It’s been almost a week since I’ve blogged. Since returning from Phuket, I’ve been resting my legs and enjoying the last bit of holidays before school reopened. Took the whole of yesterday to get my teaching mood back, and I think it wasn’t too bad.

This term, I’m released from my Physics classes as I take on two new Math classes, namely 1 Grace and 2 Hope. That makes it a pair of Graces and Hopes under me. Heh. I would regard this taking over of classes as a new challenge, as it’s not gonna be easy to get the new classes to adapt to my teaching style, especially after they’ve been taught by much more experienced teachers for the first half of the year. Nevertheless, I’ll put in my best.

In terms of sports, I’ve been slacking for quite sometime, having only done a swimming session for the past whole week. So today after school, I decided to do some brick training. I ran a 2.7 km from home to the Bishan swimming complex, where I took of my shoes and dipped into the pool for 15 laps. Upon completing, I put my gear back on and ran another 2.3 km to complete my training. Including transition time, I took 56 minutes, even less time consuming than a 10 km run. It felt good. I’ll probably do this more often.  

As much as I wasn’t well prepared for this marathon, I’ve been looking forward to this trip since I’ve booked the air tix more than a month ago. I’ll blog about the fun and excitement during this trip in my next entry. Now, let me do a full report on the race itself.

I was staying in Square One Hotel in Patong Beach, which was quite a distance away from Laguna Beach Resort, the starting point of the marathon. Therefore, to ensure that my buddy and I were able to reach the venue on time, we woke up at 3am and get ourselves ready before being fetched there by our hotel car. We reached by 0430 eventually.

There was already a bit of crowd over there. Some of the participants of the full marathon were stretching and warming up, some were lying on beach chairs to enjoy a soothing massage by the volunteers, and the rest were unnerving themselves just by chatting with their group of friends.

Soon, all the participants were gathered behind the starting line, waiting for the count-down to the race start. PeeeP! The 2nd Phuket International Marathon had begun! Everyone cheered and began their run. I was hoping to enjoy this first part of the marathon before the sun rised, but my race was nearly marred ten minutes into the race!

It went like this: I was always very reliant on my iPod whenever I run long distance, as I always thought that the music would distract me from the being tired. So this time round, I had my player with me as usual. But after listening to 3 songs on my iPod, I realised that they kept repeating themselves.. I’ve accidentally deleted all but three songs in my iPod! Oh no, I thought. I still had 41 km to finish.. how to survive!

So I thought to myself, just try to enjoy the scenery as much as possible and take some pictures during the gruelling journey. It did work for awhile, but not too long into the race, it started to drizzle. And the drizzle turned into a super heavy downpour. Handphone had to be kept from the rain, so no picture-taking anymore. But by then, I’d found a new way to keep myself going. Everytime I ran past another person, I’ll look into his/her direction, and if this person turned to look at me, I’ll smile and do a thumbs-up. Its a great feeling when they return you a friendly gesture, and that sort of gave me an extra boost to continue my run.

Eventually, somewhere into the 10 km mark, I caught up with this friendly Thai lady from Bangkok, and ran side by side with her for the next 10 km. As we ran, we introduced ourselves and talked about our professions and interests. Found out that she had completed 4 or 5 marathons before and she even tried the Ultra-marathon in Macritchie last year! and She did 6 rounds, equivalent to 60+ km! Really take my hats off her.

Shortly after the the 21 km mark, that lady decided to wait for her friend (I think), and I went ahead. Although the rain was reduced to a slight drizzle by then, my shoes were still soaking wet and signs of blisters on my feet could already be felt. Ouch. As I ran, I started to enjoy the silence around me, and began appreciating the scenic view offered by the course. That was the moment when I realised running without music ain’t that bad after all.

Another nice surprise was that this course wasn’t as hilly as I thought (or perceived from the description given by some sgrunners). It was only after I’d run past the 25 km mark that I realised I had completed the so-called "hills". Phew!

