I was in West Malaysia last week on holiday, and my writing will be pretty rough but I just want to write all this down sooner to preserve the experience as best as I can, because I’m the type of person who forgets where I park my car. One of the things I was looking forward to the most on my schedule was white water rafting. Before the trip, I was looking for something exciting to add to my itinerary and it came up. I looked at it for a while and thought, why not? Look at the boats, they’re fuchsia pink, I love them, how cute are they!? And everyone sure looks like they’re having fun. The subject of rafting caught my interest there and then and I started doing some reading to weigh the risks. It seemed like just the right amount of wild, enough to shake things up but not so wild that there was a legitimate risk of cardiac arrest midway (like during skydiving maybe, because I’m scared of heights).
There were a few locations to choose from, including Kuala Kubu Bahru (in Selangor) which according to the organizer’s website was categorized as Class II – III rapids and Ulu Slim (in Perak) which was Class III – IV. I figured the latter would be too much for a first timer like me, so I picked KKB and booked a morning slot. The whole thing cost RM 200 including RM 20 for insurance.
I left my hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 8am, reached the site at Kuala Kubu Bahru just before 10am (there was a fallen tree on the road going there which held up traffic a little), and I think we got into the rafts at 11am. So, they asked us to get in groups of 4-5 per raft. I stood around looking for a group, suddenly feeling like instead of the 32-year old I am now, I was a nervous, skinny 12-year old high schooler again waiting for someone to pick me for a group project. One of the guys invited me to join their group, and I was relieved. We put on our lifejackets, safety helmets, and each grabbed a paddle. So, we made our way down the rocks and descended into the rafts.
This is us, during the safety briefing (I think) before they floated us out into the main stream.
It started out easy enough; at the beginning we got a small taste of what was to come when we all got splashed by the current for the first time and the water pooled in the raft around our feet. Shortly afterward, though, the raft capsized when we went down the first waterfall, which I definitely did not see coming, as I thought there was only a 50/50 (or less) chance of a flip, if it were to happen at all.
Here we go!
Yeah, that’s my leg.
Yeah, that’s my hand too, holding on for dear life. If it wasn’t evident beforehand: I can’t swim.
“HELP ME”
Good luck trying to pull in 82 kgs of waterlogged woman.
I’m pretty sure our raft flipped a total of 3 or 4 times. I screamed a lot. I think the first time we flipped was still the scariest for me, because it looked funny in the videos I watched, but the first time I was tipped into the water, when I realized my feet couldn’t touch the bottom, I started panicking and forgot everything they said during the safety briefing…like don’t try to stand in the water because your feet might get trapped in the rocks. Oops. Speaking of trapped, there was one time where we were maneuvering a narrow stretch between two huge rocks, and my hand got trapped in between the raft and a big rock (I was holding the rope but didn’t remove my hand quickly enough), as did the hand of the guy sitting in front of me. It was scary, too, because I couldn’t free my hand from the rock as the force of the waves combined with the weight of everyone in the boat kept my hand pinned there. The guide sitting behind me had to keep yanking hard at my life jacket until my hand finally got free. It was almost comical. After that, we all learned to quickly pull our hands (the ones holding onto the rope) in every time the raft hit a rock.
They also had us all jump in for practice, and they told us which parts of the stream to hold our breath at to avoid ingesting or breathing water. The moment I jumped in, I forgot to hold my breath because my first thought was: WHOA my feet can’t touch the bottom, and the water’s cold, and I swallowed a huge mouthful, and the current is so fast, and I couldn’t see for the first few seconds that I was plunged underwater since the water was opaque. And my left shoe popped off while I was being buffeted around by the waves and I was thinking, “great, now I have to go home with only one shoe on one foot”. The guide tossed me a rope from the banks, and as I grabbed it, I saw my shoe floating toward me, so I grabbed it too and they pulled me back into the raft.
I think my right shoe was feeling left out, because later on when the boat flipped, it removed itself from my foot. In the aftermath, me and the guy beside me held onto the rope at the side of the overturned raft, and we watched my shoe bobbing a few feet away. He looked at it, pointed at it, and laughed. So did I. I managed to grab it and we clambered onto some rocks at the riverbank and got on the raft again. We then developed an almost pathological habit of tying and retying our shoelaces repeatedly after that.
Right when the fourth and last waterfall was approaching us on the horizon, I begged my raft buddies not to flip the raft on purpose as I was getting scared of falling in. (I do feel bad, though, like I was being a wet blanket or spoiling the fun for them by being so anxious and scared. I hope not.) So, did the raft flip when we went down the last waterfall? Let me answer that in a series of photos (a picture speaks a thousand words, and here I have seven of them:).
In my head I was imagining the Titanic soundtrack playing in the background as this went down.
At the moment, I was terrified, because I surfaced in the air pocket under the capsized raft, but when I look back at these photos now, I just smile or laugh. It’s so funny how we all tumble into the water like socks in a dryer every time the raft flips.
For the last 1km of the journey, they had us all jump into the river where it was calm and float away down to the endpoint. At first, I was apprehensive yet again, as we were all lined up in single file to jump in one by one, and as I watched each person before me jump in, my anxiety grew. However, when it finally got to my turn, I said to myself, “don’t think, just jump”. It’s something I should probably apply to more things in life. Later on, when I was reclining, freshly showered, in my bath robe on a chaise lounge back in the quiet comfort my hotel room, I realized that like with many things in life, I was making this more complicated than it had to be. Look, I’m not jumping into a frigid, obsidian-black Siberian lake in the dead of winter with nobody around to save me, I’m just jumping into a calm stretch of river, we have long passed the rapids, I can see the jumpers before me bobbing away on the surface of the water.
It was an amazing way to end the activity. Sometimes I floated on my back, sometimes on my front. When I looked up there was only the blue sky, the occasional treetops, and the birds flying. One of the guys from my raft kept teasing me by saying “hey, it’s really deep here, my feet can’t touch the bottom!” Haha. At some point, I felt someone pulling on my life jacket and when I flipped over, I saw he was pulling me away from the low-hanging tree branches which narrowly just avoided smacking/scratching me in the face. Quite a few times, I got so lost in thought, the others had to call out my name as I unwittingly floated under the tree branches which loomed into view at right about the same time.
I have a pretty big, gnarly green hand-sized bruise on my shin, possibly from someone dropping a paddle on my leg at some point. I look at it and see a souvenir from a time I dared to do something fun and crazy and not “myself” (relatively speaking; I’m the type of person whose idea of a perfect Sunday involves playing the violin/cello, a good cup of coffee, and a long sun-dappled nap – I’m sure most people think I seem quiet or unassuming). While getting dressed at the hotel, I had been deliberating wearing shorts to be ‘lighter’ but was glad I wore leggings, because I don’t think it would have been fun to graze my bare legs on any of the rocks when I was in the water. After everything was over, we had ice cream sandwiches.
Ultimately, I joined this activity because I figured it was important in life to face one’s own fears…isn’t that the point of life? To live, to experience? It’s character-building to do something you’re scared of. At the end of it all, I’m so glad I joined this activity. What an adventure! I felt so alive, like my sense of excitement was sealed in a glass box and I’ve just broken the glass box and regained the ability to feel alive.
I have this picture printed out on a Polaroid and stuck up on my photo wall. Thanks for the memories, guys.
