Team No. 1 is No. 1...

From left: Chong, Ju, Sofia and Lee Quan .... GO GO GO

The long awaited DHL Hunt 2007 finally came. This time it was called the East Coast Treasure Hunt, from Cyberjaya to Cherating. This hunt was organized by Malaysia Hunt Club (COC: Baskaran) Registration was open in November. We had no idea we were the first team to register. So therefore we were Team No. 1 (GO x 3). Briefing and collection of goody bags was on Friday evening. Due to the lack of time to prepare for this hunt, wrong T-shirt sizes were distributed to most of the teams. Funny, they considered CH as female, giving him a baby-T shirt, which was too small. Thanks to Sofia, she managed to get a normal sized T-shirt for him. Briefing time, Sofia, Lee Quan and me were already excited for the next day. We were all ears and jotted down all his sample questions and answers hoping to get some "tips" for hunt day.
Hunt day, CH and I went to fetch Lee Quan at her place and headed to the office. Sure enough, we were late and were the last few cars to arrive. COC gave the final briefing and a group photo session and we were ready for flagged off. Chuan Yew was there to flag all the cars. When it was our turn, he criticised our team saying, you are team no. 1 but you are late, then CH sheepishly replied, ya we were a bit late today, hahaha... After flagging off, we stopped a while to solve the puzzle and to look through the route and treasure questions. We were practically the last car to leave the area.

Heading for Damansara Utama via LDP, we tried to start cracking the treasure questions (4 of them). I guess all of us were still not warmed-up. At that time we only managed to crack treasure 1 and 3 partially, the Cintan mi goreng and Lot100 Mango. We decided to make our first stop at Tesco Puchong to look for treasures but were disappointed as we did not manage to get anything out from there. At that time we were getting a bit worried, as we did not want to leave Klang Valley without securing all the treasures.

We arrived DU , the area looks familiar, I was there for Sun Hunt. The first question was pretty straight forward
Q: First question for you to try,
If there is cure for everybody, then we can go in to buy
A: ALLin Pharmacy

We sort of breeze through the first 13 Questions in Klang Valley, after that we decided we had to seriously get the treasures or else we are in deep trouble. We went to a few 7 Eleven, searching for Lot100 Mango only to find the gummy and sweet type. Nothing of like a hose or cylinder as mentioned in the question. We decided to try our luck again in 7 Eleven, both Lee Quan and I will run out of the car to go get treasures. And this time she spotted the Lot100 Mango tube which matches with the treasure question description. She was excited when she saw it, but had to hold her excitement as there were other teams in the 7 Eleven as well, both of us waited patiently until they left, bought the treasure and ran back to the car happily. This boosted our team's confidence a bit. Still no sign of the Cintan mi goreng 80g.

Next destination, Karak. While driving Lee Quan and I were trying to crack treasure 2 and 4. First line of treasure 2 goes like this:
Find the nyonya who will not have questions,
we were trying to find another name for nyonya then out of the blue the word nona came out, then sure enough it did match the description, nyonya without questions is without the y y = nona.
Next line was: Totally mixed and doubled within the mission

nona = nano, doubled = nano nano.
Following line: Look for the celebrity crop, as it's our passion
celebrity = star
crop = fruit
Star Fruit flavor.

After buying the Nano Nano Star Fruit, both Lee Quan and I ran back to the car, while CH and Sofia were trying to crack treasure 4. The first line goes something like that, "Perhaps a flipping male together for the item, as I hear it better". CH was wondering male = man, flipping = toss, so sounds like mentos. Yes it's mentos. Mentos variant with less than 10 in net. Then both of us ran back in to the Petronas station to look for Mentos, we found the Mentos Power Gum, net 9g. Secured 3 treasures and leaving Klang Valley. We are still wondering, where to get the Cintan Mi Goreng 80g?? The team decided, it's just going to be a waste of time to continue stopping at petrol kiosk or 7 eleven as this item cannot be found there. We tried to be positive, hoping we will find it at our next stop, Karak.

We continued with the hunt in Karak, there were a few shops in Karak, this time, Lee Quan and I got down from the car and decided to split in finding our last treasure. I went into this dingy looking shop to look for the last treasure. I was so happy, at last we found the last treasure that has costs us so much time. I double checked the label to ensure it was 80g. Quickly paid for the item and ran back to the car. The team was delighted we had secured all treasures as each treasure carried a weightage of 6 points compared to the route questions which only carries 2 points.

Cintan Mi Goreng Ala Indonesia 80g

By then, weather began to change and through out the journey approaching cherating was mostly rain. We were quite fortunate in a sense, that when it was time to solve route questions, there is no rain or just slight drizzle. Heavy rain and some traffic did slow us down after reaching Kuantan. Chong was constantly keeping a close watch over time not wanting us to be behind time. The journey from Kuantan to Cherating was quite a funny one. We were all constantly looking at the time and calculating the remaining mileage left to cover. There were quite a number of lorries which has slowing us down. There was this lorry, carrying sawn timber and moving rather slow. Chong was having difficulty overtaking this lorry because the road was narrow and there was on coming cars. Then at one stretch, there was this herd of cows resting by the road side, and suddenly 2 of them started fighting. Seeing this, the lorry ahead of us slowed down and this gave us the opportunity to overtake it. Ah... see even the cows had helped us in our journey as we laughed in the car. We arrived at the finish point 5 minutes before the 9 hours duration. Sofia our navigator ran down to submit the answer sheets and treasures.

Parked the car and checked in. The organizers made a mistake by labelling Chong as a female and assigned him to share a room with Lee Quan. How funny. That must be the reason why, during briefing day, he was given the female sized T-shirt. Chong and I had a rest, it was indeed a very long journey, but filled with fun, excitement and laughter.

Dinner was ready at 8 pm, but the food was lousy. They went through the Answer presentation. We made 3 mistakes, but then I was confused on the last question, couldn't really remember whether I wrote the answer in full. So I told the team, I think i did not write it in full, so we made 4 mistakes. I was feeling awfully guilty at that time while they were announcing the winners starting from 25th position. We knew this hunt would be very competitive with 2 teams from the recent Sun Hunt open category finishing at 4th and 5th placing respectively. At last it was the top two positions. The COC mentioned that one team scored 92 points and the another team scored 94 points. We kept thinking we scored 92 points but in actual fact it was 94 points. When the results were announced we went up the stage but I was wondering did we finish 1st or 2nd. I looked at the enveloped that was handed to me, it was blank in the front, then I looked behind, it was indeed 1st. Ah... I really couldn't believe this. We were all so happy and stunned at the same time. Thank you team, for a job well done. It was all good team work.