Tracking Perlis : Gua Kelam

Sure, I have heard of Gua Kelam the name - but never been here myself until recently.  I ended up wishing I knew of it much much earlier. This is a beautiful park - it has 2 cave systems and the park at the OTHER end of the caves is a park worthy of your time and visit : you will be amazed that this is in Malaysia but not much is publicised about it.

Picnic spot at the Cave entrance

Pack snacks and budget time to spend on the other side of the cave

Cave system 1# is now closed - a tram used to run and enables the visitor to punch out on the other side of the limestone hill. The tram is now broken down and some millions obviously wasted. So we're left with cave system 2# which is an elevated gangway that cuts through the hill whilst being suspended above the underground river. All lighted up with railings so it is safe for little children as well - this facility and the park spaces will cost you a princely sum of RM1.00 (2014) only. It is a short walk through the cave which opens up to this :

One of the many wakafs you can set down for a picnic

Like a little hidden paradise

Pack lunch, a hammock with an afternoon to spare - and you're all set. There are toilets and changing facilities should you decide to swim in one of the creek network. There's a deer farm and the mystical Sintok Tree (Pokok Ajaib Sintok). At last count (we literally lost count), this single tree has it roots creeping up to more than 32 other adjacent trees! You could say it is a spineless tree. Indeed.

Get your kids to count how many trees that this parasitic tree has decided to creep upon.

DISCLAIMER - please DO NOT do the following:

Fully equipped with proper gear, supplies and torches - we sought out the second cave system. It was not difficult to find and the egress was located somewhere higher up against the limestone hill wall. Inside - there is absolutely zero light so reliance is solely on your (hopefully very reliable) torchlights. What's inside is a network of caves - complete with concrete paths, steps, rest areas, railings, multiple junctions and lightings which leads you to the end of the line of the tram. Of course none of the lights work now. As we moved further into the cave, it got warmer and before long we were sweating buckets. The trek ends where the tram rail meets. We were tempted to trek out along the tram rail but decided to backtrack to avoid tangling with the Park Rangers.

now disused pathways

secret stairway to the underground river

If you're in Perlis - don't brush off a visit to Gua Kelam : you must go!!

Is it far? In Perlis, everywhere is just "15 mins away". So wherever you are in Perlis, it will take you no longer than 15 minutes to get to Gua Kelam. Really!

History has it that Gua Kelam was previously used a rice trail or a smuggler's run where supplies made its way to and from across the Siamese border.

Fitbit Flex Reviewed

Purchased this in Perth for under RM400. A health band was something that was never on my radar but I spent all of 1 hour before deciding to buy it.

First things first : why did I not buy the Garmin Vivofit instead? It has a nice display, 1 year battery life, connectivity to Garmin Connect. Only thing going for Flex which has no display is the Battlestar Galactica Cylon blinking lights. Because I would look like a dork wearing two watches : unless I am willing to just wear the Vivofit to work and leave the other watch at home. To wear watches on both hands, IMO, looks dorky - and would elicit too many questions from work colleagues.

Plus 1# - understated and not attention grabbing.

 

Activity for Larian Gegar 2014 - the run started at 7:30 am

Sleep analysis - sound asleep like a beruang

 

Minus 1# - Battery life : needs to be recharged every 5 days! You can easily forget to do this - or happen to not have the proprietary charging cradle handy. I'd leave the charger at the office or a place where you spend the most time during the week. 

Plus 2# - all fitness bands do not tout having 99.99% accuracy and uses oblique words like "representative", "guide" or "reference" but never "accurate". Because it is not. It calculates based on motion - despite their best algorithms to distinguish between movements by walking or movements when sitting down - it is not a perfect science. However! After tweaking the stride length settings, I found that I could get the calculation near the ballpark. If you look at the summary of Larian Gegar 2014 during the morning session, it recorded a distance of 13+km. The run itself was 10km and add the milling around at the start finish line, the warm up, walking from carpark to race site  - I'd say that is pretty close to being accurate!