After I’d reached the 30 km mark, I began to feel a little worried. I had my first cramp at the 33 km during the KL marathon, and I was certainly afraid of going through the same ordeal here. Luckily, I didn’t have any cramps or symptoms of "hitting the wall". Cool! The chiRunning principles that I’ve tried to apply must have contributed quite a bit.

I continued on despite being quite exhuasted. At every drinking point, I took a sip of water (and some bananas and water-melon if they were available) and thanked the volunteers for serving. They were really all smiley and friendly, and clapped to cheer me on. Some motorists along the road also shouted out words of encouragement as they rode past. Mind you, at this point of time when you’re all drained and sore, such little but kind gestures really help tremendously.

As I reached the 40 km mark, my buddy and another friend (who were constantly a little behind me) caught up with me. I was very tired by then, and kept having the temptation to start walking. "Hey, you two go first.. I can’t make it already", I said. "No, man. We’re at this together. Come on, lets run together!" came the reply. That urged me on, and I started picking up speed.

During the last km, I remembered myself almost sprinting all the way till the finishing point while those earlier finishers and spectators at the sides cheered and clapped enthusiastically. This was very welcoming, much better than my finishing-point experience in KL. Finally, I crossed the finishing point at a 4:44:18. A new PB, 15 minutes off my first marathon!

Me and my buddy, Tianming, after completing the race.

The feeling of completing this marathon was ecstatic. Great weather (minus the huge downpour), great fellow participants, great volunteers, great race. Would I recommend this race to any fellow runner? You bet!!

Two sides of the finisher’s medal. I heard that the medal for 1/2 marathon doesn’t have the sun beside the tree? Interesting.

Timing:

9 km: 0:55:03

20km: 2:07:45

30km: 3:16:21

42km: 4:44:18

Photographs like this one above may be misinterpreted by many as a digitally manipulated night scene with thin streaks added in the background to simulate meteor shower. However, the lines are indeed created by the several bright stars in the night sky. Why are they lines instead of bright dots then?

"Star trails" is the term used to describe such lines that add interest to the otherwise boring sky. These star trails are caused by the rotation of our planet. Just imagine the sky above us is turning in a circular manner. Hence the distant stars will also be moving in some directions accordingly. The capturing of star trails is done by exposing the camera shutter long enough (means clicking and holding on to the shutter for a long time, i.e. 10 minutes for the above picture), so that as the stars move, their images will streak across the film (or in my case the CCD sensor).

Another interesting fact is that the North Star (or Polaris) is the only visible star that doesn’t seem to move a bit even as our planet rotates. So if the camera is pointed at the North Star and has its shutter exposed for a long period of time, you will probably see a lot of circular streaks of star trails, with a bright dot (the North Star) in the middle of these circles.

During my Cameron Highlands trip, I had the luck to see a night sky decorated with a blanket of stars. Hoping to capture some star trail pictures, I aimed my rangefinder into the sky with some leaves in the foreground. Sadly, the pictures I took turned out to be less than satisfying, and I only managed to salvage 2 shots.

This one is taken using at around 23 mm focal length, exposed for 20 minutes. Trails not really obvious due to light pollution.

I’ll be off to Phuket tomorrow, planning to enjoy the beach there for 3 days and then end off my last trip of these holidays with a 42 km Marathon. I’m going to bring my DSLR this time, hoping to get a better night sky there and capture more of such star trails.

Yeap, you saw it right. I got lost while trekking alone in the jungles of Cameron Highlands. More about that later. Anyway, this is gonna be a long post with quite a bit of pictures, as I’m going to attempt blogging the 3 days’ happenings in this single entry.

This was my second time going to Cameron Highlands (with some colleagues and friends). The first time was 2 years ago, where I went with one of my buddies. In Cameron Highlands, you basically have to self-entertain, because there’s pretty much nothing to do except hiking, eating and sleeping. Here, you can find lots of nice food: Pratas twice the size of Singapore’s ones, but only at half the cost; cheap but huge servings of steamboat dinners; scones with jam and butter, one of the specialty treats in Cameron Highlands; and last but not least, lots of strawberry farms where you can get to pluck the strawberries yourself and buy them at a cheap price.

