Ages ago, before Eel came back for her annual trip, we got to talking about stuff that we could do in Malaysia. Generally, most of our events involve food in some ways, so we wanted to do something totally different. I suggested going for SkyTrex Adventures, which is located in Bukit Cahaya, Shah Alam. To quote from their website:

SkyTrex Adventures is a place where you can enjoy jungle trekking from a level never done before – through the canopy of the forest! Test your agility, challenge your fear – walk, crawl, glide and swing through our different trails in the sky, in total safety while appreciating the wonders of Malaysian tropical rainforest.

I had read about it in the newspapers quite some time ago, but never got up the energy to go and check it out. This provided me the push I needed in order to get going. Together, Eel and I googled several blogs that talked about it, and it looked really interesting, if not a bit scary at certain points! Anyway, we decided to go, and invited our group of school friends to come along.

My advice? Don’t wear shorts. It bunches up and feels pretty uncomfortable. Guys, be prepared, the harness enhances your “package” a lot. And also, it would probably be better to wear a long sleeve shirt, I wore a short sleeve shirt, as you can see, and by the end, I had rope burns. You can also rent gloves there, if you want, it does save you some pain. Oh, and don’t try to be a smarty-pants and put the harness on by yourself, unless you really know what you’re doing. Some of the guys in the other groups tried that, and during the training session, the person in charge had to go and fix the harness for them.

Once we got our equipment on, we were taken to the side where we were shown some of the different obstacles we would be encountering. The trainer briefed us on the pulley, carabiners, harness and the correct methods to use them. It felt really overwhelming at first, but after we went through all the obstacles, we kind of got the hang of it. That was only the “easy” part, I believe the height was only a couple of meters of the ground. Later on, the actual course was up to 17 meters above ground!

After graduating from the training, we started off on the main course. The first obstacle was climbing this ladder, which seemed to go on forever and ever! Furthermore, only one person at a time could climb the ladder, so I felt doubly pressured to go faster, even though all I wanted to do was stop and rest for awhile.

I don’t have too many pictures of the obstacles itself, it’s hard to take pictures whilst going through the course. For the picture above, it looks easy enough, but what you can’t see is that it tips from side to side as you walk along the wooden bars! One of the hardest tasks that we went through was this one where there were horizontal wooden planks. In between the planks was a rope dangling, and you had to lean forward to grab the rope, and swing yourself to the next plank. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? But you feel a great sense of accomplishment after finishing it. If you’re too scared, they do have these alternate routes, I think they call them “Chicken Exits”, where you just flying fox your way past to the next obstacle. There was actually a guy in the group after us that did it! Hehe, I felt really smug because I completed it and he didn’t!

In this obstacle, we had to swing on a rope from a platform, and we would smash into this rope net. We then needed to cling onto the net, let the rope go, and climb up to the next platform. See Terence in red, and a sliver of green beside him? That’s me! All in all, it was a fun outing, although at times, I had the thought, “What on earth am I doing to myself??”

And guess what? The advanced course should be opening up some time this year, where it’s even higher and tougher than the current one! Hmm, not sure if I’d want to go for that, though. Definitely something you should try (although you can’t try it if you’re over 100kgs, there’s a weight limitation!). There’s even a children’s course there, a kid was having a birthday party on that day, and it looked so fun! Something different from the normal A&W / McD’s birthday parties I used to go for!

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