Minus 2# and Plus 3# - after 5 months of having it - I would confess that it is rather faddish. I no longer diligently sync the unit every day nor do I key in my food intake anymore. In a word - it is pretty much forgotten. For big activities like hiking or races, I have my Fenix which can make the Fitbit rather redundant. Until my recent 8 day trip overseas. Switching GPS on for Fenix would do little since I would be in and out of subway stations and shopping complexes. That was when Fitbit came into its own : the logs gave me a nice overview of my entire trip - and I could corroborate certain time of the day as being "Oh this was that long walk at the Arishiyama Bamboo Grove .." and I could determine with reasonable certainty that on average I was walking 8.95kms per day in Japan! 

Which is why - the Fitbit still has a place on my wrist till today.

Price paid (RM380)

MSM 2014 NT v6.68 released!

http://t.co/iXgaWS6Gi4

Life With Garmin VIRB Elite - Mini Review

Qualification:
This is a private purchase and not a sponsored item by Garmin. What I purchased was quite a lot - it was the Garmin Virb Elite and most of the mounting accessories - including the shoulder harness.

You can read detailed reviews elsewhere and I would not try to repeat the same stuffs covered by other reviewers. There is an outstanding review here by DC Rainmaker. Check it out. The reviews out there will tell you it has built-in GPS, accelerometer, a lo-res display screen and connectivity with other Garmin devices. I will share with you how the unit has performed for the past month or so I have had it.

The tempe sensor is optional. Got it online for USD$29.

Conclusion : The Short End of It: 

Virb Elite DOES NOT produce the best video quality out there but as an overall complete package with enhanced features, it is HARD TO BEAT. The low down is : it all boils down to Virb Elite vs Sony HDR-AS30V vs GoPro Hero 3+. I am not a videographer nor a movie maker where perfect image (color rendition etc) is a must. All I want is decent footage with overlaid GPS data. You can fine pick picture quality all day between the 3 units but for me, the clincher is that the Virb can talk to other Garmin devices and accessories. And because it does so - it opens up new features and data fields that neither the Sony nor the GoPro has. You can tell me Hero 3+ renders color more beautifully and that Sony does better low-light recording than the Virb and I simply don't care. You will understand why as you read below.


KEYWORDS on things I like about it : GPS, remote connectivity, display, When Moving Mode, sensors, data overlays, TimeLapse mode.

Out of the Box

First the bad : it came with Firmware 3.0. And honestly it was a real pain. The unit freezed up on different occasions. When I thought the unit was recording, it actually was not and there were footage which were simply not recorded. For the first 3 days, I felt I really had an expensive lemon in my hand. The WebUpdater could not detect FW3.0 and it tells me that my FW is uptodate. It was not - FW 3.70 was already posted by Garmin. I had to manually update the Elite by finding the physical update file of 3.70 on the  internet and putting it on the SD card.

The good - the manual update went smoothly and the unit since update has performed flawlessly for the past month. No more freezes.

Life with Virb Elite 

Garmin:"We chose white so that you can find it easily if it falls in the mud."

Virb Elite comes only in white and you can see why white is a bad choice! It is an action cam, where the photographer you know, may come into contact with dirt, water, mud .. or did that escape Garmin's designers? For a unit which has not spend more than 40 days out of the box, it looks like it has spent life outdoors for the past 2 years. The Garmin lettering is not in black - that is a botched experiment of using Black Plastidip spray ..

Customisable everything with all the GPS and sensor data!

Display

Its a simple lo-res VGA display that tells you all you need to know : how the video is being framed, what it is recording and playback. It is not backlit so you won't be able to use it in darkness but for most other occassions, it is mighty fine enough for you to even select and delete clips that you do not like when you are out doing your activities. After living with GoPro Hero 1 for many years, the display is a big leap in terms of assisting video composition as well as excising useless clips on the fly.

The display also has a GPS style dash - which shows you the speed and sensor data. For example, it will draw an elevation profile of your location - so if you have the unit turned on for the past 1 hour, the graph will show the elevation profile for the past 1 hour. Ditto for temperature readings. It also shows the G readings in real-time. All these data are displayed live together with a Min / Max reading. Very nice.

GPS

Virb writes on the SD card the .mp4 video files, .gpx files and .fit files.Presumably Fit files come into play when you pair the Virb with, say, a heart rate monitor or a tempe sensor. All the GPS and sensor data can be put into good use when you edit the videos using Virb Edit.

