Angie asked me to blog about my experience last weekend with the scouts, so here it is:
My current calling in church is the assistant leader for the 11 year old scouts. Last Friday evening our scout group went on a camping trip. We have a somewhat small group so I took Ben with me to the campout. Camping in Singapore is quite a different experience than camping in the Utah mountains.
Our experience started at the boat pier. There are a few places to camp on the Singapore mainland, but to really get away from the city you pretty much have to go to another, less populated, island somewhere. Our scout group met at the marina, where we hired a “water taxi” to take us out to Pulau Subar Laut (Malay for “Big Sister Island”). These boats for hire are not created for comfort since they haul people and equipment out to the big barges and/or other islands in the area. The boat took us along the Singapore coast for about 15 minutes to one of the sister islands just south of Sentosa. We had a great view of downtown Singapore the whole way.
As we docked and disembarked from the boat, the natives all gathered around the pier to greet us. The boys were a bit intimidated by this gathering—very understandable if you know how aggressive the monkeys can be (see Angie’s previous blog posts for some examples). Who knows how long it has been since the last camping group came to the island, so the monkeys were probably excited to have visitors and speculating what food we might give them. Someone eventually started stomping down the pier and the monkeys scattered to let us pass.
We walked to the far side of the island (a short 5-10 minute walk) where we sat up camp and enjoyed the night. We swam in the lagoon, cooked and ate dinner, and played some night games. Our scout troop (Troop 102) has a tradition of making “102 stew” for campout dinners—everyone brings a food item to contribute; we throw it all in a pot, heat it over the campfire, and eat whatever creation that makes. Of course, since the food was being cooked over a campfire, the boys (even some of the grown-up boys) couldn’t help but play with the fire. Even with the extra ash this added, our dinner turned out pretty good. Ben asked me to write down all the ingredients so we could make “this exact same meal” at home. All the time we could see and hear the monkeys hovering in the trees over us. Around 10:00 Ben sat down at the picnic table and quickly fell asleep with his head on the table. I decided to call it a night and took him to the tent.
In the morning I stepped out of the tent to discover that the monkeys had been close by during the night. Angie had sent us off with a great breakfast of donuts. In my quick packing for the trip, I took them in the bag from the store and tied off the top. Some monkey must have smelt the donuts near the edge of the tent—the plastic bag was protruding out of a small hole that had been ripped in the side of the tent. Luckily, the hole was too small for the donuts to pass through, so the donuts and most of the bag remained inside our tent. Note to self: Next time make sure you seal up all food in an airtight container.
After we enjoyed our delicious breakfast, I asked Ben if he would like to go for a hike around the entire island. He was agreeable to the idea so we departed. Shortly into the walk Ben found a coconut with part of the husk already removed. Ben decided it would be a great idea to carry the coconut back to camp to show everyone else. I tried to convince Ben that we had only walked about one minute from camp and he could easily return to this same spot to collect the coconut after we returned. Besides, we would probably find several other coconuts on our walk and he would probably even find one as we were returning to camp. Ben was not convinced and decided it would be best to carry the coconut the entire walk. He struggled to pick up the coconut with his one free hand since his other hand was already holding a big stick he had found a few seconds earlier. What would have been a 15 minute walk was extended to about 30 minutes as Ben struggled to keep hold of his two prize possessions. At one point I had to hold onto the coconut so Ben could climb a small rock wall near the pier.
As we approached camp we looked over toward the bathroom building to see a swarm of monkeys. The monkeys were eating breakfast—they were climbing down into the trash can next to the building and pulling out all the empty cans and other trash left from 102 stew. Now I know why we encountered several pieces of trash as we walked around the island.
Once we arrived in camp Ben proudly showed off his coconut. He then decided it was time to open it up to see what was inside. One of the other adults was kind enough to sit down with Ben and help. With the help of a pocket knife they eventually removed the rest of the husk. After admiring the seed for a brief moment, Ben stood up and threw it against the cement. It cracked and splashed a little bit of the juice. Ben picked it up again, took a couple of steps away from us and threw it against the cement again. This time the seed split in half and all of the juice splashed out—directly toward the other adult that had helped him remove the husk. Luckily, he was good natured and laughed about getting soaked. He even asked if Ben would like to try a little bit of the juice that splashed into his ear. He then picked up one of the pieces, cut out a little of the white fruit and gave it to Ben to try. Ben quickly decided that he didn’t really like the taste. However, he did want to share the experience with his family, so he gathered up several pieces so he could take them home and tell about the steps required to open the coconut.
As this was happening, one of the other leaders was busy on the beach trying to make a raft from the various pieces of wood and palm leaves he found lying around. Ben became interested in the raft and set down his coconut pieces to go help with the raft. Almost as soon as he left, the monkeys came out down of the trees to inspect his work. Ben yelled and threw a couple of rocks toward them, so they quickly gathered up all of the white fruit pieces and ran up the trees to enjoy their newly found feast. Luckily I had gathered up a couple of pieces so Ben still had something to take home to share with the family.
The rain started about an hour before the boat was scheduled to pick us up. As usual for this area, it was a very heavy rain. Several of the boys played ultimate Frisbee even in the rain. The rest of us stayed dry under one of the shelters. Once the rain let up we went to the pier to meet our boat and returned back to civilization.
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