I was in West Malaysia last week on holiday. I’m now in my hometown in East Malaysia for Chinese New Year. I wanted to carve out some time to write all this down to preserve the experience better.
In KL, I typically spend most of my time at the mall or elsewhere indoors. Well, this time I wanted something fun in my itinerary. In the spirit of this year being a brand new year and a fresh start, I wanted some equally novel things to do. I needed to reset my mind.
Rafting topped the search results list, among other things like firefly and caving tours. I looked at the pictures and thought, why not? The boats were a bright fuchsia pink, how cute is that!? And everyone looks like they’re having a blast. The subject caught my interest and I started doing some reading to weigh the risks. It seemed like just the right amount of adventurous, enough for a good adrenaline rush but not so wild that my soul would leave my body.
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 III – IV (intermediate to advanced, acc. to google) rapids and Ulu Slim (in Perak) which was Class II – IV (beginner to advanced). KKB seemed the most popular option so I went with that and booked a morning slot. The entire journey spanned 7kms and cost RM 200 including RM 20 for insurance.
I heard it was almost impossible to get a Grab ride back from the ending point because it’s so remote, so I booked a driver in advance to take me there and back. He was really nice and went above and beyond to help where needed. We also had a long chat. We also ended up talking about the Malaysian political landscape and taxation system. You can take me out of accounting, but you can’t take the accounting out of me, haha. I left my hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 8am, reached the site at Kuala Kubu Bahru/Selangor just before 10am. We got into the rafts at around 11am after putting on our lifejackets, safety helmets, and each grabbing a paddle.
They then had us get in groups of 4-5 per raft. I stood around looking for a group, feeling like a nervous, awkward 12-year old high school student again waiting for someone to pick me for a group project. One of the guys invited me to join their group, and off we went. My new raft mates were a nice and welcoming bunch. We made our way carefully down the rocks and descended into the rafts.
Each boat had two guides, one in the front and one at the back, and they did most of the navigating. They briefed us on some commands, which included things like sitting in and kneeling inside the raft, going back to our default sitting position on the edge of the raft, stop paddling and hold the paddle upright, and so on. Occasionally we would also be told to all pile onto to the left or the right side of the raft in single file, which was a little hard because we were all significantly bulkier with our lifejackets on and there were four of us (excluding the guides). That was whenever the guides needed to tilt the raft diagonally to manoeuvre between rocks, or for equilibrium.
It’s funny how life works. One moment I had been crunching numbers and printing reports in the office. Five weeks later on a random Monday, I found myself squished lifejacket-to-lifejacket in a four-person sandwich on a pink raft going down the rapids 3,000 kms from home, getting doused by cold river water every now and then. I love when life is fluid like that.
This is us after getting in, my driver took this photo for me.
At one of the stops, they tied the rafts to the banks and had us all jump in for practice. It looked easy when the others did it, so I joined the queue early and confidently jumped in. After I jumped though, I forgot to not breathe through my nose once the current dunked me under the whitewater parts, because my mind was busy cycling between:
– WHOA I can’t touch the bottom
– I can’t see anything underwater
– the water is COLD
– I just swallowed a huge mouthful of river water
– this water is so fast
Also, my left shoe popped off while I was being buffeted around by the waves and I was thinking, “oh man, now I have to go home barefoot on one leg”. The river giveth, and the river taketh away. Well, almost, because the guide tossed me a rope from the banks, and as I grabbed it, I saw my shoe being swept past me, so I reached out to catch it. Not today, river! Someone’s rubber sandal rushed along past me.
The rafting had 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. Not long afterward, though, the raft capsized when we went down the first drop. The capsize always happened so fast, before my brain had time to register anything. One moment, I was in the fuchsia raft. The next moment I was in the river, which was everywhere, including above my head, and my feet, reaching down for something more solid, found only more river.
The funny thing about this picture is that there were actually six people on board when the picture was taken.
Yeah, that’s my leg.
I weigh 82 kgs on a good day and probably more when waterlogged, so I can’t imagine it was easy to pull me back in. They would count to three and then heave me in by my lifejacket, and I would land sprawled out onto people’s laps dripping river water like a giant Chinese carp being hauled onto a fishing boat.
I think our raft flipped a total of 3 or 4 times. The first time I was tipped into the water, when I realized the water wasn’t shallow like expected, I started freaking out and forgot everything they said during the safety briefing…like don’t try to stand in the water because your feet might get caught in between the submerged rocks. Oops. The first thing I did each time was literally try to get a foothold. Luckily my feet didn’t get entangled in anything.
