This week trekking was located at Kota Batu near the President of standard Chartered’s residence (just up the hill). About 30-40 minutes drive by bus from UBD. The trekking started around 6.40 am (bits late due to the road at Kota Batu are still under renovation so the bus has to go a bit slow).some used own transport.
This time I volunteer to be the sweeper. My job is to help my leader remembering the mark trail and clean any rubbish along the trail, and also not to forget marking the trail by tying red rope on the trees randomly and untied it at the end of the trekking. My group is the group 3( last group) Nazz as my leader, hafiz as the member, Chia Yie as the group photographer, Asri as the assistant leader and lastly Dr Irene as the shadow (guiding us from the back). It’s part of my job to help my group leader to leads us to the right path and help my group all the way in one piece. Preparing enough ropes for marking and remember the place where the leader should stop and explain the interesting part of the trail. I learned a lot on my past position as a leader so its my turn to help this week leader, like people said “two heads are better than one” so cooperation and teamwork are pretty important.
In this trekking, the activity are very challenging than any trekking we had before. Endurance and physically fit are put to a test where the trail are mostly steep hill (very very steep). by doing so, we are able to experience to keep our balance by stepping our foot between roots of trees and rocks to hold our whole body and balance our center of gravity while grabbing a strong roots or ropes to prevent us from falling or sliding down the hill.
I also learned not to tie the marking rope tightly as it can be reused and recycle. The most important advice from Dr. Irene was not and NEVER to go into forest ALONE because people can easily get confuse and lost if the trail are not familiar to us. even like what happened to me during my previous trekking with my group were lost even though we put marking along the trail, so from the past experience I learned that to used colored marking and never went to unfamiliar route. One more thing is that never enter any forest when it’s almost dark!!!
Apart of variety of plants and animals including insects, the structure of the landform are very unique and wonderful. There are valleys, ridges, protruding hard rock’s (that showed slanting bedding planes and vertically slating joints), a stream, water rapids, and a small waterfall. The stream had Iron Oxide deposits near pebbles, and potholes - signifying the river rocks contained iron. The rocks near the streams undergo chemical weathering. There are many processes happened to such awesome valley and ridges. Scenery that shows weathering of both chemical and physical that occurs for a very long time. It shows that this place can be used as recreational and education purposes both local and worldwide. This can boost the economy by improving its ecotourism.

Like previous trekking, plants and trees were very diverse such as wild orchids, Tongkat Ali, Simpur flower, Rattan (the trunks are very flexible and have spikes on it), soft and hard woods trees and more. Most of these are highly demand nowadays because of its uses and benefits. There are so many things that I can learn during this trekking and these knowledge are not only for my educational purposes but future benefits. Other than that I also learned that the areas are highly preserved when I see a lot of huge trees (more than 10 people to surround it).



In my opinion, this trip further developed my leadership and teamwork abilities and this hopefully will develop me to become a better person and to handle any event or problems much better. I also seized any chance to apply what I’ve learned to the trip. I’ve learned to never go to places I’m not familiar with alone, and to be more observant. This trip made me a better hiker as I challenged my fatigue and learned new hiking skills. Apart from that, I also learned on what to do if someone or anyone happened to be lost in a forest when I, Nazz and Chia Yie volunteered to search for the lost “team 1” during this activity with the guide of Dr. Irene. Although it was an exhausting trip, it was enjoyable and knowledgeable nonetheless. It was the best and can’t wait for another challenging activity.