Rainforest Challenge 2008

[XTREME MMM]

Just a very quick update on the 2008 RFC

Venue:- Terengganu, Malaysia.

Date:- 5 -14 December.

All interested Teams or Spectators please contact me and I will be able to assist you in your preperation and getting you and your vehicle to Malaysia.

I have some possible positions to fill as codrivers in a couple of local vehicles as well.

I will be returning as one of the Chief Marshalls this year (2009 will see me back over there competiting in the MLC), along with taking some video and photo's of this years RFC.


Contact me direct 0418 745 830 or david@xtreme4x4sport.com.au


Cheers
David Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[XTREME MMM]

Here is the latest update from Luis.

Don't forget if I can be of any help please drop me a line.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative



RAINFOREST CHALLENGE ’08 JUNE NEWS UPDATE
“UNFINISHED BUSINESS!” – Continuing the Saga of RFC 2007

This year, we have “Unfinished Business” to settle with the dreaded Terminator at the Twilight Zone of Hulu Terengganu, Malaysia.

For those who have already signed up and those in preparation, well, get Ready to Rumble. Come fully prepared to face anything that Nature can throw at you. This year, we shall start off on 5 December, a significant reminder from last year when non-stop rain started to hit us on the fifth day of December!

With hindsight, and with the experience from last year’s apocalyptic rain, the RFC organization, together with the State Government of Terengganu, are also getting ready to face the extremities of Mother Nature. However, as we are aware, even the best-laid plans can be derailed by the monsoon; but, this time, we shall be better prepared than ever.

1. Get ready to meet the Ladies of Steel in the RFC! Yes, this year’s attraction will indeed be very attractive to the eyes of all macho men of 4x4. Get to meet and see what they are made of; these All Ladies Teams from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, China and from Malaysia. Preparations are under way for the moment, more details in our next update.

2. More Russians are coming. This time, from Moscow, we have Zecevic Marko from Cyvas Trophy Team. “After several years of decisions and preparations my brother and I have finally decided to take part in the RFC this year,” said Marko. We welcome the 4x4 warriors from the biggest country in the world to RFC. This year, we shall have teams from the extreme west of Russia (Moscow) its extreme east (Andrey Kurdakov & his Offroad Club Xtrack from Vladivostok). They will be coming with 3 4x4 combat machines.

3. European zone. After Euro 2008, well, the next best thing for off-roaders is the RFC. Apart from the Russians, the others are also getting ready as competitors, officials, media and touring adventurers – from the Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Italians, Czechs, Danish, Germans, Austrians, British, Spanish, Hungarians, Dutch, Croatians and Turkish.

4. Out of Africa to the RFC this time will be participants from Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya. The Zambians (Marek and Fred) went back last year fully fired up with passion to take on the jungle again this year, but this time with worthy competitor teams. These will be properly selected and should pass the extreme test at home first before they embark on their journey to Malaysia. More information coming on who will succeed.

5. On the Asian front, the 4x4 warriors from Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and home country, Malaysia are on the move to join the RFC, both newcomers and returnees. Malaysian returnees like teams 113, 136, 117 and of course, the current champion 109 will be waiting to do battle all over again. This time, they will have to deal with the new rules on PTO and electric winch. But, all will be fair in the RFC war zone, no worry.

6. Enter the Dragon. Even though everything is abuzz now about the Beijing Olympics, a lot of behind the scene happenings are taking place in the “Middle Kingdom” in the off-road sector, but more news after the August Olympics.

7. Opening Ceremony/Prologue SS. The opening ceremony will take place on 5 December in Chukai town, and the Prologue Special Stages called Battle Stations will take place at Kijal and Kemasik on 5 and 6 December. Please remember to arrive in Kuala Lumpur latest by 3 December as the convoy will leave for Chukai and Kijal (Terengganu) by 4 December morning. Those arriving later will have to make their own travel arrangements to Kijal. For spectators no worry. On road travel from Kuala Lumpur to Chukai is approx 5 hrs.

8. The Great Escape Epic Story (of 2007). We are pleased to inform that we are progressing well with the compilation of the various stories. It will be a book to remember for sure with tales of high adventure, told from the various groups who lived through the event. Be sure to get your copy. Thanks to everyone who has sent in their articles. We’ll keep you updated.

