Day 5 – First Night Camping
Posted by: Tom and Cherry's Tandemonium
Posted on: 9 February 2016.
Posted in:
Camping in malaysia is a lot warmer than camping in the uk – not in a good way though – from midnight – 3am we lay in our tent unable to sleep due to the extreme heat. I was sweating more than I ever have in any sauna or steamroom, mopping myself with my towel only to be covered again a minute later. I think the temperature was about 34 c., however it was the extreme humidity that made it so crazy. Having packed some marino wool baselayers, and being told by the advertising that it helps you keep cool when hot, as well as hot when cool, I thought I would put it to this seemingly impossible test – although I thought I might be committing suicide when pulling on what are essentially thermals, even putting my buff over my head, when I was already hotter than I’ve ever been in my life. It did actually do some good though, mostly by stopping me from drowing in sweat, and i managed to get some sleep this way.
You might wonder why we didn’t just sleep outside – well for one the mosquitos were horrendous, and devoured us when setting up the tent. Although they’re not supposed to carry maleria here there is a real risk of denge fevor which you can’t get preventative medicine for and is also pretty bad. As well as these though there were some pretty massive spiders including two that terrified me when putting the tent away… one went inside cherry’s shoe (I was too scared to get a photo sorry) although that was not protection enough from my special forces shovel 😀 the other ‘disappeared’ so I’m still a little nervous it might have got somewhere else in all our kit – if we find it and survive I will let you know! Thirdly there was quite a lightening storm and the heavens opened with rain to put storm desmond to shame, making us glad to have brought a decent waterproof tent, but unfortunately not making it that much cooler inside.
Since this wonderful experience we have splashed out a little and stayed in hotels, although we do plan to get camping again soon – partly to save money, but also because when we get to Burma there won’t be much other option. Plus it will probably be considerably warmer (i don’t want to believe it but apparently it gets a lot hotter over the next few months!) We will adjust, however to go with the spiders we may have tigers and wild elephants… again I will get photos in accordance with my current level of courage at the time!