Spelunking

JULY 10, 2010. It was a day to remember; a blood curdling one that will definitely make your blood run freeze and turn into icicles. Every life has its ups and downs and I’m living a kaleidoscopic life with too many adventures and challenges that I need to embrace. I need to overcome my fears. Having said this, it doesn’t turn me into some kind of a superhero or a valorous warrior who will wield a broad sword and stab the enemies by the neck like the one you see on the telly with Achilles aka Brad Pitt in “Troy” slew his enemies and cut their throats. Let’s face the reality - I’m just me, neither Achilles nor Hector and I’m not invincible too. It’s hard to be only known as a commoner. To be honest, I’m achluophobic or someone who’s scared of darkness.

I haven’t done anything fruitful during the past two months hiatus except I’ve managed to lose weight. I was dead bored and you can see how huge the word “BORED” written on my forehead. Definitely, the boredom intensified when I learnt that most of my friends managed to escape from their beloved family’s grip. This was really embarrassing. I was completely a lunatic, spending too much time on the internet and even had few virtual fights with my game friends. There’s no one within the vicinity of my house who’s the same age like me. I was mad as a hatter and starting to miss my alma mater. I was in delusion and in complete misery. I was craving for fun and laughter. Even cat’s constant meows exasperated me. Luckily I was still sane to crack jokes.

One day my mum had this brilliant idea. It’s considered as brilliant because I can finally wake up and smell the sweet scent of coffee and yes, nature! It was the first time that I ever heard of “spelunking” or “potholing”. It did sound horrifying. Potholing? Like we can’t find enough potholes in front of our house. Yup. I had no choice but just to agree to her idea. The place – “Gua Tempurung” is somewhere 20 minutes from my house with the condition that you’ll drive like my father, speeding like a crazy buffoon and exceeding the speed limit. Thank god, he’s only driving a Proton Satria. I could have sworn that my dad is a dare-devil when he’s on wheels. Totally!!! It really tested my adrenaline.

The Speeding Gonzales was driving. It felt like sitting in a hell carriage with pompous black stallions maniacally smacking the highway

The road not taken. Along the road, you can witness the calm villages and proliferating DURIAN stalls!!!

Right, this is the main entrance of the place. There are four types of activities offered by “Gua Tempurung”. "Gua Tempurung" per se is a limestone cave. Perak for your information (for those who fail their geography during PMR) is well-known for its richness of limestones and tins. And ours was TOW (Top of the World) activity. If I am not mistaken an adult will cost you RM9 per entrance. Basically, our activity did not involve any water activities since my family and I were going in a group with fatsos and drooling kids. Ooopppssss sorry. That was harsh. Whatever! They were the main reason why we need to wait for another 1 hour. Snails. Coming back to the reality. A guy who is one of the rangers gave us a short briefing, telling us all the necessary precautions that we need to take and an overall view of the activity. The cave is already modified and has steps. I mean real flight of steep steps that will leave pain to your muscle.

The main entrance and my dad taking pictures of ...! Dad! Quit that will you? You're blocking my stairway to heaven

There are four platforms. You’ll be fascinated, captivated by the jaw-dropping and breathtaking view. I can’t believe that I’m saying this but this activity really left me with something. I’m starting to think “spelunking” is one of the best activities that I ever did in my whole entire life. Not only it’s generally beneficial to our lungs and health, it also gives me inspiration and I am really grateful to be chosen to ponder and think how small I am if to compare myself to God’s creation. God is great. Imagine. This is only a part of God’s power. He has created such unimaginable creations. Let us think how He may easily strip away our fortunes within a glimpse. Let us think what we have done during our 20 years of living. Let us think how we’ve used our knowledge for good or for the worse. I can’t believe that I always blame God for all my misfortunes. I’m such a wretched soul and yet, God still lend me another chance for atonement. Masya-Allah.

Cold torrent coming out of nowhere. Perhaps from the cave itself. You can dip your toes

Wonderful sight of limestones

These are some of the pictures that I’ve taken during the activity. My camera was driving me nuts! Due to the bad lighting, these were the pictures that I could take to solidify the precious memory. See that red circle? It looks like a head of a ram. Pretty stalagmites and stalactites would form many unimaginable forms of miraculous wonders. Some look like a pregnant woman with a complete set of hair and even an inflating stomach (it looks like a balloon!), erkkk because she’s conceiving a baby. Some look like jellyfishes and even flights of stairs. Most of the stalagmites and the stalactites are about hundreds and even could reach up to thousand years old. I was told that young stalagmites and stalactites are white in colour and will turn yellow when they’re getting older. This, personally it’s due to the process of oxidation and reminded me of my Chemistry. Crystals can also be seen at some parts of the cave.

As you can see inside of the red ring, there's a part of the cave that imitates (I don't think this is the correct word. Visage?) the head of a ram

Bats’ stool appears to be crafty. Seriously these conniving creatures had proven to be worthy when their dung when being washed away by rain will leave beautiful images to the cave’s surface. As oppose to my strong stomach, there’s one that really looks like a chicken drumstick and the ranger made a stupid joke that that image really reminds everyone of KFC. Yeah, right. I felt like I wanna puke. The third platform, whereby it was one of the communist’s meeting point, setting up conspiracies and scheming to kill the leaders. The untrodden path (starting to feel mysterious). There’s the wind tunnel. It is ventilated and you can experience cold breeze, like a room with air-conditioners. However, it smells bad due to the tourist’s stench smell of sweat. The place soon was crowded and the cold-breeze-experience turned into an abrupt nightmare. The ranger informed us that when the outside is hot, the cave will turn cold eventually and vice versa. 

My mind started to click. My Physic’s mind starting to process. Well, the thing is the cave is acting like our house. The same analogy like the sea breeze. Kind of an interesting fact but it really left wonders among the other tourists.

Guess what? Even a mad man can recognise this vehicle. My heart leaped and I wanted to scream "yeah" but it was just an empty vessel

The snail rendezvous ended up at 12 noon. I got myself a burger because I was starving since I didn’t have my breakfast. The others were complaining of body aches while I was carving smile like a prima donna, walking arrogantly and sniffed the clean air. Although I was really disappointed because I was left alone like a douchebag with nobody to talk to, I was really utterly satisfied to explore such a wonder within two hours of dark and eerie adventure. I managed to overcome my fear of darkness. Seriously, (with booming voice like a blood and thunder preacher) you guys need to travel and expand your horizon with the colourful world of Malaysia. There're many places in Malaysia that shouldn't be missed before receiving your boarding pass. Do something that you can cherish and can be shared when you're abroad. Tell them what's Malaysia. How unique we're - the avant-garde Malaysia (sounds like sissy). Joie de vivre!

Malicious Operational Team. Nah...it's actually TOW (Top of the World). So uncool

Coming back to my dungeon, I had to be entertained. I was nonchalantly informed that there was still no sign of the despicable allowance. Great!!! Imbecile.