Tulips, anagrams, initials, treasures etc – if you’re familiar with treasure hunts, these words probably resonate with you already. Last week I had the fortune of joining my company-wide hunt, which involved locations from Bukit Jelutong, Subang and Nilai, all the way to Merlimau and Desaru. For those scratching their heads, Desaru is situated at the East end of Johor. In other words, it was a massive treasure hunt and involved hours of driving.
It was my first hunt experience and it was a great one. The riddles themselves were far from straight forward and it takes rounds of thinking, discussions and brain storming to get to the answers. Lesson learnt from my first Treasure Hunt? Always read between the lines and give every word the same weight you would give for any word. It also helps that you study every category of riddle there is to ease the process of solving the clue.
The treasure hunt also gave us the opportunity to visit places we normally wouldn’t. For instance, I found out that there was actually a getaway resort situated at a remote place called Desaru. Also, it was surprising to learn that there are rows and rows of textile shops in Nilai. You would expect it to be as deserted as a low-density town, but if there are countless shops in that area, these wholesalers must be some kind of an attraction.
One particular interesting segment of the hunt – called “CSR Project” – was where you had to hand a bottle of cooking oil to a local resident in a particular town we were at. It sounds quite easy but even so, you’d be surprised how people’s alarm ticks off when they are about to receive something ‘free’ and ‘have their photo taken’. It took some convincing to assure them that we were only using it for a competition. Still, the idea of ‘no free lunch in the world’ deeply engraves into one’s mind that you can’t help but feel cautious.
In the end, our team came in 36th and considering there were 180-odd cars in the race, it wasn’t a bad result at all. Let’s see if we could fare better next year.
Xien Explores 