Category Archives: Uncategorized

by

4187…

I and my girlfriend have just returned from a trip to Mount Ophir in Malaysia from mountain climbing with friends. I guess I should write up something before getting back to the “modern life”, hehe…

Yet, our trip was only about 2 day (26,27/12/05) with 8 members (2VNese, 1Chinese and 5 Singaporeans). It took quite a long time for us to reach the base of Mount Ophir which is in Segamat town (Malaysia) since we only used bus for transportation. Around 5pm, we were there…

At 6pm- I guess, we started. Mount Ophir has 8 Check Points (CP1 to CP8, which is the summit). The mountain is about 1276 meters ( 4187 feet) above the sea. It was getting dark and darker and the path was more difficult to climb, so we camped at CP4 to cook dinner and rest… The dinner was nice with foods from everybody. Well, things went pretty good…

Tomorrow…

At 5am, we woke up, leaving some stuffs in the camping site and continued our journey. It is known that the path is hard and harder to climb from CP4 to CP8, and it is true, somehow out of my expectation, hix… The dark actually made us move close to each other and more concentrating rather than fearing of the narrow path…
The picture above is taken in the forest around 6am. It’s nice rite ?

CP4- a lot of climbing, with our bare hands and the slope was actually steeper. We holded tree roots, branch or anything that can help to climb up…

CP5- here our legs were rest yet our hand must work harder. We climbed over big rock and cave with help from robes and staircases… It seemed ok to climb up here but really difficult later to climb down…


CP6- nothing much about this route, except a big wall of rock and a robe for you to climb. Yet, hold your hand to the robe, face your feet onto the wall and pull your body up, slowly but firmly with your hand never be free… It really made me surprised that we climb here with no protection equipment at all. Yup, there may be a lot of “what if…” question raised in your head if you were there… hehe.

I climbed first and followed by my brave girlfriend, who I was undoubted can overcome it… She’s great, I know…

CP7- things were back to normal with climbing, steep slope and high step where we have to use our hand to push the body up…

Ura… Yahoo…, after all, we reach the submit (CP8) around 11am… Scene was beautiful, amazingly and the air was fresh and cold.

This is a scene from above 😀

Here is the picture of our team taken on the summit (from left to right: Yongsiang, Willy, San, Eugene, Phuong, me, Susanna). It was sad that Cleo had to stop at CP7…

Staying for around half a hour, we climbed down… Some say climbing down is easier and faster but for me, it is much harder since my shoe is a bit slippy and I feeled hard to keep my body balance… Time for rest was limited since we were quite rush to catch the last bus to Segamat town. My feet and leg were really tired and my toes hurted that I hardly standed firmly… Thanks Eugene for helping me carrying my bag!…
Should I say we were lucky when it rained when we reach CP1? (!). If it rains any earlier, it is very dangerous to climb down… And yet, by the time the rain started, we knowed we missed our last bus…
So… 6h30 pm, we rent a vain to go to Segamat… Then we waited until 10pm to buy a train ticket to Singapore at … 3 am tomorrow morning (!). Finally, here we are in Singapore at 10am on 28/12…
Hey, what are the records of our trip? Hehe… we got some to mention (otherwise, the trip will be easy to forget, don’t you think?)

  • Well, we have climbed a mountain at 4187 feet…
  • NO breakfast, NO lunch but climbing up and down the whole day (yet, we have chocolate bars along the way and dinner but I shouldn’t mention it here, rite :D?)
  • Transportation: we have MRT, bus, vain, train, walking, climbing… Many huh?
  • Last but no least, we win OURSELF to face the chalenges since I know some of us never climb before and this mountain was really tough… , much more than my expectation…

Yup… That’s all… I have to get back to work now… Agrr, my legs still hurt…

All the best to every one 🙂

by

Deep hurt

Today, I hardly concentrate on my work but keep thinking and questioning… The news hurts deeply in my heart, not just because of the death of 9 Vietnameses, but the pain of a weak country without no “bargaining power” in politics. Yesterday, I read some opinions from the Chinese “friends”in forum- about Vietnam, which insult Vietnamese people by “poverty”, “dirty cheap labour”, “weak country”… I was angry, felt like wanting to shout out loud but it’s bad that I don’t know what to say then. These few words are just what we think of Chinese labour and its products in the past, and obviously those things can also be applied to Vietnamese. We are weak, it’s something that we can’t deny. China, the weak country in the past (it is still like that in some elder Vietnamese’s mind), bypassing all the notorious rumour, arises with its real power in economics and technology. At this time, how do Vietnamese people behave? It is true that we are content with those rising in GDP, while people are satisfied with more imported products rather than export, while people are using high technology rather than mastering and inventing new! Vietnam is left behind too far from others, especially the Chinese “neighbor”. Embezzlement, corruption and internal dispute are still abound in the society, from top to the bottom. Is it a natural human behavior or the ugly Vietnamese? Or people haven’t feel ashamed to be weak yet, and more over, never we feel the threat from the strong-and-stronger Chinese neighbor. How to make the Vietnamese Education be better, to see Vietnamese students learn passionately to catch up with the world, not some individuals who are named on the newspaper but the whole nation? How to change the Law System to see foreign investor feel reliable to put their money in the country? How to replace the troublesome and complex administrative formalities with those transparent and simple one? And the most important is… HOW TO TRANSFORM THE “UGLY” VIETNAMESE PEOPLE? Please forgive my words to say so, but I hardly change this fact! We, Vietnamese, are proud of the past with successive wars, arrogant with our intelligence, content for achieving what others did in 10 years ago and never fear for being bully by the nearby neighbor, never feel the deep hurt for our weightless speaking to other countries.

When I and my friends talk about Vietnam, we easily say… “Oh, it’s Vietnamese style. It only happens in Vietnam, why Vietnam can’t be like Singapore’s style” and the story then faded away. It is like we’re accepting the fate of Vietnamese, or waiting for the big change. I rarely give comments about those sad news about the ineffectiveness of Vietnamese Education, about the corruption in some companies or Department of Oil…, as it is redundant to say those things that everybody know, but doing some things that people search for.

Someone said “Economics determines politics”- that’s true. 9 deaths of innocent Vietnamese fishers who are called sea-robbers by China make it become very sensitive political issue that every movement of each party has to be considered carefully. We are angry, we feel unfair for our Vietnamese fishers but we have to stay calm. Online petition, meeting for asking the justice make some senses but it might not quite suitable here. We have our judge, but more importantly if we know how to be resigned, to turn the long-suffering into our strength and strategic movements. Patriotism is a concept that might hard to explain, but the hurt and traumatic when we don’t have a power to speak and be listened even when you know you are right are somethings that you might understand. The war victories from the past are over, the present has just happened, only the future is left for us. “How can we make the NATION see the future in the same direction?“ and DEAR “UGLY” Vietnamese People, what can we do to make VIETNAM be much more than this?…