I know I have been postponing this post for 3 weeks now because I knew I couldnt afford the time. Anyways now that I have decided to write it, I might as well try to put in as much detail as possible
Gua Tempurang:
So on thursday night, 10 of us were supposed to leave for Malaysia. Little did I realise that not only would the Causeway and checkpoints be jammed, the roads leading there were also blocked thanks to the massive traffic. As is my professor had managed to give me enough work that by the time I left the university I was sure I would be the last to arrive. I met up with another friend and the two of us made our way to the meeting point half hour late thanks to the traffic. We had to carry our bags and walk from the main road for about a kilometer. On reaching, found out we were the first ones there! Then we got a call from our dear friend,Noolunda, whose broher was supposed to drop him off. Somehow they had gotten on the wrong road and were stuck in the middle of the road leading to the Causeway. (They were later escorted out by the Malaysian Immigration back to the Singapore side, as Noolunda's brother did not have his passport and a funny rule that the entire vehicle and all its passengers should cross over else no one does). Another group had forgotten to get the road maps and had to go back to get those.Slowly people started reaching the meeting point, so begun our adventure, 3 hours late.
We managed to make it to the car rental place without any further events happening, except that we had spent a lot of time standing in slow moving immigration queues.There was a lot of excitement as the drivers took the SUVs out of the car park and we headed for the highway.I love the Malaysian highways...actually I love the Indian highways also, I guess I just love going on long drives. Out of the blue it started raining and we were forced to slow down. All around us the motorbikers sped up in search of shelter and one such biker managed to startle us by suddenly coming in front of our car, causing us to brake suddenly and the back car to ram into ours. Good news, the back car was the rest of our group and no one got hurt. Bad news, the back car's front was badly damaged. We still tried to continue at least till the nearest rest spot, there was little else we could do in the middle of the highway. At this point no one really knew the extent of the actual damage, except that the front lights werent working well.We went a little further but the car behind was missing. The car had overheated and stalled about 5 mins ago. A police car spotted it waiting on the road shoulder and called for a tow truck.
By then,I was very upset and contemplating canceling the trip and returning to Singapore.This whole idea of the trip and driving at night was mine, so I was feeling very guilty that I had not even considered that such a thing might happen and now it was 2am in the morning and everyone was stuck in the middle of nowhere after an accident. Turned out, it wasnt so bad though, some people caught up with sleep (me!) while others chatted away while we waited for a replacement car.
We got a smaller car after 3 hours and after unloading and reloading all our luggage, we were off to go.It was around 6-7 am when we resumed our journey.The sun slowly came up bringing light and warmth with it. The rains had stopped and we were trying to catch up on lost time, as we headed towards our destination, Ipoh!
We reached our Hotel at Ipoh at around 1pm in the afternoon.It was a cosy place and everyone was more than happy with the cosiness of the rooms. After a quick wash and lunch, we headed for the caves, it was nearly 4pm now. As we neared the caves, it started pouring as if it didnt want us there. We were refused entry to the caves as it was too late to start and were told to come in the morning. We headed back to the hotel room. I was a little disappointed as I was hoping to go to the Cave temples the next day and thanks to the rain it wasnt possible to go on that day either.
Back at the hotel there wasnt much to be done except laze ard. We had two people celebrating birthdays the following week and decided impromtu to give a surprise to them. So a few pople sneaked out to get a cake whilst back in the hotel room, a round of card games started to keep the rest occupied. We went for dinner to this amazing punjabi place.Actually the uncle was so happy to meet my Punjabi speaking friends that he would have given us anything we asked.The naans were huge and very soft and I suppose I dont have to mention it tasted awesome.
After dinner was the surprise party and balloon games (who would have thought a bunch of 20+ year olds wud get so excited over balloons...but I am sure our neighbouring room guests would beg to differ). So after everyone had their share of "volleyballoon" it was sleep time.Not sure what happened over at the guys room, but the girls pretty much knocked off as soon as we hit the pillows
I will put day 2 and the caving adventure bit in another post :)
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