9. Last but not least, a timely reminder to those making it to RFC this year. Be sure you have a good sense of humour and a positive spirit to match. Because, when the chips are down, when you are perpetually wet from day to night and when nothing seems to go right – you will need these qualities to go through the adventure. Panicky and being negative won’t help you at all, be cool. Remember that you are made of much stronger stuff than you can ever imagine. By living out this adventure event, we hope that you will discover or rediscover your sense of being. For those still contemplating of joining us, this is for you: live life as fully as you can, live the life less ordinary. Till the next news update, cheers.

Please contact the RFC Secretariat for any queries.

Best regards.
Luis J.A.Wee
Founder & Event Director of Rainforest Challenge (RFC)
Future Oracle Sdn Bhd
Suite B1-27, 1st Floor, Block B
Megan Ambassy (Business Park)
225, Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
Tel: 603 – 2163 5908 / 6908. Fax: 603 – 2163 5908. Cell phone: 6012 - 2117080
Email: jawee@rainforest-challenge.com, luiswee@yahoo.com
Website: www.rainforest-challenge.com

[XTREME MMM]

Just a reminder, if you are thinking of going to this years RFC could you please make contact.

If you would like to be an official please give me a call 0418 745 830

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[krimnl]

sounds good Dave!!

that area through the terminator is awsome!!
I was lucky enough to compete a few years back in this area and its not for the faint hearted!

[OnPatrol]

Just out of interest...what would be a reasonable budget one would plan for to compete in the RFC. I can't afford it in 2008 or 2009, but who knows after that..

Entry fee : USD$2,000
Return flight : AUS$1700 per person
Vehicle freight & return : ????
Fuel : ????
Other costs : ????



From the RFC website --------------------

FOREIGN ENTRIES
4x4 Category (Competitor) Entry fee of USD2,000 per team of two persons. Airfare, freight and miscellaneous expenses not included.


ENTITLEMENT (4x4, and Touring Class)

2 pre-event and 2 post-event hotel accommodation

Rainforest Challenge 2008 Promo Items (Gift Packs)

Insurance coverage

Full colour souvenir programme book

Application for special Approval Permit (A.P.) for foreign registered vehicle for use in Malaysia

Other sponsored items for each team

[XTREME MMM]

Just out of interest...what would be a reasonable budget one would plan for to compete in the RFC. I can't afford it in 2008 or 2009, but who knows after that..

Entry fee : USD$2,000
Return flight : AUS$1700 per person
Vehicle freight & return : ????
Fuel : ????
Other costs : ????



From the RFC website --------------------

FOREIGN ENTRIES
4x4 Category (Competitor) Entry fee of USD2,000 per team of two persons. Airfare, freight and miscellaneous expenses not included.


ENTITLEMENT (4x4, and Touring Class)

2 pre-event and 2 post-event hotel accommodation

Rainforest Challenge 2008 Promo Items (Gift Packs)

Insurance coverage

Full colour souvenir programme book

Application for special Approval Permit (A.P.) for foreign registered vehicle for use in Malaysia

Other sponsored items for each team

Thanks for the enquiry.

Entry fee : USD$2,000 (we can sometimes get a reduced entry fee)

Return flight : AUS$1580 (my cost for this years trip flying Malaysian Airlines) or cheaper if you fly Asian Air, you could save $500

Vehicle freight & return : It cost us around $7500 for a 40ft container in 2007 for the 2 vehicles but you would be able to fit in 3 with some work. This was ex Brisbane to Port Klang and back including all charges. Remember vehicle must be super clean when you come home. Otherwise you could pay upwards of $80 an hour to have cleaned.

Fuel : Cheap as. You would spend less then $1000 on fuel depends on km per lt.

Other costs :

Carnet (vehicle pasport) set us back appox $900, depends on value of vehicle.

Travel Insurance appox $200

Malaysian Insurance appox $300

Motel: - (extra nights) We have paid $100/150 per night including breakfast, 4+ stars. Quite cheap.

Food: - Very cheap if you like Asian style food.


If you worked at having 2 vehicles in the container it would be under a $15k trip, and yes that would give you spending money as well. This you could get down to $12k if you worked at it. (cost for 2 people)


I am a Chief Marshall this year and am taking the vehicle back in 2009 to compete. I will be loading the container out of Brisbane and am looking for 2 vehicles to fill the container.

I hope this has been of some help to you. You can always give me a call for more info.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[OnPatrol]

That's great info. Thanks for that. $15k isn't too bad when shared between two.

How many weeks/months did you allow for freight ?

