We had months and months of notice and Edie was very excited about spending a night in a tent. My experience with camping is limited to ... well ... not much at all really. I went on a few cadet camps at school. So we did not have any camping gear. I led the troops down to Carrefour where I fussed over various pieces of camping equipment, all the while trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about to a not entirely interested Soph.
I also had to make a last minute run to Giant at Parkway Parade on the Saturday morning before we boarded the boat to the little island. I only just avoided what would have been a schoolboy error of forgetting torches.
Here is a photo of Edie, Dave and Keira ... who watched me attempting to put up the (recently purchased) tent. Dave eventually showed a little mercy and helped me out. It soon became apparent that the two air mattresses were not going to fit in the tent so we made do with one double, a decision that would come back and haunt me in the middle of the night..
Firewood collecting search parties were sent out to find and return with dry wood, but overnight rain made the task difficult. Wet wood was easy to find and we dragged a ton of it back to the big pit.
We had a spot down near the beach on Palu Ubin which looked back towards the eastern side of the main island. Just off the island were a number of floating houses for the fish farmers who live in the channel.
Then it got dark. We ate some marshmellows and played with sparklers, then spent an hour or two getting the kids to bed. A bunch of local fishermen turned up about half an hour before sundown and set up some rods near our tents ... they sat up all night fishing ... they do it every weekend. They were very friendly and, most importantly, very quiet.
My camping inexperience became shockingly apparent at around 5am. I had not attached the plug in the airmatress correctly so spent most of my tent time sleeping on the hard earth. On top of that, Edie kept rolling over on top of me and kicking me (accidentally, I hope). Anyway, after about two hours sleep I woke up to this beautiful sunrise ...
For all of our wives, I say the following ... ahem ... the foam esky's below were, in the main, filled with water with which we kept ourselves and our children hydrated.
After breakfast, Edie and I decided that we would catch the ferry back to the main island ... the others did a nature walk and headed back at lunchtime. Soph picked us up at the ferry terminal and by the time the other dads got back to Singapore, I had caught up on my sleep in the comfort of my sealy posturepedic.
A great time was had by all. All thanks go to Blue for organising. We look forward to the next one.