After an over-night bus journey, we reached the highlands feeling fresh. After having our breakfast, we checked into our Bala’s Chalet Hotel, and then went out to walk a fairly easy trail. (By the way, the forests in Cameron Highlands offer quite a fair number of trails for the visitors to hike, although most of the people who actually hike here are the ang mohs.)

This is how an easy trail looks like. It even has bricks lay out for you to walk on. However, after reaching the end of this trail, we decided to continue another longer trail, and that took us quite awhile to complete. Halfway into the long trail, there was a watch tower, and all of us climbed up to get a scenic bird’s eye view of the highlands. 

Different views offered by the 2-storey watch tower

Some camp-site that we came across while doing the trail. 

After we completed the trail, we were already famished, so we got to Tanah Rata Town’s T-cafe to have our lunch. I had claypot chicken rice, scones and chocolate milk shake for my lunch. It costed only about 5 sgd.

It must have been the long night bus ride that made us tired, so much so that we ended up sleeping in our chalet after lunch. Got up 2 hours later to visit some strawberry farm.

Yea, this is the outside of the farm. I didn’t take any pictures of the insides though. 2 of my friends went to pluck half a kg (or was it 1?) worth of strawberries while I bought some ice-cream to enjoy. We hung around for awhile before going for a delightful steamboat dinner in some restaurant in some hotel. Dinner was great! Having steamboat in such a cold rainy evening is definitely pure indulgence.

We spent the rest of the night by playing interesting card games, before retiring to bed.

I Got Lost 

I would consider the second day my highlight of this trip, simply based on the fact that I almost got lost in the moutainous jungle of the highlands! My friends had decided a day earlier to go for a guided tour to visit the tea plantations, catus valley and some other attractions in this morning. Since I’ve gone for such tours 2 years ago, I opted out and planned to do my own trekking alone instead. Well, not quite a smart idea to trek alone here.

The hike started off well. I got to the starting point of the trail (leading to one of the orang asli villages) without much difficulty. Walking alone, I was able to appreciate the view and sound of nature. Weather was cool under the thick canopy, and I had ample energy to stop and take some pictures every few minutes.

This is the kind of path that I was walking on at the beginning of my trip. The paths are typically narrow with an edge at one of the sides.  

Because of the climate here, you can find some interesting plants, flowers and fungi that you won’t be able to see in Singapore.

Some interesting blue beady (seeds?) plant 

Some fungi that grew on the tree trunk 

White mushroom!

Another interesting one, with a red top. 

Well, the above pictures were taken when I was still able to enjoy the trek at my own sweet time. Not for long though. Approximately one hour into trekking, I took a wrong path at some fork, and that marked the beginning of my exciting trekking experience.

To begin with, the trails were not well-marked. Trees between some distance were either tied a red tape or painted red on part of the barks to denote the route. Sometimes, the distances between 2 marked trees could be longer than 200 m, and before you realise, you’re already on the wrong direction. Which is what happened to me.

I wasn’t quite worried at first, because it wasn’t my first time getting lost here. I got lost 2 years ago with my friend. The map I had was quite useless, without any detailed information or contour lines at all. How on earth would I be able to figure out which part of the trail I’m at? Heck, the map even stated "not drawn to scale"!

So, I continued to walk on the wrong trail, which eventually led to something less than a trail. I even bashed through some vegetation and deadfalls in hope to get back onto another right trail. When I passed by quite a number of dead logs, I was thinking to myself that there’s a high possibility that I could appear in the Strait Times headlines: Another Singaporean man killed by dead tree log, this time in Cameron Highlands. Shudders.

Anyway, I kept on ascending the trail, and the altitude increased gradually. In no time, I was walking between the clouds, and everywhere around me was misty. It also started to rain quite heavily, by which I responded by putting on my disposable poncho. After 2 hours of walking, I eventually got onto one of the mountain peaks of the highlands. I believe I was on the peak of Gunung Jasar (1670m), because it’s the nearest off-track from my supposed trail.

Great, I thought. How did I end up at this peak, I’d absolutely no idea. Looking all around me, I see no nice routes to retreat. At some edges of the peak, I could see nothing thousands of feet below. The thought of falling off the edge sent me shivers. I gingerly stepped back and found one of the more walkable paths to descend.