[XTREME MMM]

That's great info. Thanks for that. $15k isn't too bad when shared between two.

How many weeks/months did you allow for freight ?

At the moment Maersk Shipping offer a weekly service.

21 days over

13 days back

I will be looking at sending my vehicle late October.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[XTREME MMM]

Only 12 more sleeps before I fly out.

Dave Hobbs will be joining me 2nd Dec in KL.

And Peter Taylor (longest serving international official) been at every RFC will be acting as a Chief Marshal & Chief Scruitineer.

Plus Stu Garrow (South Australian) will also be joining us in in his purpose built jungle machine. Will send photo,s as soon as I get them. This vehicle is based in Malaysia.

Will give updates when they become available.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[SIM79]

Please post some pics up.

[XTREME MMM]

Please post some pics up.

Fly out tomorrow (Friday) night and arrive sparrows on Saturday morning.

I will then be going to do some work on the vehicle that I am using.

Will check into Hotel Saturday evening.

Sunday I will start taking photos.

Will try and post something on Sunday evening.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[XTREME MMM]

Arrived at 0530 on Saturday. Bloody hot & humid, normal as usual.

Went to Northport today (Monday) & assisted the Kiwi's get their Isuzu out of Customs. This is a true farm truck and will be very interesting to watch Will get photo's up of it as soon as I can download photo's.

Nothing is really start to happen until tomorrow when Scruitineering starts.

Russian vehicles have arrived, one competitor (Prado) & one support (Nissan Safari). Motors and finer points unknown at the moment.

Poland have the biggest entry, 7 vehicle plus 2 quads. Unknown of how many are competing or are support vehicles.

Everyone here really looking forward to this years event.

Heavy rain & flooding has already been reported in the areas where we will be going.

All for now.

Cheers
David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative

[gqpete]

cool. keep the info on trucks and photos coming. cheers

[Troll00]

Hmmmm seams like MMM has found a beer or two to wash the Southern down with. Come on Dave updates, make with the pics!!!

[OnPatrol]

mmm...not much news coming from Dave on the RFC 2008....

found photos from the Polish website...there are updates but you'll have to translate from Polish.

http://www.lr.pl/rfc_2008_news.html

[Tojo]

some cool pics there

[Mickey Thompson Racing]

The latest.......from Marathon Rally



Headline: Heavily rain at RFC 2008 caused to change the plans







After another night at the prologue site the whole convoy moved further north into the jungle. During the night it had started to rain heavily and on the way several areas had to passed that were heavily flooded. The police had closed down main roads that only could be passed by appropriate vehicles any more. Already deep in the night all vehicles started to move into the jungle.

The original plan was to go inside for about 3 hours to reach the next campsite and drive a couple of special sections there. However only after a couple of kilometers the path began to rise steeply uphill. From the past rainfalls deep guts and holes had been washed out that made a passing without heavy winching impossible. After took more than 2 hours for the first cars to pass this section the organization decided that only the competitor cars would go inside.

It took the entire night for the competitor cars to reach the top of the hill. Everyone else was either involved in heavy work or tried to sleep in their cars while the rain fell down heavily. In a matter of minutes after a particularly heavy rainfall small rivers appeared out of nowhere on the road and made passing it even more complicated. A team of two Indonesian girls needed more than 6 hours to get on top of the hill. Under normal condition at that point everyone would have been 15 minutes in the track to the camp.

On early Sunday morning the rest of the convoy went back and set up a campsite next to a river to wait for the competitors. On Monday noon everyone was still waiting for news and the situation was slightly unclear as there is no official channel of information to the waiting media or team crews. At the same time special sections were prepared next to the campsite to be driven when the competitors would be back in the camp. It still constantly rained and the nearby river was going up and down by almost half a meter shortly after strong rainfalls.

The camp mood at that moment was good although especially the foreign participants were complaining about a lack of organization. "We haven't received any kind of news of what is currently going on, how long we will be staying here or what the plans for the next 24 hours are." worried a slightly concerned team member from Poland who has intense experience in organizing events. "We are all having fun and enjoy ourselfs but we are really surprised that an event with this magnitude of internationality relies mostly on a self-organization principle. We would expect a more intense flow of information from the organization in our direction."

