of people there.

i think one of the reasons that there are allot of people there is because in ipoh, there isn't many places to go party at night. so thats why everyone comes to the rum jungle to party. i think the whole of ipoh was there. we could see old people, young people, middle aged people, and yes, even old white men that smokes cigars hanging out at the bar all alone checking out girls.

after a while we got bored of sitting down and decided to take a look around the place. it was actually really nicely done up. they have about 4 bars there, loads of space, tons of sofas for groups, and it has 2 levels. i didn't bring my camera with me, so there aren't any photos. after awhile we decided to call it a day. headed back round 12 or so.

the next day, we woke up and had some mamak food. the service there was the ultimate slow and messy kind of thing. they can never get your order, and it seems like they don't want your business. when taking our orders, they just leave even before we finish giving our orders.

such bastards.

anyway, went climbing later on.

on our way to the entrance, i spotted a crash pad that has hands and legs.


the highlight of this day was that, I DID MY FIRST MULTI PITCH!

don't know what a multi pitch is? search it online.

here are some pics of me and hannes multi pitching.


this picture is when i decided to take a crap on the wall.

hahaha... yeah rite...

ok, so it doesn't look like we were multi pitching. but we did it. climbed half way and all of a sudden we lost the route which we were supposed to climb and decided to bail.

while we were climbing multi pitch, marianne decided to take some weird photos.


ok so i'm lazy to type. this is taking way way too long.

after the climb, we headed to the water park, stole some people's tubes, and went on the lazy river, and also some of the slides.


after the swim we got changed and went to meet brads grand auntie for dinner.

she brought us to this cool place which had really cheap food. she also gave us a fish, which we ate at the restaurant.


see the fish? it was deep fried and all. it was so krispy!

then later on, we sent her home and it was back on the highway again.

this time it wasn't so bad, becuase hannes and brad kept me awake by chatting me up.

ok so i'm lazy to type already.

this trip was mostly attended by

Marrianne!

Johannes!

Noel!@#$

Brad!

and lastly,

The Orange Butterfly!

here is our small group photo!


and now here are some random pics.


ok looks like this is it.

next trip, LANGKAWI!

which will be this coming week end!

Whee!! i'm back!

climbing in tambun was great!

the people was fun.

food was good.

i know where all the ipoh chicks party at.

the drive there was long.

and most of all, i just got back from ipoh, so i'm really tired.


so more on the trip when i get the pictures from johannes and once i've gotten some rest.

the whole story at the polo field

so the day started out with us having to meet up at primo's house at 545 in the morning.

what time did i wake up?

i woke up at 535am and only arrived at primo's at 550.

but anyway we managed to get to bukit kiara equestrian by 607. our registration time was at 615. when we got there, it was so freaking hell cold. so imagine walking across the big huge open polo field, being exposed to the wind and all.

so anyways we took our seats and waited. me being all sleepy and sitting there with an empty stomach, really wanted to go back home and continue sleeping and also to get something to eat. all of a sudden, a familiar face appeared, well 2 faces actually.

the people sitting right behind us were the toughest group you could ever find. these people are so strong and buff that there was nobody else as tough as these guys. these people are gym instructors and people who always win adventure races.

the two familiar faces was soon, and jonathan gabriel. don't know them? well just imagine 2 guys, so buff and all that they wear tights, and are basically people who frequent a work out gym every single day. these 2 people used to do some climbing at camp5 until a few months ago where they must have lost interest. but never the less they still do climb and are quite good at it. whats worst was that their 2 other team mates, which were girls, are also as buff and fit as soon and jonathan. they were so buff and all that i seriously thought that one of em was a guy! plus it was at like 6am in the morning, so the lights were not that bright. seriously took me a while to realize that they were girls.

when we saw these other team, we were like, "ok they are probably going to be our number 1 competitor"

anyways, the day went on with us going for the briefing on what activities were going to take place, then finally we had to do some really gay stretches before we started the challenges.

here are the challenges for the first elimination round

1. transfer weighted sacks over to the weighing scale. when the weighing scale reaches 20kg, then you can stop the timer. 20 second penalty of you go over 20kg

2. walk across the beam and hang flags on the flag hangers at the side of the beam. timer will be stopped once all the team members have finished the challenge.


