| The team assembles at Leong's house at 2100h. Rainy
weather is expected during the drive up north on the highway. The
drive from Kuala Lumpur to Perlis will take about 6 hours. Three
cars comprise of two 4WD and one sedan car will convoy along the
highway. All the gears have been sorted and packed into their respective
vehicles. Total weight of all the gears and equipment will
come close to 1.5 tonnes. Photos
- Departure
night A
simple departing ceremony was held at
Leong's house with the attendance of Mr Ganason the Cave Group
coordinator. The ceremony included the officiating of the expedition
logo by applying the sticker logo to the participating cars.
Finally, the group departed from Kuala Lumpur at 0030h. On
the north south highway, Leong's car encounter some problems with
the fuel pump while he refueled at a petrol kiosk in Ipoh. His car's
engine stalled as he departed from the petrol kiosk. After 1.5 hours
of fiddling around with the fuel pump, he found that his car's
batteries failed to crank the engine because of a damaged battery
cell. This posed a difficult situation as there were two problems to
tackle before we could start the engine. We concluded that the
battery was useless and we could not buy a replacement battery at
0400 in the morning. We managed to start the engine by swapping the
battery with Tony's car and did a quick manual pumping on the fuel
pump. This means that once the engine has started we could not stop
the engine from running as we do not have a replacement battery. Photos
- The journey After
traveling for one hour, we decided to stop at a rest area for a
break. Leong left his engine running while he got himself a cup of
coffee. Suddenly, the engine stalled again. Luckily there was a
friendly truck driver who offered to jump start the 4WD. We managed
to drive up to Juru toll plaza and once again the car stalled in the
middle of the queue leading to the toll booth. Darren, Min Er and
Yoke Chuan quickly jumped out form the 4WD to push and the rest from
Tony's 4WD came to the rescue. We were just 4 cars away from the
toll booth when the car stalled. We managed to push the car through
to the toll booth and straight into the control toll plaza. Once
again, Leong tried again to jump start the engine but this proved to
be useless. He found that the fuel pump was the main source of the
problem. Tony and Leong decided to drive all the way up to Sg.
Petani to obtain the car parts. At that moment, Colin and Chun Wah
were on their way to Kaki Bukit to find the rented accomodation. The
last of the convoy arrived into Kaki Bukit at 1730h. Total travel
time was 17 hours. Photos
- Kaki bukit |