A trip back to nature

In January this year, my office had a retreat to Taman Negeri Endau Rompin. On the way there, we came across globs of elephant poo on the road. That was interesting and a bit scary for the 30+ of us. The "resort" is located about 16km from the main road.

I am always very apprehensive about this kind of retreats. Earlier I attended one in Sungkai and that was a culture shock for me! It was like one of those NS camps.

Our accommodation in Endau Rompin was quite simple. We had to walk about 500m from the common area.

I stayed in an A-shaped hut with two beds and it has an attached bathroom! The only problem was it was naturally ventilated and we are always on the watch out for any insects that might have sneaked in.

After discovering a scorpion along the pathway, I was more careful in toilets and definitely no more short cuts! Anyway the water supply was from the river and it's only pumped up to tanks once a day.

So the water from the taps does look murky at times. Anyway my room mate & I have been brushing our teeth with mineral water. The organiser kept wondering why the mineral water bottles seemed to disappear so fast. I guess most of the others were doing the same!

The "resort" is located along the river and the water in the river is crystal clear. Some of us went for a dip in the rapids and it was definitely refreshing.


During our meetings and discussion, we had some "locals" joining us in the meeting room ...leeches. As we had to take off our shoes in the meeting room (so as to not offend the "locals"), we had to resort to wearing socks and keep our legs on the chair pedestal.

The management had our full attention throughout the retreat because the place had no handphone reception. Our Blackberry, HTC and any other handphones became useless in the meeting room. At times, my colleague sitting next to me will be showing me how to fly a plane on his HTC while I only had Solitaire to keep me occupied. We can only receive Maxis and Digi line but at selected locations only. During my free time when my other colleagues went for their prayers, I will be scouting around the place for the best reception area. So far under the tree in front of the meeting room and the light pole at the courtyard area are the best because we can get two bars reception!

After spending two nights there without airconditioning (it was quite cooling at night) and surprising no mosquitoes at all, I was dying to leave the place. I took the fastest way out by following one of my bosses in his car instead of following the bus! We stopped at the petrol station in Endau and I was again reminded of God's lovely creation when we spotted a grasshopper on the car windscreen.

I guess some times we need to go back to our basics in life. We have begun to rely a lot on our electronic gadgets that we have forgotten to enjoy the simpler things in life.