Going Green: Responsibilities.

Little bit of important details one must know and get accustomed to when entering a jungle. If you find all these items down here troublesome and tedious, drop your bags, hang your shoes and forget about ever going into the jungle until you've learned to respect it. Trekking and camping in the jungle comes with responsibilities.

Trekking

1. Guys (the male kind), kindly keep your egos out of the jungle. If you have problem doing so then you should really reconsider entering in the first place.

2. Bring your own trekking poles. It's not cool to go into the trails with a parang and happily chopping up tree branches to use as walking poles when your knees start to give way. Know your limits. If you're weak in the knees, bring your own poles. The cheap ones from China barely costs RM 50 each. Don't be cheaper than that.

3. See the trail, follow the trail. Some trails have red and white ribbons tied onto tree branches, some have yellow or red tags stuck onto tree trunks. Bushwhacking is not recommended under all circumstances, unless you're very experienced. But if you're experienced, you might not need to read this post anyway. Every once in a while turn around to check the trail you came from, in case there are forks you could not spot from the other angle.

4. Engraving your names onto tree trunks? Seriously? Who LOVE who else? You probably didn't cause the tree it's life by engraving your less-than-uneducated names onto the trunk, but please!

5. Avoid using bushcraft in the trails, unless absolutely necessary. Don't know what's bushcraft? Good. Keep it that way.

6. If travelling in a group, stay in a group. There's no shame in asking for a break, even if that girl in front of you is clearly better than you. It's more important to stay in the group.

7. Trek Leader (in front) and Sweeper (at the back), always do a rough head count of everyone in between. Make sure everyone is accounted for, and if not, call for a search immediately.

8. If lost, stay on the trail and stay where you are. Blow the whistle if you have one. If not, call for help without reciting your friends' full names along with their fathers'. Of course the first thing to do if you have a Celcom network is try using your phone.

9. Please keep ALL your rubbish to yourselves, biodegradable or not. This is not negotiable.

10. If you have to take a poop or pee while trekking, I suggest you do it out of the way, as in NOT on the trail. But make sure you have another friend or two to stick around just so you don't get lost while looking for a good spot. You might smell bad, and it'll help now more than ever if you or your friends are smokers.

11. The squirrels are cute, those wild mushrooms look cool, could I take that fuzzy little thing home? No, no and NO! Imagine if 5000 people go past that section of Mount Kinabalu and all want to take home a squirrel as souvenir. What's left there?

12. When going into nature and enjoying it's beauty, please enter ONLY with the same nature we have all been given: with legs (or anything similar in kind). 4x4 truckers have no respect for nature whatsoever. You'll agree once you've seen how much damage these people have caused the natural balance all in the name of 'sport'. If you guys wanna learn problem solving, go to Club Med.

13. Hashers you're not forgiven as well. Shame on you, throwing all those papers around the trail. Biodegradable, yes. Eye-sore, also yes!


Camping

1. Bring tents with adequate poles and pegs to avoid using materials from your surroundings. Yes, the idea of camping is not to McGuyver your way through but to enjoy nature while doing as little damage to it as possible. Which also includes skewers for your little marshmallows.

2. Some damages are inevitable but can be minimized. When selecting a spot to lay your tent, please remove all dried leaves and twigs. This will disturb the balance of the site, but it will also ensure you don't sleep on scorpions and centipedes.

3. Contrary to popular beliefs, boxing your campsite with yellow sulfur will not keep snakes and scorpions out. I've seen sulfur lines stained with snake's slither marks. And did the shopkeeper tell you it's poison to people as well?

4. If you're camping at the beach, avoid having your tent's entrance facing the sea or the opposite. You'll be catching the worse winds into your tent and eventually damaging it's structure.

5. Avoid starting campfires. They consume too much wood, generate too much fume and you only sit around it to talk cock. If you have to use campfires, keep them small. Small enough to generate enough ambers to bake that cake or chocolate banana, and nothing more. Harvest fire fuel only from dead trees, as it should be. Keep fires well away from tents, and sheltered from winds. Keep a pail of water and/or sand nearby. Fires are more unpredictable that you think. Before sleep, please make sure the ambers are cold to the touch. I've seen fires restart by strong winds with almost dead ambers. Many times. Feel like it's a tedious task? Then don't start fires.

6. Do not start fires using those white-colored solid fuel. They're very kuno and extremely poisonous. Challenge yourself to a 3 match-stick start, or use those organic fire starters satay guys use on coals. Cap Ayam.  I've seen people use kerosene or petrol. This is what will happen: Big ignition, much black smoke, fire  returning to it's original size. Because all you're burning is kerosene, not the wood.

7. Set bio ditches for excess food and the other bio ditch for your pee and crap away from tents. Pee and crap have to be down stream from the spot where you pick up river water, and at least 200  yards (180 m) away from any water source.

8. It's dinner time, and it's raining. Should you cook in your tent? Why not? But do you want to cook your tent instead? More so if you're using an MSR. So under no circumstances shall you cook in your tent.

9. I know. The Marlboro Man sleeps outside his tent at night. He's also dead from excessive smoking. Snakes are cold blooded. When the night gets too cold, they need to find a warm spot to adjust their temperature. And guess what? You're nicely cuddled in your sleeping bag, warm and cozy. You wake up in the morning and feel something cold and scaly wrapped around your legs inside the sleeping bag. Good riddance.