Camping Trip ! (SY's Fruit Farm) Pt.2

Saturday, late evening (19th August 2006)

I've lost track of time by now, though it would just be a simple task of reaching for my phone and looking at it, it dawned upon me that it didn't really matter.
Time took an extremely less of an important role in my life at that point.
The only thing that I had to worry about was when was it going to get dark.
Cause by then everyone should be back at the camp and already having dinner.

Its not exactly safe to be out in the dark in the middle of a jungle, there were tigers and wildboars in the area.
Though animals generally don't come into contact with us noisy and destructive humans, it was best not to take chances.

Anyway, by this time the camp was already up and running, and most of the guys were chilling by the river.
Julian on the other hand, decided to build a freaggin table.
A FREAGGIN' TABLE . . . . T - A - B - L - E.

Initially I thought this guy must be crazy, working on building something with limited tools in this hot weather, not thinking much, I decided to help him out anyway.
So what we had were, bamboo, raffia string and 2 parangs (machete).

So we split our work up,
Julian was doing the 4 legs of the table while I worked on the table top.
Favian was there as well and he helped me out by cutting bamboo for the table top.
So there we were sweating bullets chopping and tying up bamboo.
SY came in after awhile and helped us out by chopping the bamboo in half for the table top.
See this way, we only needed 1/2 of the span of the table in bamboo for the table top, means less work and less work means happier lazy guy.

I'm not quite sure you people were interested in the architecture of our table so I didn't post it up.
Towards the later stages of building the table, Johnny came by and helped me tie off one side of the table top while I did the other,
soon after the table was done.

And then there it was, looking down on the table was the feeling of acomplishment.
Here before me was a beautifully crafted table that I helped build from scratch out of bamboo and raffia.

Saturday, night (19th August 2006)

The fire was up by now and first batch of the food were already being cooked.
Table was a BIG, naye, HUMONGOUS help.
I could just imagine doing the food preperations or dining on the floor and half-way breaking my back.
Oh how I doubted thy wisdom, for an act of madness twas really an act of genius.

- Menu -
Roasted fish with maggi seasoning and planta wrapped in banana leaf
BBQ-ed chicken with maggi seasoning
Grilled beef burger with maggi seasoning
Grilled sausages with maggi seasoning
Roasted fishball on a stick
Roasted crab meat stick on a stick*

*Lazy guys favourite

Dinner was good, we had alot to eat,
oh and the fish were caught by SY, Favian and Yoong.
They managed to catch 3 considerably big fishes.
HOW they managed to catch the fish was another story.
Lets just say that the fish didn't come to them.

After dinner we all chilled and played some cards.
It got irritating after awhile having to use the torch lights to check what cards you have every so often.
Cause it was REALLY dark.
I mean yeah you could see the stars but anything eye level is pitch black.
So black the night sky looked grey.

It was not long before everybody started dozing off.
All nice and comfy on an uneven ground with rocks jutting out here and there with little padding in between.
Wish I could say it was therapeautic but the ache I got when I got back on Monday proved otherwise.

Sometime through the night I got up.
It was unbelievably cold and I was shivering.
Upon a short inspection of my surroundings, I saw that a few of us had expected this cold night and were already wearing their jackets or windbreakers.
"Darn", I thought.

Anyway, I found out that I wasn't the only one awake that night,
By the campfire, Favian was keeping the fire up through the night.
He told me that he has been waking up once in awhile to keep the fire burning.
So being a good samaritan and all, i'd thought i'd take over and let him sleep, since I couldn't.

There I was playing with fire, something you don't get to do often or at all back in the city.
It literally had SO much fun, trying to keep the fire up while trying to control the amount and the movement of the smoke that it produced so that it didn't flow into the tent.

It wasn't very windy that night, so I could control the general direction of the smoke by the way the fire was burning.
I contemplated on the amount of firewood we had left, so tried my best to keep the fire burning as efficiently as possible.
But what I soon found out was that less fire means more smoke on the count that the wood wasn't burning properly (also because the firewood wasn't exactly dry) and more fire means less firewood.

Out of sheer boredom (and maybe because of a little adrenaline) I started making really wierd campfire builds to see how efficient I could keep the fire going.
One of the coolest achievements I made that night was the "flamethrower".
Its basically a low-tech blow torch, where the fire is directed outwards out of a make-shift funnel.
Ok ok, so it can't really throw flames or weld iron together, but it was really something, though I didn't take any pictures of it, you're just going to have to take my word for it.
It was freaggin' cool la ok.

- End of part 2 -