As you can see from the above picture, visibility was very bad. I could hardly see anything beyond 10 metres.

The above two pics once again showed how bad the visibility was. From the 1st pic, I retreated a little backwards, but when I took the second pic, the cable tower was nowhere to be seen. Thick mist isn’t friendly.  

A poor map and compass wasn’t of much help too. So, I used my 6th sense to navigate my way through, which was a bad mistake cos men are supposed to have bad 6th senses. I had to back-track quite a lot because many paths that I took ended up as dead-ends. I started to get a little worried because my water’s almost finished, and it was already 3pm by then. Few more hours and the sun would set. Would I be able to get out of this maze before nightfall? If I so badly needed someone to locate me and help me out, how should I even describe to anyone where I am through the handphone?

And guess what? I tried another path, and five minutes later, I saw red (no pun intended)!!! The flourescent red paint on one of the trees seem to welcome me back on trail, and I almost wanted to run straight into that tree and kiss it. Not. I finally was able to enjoy the rest of the descending trail back to civilisation. By the time I was out of the forest and back into town, it was almost 5pm. I spent a good whole 6 hours in the trap.

In the evening, I was back in the chalet. I’ve never been more appreciative being able to have a good bath (to get those mud off my limbs) and then relax on the bed in the room. Ahh..

During our last night there, we again got together and played games in the attic. It was fun. We played Taboo and bridge until we finally got tired. Well, this concluded my 3 days 2 nights stay in Cameron Highlands. Not a bad trip at all, but certainly more adventurous than I would’ve wanted!

Going off to Cameron Highlands in few hours’ time! Can’t wait to trek in the jungles over there. Cool weather and hot steamboat! Still have tons of China trip photos to put up, but that can wait. ^^

Almost half a year after participating in this run, I finally received the certificate by mail!

It is printed on a glossy photo paper, with the signature blue, red and white colours used for the background. It’s very personalised, as every individual completer has his or her photo at the finish line placed on the right side of the cert.  I think the quality of this cert is much better than the KL International Marathon’s one, and it came as a nice surprise just when I was about to forget that I’ve not yet received this piece of paper.  

Due to the vast population in China, it is no easy task for its people to get their children to receive adequate education for a better future. The poorer villagers normally cannot afford to pay for their children’s school fees for higher education, and hence these children would have to start working at a very young age. Thus, it is no wonder why China children work so hard when they are given the opportunity to study.

In the past 14 years, Project Hope (希望工程), a charitable organization, has been helping needy students around the country. More than ten thousand Hope primary schools have been established in underdeveloped regions in the country. Conditions of these schools have also improved a lot as Project Hope utilises its funds from donations to rebuild better classrooms and furnitures.

On the last day of our Xi’an trip, we had the opportunity to visit one such Hope primary school in a village in Xi’an.

It was a warm and sincere welcome by the staff and students of 希望小学. They stood on both sides of the pathways, smiled and clapped continuously as we walked in. Some of the children even chanted "欢迎欢迎，欢迎光临!".

We were led to the open space outside the classrooms, where desks and benches were arranged nicely for everyone to sit. 

Representatives from each visiting school (as well as the principal of 希望小学) were seated in front behind the big red banner that welcomed all of us. In front of them was a small makeshift stage for their local students to perform some dance items later on. In the picture, you could see the principal of the school giving an opening speech.

As the pupils were preparing for their performance items, I caught the attention of some Primary 5 students who were standing next to me, and took a picture of them. Just like any kid who seldom has the chance to see his/her photographs taken by a digital camera, they crowded around me eagerly as I showed them the picture taken of them.

The performance started! It was the upper primary pupils who performed the opening dance item.

Then it was the lower primary pupils. From their performance, one could observe that they put in a lot of effort and worked really hard to get the dance steps right and natural. It was indeed eye-opening to see such items that were very much different from Singaporean students’ style of stage performances.

