Normally, Saturday morning is one of the busiest days of the week when we juggle school runs, tamu (fresh market) shopping, breakfast, more shopping when the supermarket opens. But because it’s the last weekend of the school holiday and shopping’s done a day earlier, it meant we were able to organize what we couldn’t since the start of the year — an extended Bukit Shahbandar hike, which is basically twice the distance of the regular 9 Pondok trail but a lot more intense. But it’s not just the extended hike that I am writing about. It’s also that on the same day, after hiking an exhausting 6 km jungle trail, there was an hour’s drive home, leaving us about 3 hours to grab lunch, shower and rest, before another hour’s drive back to Bandar Seri Begawan to attend a Chinese wedding banquet.
See larger version of photo: Group photo at Bukit Shahbandar Lookout (Canon PowerShot G11)
See larger version of photo: Group photo on extended trail of Bukit Tangahan (Canon PowerShot G11)
11 hours later, with barely an hour of shuteye, we were on the road again for another hour’s drive to the Centre Point Goldstone Ballroom for Sharon and Yazid’s wedding banquet. It was a great opportunity to catch up with so many people we hadn’t seen in a while. We reached home close to midnight, ending a very productive day collapsing in bed super exhausted.
Having a bit of fun with props posing for the photo booth camera.
I almost always make it a point to have a camera with me when I hike, regardless if it’s a short hike at Sungai Liang or half the morning in the Shahbandar forest. Being a photographer, I think it’s a habit to do so but more importantly, as you’ve seen from the two group photographs above, you just never know who you’re going to meet during the hike and what better way to remember these chance encounters than to have them photographed and shared.