Apart from the conventional continuous recording, it can also record "When Moving" mode. So when the vehicle stops - say at a traffic jam or a traffic light - the recording stops. It restarts automatically when the car moves again. On this mode, as you pull out of the garage, it will automatically start recording, even though the Record button is in the OFF position. It cuts out a lot of useless motionless footage. It also has a SKI Mode which only records when the camera detects you are going downhill. If you are going uphill, the recording stops. MTBr downhillers may find this function useful.

Garmin connectivity and sensors!

My Montana 650, Garmin Fenix watch can remotely operate the Virb Elite. The Android app allows my Samsung Note 8 to remotely operate the camera too. You even have a nice preview of what the camera is seeing with your Note 8. But once the shutter is triggered, live-view is disabled (you see a blank screen on your tablet).

If you are a Montana user - there is another plus point - Virb uses the same batteries! So whilst you plug in the Montana in the DC charger of the car, you can use the Virb for (it says 3 hours but I have consistently got 2++) and the swap the batteries with the Montana. Rinse and repeat. For a long journey, you basically have a continuous supply of batteries :)

This connectivity enables you can mount the camera on the roof of the car and use your Fenix watch or Montana GPS whilst driving the car to remotely operate the cam. Wonderful. The Fenix will even tell you how long it has been recording. Superb! I have a GoPro Hero 1 - how may times do I have to check and double check if I am recording or if the unit is on? TOO MANY! No reaching out to the unit to fiddle with it every time you can to start and stop recording.

It talks to the Tempe, HRM, cadence and power meters. And you can overlay all these data on your video. Seriously do you need more justification? :)

Tempe readings and graph for the last 5 mins

PLEASE NOTE THAT NONE of official Virb Garmin mounts can be mounted on the external surface of the car (short of gluing it). For this job, I use RAM Mount - the suction is rock solid that it ain't gonna fly off even if I mount it on the roof and going at 150mph.

RAM mounts are the bees knees of all mounts out there

Video Recordings & Camera

With a 64GB SD card, I am able to record some 6hrs 30+ mins at 1080p 30fps. The  max file size per video is approx 3.5GB+ before Virb splits and create another file is the recording exceeds the limit. So if your footage is 12GB long, then you may end up with 4 separate video files.

The Time Lapse mode is super neat. It takes 16MP pictures at selected intervals of 0.5 secs, 1 sec, 2 secs, 5 secs, 1 minute etc. The moment you stop recording, Virb will stitch all the pictures into a videoclip. Great to film mundane things which would seem boring otherwise- like eating, setting up bike gear or better yet : sunrise or sunset. For the latter two, you should plug the camera into an AC outlet if you intend to do time lapse for many hours. On time lapse mode with 64GB, you can record more than 99+hrs.

Time Lapse and 1080p are the only 2 modes I normally use. It has a wide-angle 16MP camera. The performance is actually pretty good - even in low light. 

My personal impression is that this camera does admirable night recordings and I am honestly impressed. I read that Sony betters Virb but since Sony cannot talk to the Tempe, HRM, cadence sensors, I did not particularly care :)

Virb Elite on FW3.70 performed flawlessly whilst it traveled the length and breadth of Japan in 8 days - including 2 days in the rain and a waterpark. 

Photo mode. Night shot. Not bad eh?

Sungai Besi Toll Plaza

Virb Edit

Virb Edit - this software is far from the best out there, but it gets the job done for simple editing.

Gunung Rajah (up to Y Crossing)

Y Crossing

This was a leisurely hike along the Gunung Rajah trail. The complete trail to summit and back is about 27km but this is the short hike to Y Crossing. You have to take your boots off to make this crossing - and depending on weather, the water could be calf height to totally uncrossable (after heavy rain). On the other side, the trail continues on to Lata Naning and Kem Hijau and all the way to summit. 

Vital Stats
Min / max temperature : 27 deg / 33 deg C
Elevation gain : 565m
Max elevation : 618m
Avg HR / Max HR : 141bpm / 163 bpm
Distance : 17.81 km (Fenix)
Avg Pace : 14:03 min/km

Trail conditions : very good, well maintained, deadfalls all cleared, log crossings all intact. A good part of the first 8 km is exposed, so you are well-advised to start early.

