Finally!!!! Summer Trip Part 1

Day 0 - going to Birmingham! 

An intro to the group! :)

These were the amount of stuffs of all of us combined. No regrets in bringing bout 10kg of food there! You will see why in a minute or so.

      

View of Norway from the plane... 

Norway's an hour ahead of UK, so we arrived there at about 9-ish but had to take a bus all the way to Oslo, which was bout an hour and a half away... Reached Oslo bus station nearly 12 midnight... And... It was still bright!!! 

I was very impressed with the taxi drivers... When we told them we wanted to get to the hostel, they said we have a choice to choose whether to walk there or take the cab as it was bout 5-10 minutes walking distance. If it were back home, the taxi drivers would have immediately gave you a price and drive you there, at times going a longer distance to make it seem far! 

In our hostel room. 

By the time all was settled and sorted out it was 3am in the morning and it was bright again... Imagine 3 hours of darkness only! 

Day 1 - 280609 (Sunday) Touring Oslo!

 

A background of the hostel... Recommended! ;

The tiger outside Oslo Central Station

Karls Johan Gate 

A long long street with shops all the way through... 

Ibsen Museum... A house turned museum of this man who is famous for his writings... Internet gave good reviews bout it, but we did not see much..Maybe would have been better if we went for the tour of the house but we were there more to kill time there while waiting for the change of guards... 

The Palace... 

Change of guards... 

Disappointing... Buckingham's Palace change of guard is by far the best! hahahh!

        

Left: Outside the Holocaust Centre Right: Viking Ship Musuem

         

Frammuseet (The Polar Ship Fram)

The world's strongest wooden ship, and the one that has sailed the furthest to the North and South apparently.

           

Vigeland Park

A park with 'artistic' sculptures by this guy Vigeland...

     

Akershus Slott (Castle)

Day 2 - 290609 (Monday) Jotunheimen National Park!!!

The pictures say it all!!! And these were pictures taken on the way there in the bus!!! 

 

A prelude to our camp site... (*drum rolls*)

 Tada!!! Our home for 4 days!

yodgamma is the name for it we were told.. no idea how to spell though, so I'm just using my childhood days phonetics to pronounce it... yod - earth/mud; gamma - hut = earth/mud hut! 

                

the interior of it... made of wood! 

          

and the food we brought all the way from UK.. 

Well... at least 70% were... =) Chong Ngie's brother told him that Norway is very expensive just days before we left, so the day before, we decided to pack some food there... some = 10 kg worth of food! bread, pasta, baked beans, instant noodles... hahhahah... And no... there was no regrets! First and foremost, it was so hard finding a supermarket around the city... Only after asking our hostel reception, did we know where it was, despite it being very near where we stayed, we were still clueless nonetheless! Anyway, secondly, it was super duper expensive! So we only bought the 'fresh' stuffs... Funny though that marinated meat was much much cheaper than fresh meat... i wonder why... And al thanks to McD we had seasoning for out food! LOL... 

Day 3- 300609 (Tuesday) Lom with it's most famous bakery in Norway

Norwegian Mountain Museum

                       

Lom's (or Norway, so we were told) famous bakery... Pretty right the girl? hahhha... too bad, I'm not a pastry sort of person, so I'm in no position to comment on the breads and pastries eaten... It does taste better than those cheap breads u get from supermarkets, but besides that full stop. hahahhah... 

               

Lom Stave Church

Somehow, it just reminds me of Thailand or rather Balinese style feel... 

           

On the way to the mineral musuem, we had to cross this bridge.. And i likkkkeeee the water sceneries and all!!! 

Fossheim Mineral Musuem

                    

Trying a hand at fishing. The water was so fast, macam mana catch fish?

                

Our barbecue pit! 

                    

Coolest bbq ever! 

                  

The guys competing to see who could stand the coldness of the water! 

Record was less than 10 seconds i think! While they were doing that, we decided to show how healthy we are by eating apples. An apple a day keeps the doctor away! haha!

Chong Ngie on fire! lol...

Our yodgamma feeling all cosy and warm with a fire inside... :)

Day 4 - 010709 (Wednesday) Hiking! 

