My Padas River Rafting

After a gruelling week of summer school at the University of Malaya, I decided to try out river rafting at Padas. I tried to convince my other friends to join me, but only Mayuko ( my Japanese classmate) had the guts to try out a wild river adventure.
A van picked us up from our hostel very early in the morning. After an hour and half, we arrived at Beaufort town and waited for a train going to Pangi Dam - the starting point.

The train was old and dirty. It was very much like the ones we have traversing the old railways in Manila. For most parts of the trip, we took our spot in the open portion of the train where most other tourists also hanged out. Except for the scorching rays of the sun, I enjoyed the forest and suburb sceneries that unfolded as we moved on. Mayuko After a week of mind-bleeding serious conceptualization work with a bunch of nerds (like me, hehe) from all over the world, a zero-thinking mode was defintely a badly needed state of mind.

When we reached Pangi Dam, we had a safety briefing and started gearing up for the thrill ride.
We were assigned to a bunch of strong international-multicolored raft team mates. And so... we went through our 12-kilometer river adventure across the Bornean forest.

With 9 major rapids to go through, it was good to have a set of strong team mates on board. It was difficult to look after your self and making sure that you don't get thrown overboard with all the flip and tosses that our raft went through. There was one group composed of American kids and their parents whom we had to look after once in a while. Each time we go through a major rapid, 2 or three of the kids get thrown overboad! We kept on rescuing them which prompted my British team mate to comment "Jesus, what's wrong with this American family?!>$%!"

My favorite part was the body rafting. There was a portion where for a few minutes we have to jumpoff from our raft and glide our body through the smooth but fast moving current. I must have drunk a few glasses of river water during that time. It was quite a challenge to keep my head up above the water surface despite having my life jacket on. But after sometime, I finally got the hang of it and learned how to manipulate my body to keep the perfect form so I won't wobble around.

Finally we got to Halogilat Village - the end point. I was wet, exhausted, and very hungry. It's a good thing,there was heavy lunch waiting for us. After drying up and resting a bit, we started our long travel back to Kota Kinabalu. That wasn't bad for my first experience of river rafting. In fact, it was really fun and well worth it. Highly recommended!