After the performance put up by their students, the students were told to go back to their respective classrooms, so that we could go into their classrooms and have a sense of how studying takes place inside.  We were given some time to roam around freely in their school. It was also a chance for me to interact and take pictures with some of the little children.

This is how a typical classroom looks like. The classrooms were made of bricks and furnitures made of wood. Blackboards are used for teaching. School rules, expected behaviours and other wise words can be seen on the walls of the classrooms. Although the conditions may not look very favourable to us,the young children are already more than contented to be given a chance to be in school.

Our Singaporean students having some interaction with the Primary One students. These young pupils impressed us by reciting passages from their textbooks in unison. Some could even recite by memory! I was indeed impressed by their positive attitude and eagerness towards studying.

A little girl looks on as one of our students visited her classroom.

Below are some group shots of the local students that I managed to capture. Apart from a handful who were camera-shy, the rest were more than willing to pose for me.

It is very heart-warming to see these kids having such cheerful outlook. It shows a stark contrast to the ever-unsatisfied behaviours of some of us Singaporeans although we are in a better living condition and have more choices and freedom to do what we want. Some food for thought to ponder indeed.

I wished we could stay a little longer, but time was tight and we had to go. The staff and pupils of 希望小学 waved farewell to us, and we left shortly after taking a group photo.

Although we were there for only about an hour, personally, I feel that it was definitely one of the more memorable highlights of this 7-day trip.  

I’m finally back home after 7 days of Xi’an! I’ve been deprived of running so much so that upon reaching home, I immediately changed into my running attire and did a 4.5 km. Call me crazy, but I seriously felt 100 times healthier after the mid-night run. Had an early supper of instant noodles and gonna retire to bed soon.

Anyway, yesterday’s (Monday) highlight was the visit to 希望小学. Although it was only a short stay before heading to the airport, I enjoyed myself there. Since I’ve not post-processed the pictures yet, I’ll blog about it in more details soon. Meanwhile, here’s a young beauty for you.

One of the primary 1 students in the classroom. She was shy, turning away twice before I successfully took this picture of her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch her name.  

On the 3rd and 4th day of this Xi’an trip, our students were to attend a Secondary school to experience the typical school life here. Before the students got into their respective classes for lessons, all of us were first invited to the welcoming ceremony.

Our students (along with other Singapore students from various schools) were paired up with their new Chinese buddies by identifying their names on the labels put on the tables. The principals of this school (薄迪中学) gave an opening speech, followed by two students (one from their school, and one from St Nics) who gave a brief introduction.

Next was the exchanging of gifts between the local and Singaporean students. From the picture above, you can see that the students were ready to engage in a conversation with their new friends. Not long after, it’s lesson time, and our students went off to their buddies’ classrooms to attend lessons.

I had the chance to walk about and snap some pictures of the school. Pretty big. They have what is equivalent to Singapore’s Primary, Secondary and JC level all in a single school.

In the afternoon, I was given the opportunity to conduct an English lesson to 2 Sec 2 classes. Yes, English..not Math! :S Anyway, powerpoint slides were prepared in advance, and what I needed to do was to introduce interesting facts and lifestyles of Singapore. I must say that the students here are very well-behaved. They are attentive and responsive, making the learning environment very conducive.

This are the children in the classroom listening to another teacher teaching English. Nope, the boy at the bottom-left is not sleeping. 

A teacher who joined this trip with us giving the lesson. 

See how attentive the students are? (They weren’t even bothered by me snapping my camera away!) When they were asked to write a short paragraph about "Myself" later on, some of the students had a little difficulty in expressing their thoughts in English, probably because they’re still at quite an elementary level of English. But nevertheless, they wrote with great enthusiasm and tried to include as much information as they could. 

Before the lesson ended, Audrey (the teacher who was teaching) asked for volunteers to read out what they had written, and immediately, two students volunteered themselves. With confidence, they recited their paragraphs while the rest of the classmates kept quiet and listened. At the end of each presentation, the classmates clapped together to show their encouragement and support to the two volunteers.

Although we spent only a little time in the school, it was quite an enriching and eye-opening experience. It is interesting to note the difference between schools in Singapore and those in other countries.