Out and back profile

 If you don't mind the sun, the hike up to Y Crossing in one word : wonderful - gradual grade that saw us gain almost 600m in 9km. That is gentle by any standards and made for a wonderful stroll amidst cool forest settings. No hard climbing, no knee-to-chest climbs and it was literally a walk in a forest park. You will pass a Mini Hidro station and a tiny orang asli settlement with its neat houses.

At Y Crossing, dip in the sub-22 deg waters (measured at 3pm on a sunny day!), break out your stove, eat and head on back.

Recommended:

•  proper hiking boots
• trekking poles here pay dividends on a hike this long - use two to trek alpine style.
• a hat for the exposed hike along the logging track
• at least 3L of drinking water - or stove to purify river water at Y Crossing
• there are leeches in the trail but not in abundance, you would be considered lucky if you are bitten by one.

Sleeprite Cot Quick Review

Official site of Sleeprite Cot.

My current camping accomodation is Therm-A-Rest Scout . I have the Regular 183 cms pad which weighs 680 gms and can fit quite easily in my backpack. It is a great self-inflating sleeping pad and it has seen action at places like Mossy Forest, Bako National Park, Kem Baha, Broga, Gunung Datuk. It has given me many comfortable night's sleep. Even on uneven rock surfaces, it is so darn comfortable to sleep on and your body warmth actually heats the pad up. My only complain if any is its weight! Budget does not permit me to buy the more expensive and lighter pads!


I picked up the Sleeprite Cot  for days when I (may!) do car-camping or beach camping WHEN WEIGHT DOES NOT matter. It comes in a small portable pouch which together with all its trappings clocks at 2.87 kgs. 

To put things in perspective - folding aluminium camping beds as we know it like this weighs 6+kgs, is bulky and not exactly portable without some huffing and puffing but costs in the range of RM150-200.00. The other big difference is that these sit much higher above ground : we're talking in feet. For Sleeprite Cot (or LuxuryLite for that matter), they sit considerably lower to the ground : we're talking in inches here. The idea is that your body is off the ground - whether it is 2 feet or 6 inches should not matter in reality since you are already isolated from the ground environment.

Dimensions : the cot sits 175mm above ground (no load), is 1960mm in length, and 740mm in width. Basically it can sleep a 6 footer more than comfortably. Once you are on it, the cot fabric will sag down much closer to the ground - so depending on where your bum is located in relation to the support frames - in my case, the lowest point was 70mm off the ground. 

Sleeprite Cot at 2.87kg is much lighter in a compact package compared to traditional camp beds. But if you wanna go crazy, there is always the Therm-A-Rest LuxuryLite Mesh Cot - which in Kuala Lumpur is being sold at RM999 but weighs a waifly 1.47kg only. But let me be the sour grape and tell you that I have molested the LuxuryLite before - it is darn crazy light BUT, the durability of the oval foot packs of the bow-frame is honestly questionable. It is made of some kind of light plastic, which looks and feels fragile. I have read a review where a user claims to break the foot on its first use - in his living room!

The Sleeprite has foot packs made of solid aluminium and is rated to carry up to 300lbs.

Everything is shock-corded : so no pieces are liable to be misplaced or dropped. The aluminium poles are not your ordinary heavy generic tent poles - they are lightweight and is similar to the poles used by the MSR tents. Handsome and light. I like. And the red color : very pretty. Very MSR Hubba Hubba NX .. ahem ..

The 6 support frames are not evenly spread out - 4 of them are bunched more closely together where most of your body weight is : head, upper torso and bum. So note the White Arrow which tells you which way your head should be. Sleep the other way and your body weight may not be properly distributed - which I assume can break the frame. Who knows?

So how easy is it to setup and dismantle? Actually very easy. I fumbled in the first try but by the second and subsequent attempts, I can get it up quickly in a leisurely 2 minutes. Bringing it down is even faster. My tip is:
1. use the ground as leverage for setup and dismantling.
2. fix the support frames on either end of the cot FIRST, before doing the intermediate ones.
3. slot the frame on the left side of the cot, stand the cot sideways on the left and press down to slot the frame on the right side of the cot (which is elevated). The leverage by pushing the frame down enables you to easily bend the frame to ease slotting.

SLEEP TEST

Sedap siol! The bed is firm, there is sagging but your torso doesn't ball up like it would when in a hammock. The fabric is held taut and gives just a little when your full weight it on it. It makes noise when you move : if you are a tosser-turner, you might piss off the guy sleeping next to you. It is not very noisy but it is audible.