Speaking of trapped, there was one time we were navigating a narrow stretch between two huge rocks, and my hand got pinned between the raft and a big rock (I was holding the rope at the side of the raft but didn’t remove my hand quickly enough), as did the hand of the guy sitting in front of me. I couldn’t wriggle my hand loose due to the force of the water combined with the weight of everyone in the boat pressing on my hand. The guide sitting behind me yanked at my life jacket. Finally, the rock let go and my hand was returned to me, which felt like a gift. Interestingly, the gel manicure I got the week earlier only sustained very minor, barely perceptible scratches, and none of the crystals glued to my nails popped off either. A good pre-travel manicure is worth the investment!
I think my right shoe was feeling left out of all the fun. When the boat flipped again, my shoe took its chance and absconded from my unsuspecting right foot. Me and the guy beside me surfaced holding onto the side of the overturned raft, and we watched my shoe bobbing tranquilly in front of us. I plucked it out of the water and we clambered onto some rocks at the riverbank. We then developed an almost pathological habit of tying and retying our shoelaces repeatedly after that.
We reached another stop point, and a few steps ahead there was a waterfall pouring over the rocks. We all stood directly under the waterfall to take group pictures. Wow, it was COLD! It felt like the coldest shower I have ever had. Then, all of us sat around on the rocks for a while to rest and chit chat and get to know each other. They told me my Malay was very Sabah-an sounding (I would also be told the same thing by my Grab drivers). Interesting, but I guess Sabah is just Brunei-adjacent anyway. I learnt that most of them came in the same large group and hailed from Shah Alam. A few of them were staying overnight as they would be camping. Someone passed around a tube of mentos. After a while, we continued on the journey.
The water was very calm for the next twenty or so minutes. The sun was shining brightly above. I turned to my raft mates and asked “ada buaya kah?” (are there crocodiles?) in this stretch of water. The guide said no, there weren’t any. Then someone pointed to one of the other guys and said “neh, this one buaya”. HAHA. 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.
So, did it? Well, a picture speaks a thousand words, and here I have seven of them:
In my head I was imagining the Titanic flute intro playing in the background as this went down.
I surfaced in the air pocket under the capsized raft. I was hoping that that, specifically, wouldn’t happen, ever, but tried to ignore my panic and groped my way out from underneath.
When I look back at these photos and videos now, I just smile or laugh. Every time the raft flips, we all tumble into the water in a tangle of elbows, knees, and paddles like socks in a dryer.
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. I told myself, “don’t think, just jump”. It’s something I should probably try to apply to more things in life, because if I think about something too much, I don’t do it, and there are a lot of pretty awesome things I would have missed out on.
It was an amazing way to end the activity. I felt so serene. 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, I can’t touch the bottom!” Haha. At some point, I felt someone pulling on my life jacket and when I flipped over, I saw they were pulling me away from low-hanging tree branches which narrowly just avoided smacking/scratching me in the face as I had veered a little too close to the banks. A few times I was so lost in my thoughts and in the scenery, I unwittingly floated under trees that loomed into view a little too late to avoid. Some parts of the river were so shallow, they were only up to my waist or knees, and some parts deep enough that the water felt bottomless.
After everything was over, we all got into a hilux soaking wet and had ice cream sandwiches. I got back to my hotel at 4pm, including the hour plus drive back. While getting dressed at the hotel before starting off the activity, I had been deliberating wearing shorts as I preferred to be lightweight and not weighed down by wet clothes, but was glad I went with leggings. 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. The last thing I would want is an open wound in river water.
I have a pretty big, gnarly, green bruise on my shin, probably from someone accidentally dropping a paddle on my leg at some point. It doesn’t really bother me, because to me it’s merely as a souvenir from daring to do something fun, something that people told me didn’t seem like the kind of thing they thought I would do.
I wanted to join this activity because I wanted to face my fears. I can’t swim or float without a lifejacket, and I’m terrified of bodies of water. I spent the first half of the ride being scared of drowning, but I I saw it through to the end. Falling in, being submerged and coming back up to the surface to find my way back on the boat felt like a metaphor for coming out on the other side of fear.
I feel privileged to be a part of this experience. I enjoyed the banter and shared laughter with my rafting companions. It’s definitely one of the cooler things that I got to cross off my to-do list. I felt so alive. It was scary and fun at the same time. While I was there, my instinctive, human fear of drowning took precedence over any other emotion I may have felt then. But when I was warm and dry in a bathrobe and reclining on the sofa afterward, I was able to really marinate in the feelings of fun and excitement I had felt. While floating down the river, I thought about how I could be afraid of something the entire time, and it can still crack something open inside me. I just had to jump.
They sent me a link to the Google Drive album the very next day as I was on a bus going up to Cameron Highlands. I downloaded about a hundred pictures + videos from album. He was also kind enough to courier the t-shirt to me after I had left KL. The wristband that I wore and that got dunked in the river with me is now hanging on my pin display.
The latest addition to my photo wall –