3. the team leader collects an envelop which has a picture inside. when the timer starts, team leader opens the envelop to find out which picture his team has to assemble. 6 cubes from the other side of the field has to be transfered over to the other side, and assemble the puzzle in the frame.


for our information, the one with the cubes, is really really hard. the pictures you get are all so much of the same colour that it is really hard to tell which goes where. what makes it worst, is that these cubes are freakin huge and heavy! the size is about 1 cubic meter.

anyway, we were told that we were quite fast. even though we were like the second batch of people who did the challenges.

so anyway, after our turn was up, we headed home, cuase there was still another 142 more teams that had to go through the challenges. my team number was A06. A is the batch number, and 06 is the turn number. so basically we were the 6th team to register. the challenges were done 4 teams at a time. so we were the second group to undergo the challenges.

what did i do when i went home? well i went back to sleep. later on i woke up to go to church at 1015am. after church, i went back home, and went back to sleep.

somehow, we knew that we were going to get into the top 10. so even though the winners of the top 10 was going to receive a call at 230, we all decided to meet at primo's place at 230.

as usual, i was late. when it was 235, while i was about to leave my house, i gave dhayang a call to ask him if he has gotten the call yet. he said they haven't contacted him yet.

jeng jeng jeng!!

what the hell!!

so anyway by the time i got to primo's place, it was already 250. i asked dhayang again, have they called? he said no they didn't call. so we comforted ourselves by saying that "it was raining just now, so things might have been delayed"

then we waited and waited.... still no call.

255, still no call.

300 still no call.

suddenly, at 301, dhayangs phone started to ring.




it was his mother.



302, the phone starts ringing again!

this was what we have all been waiting for. the call that told us we would be in the regional top10.

as dhayang was talking to the lady, who was telling us that we got into the top 10 yada yada, i asked him to tell her that she was late...

so we made our way, and this was what we saw on the score board.


well, now im starting to get quite lazy to type. so im going to make this short.

went to the briefing tent, to be briefed on our next 3 challenges, and we had time to plan our strategy.

at this time, it was drizzling, and has been drizzling for a few hours now. so all the props were wet. never the less, the event still went on.

we had to draw lots to know our turns. we got the 8 turn.

this gave us loads of time to watch the other teams and plan our strategy.

this time, the challenges were longer, harder, needed more running, thinking, and most of all speed!

among some of the things we had to do was an obstacle course, which had to be done individually and i took one that had climbing involved, transferring smooth pebbles into a bucket using chopsticks, searching for an allen key in a tank full of maggots, assembling and disassembling a clothes hanger, searching for a towel in a tank full of other towels and ice cold water, and of course, loads of running.

jonathan b. in the tank full of maggots.

jonathan b. , primo, me, and dhayang waiting for our turn on the second challenge.


the competition was really tight. the team of malay dudes from UM that was doing the challenges at the same time as us, was really freakin fast! and our scores were really close. they partially contributed to us pushing ourselves to pick up the pace.

after our challenges were over, we sat and waited for the results to be announced. at this time we were counting our time to see if we actually managed to enter the top 2. it was really close. it was either us or the malay dudes from UM.

suddenly, as we were getting really nervous, there was a rainbow in the sky, and the rainbow was freakin huge! this seems funny, but we actually took it as a sign from god that we would get into the top 2. plus our team comprises of people from church, so why else shouldn't we have the support of god! hahaha!

the rainbow in the sky, the picture ain't that good, cuase the light was really dim.

after a while this lady walked up to the board, and started writing down the placings, from the 10th place onwards. as she got to the 3rd place, as soon as we saw that it was not our number, we jumped and shouted for joy!

we beat those malay dudes from UM by a very slim 7 seconds!

so we got our "passports to the finals", and we posed for the press and stuff. got interviewed by ntv7, and its going to come out in the morning breakfast show on wed 830am. so go watch it if you are ever bothered to wake up that early in the morning. i know i am not bothered to wake up that early.


oh, the news paper people came to us and asked for our names, and if our team had a name. guess what name we gave them. JC's quartet! hahaha! if you don't know what JC means then go ask someone.

so anyway, if you guys want to watch the finals and support us, go to kelana jaya stadium on the 9th of september, where we will battle the other 9 teams from all over malaysia for the grand prize of 20k!

as you can notice in all the photos, i stayed away from jonathan b. know why?

cuase he has got the chicken pox.

whats to great about that? well i haven't got it yet.



after the competition, we went to the pasar malam in taman tun to get some fast quick food, and headed over to KL near stadium merdeka, at the dang wangi police station. there was a candle light rally to call for the release of a friend who was taken into custody by the police under the OSA. some crap bullshit la. anyway, we went there to shop our support and all. FREE NAT! or BEBASKAN NAT!