CAMPING 🏕, interesting experiences from the veteran and newbie.

There are many write ups on the nice part of camping and it's benefits. It's always interesting to listen to the veteran and newbie with regards to their camping experiences. Below are some of the campers whom I communicated with :

1. Dirk Limann, German.

First camping at age 7 yrs old.

Dirk at 7 yrs old and his sister.

The Camping life , written by Dirk Limann in Sept 2021 is as follow:-

The Topic of Camping in my case is very complex. I did in my whole life camping with tents.

Starting with the first time in 1950 at an age of 7 years and my last sleep in a tent was with my grandchildren last year 2020 at an age of 77 years. Majority of the camping trips were by car, but also by boat, motorbike, cycling or trekking.

Intensive camping rides by cars and stay in tents was between 1956 and 1973. The first years together with my parents and after I got my own cars (1961) I went with friends. We drove to camp sites on weekends, during school holidays covering most of the European countries from Scotland to Greece. I estimated I slept 2 month a year in tents. That means over a time span of 17 years I slept roughly 3 years in tents!

1974 I was based in Malacca and went several times by boat to Pulau Nanka for camping. In the 80’s by then with family, we camped 3 times on Pulau Besar. Once as a Siemens MPT weekend. We also camped on Pulau Redang (East coast) twice to do scuba diving.

A camping highlight for me was in 1985 to Nepal in the Himalayas, trekking from Pokhara to the Annapurna Base Camp 4200 m high. We pitched our tents in snow and the night temperature dropped to minus 10 dgrC.

From the 90’s onwards I rediscovered camping in Germany, Italy, Austria and Czech

Republic. I went by car to a camp site as base and started from there with the bike for day trips alone.

In 2001 Jenny and myself flew to China, to join the Changchun Expatriate Side Car

(motorbike) Club on a two weeks trip through Manchuria.

Now to touring with bike and tent which was sparse as compared to the above. In the years of 1959/62, I recorded four outings only starting from Munich. As late teenagers we loosened the grip from our parents and wanted traveling with friends. A cheap way was touring by bike with tent. In 1961 I got my driving license and camping by car took place again the next 12 years as mentioned above.

Coming back to 1959/62, these were the gears we used. Bikes were standard 28” steel bikes without gear. Dressing was our normal casual wear mainly from thick cotton. For the night we brought a tracksuit along. Light weight cycling gears and padded shorts were unknown. We never changed or washed our clothes. Just imagine how smelly we came

home! At this time girls wore skirts even during cycling and camping! Tents were made from heavy impregnated cotton (still leaked during heavy rain) and had a rubberized flooring. Damn heavy. Same for the rubber air-mattress. Cooking with an old brass kerosine pressure cooker. Spare Kerosine was stored in a brass bottle. Disaster when one of them leaked and all the stuff in the bag was drenched in kerosine!

Plastic bottles were not available at this time. Only glass, aluminium or brass. Jeans and

MTB’s were unknown to us.

Three decades later in 1991, I did cycle touring by myself to the Czech Republic after the Iron Curtain was lifted. In 1992 with my family, Jenny, Nina and Celine on single bikes, we cycled the Danube Cycling trail between Ingolstadt and Passau. We brought our big family tent along. However, on one night we encountered a very heavy thunder storm with lightning and the leaking tent made the rest of the family scared and they decided not to go on camping trips anymore.

My last bike touring with tent was in Malaysia 2002 from Tanjong Piai (most southernly

point of the Asian continent) to Malacca. I joint a group of Russian adventurers on their way back to Siberia.

Jenny and I do Tandem touring since 1999 in Germany and later also in Malaysia. However, we stayed in overnight accommodations. Till today we have clocked 15,800 km in Tandem

touring!

Pics follow.

Why we camping (as written by Dirk) ?

No money for accommodations and restaurant food.
Traveling to remote areas where above facilities are not available.
Free and easy live style. Indulged in mother nature from icy snow to green lush vegetation, water shores as well deserts. Listen to the sound of wildlife. Clear sky star watching.

Other old photos of Dirk ;

2. Valerie Rodrigues , Malaysian.

First camping at age 58 yrs old .

Valerie is a newbie in camping recently. Let's hear her experience as follows:

My adventure experience for my 1st camping was at the base of Bukit Batu Sawa. The campsite was next to an old wooden malay house. There were only 3 of us camping. I cooked my spicy broccoli n had raw cucumbers & baby tomatoes for dinner. After we finished dinner, the place became dark & I was getting cold feet as it's my 1st time in camping. I had some fear at the beginning that the wooden house is haunted 😓 . When it was about 7pm the owner of the opposite house came home. I had a small chat with the makcik. I told her , it's a mistake being here n I wanted to run away. That kind makcik told me I could sleep inside the abandoned house as there's fan n lights. But I scared n goosebumps to sleep alone. As at 8pm I can't hang around at the old house anymore . So the kind hearted makcik allowed us to move our camping tent to her garden. By 9.30pm everyone was asleep . I didn't sleep untill 1am coz of the frog n insect sound and many others sounds had triggered my imagination ......☠🤯. Finally, I woke up at 5.30am and forgotten about the scary night. So we started our hiking at 6.15am bukit sawa n I was a very happy person to see the carpet clouds for the 1st time.

That abandoned wooden house frightened Valerie a lot.