POTENTIAL SETUPS

1. When your wife gives birth and you can only get a Single Room. An instant bed!

2. Day trip / picnics for an afternoon siesta by the beach.
3. Motorbike camping - what is 2.8kg in the panniers dude?!
4. A non-fussy sleeper guest drops by the house
5. Watch World Cup when the rest of the sofa is already taken up by other family members.
6. Overnight camping gets tricky:
(a) setup a flysheet above you; or
(b) have a very big tent

For Malaysian climate, 6(a) is very very doable and would be much preferred.

Last question : would I hike up a mountain with it? Answer : NO. My Hubba Hubba (2.04kg) with the Gear Loft (85gms)and  and Footprint (140gms) is considerably lighter, can sleep 2 comfortably, has an ace view of the stars minus the insects and mozzies and keeps me out of the elements.

Price paid RM340.00 (2014)

Living with : The MSR Hubba Hubba Review

This is my second Hubba Hubba - after the first one was stolen. I like the tent so much that I'd buy this again if I have to.

Keywords of things I like about it: lightweight everything, build quality, view, packs very compactly

At first glance, the Hubba Hubba looks like a variation of the dome tent but it is far from it. Hubba Hubba comes with a single pole design - every single piece of the entire pole structure is shock-corded together as a single unified piece. The pole itself is amazingly ultralight - most people when they handle the pole for the first time and get awestruck by its light weight - will just blink the eye and buy the tent. :) It is called DAC Featherlite and weight probably only 1/10 of the normal weight of the traditional 2 piece aluminium dome tent poles. It is that amazing.

Before I bought this tent, I shortlisted a few others - an orange Marmot being one of them which was in the same price range as the Hubba Hubba. I tested the Marmot in a showroom in Singapore - actually was very impressed with the entire package until I saw the tent spikes. For an ultralight tent which went to great pains to save weight - it uses the traditional heavy as lead steel tent spikes. Locals would call those Paku Pontianak. FAIL.

The beautiful MiniGroundhog stakes

MSR made no such mistakes as it went all the way right down to the ultralight and beautiful MiniGroundhog stakes - which looks the business and weighs next to nothing. And they even supply you with insufficient stakes! For this iteration of Hubba Hubba, it came with only 4 stakes - when ideally you need 6 minimum to fully guy the tent in strong wind conditions. One stake costs RM11 so you should grab at least 2 extra.

My recommendation is to buy the tent with the Hubba Hubba Footprint

The Footprint enables me to setup the tent pretty much anywhere I want - protects the tent from rough surfaces underneath and allows me to setup JUST the rainfly without the tent. There are some occasions when you just need the shelter without the tent - so you raise the poles using the footprint and then raise the rainfly. The practical advantage is that when it suddenly rains, you can quickly layout the footprint, raise the rainfly first to get out of the rain, and only then raise the tent underneath. You are dry and the tent is dry : this is one ability which most tent systems do not have.

Full mesh 360 degree view if you remove the rainfly

The tent is almost entirely full-mesh. For hot nights, you can fold the rainfly away and have a awesome view of the sky. The interior is spacious - you can sit up with no problems of hitting the roof of the tent and put Therm-A-Rest side by side. There is now a new version of this tent called  Hubba Hubba NX - it has shaved some 500 gms further making it one heckuva UL tent. But I haven't upgraded .. because of its weight saving improvements, the tent is no longer 360 degree full-mesh. It has side walls and the view is impaired. View or weight savings? 500 gms vs 360 degree views?

NO TENT - Only the rainfly is raised - you can configure shade coverage however you want : half, quarter etc.

Vestibule for gear storage and light cooking away from the wind and elements.

I found the MSR Gear Loft useful : I store my handphone, wallet, watch, keys - and you can use it to put a small light to illuminate the tent.

IN THE ELEMENTS

The coldest I camped was 11 deg - there was condensation outside the tent but it did not get into the tent. I have camped it in extreme high winds - at the time when I didn't have enough stakes. It felt like 20-25kmh winds but with proper guying, the tent stayed up all night. Rain? No problem absolutely.

Price Paid : RM1200.00 for the tent only (2011)