Muka Head - Day 1

18th November 2007, Sunday

I planned to go to School of Biological Science at 10am, however I wasn't able to pack all my things by that time..... as mentioned, we have to clear the whole room before moving out the hostel during semester break.

In rush I packed my things.... luckily Huey and Chin came and helped me! They also helped me to carry the so-much luggage...

Two of them were in Group B.... while I was in group A...

phew... I wasn't late.... I planned to bring only 2 bags out of the 5 bags.... so I put the others at the laboratory which was purposely prepared for us to put our belongings.

At about 11am, the 2 USM buses reached our school. It's time to depart to our destination: USM Muka Head Research Centre!

When we reached the entrance of Penang National Park (USM Muka Head Research Centre is part of the Penang National Park) at about 12.15pm, we had to move our luggage to the boat by walking on the narrow Old wooden jetty... I was worried while hugging my bag and walking.... I would fall into the sea if I didn't walk carefully!

Our luggage would be sent to the destination by boat but all of us had to walk along the long forest edge instead!

This is the old wooden jetty...

This is the entrance of Penang National Park... and we had to walk past the long long forest edge like in the photo above~

The journey took us about half hour.. it was tiring and dangerous as the path was quite narrow at some parts, we also needed to climb up the stairs for few times and to walk through bushes etc... Some people had gained themselves some scratches on legs because of the bushes with torn.... luckily I wore long pant but not a short one.... hehe...

The first thing to do was to carry our luggage from the boat again.... hmm... the jetty here was far better than the one just now, this one was not a wooden but it's made of stone and cement.. more stable of course!

and hey.. our research centre is just by the seaside! wow.. nice hehe... just like the chalet I stayed during the trip to Perhentian Island!


Chleo, Flory and I.....; Jasmine & I..... while we were on the jetty to take our luggage..

the view of jetty and the research centre we were going to stay...

After that, 56 of us (if I'm not mistaken) were given a short briefing before we had our lunch at the quite-big room. There were many round tables, and hence all of us tend to sit in the same table with our friends.

Oh.. we were told that we would have to make a presentation after going back to USM campus, the students from previous years didn't have this section, they introduced this section to us so that we could have chance to practise speaking etc....

I don't know about others' comment but personally think that the food provided by the staffs was quite nice... the facilities here were at quite a satisfied level hehe... there was even a machine making ice cubes....

Next, we were given some free time, to take some rest in our hostel -- few wooden rooms interconnect, and there were few double decker beds in each room... we covered the dirty bed with the given white clean bed sheet, also covered the dirty and smelly pillow with the white clean pillow sheet... some of us were so excited that we quickly went for a walk at the seaside right after tidying up our things!

We also met two 'fishermen' who were collecting oysters on the rocky shores.... they used the hammers to crack open the osyters then collect the flesh~

Sok Wah, Sheu Yen, Kim Yin, Chai Lee, Denise, I

Cool Pose? hehe....

Chai Lee & I... beside/under the jetty...

At 5pm, we gathered at the back of our hostels, and queued up in 4 groups according to the name list.... I was in group A2, my group consists of 14 people....

The 'mission' was to climb up the hill, and to set traps! The tools we used were the animal traps we normally use to catch rats at home...
It was our very first time to walk up this steep hill through the real forest.... led by few teachers and staffs...

It was very tiring indeed.... I rarely exercise recently as I was just staying inside my room for the past two weeks to prepare the exam.... At somewhere we stopped, and started to set our trap.... with some distance between one another... the bait used was half of a banana "pisang emas"

After checking by our teachers, we started to go back but by using another route.. and the sky was getting darker and darker by the time of 7pm.. fortunately we were able to reach our station safely... it was so adventurous!!!

After setting the trap, Atiqah and I were taking photo in the jungle haha...
the next photo shows that we were going down the hill carefully.. and sometimes we needed the help of the trees ... but beware! Look before you hold, the trees trunk/stem may have torns on them...

Everyone was so exhausted, and queued up to take bath.... for me, I prefer eating first... hehe... because I don't like to wait long for my turn to take bath.... and I had already very hungry...

This night we were free to have our own activities... we just sat by the jetty with few lamp posts, chit-chatted, listened to the sound of ocean waves, felt the breeze off the ocean... it was so relaxing

*for your information, all of the students taking Pure Biology or Applied Biology are required to attend this "trip"... for first semester, we pure biology students have already register 2 units of this core subject...

we didn't do any experiment during the semester 1... so actually this trip to Muka Head which lasted about one week is to expose us to different type of ecosystems and to teach us the way to use equipments/tools to measure the micro-climate etc...

After back to USM, we would have do some lab works for few days, then do our presentation... and this course ended by exam...

Students of Applied biology will do the same thing at the end of 2nd semester of first year study.