Not One With Nature

Posted on 01.29.10 to Personal, Travels by Joan

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Mother Nature and I are not best friends. First time I went snorkling in Phuket, the fish came to eat me. On KK, I developed a nasty case of food poisoning.

I decided to challenge myself by not hiring a porter and carrying my own bag up. Halfway through, I started feeling sick and paid my guide to carry my bag. It got progressively worse, and I felt like puking and crapping. Which I did.

The last 1km to Laban Rata was mega painful for me. My legs were so tired and body tremendously weak from being sick.

I burst into tears for a bit because I was so miserable – I was in bad shape and my clothes were so dirty, with backsplash from the puking – but felt better after looking at the view. I was above the clouds and saw a really pretty orange and purple sunset! I also felt proud of myself for finally making it.

I fear making my way down though. This climb was hard. And I have a fear of heights, so when making my way up, climbing over rocks, I was trying very hard to not freak out. The steps up were also very big and I felt like Jack, from ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

The real drama began last night. Kim and I are bunking with this pair of ex-Swede military guys. Big white guys who were awesome. They initially called dibs on the lower bunks because they arrived 3 hours before we did. But when they found out I was sick, one of them gave me the bottom bunk, and there was medicine sitting on it when I got back to the room after dinner.

We tried to sleep at 8:30pm because the summit climb would begin at 2am. At 9:30pm, I wasn’t feeling too well and decided to make a dash for the bathroom, which I’m glad was next door. When I got to the room door, I felt my world fade to black and I went ‘Oh shit’ in my heart as I knew I was fainting. The last thing I remember was knocking my face on the door and collapsing on the floor.

Next thing I knew, Kim was slapping my face to wake me up. I was disoriented for a while, especially waking up to see big white guys staring at me in their underwear! (They were in bed when we arrived, so they were sufficiently decent.)

Apparently, I got up another three times and collapsed another three times.

I spent about half hour on the floor trying to regain conciousness, and then made my way to the bathroom to clean up because I soiled myself during fainting. Terribly unglamourous but I was sick!

Nearly passed out on the way to the bathroom and spent more time on the bowl trying to not faint. Cleaning up was not fun, because the water was freezing and my body parts were going numb.

I went back to bed after. An hour later, I felt like puking, so I stumbled to the bathroom and nearly fainted in the process again!

Climbing this mountain was by far the WORST experience of my life, what with falling so sick. I’m ready to go home and never remember this ever again.

The Swedes are coming through to SG in a few weeks and I offered to take them out if they promise to never mention this fainting fiasco again. I’m thankful we are bunking in with them though. They were very cool and calm throughout (well, they are ex-military), but it would have been so much worse if we had people who freaked out easily. Also, I was feeling so guilty from waking them up so many times because I knew they needed rest for the summit climb.

Needless to say, I’m not summiting. I don’t want to faint from the last leg of the climb. It’s such a disappointment since I came so far, but my body can’t take it.

I wonder if I told my dad what happened, he’d airlift me out of here. I want to go home, pronto.

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