A rainbow being formed in the middle of the field from water spraying and sun splitting light into its various colours... Primary school science being seen again!

The start of the hike... 

Sceneries all the way up... 

Reminds me of the movie Sound of Music... The hills are alive with the sound of music... lalalalalalalalalala....

             

At the 'top'!

Feeling on top of the world! There was no top... It could have gone on and on, hills and mountains over and over again... But it was a worthwhile hike! 

Moose shit

One of the guide jokingly told us that you only get to see a moose when you are drunk, cos apparently for him, the 3 times he saw the moose was when he was drunk. Well, we were the lucky ones, to not need alcohol yet be able to see one! hahahha...

Ice in the middle of the mountain... talk bout sheer coolness! 

                     

Dinner! M'sian Curry!

Modified with adding of sausages (Oslo's sausages are yummy!!! and big too!!) cos chicken is too expensive there! it converts to bout 14 pounds for one fresh (didn't really look fresh though!) whole chicken! So we bought cooked marinated chicken and sausages! hahhah... 

Day 5 - 020709 (Thursday) Rapelling and Canyoning!!! 

             

Our cabins... 

                

Walking to the cliff where we rappel down to the canyoning place... 

One of the 3 guides for the day... 

cos we had no waterproof camera (who wants to give me one??? :) ), HL decided to take a picture of this from the base as a proof of where we went... ;p 

A day of many first-times... first time using a harness, rapelling off a ~40metres cliff... jumping from a waterfall... climbing through a waterfall... sliding down a canyon... walking in freezing cold water (thank goodness for our suits that kept us neutrally warm!)... 

Day 6 - 030709 (Friday) Water Rafting!

As our rafting was in the afternoon, we decided to laze around in the morning. 

A slack-y afternoon while killing time to go water rafting... 

            

Left: posing with the floats they use for hydrospeeding... looks cool; Middle: With our good-looking guide ;p; Right: Out of boredom while waiting to get back to the campsite... 

The picture of us rafting is still with a Danish chick... Am still waiting for her email... =(

Around the rivers of Skjak... Going through Ooforsen... (How the name came about: Oo - the person who discovered it was so amazed at finding the rapids... forsen - rapids: hence the name Oo-for-sen!) 

Rafting terms we learnt: All forward - everyone rows forward; All back - evryone rows backwards;  All in - everyone gets into the middle of the raft;  Right back - Those sitting at the right rows backwards while those on the left rows forward. 

Did you know that:

•  the T-shape part of the paddle causes more injury than anything else while rafting...
  
• if you were to drop into the water while rafting, keep afloat with your legs up... cos if ur legs are down, the rocks may cut you.... 

Our last night... 

Day 7 - 040709 (Saturday) What an end to Oslo! 

         

This was at 4.15am in the morning... 

      

We waited for the supposed 5.30am bus... 

    

and waited... 

And still no bus came... Hour by hour... And the bus company only opened at half past 7 or 8... No way of knowing where to go and what to do... Finally, when we got through, we were told that the bus only reaches our place at 11.30! @.@ It takes 6 hours to reach Oslo, and our cruise was leaving at 5! And the only way to get back to Oslo in time for the cruise was to get a train from the nearest town. Impossible task! Our best plan was to go back to our campsite and ask whether they could give us a lift to the nearest town. Who knows, we got scolded for invading their property early in the morning and were asked to leave the site... @.@ With no choice left, the only way was to hitch-hike. I learnt the universal hitch-hiking sign! But to no avail... Apparently the first car they tried to flag down, the driver showed a middle finger... !@£$%^&* But if we were in the driver's position, i guess none of us would have stopped as well. Especially when the mind goes wild, thinking that ppl have ulterior motives, would we stop our car? nah... But after much prayer, out of no where a bus with the sign Otta arrived around late 9-ish... talk bout divine intervention! =)

On the bus... 

And when asked, the kind driver mentioned that the bus will just reach in time to catch the train to Oslo!!! No words could describe the emotions that went through us! Bless him! 

                        

The train station... And to cross over to the other platform, there are stairs on the rail... 

To be continued...