Alycia has been assigned by her high school Drama Club teacher-in-charge to organize an end-of- year school trip for Drama Club members.  The destination of choice is Ipoh but she’s open to other places as long as the trip is within the budget of RM200 per student. So Alycia called my parents to ask them for contact numbers. Today my mum Whatsapped me the brochure of YMCA Ipoh. And the sight of YMCA on the brochure flooded my memories back like torrential rain!
That year was 1987. I was in Form 2 @ MGS Ipoh. The forth formers (just like Alycia who’s in Form 4 now) organized a trip to KL and I begged mum to let me join this trip with my besties. It was a dream come true when she agreed. The day came and we took a big long tour bus with air-cond (very rare in those days!) to KL. That was my maiden school trip out of Ipoh and into KL, a place that I’d always wanted to visit.
When we reached KL, we were checked into YMCA. We were brought to visit all the fun-filled places in KL (Batu Caves, Zoo Negara, Museum, The Mall, airport in Subang Jaya, etc) and from KL we adjourned to Melaka for a day trip before heading back to Ipoh. At YMCA, about 4 or 5 of my besties and I were placed in a room. There wasn’t any en suite and we had to walk a few meters away to the bathroom and toilets which were not well kept or cleaned. Till today I still have nightmares of those bathrooms and toilets 😱
Besides the nightmarish toilets, there were cockroaches flying in our room. Mother of all horror for me!!!!! I remember screaming and running like a headless chicken when chased by those huge roaches with flappy wings Oh. My. Gawd.!!!  Also, beside our room were a bunch of rowdy gangsterish Malay boys who kept disturbing us by knocking on the wall to ‘call’ us. They also kept wolf calling us and knocking on our door the entire night. We were scared to death that we would all be gang raped and murdered in the room at YMCA KL. We dared not even go to the toilet and had to hold back our pee the entire night for fear of being raped by those boys 😆 We even pushed our beds against the room door as we were scared shit that those boys would break down the door to look for us  🤣 Yeah, can’t blame a bunch of 13 and 14-year old melodramatic girls, can you? Besides all these discomfort, we nonetheless had TONS of fun throughout our trip.  If only I could turn back the clock to relive those happy carefree teenage days!
Besides a once a year school trip or holiday that my papa would bring us, our daily lives were pretty much mundane and simple. We were usually already in bed by 9:30 p.m. We had no electronic devices and our only entertainment back then was TV. TV programs were pretty limited too and I whiled away my time watching female wrestling series at night – whatcha call that series already? Gladiators or something?
My Gen Z / dopamine frazzled zombies teenage girls – can’t live without their phones and boba tea. I have banned them from adding boba / pearls into their tea and they can only order milk tea without sugar or with the least sugar.
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