Forget the vehicle, enjoy the ride!

That was the kind of mindset the organizers tried to form among the participants during the pre-event briefing of the "Jeep Adventure River Kwai 2006", which I joined last week in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Fun and excitement was assured as participants would be put through an unforgettable off-road driving experience in the jungles that’s home to the River Kwai, made famous by a war epic that starred Alec Guinness (not David Niven as I mentioned in my other column) and William Holden entitled Bridge of the River Kwai. The classic movie told of stories of World War II POWs who perished while building the railway from Thailand to Burma.

I was in the company of gentlemen who had their own personal interest in the activity and were also invited by Cats Motors, Inc., exclusive distributors in the country of Daimler-Chrysler vehicles. They were the likes of Robbie Consunji, a known competitive off-road driving enthusiast and Top Gear Magazine contributor writing specifically on this challenging motor sport, there’s Lester Dizon, who’s not only one of the members of The STAR’s line up of veteran motoring writers but also an off-road biker himself and auto enthusiast Alex Wongchuking, who collects classic Mercedes-Benz automobiles and himself an owner of a Jeep Commander, the brand that was at the center of all the challenging driving exercises.

I have been a motoring journalist for 20 years and have been invited to quite a number of similar test drives in different countries but I felt that this was of a different kind and made of sterner stuff during the briefing, which was attended by other participants who came from other countries in the region. It was presided by Mr. Webb Arnold, a professional off-road consultant from the US. I sensed that we were really going into "real world" off-road driving when the instructions were already into what to do when "leeches" get into your clothes during the drive through the jungles — meaning we were supposed to get out of our vehicles while in the midst of the rain forest.

I also realized that this must be the real thing when I found out that this Mr. Arnold was once a participant in the ultimately challenging "Camel Trophy", an international off-road driving competition. He eventually became a trainer of the US Team soon afterwards — the big time!

But we could only speculate our fate as the organizers would like all of us to be just prepared for whatever eventuality without revealing to us what’s exactly up ahead — part of the fun and excitement.

What helped to quell whatever anxiety, if there were any at all, was the comfort that the River Kwai Village Hotel could offer — our home for the next three nights. It is situated in the jungle on the bank of the Kwai Noi River, in Kanchanaburi, which is about three to four hours drive (depending on the traffic during the time of your travel) from the huge and ultra-modern Suvarnabhumi Airport, the new international airport in Bangkok. We were all occupying individual rooms in what’s called "Raftel", a train of rooms on top of floating pontoons latched to the river bank. You could actually feel the floating sensation whenever a large boat passes by. The only downside of staying in the Raftel was that you’ll have to climb stairs that are equivalent to about three storeys high to earn your breakfast or dinner served at the main hotel. So the best thing to do is to go through your morning rituals before breakfast otherwise you’ll probably have a second one being hungry again after your second climb.

The next day I woke up at five thirty in the early, early morning for a six o’clock breakfast with the Philippine group. This is something out of my system as this is the time when I’m usually in deep sleep or just about to, but as they say, "When in Rome…" Well, we had quite a well-disciplined group and all schedules were met almost to the exact minute and on our first day we were all taught the basics of off-road driving and made to go through what we may actually experience in the jungles and taught further on how to manage them.

First on the list of the basics was "winching" or how to get a stuck vehicle out and running again by using a winch that’s attached on the front end as an accessory for off-road vehicles. Safety in the procedure was paramount for Webb with the years of actual experience in off-road driving and competing backing him up on all his tips on how to do it right. He was very particular about the safe handling of the cables as experience has taught him that mishandling can cause serious injury, even death to the reckless in case of an accident. We were all grouped into teams of two participants with Alex and I being together with Robbie and Lester in another group. Each team was given a chance to go hands-on with the procedure with the members alternating as the "wincher" and the other as the driver.

Right after the first session of lectures and hands-on learning we were all brought to a clearing where we saw wood stumps so arranged to create some sort of a track, with the stumps as pylons. And a track curved out of the wilderness it was, and what a motor sport event it would be a venue of.

