Narrowband.org

Do you like jungle-trekking? How about doing it without touching the ground? Introducing SkyTrex Adventure, where you can challenge yourself to a series of obstacles, suspended at about 3 to 17 meters above the ground. You basically need to move from one tree to another, and the entire course takes around 1 and 1/2 hours to complete - depending on your physical fitness and agility!

SkyTrex Adventure is located inside Taman Pertanian Malaysia (Malaysia Agricultural Park), Shah Alam, which is about 30-40 minutes drive from the KL City Center. If you have been following my blog since last year, you’d probably have read about my cycling excursion in that park with some friends on a Sunday morning. I didn’t know about SkyTrex Adventure back then.

Duncan and I were chauffeured in a 4×4 to the entrance of SkyTrex Adventure, where we would be meeting the rest of the gang who had arrived earlier. For RM35, you get your personal safety gear, locker (for you to keep your bags, etc), and a high-dose of pure, exhilarating fun! We were given a short briefing-cum-training on how to use the equipments before actually going for the real deal.

That’s Duncan doing the flying fox during the training. A mini-trail is set up just outside the entrance for visitors to get the hang of the safety gear, so that nobody makes mistakes during the actual course. As you can see, the mini-trail is only intended for training purposes (or even ‘warm-up’), that’s why it’s pretty close to the ground.

After the training - which, by the way, really got us all very excited! - we proceeded to the tree where we would start our real adventure. That tree really made me sweat buckets. And it was just the first hurdle…

That’s Alicia, who was right behind me. You see, obviously we had to do the course serially - on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis. Without much hesitation, I went first, followed by Alicia, In Xuan, and the rest. This is also the reason why you’ll see more of Alicia’s photos throughout this blog entry ;p

Seriously, if you’re afraid of heights, this is a good opportunity for you to cure your fear. Haha. It’s very safe in there because your pulley is attached to your safety harness as you move along the course. You won’t fall (provided you use the pulley correctly)!

That’s the safety pulley, which is also the same one used in flying foxes. As the entire trail requires quite a lot of rope-pulling and stuff, it’s recommended that you bring along a pair of gloves. There are hand gloves that you can use, provided by SkyTrex, but if you’re unlucky, you may get a pair that’s wet soaked in sweat! Ew.

That’s how challenging it is to move from one tree to another. It can get pretty wobbly up there. The bridge is suspended by only steel cables, so you gotta balance yourself well as you walk along.

When ascending or descending a ladder, our safety gear had a kind of mechanism that would prevent us from free-falling (in case we slipped). This is pretty standard for activities like this, including wall-climbing, I guess!

Here in this photo, whatever Alicia was doing may seem like an easy task. At first glance, I too didn’t think it’d be that hard, and I was wrong! Everyone later agreed that that obstacle was among the ‘more challenging’ ones there.

The flying fox, however, was one that we all loved the most. There were at least 5 flying foxes in there, and each of them always made us grin in satisfaction - like this:

The white rope was there to assist us in case we got stuck half way gliding. All we gotta do was just pull it towards us - which explains why some people preferred to wear hand gloves!

Some of the obstacles weren’t very long, like the one you see in the pic above. The longer ones were actually much trickier, because you tend to lose your balance, especially when you’re somewhere near the mid-point!

That’s the one that was really long. If it wasn’t for that safety pulley, I would have tasted branches and leaves -_-” And oh, for those who want to quit half-way through the trail, fret not… there is something known as the ‘Chicken Exit’ here!

While we were on this ‘Chicken Exit’ tree, Alicia and I decided to camwhore before In Xuan came.

The obstacles here are classified into three levels of difficulty, if I’m not mistaken. Here’s one that is a ‘Red’ difficulty level, which is kinda self-explanatory…

Actually, the Tarzan-swing (that’s what we liked to call it) itself wasn’t that difficult (of course lah, how hard could it be?). It was the climb up the net that was difficult! Here, have a look:

We had to climb quite a bit before reaching the platform, where we would be doing a reaaally long flying fox. It was so fun that we didn’t realize that we had come to the end of the challenge trail…

All in all we took an average of about 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete the entire course. While waiting for the rest of the gang, I took the opportunity to snap photos…

… of Duncan’s serious-looking face as he gingerly did the final super-long suspension bridge! There was also an incident which really cracked us up!

That’s Navin’s shoe on the ground! How the heck did it land there?? Hahaha…

Apparently the shoe came off while he was trying to grab the net - probably with all fours ;p Funny stuff. Anyway, here’s Trevor having his go:

Methinks the last flying fox was the most fun because it was long, and fast. Duncan obviously enjoyed it very much:

Here’s a panning shot of Duncan speeding down the rope…

We thoroughly enjoyed the SkyTrex Adventure trail that day… it was money well-spent! We even said that we’d come back again for the exact same thing! (By the way, a new adventure park - also SkyTrex’s - is now under construction, and it is due to complete some time later this year. We will definitely be doing that one when it opens!)

Here’re some info and tips: SkyTrex Adventure charges RM35 per adult (by ‘adult’, they mean 16 y.o and above), and you are advised to call in and make reservations to avoid disappointment. It is located *inside* Taman Pertanian Malaysia (Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam) in Shah Alam, and parking costs RM1/entry. There are lockers provided for you to store your valuables but it’s best if you don’t bring at all if you don’t need them. Also, a pair of gym-gloves will be useful, but not compulsory. If it rains, you will have to abort the challenge because the platforms on the trees can become very slippery.

Hop on over to http://skytrex-adventure.com/ for contact information.

P/s. Anyone interested? I don’t mind doing it again, haha…

Related Entries:

• Paintball Fever
• My First Time...
• VMY2007: Taman Pertanian Malaysia
• VMY2007: Taman Negara