MM SEPTEMBER 2018: A visit to Lata Hammer

Written by Andrea

On the 1st of September, I joined the Raleigh team for the first time. We were set to hike to the “Lata Hammer” waterfall and pool for a fun-filled afternoon.

The registration process was done in due diligence and payment was efficient. The meeting point was clear and well indicated using the big green Raleigh sign. We had a big group that day and about 7 Raleigh leaders, who got us smoothly organized into carpooling and assigned a buddy to each hiker on the spot. Safety was taken very seriously. 

With an hour delay, we finally set off to Bentong, where the hike was located. After 1.5 hours, we reached the starting point. Here, we got another briefing and finally started the hike. The hike was easy and it was a surprise to see quite a number of the younger people having difficulties to follow a certain pace.

It's so good to have teams like Raleigh around, to actually get the younger people out of the malls and sofas to enjoy nature and to be more sportive. Once we were at the fall, we had a great swim and some team members started to prepare lunch. They actually brought a gas cooker and we enjoyed a warm lunch. Just fabulous! Thanks to the members who prepared all that.

After some time relaxing, swimming, sunbathing and eating, it was time to clear up the site and start the journey back to KL. It was emphasized by the team leaders to only take memories and leave footprints. The return walk went smoothly. At the parking lot, we had one last gathering before we carpooled again and drove back to the starting point from the morning. We then checked out and went home.

Overall, I felt it was a very enjoyable outdoor time on a Saturday.

When I was asked to comment on what can be improved, I had to think really hard, as I feel it was very well organized already.

There is always time management – not necessarily a strength in Malaysia as people are constantly late here, and to improve this the culture needs to change – hence lets not go down that path. Still, one thing can be improved. Since we cleaned up our picnic area, I feel if we would have been given a few more plastic bags (or we could have taken it from home), we could have cleaned up the jungle on our way back to the parking lot. There is always some trash flying around and this would have been a good opportunity to do a bit of jungle clean up.

I certainly will join again, and I feel that this team is wonderful and doing a fantastic job to develop today’s youth to make them better team players and allow them exposure to nature.