The events were to be competitions among the participants that would earn winners valuable prizes. There were two exercises that were held simultaneously as we were divided into two groups. The first one would have the driver maneuver through the pylons blindfolded with the teammate as navigator verbally guiding the driver, after which they change roles. The combined times of the teammates against the rest of the teams with the fastest team winning was the contest. Robbie and Lester won this one earning for them beautiful and functional Jeep off-road bags as prizes.

Now while waiting for the other participants in our group to finish their turns we were amused seeing the other event being held with all the participants appearing to have a very hard time maneuvering a course that looked so easy. I began to wonder if they were actually checked to have driving licenses or knew how to drive. Why were they having such a hard time taking those turns and always would end up running over rows and rows of pylons and sometimes smack into the bamboo trees? Of course Webb refused to give us any clue to such a dismaying driving performance.

Well, when our turn came we found out why. We were all wrong, the participants, like we were, were asked to submit their driver’s license before the event and they all knew how to drive. Most of them were like us, motoring journalists who compete in some motor sports events making for better than average drivers. The problem was not the driver — it was the vehicle — the steering was reversed! If you want to turn right you should steer to the left and vice versa. Try it and you’ll go crazy just keeping yourself on the road. Alex and I were able to bring home a large Jeep towel each for landing second place in this crazy event, the end of which marked the time for us to go back to the hotel for lunch.

In the afternoon all the six SUVs — two Grand Cherokees (one gasoline while the other was turbo charged diesel), three Cherokee Sports and a Wrangler, went out again this time to go through another kind of track specially prepared to hone our "new-found skills" in off-road driving. This time we were all asked to go through a high mound, almost a hill with a hole full of mud and submerged in water right before it. Alex and I were aboard the Wrangler, which was the lead vehicle and we were the first to try to hurdle the mound, which I think was already pre-determined that we would not be able to drive through. And true enough as I thought, we got stuck. So the lessons of the "winching" were applied as each of the six vehicles went through the same experience in some other holes and some other hills with teammates successfully getting them out of the hole and over the hill.

The last day of the off-road driving exercises was the real world experience that we were prepared for in the previous day’s exercise as we set out early for the jungles of Kanchanaburi. It was a whole day of hard off-road driving through 120 kilometers of road, no-road, creeks, brooks and rivers, up-hill, down-hill and whatever unimaginable roads for a non-off road enthusiast like me (But I think the experience may have made me a convert). All of us, except for the real off-road buff like Robbie and Lester who does off-road biking, had to instinctively learn how to choose which lines our tires should take to produce the least strain on both the vehicle and its passengers, not to mention to safely ride through. Driving off-road can be a very shaky experience for the driver as the vehicle tosses left to right, front and back but it can be a lot shakier experience for the passenger. The driver has the steering wheel to clutch on and has the anticipation of the tossing and turning as the maneuver is dictated by him while the passenger just tosses with the vehicle without any anticipation and not much to hold on to.

I don’t know if I shall actually charge my good friends Felix Ang and Greg Yu, president and chairman of Cats Motors respectively, who invited me to this event for all the Salonpas and Alaxan that I had to buy after the experience. But really I have to thank them for the opportunity to go through this muscle aching experience. I’ll have to thank also Andros Villaraza, senior manager for marketing communications of Cats Motors for making sure the group comfortably made the trip.

Our foray actually brought us to a good 11 to 15 kilometers just off the border to Burma. According to Webb, so far being the 3rd group to go through the same route (a few more are scheduled right after us) our eight hours of traversing the 120 or so kilometers is something he considered as "flying" with the group probably composed of some "natural" off road drivers for the feat.

More than the drivers I’ll have to doff my hat to the vehicles that performed a lot, lot more than I would have expected. There were no vehicle breakdowns, there were no malfunctions, driver’s miscues maybe, but none from any of the Jeeps (Grand Cherokee, Cherokee Sport & Wrangler) that went through all that hard driving through no roads, rivers, hills, muddy trails, dusty trails, river beds with rocks galore — the works — scenarios that I would never imagine to drive any of my SUVs through, not even in my wildest dreams. The Jeep vehicles really impressed me a lot and confidence on their dependability was very much displayed by the organizers themselves just by saying, "Don’t think much of the vehicles, just be safe and enjoy the ride."

These Jeeps are really tough — with a capital T.

Happy Motoring!!!

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