The media crew had their own challenge of being stuck on Monday. While everyone was healthy and well supplied in the camp some of the local drivers of the media vehicles decided that due to an important holiday day the camp break could be used to visit friends and relatives and come back later. As a result the international media crew was quite surprised to find themselves sitting on their pile of bags in the middle of nowhere watching their cars leaving with the promise "to surely come back tomorrow". That type of adventures are also part of the rainforest experience and will usually not cause any harm although especially new media members were quite surprised.

From early Monday afternoon on the competitor cars were coming back out of the jungle were they had driven several spacial stages. "It was really a lot of fun" smiled a happy Marek Adamczyk. "It went quite well for us. A lot of the local guys are incredibly good but drove like crazy and broke some of their equipment. We went with a steady pace, got through very fast and still have no problems with our material."

Due to a lack of communication the competitor cars missed the way to the camp where everyone was waiting and went more than 50 kilometers into the next city where they found themselves without their support cars, media and organization. So it was decided to move the rest of the camp to the location where the competitors were waiting. That however was diffucult because the missing holiday drivers had not yet returned.

After a lot of discussion and changed plans the whole convoy split in two halfs with the competitors trying to reach the next campsite in the jungle and the media convoy and parts of the organization camping 100 kilometers behind in the old camp.

On Monday evening the remaining drivers all arrived back at the camp again. So the second part of the convoy will follow early on Tuesday evening to catch up with the rest of the crew. After having caught up with the rest of the crew we will will joining the competitors with our video and photo equipment into the Twilight zone were the crews will be going on long overgrown tracks making a passing very tough or impossible depening upon the weather conditions.

We will be walking the entire 50 jungle kilometers by foot over several days. As every gram is carefully balanced between drinking water, dry clothes medication and other equipment we will not be taking any transmission equipment into the jungle. So as plans might change on the way depeing on the conditions the most likely next news update will not happen before joining the main convoy again on the 14th of December. If the weather conditions are bad the next update might not happen before the 18th of December.

[pigletracing]

allthough there seems to be some confusion & a little organisation issues, JEEEZ I luve to be there, sounds like the ultimate adventure,,good luck to all involved,, keep the news coming
cheers piglet

[AutoBalanceMan]

I'm with you Piggy.
It'd be an adventure!!
Jonesy

[luxenberg]

allthough there seems to be some confusion & a little organisation issues, JEEEZ I luve to be there, sounds like the ultimate adventure,,good luck to all involved,, keep the news coming
cheers piglet

Deffently agree with you there piglet, was the biggest adventure john and i had ever done.The hardest mud driving we ever done, last transport stage trying to get to the elephant mud hole we drove 6klm it took us 12hrs and we winched at least 30 times. Something you got to do at lest once.
Steve

[pigletracing]

Its on my things I have to do before I die list. it would be an ultimate advevture.

[T.Trudi]

sounds like you better put Jonsey and I in you personal support team piggy its on top of my list too!!

Danni

[XTREME MMM]

Just arrived back in KL after a 500+ km drive. Every one a bit tied.

After some SS being missed ( I was part of the official group that had set up 4SS that got by passed, bugger!!!!!!)

So onto the next camp where 2 SS were run and the competitors left for the Twilight Zone while our competition group of officials (3 x Aussies, 2 x poms, 3 x Malays, 1 x French, 1 x German and 1 Kiwi) left to back track and meet the competitors when they exited from the Twilight Zone, guess what? More rain and they had to again turn back. The joys of Mother Nature.

Several SS were set up at this area while we waited for the competitors who had all arrived by Day 8. Day 9 saw 3 day SS & 1 night SS.

Our competition group moved again the evening of day 9 to make our way to the finish. The vehicle that I was lent had blown a head gasket on the way in to the last camp which resulted with me having to be towed for around 100kms to the final event Hotel. I can tell you it is a very tough job towing a vehicle at night in Malaysia on the back roads.

Day 10 saw the competitors and all officials arriving for the final dinner.

What a night.

Overall Champion was Wong who has been a past competitor at the OBC a good few years ago.

There is so much to tell, but is going to have to wait until I get home.

I will have photos up on my web site before Christmas.

Again another great RFC (my 9th), even with some hic ups after all it is an adventure first with some SS tossed in along the way.

Now for next year as a competitor.

Cheers
David MMM Metcalfe
RFC Representative.

PS back on deck on Friday.

[BabyGodzillaGTi-R]

Just curious,
does anyone have contacts with the Kiwis who drove the Isuzu or by chance they are on Outerlimits in the RFC?
Had the pleasure meeting them in KL.
Appreciate with any leads.
Cheers.

[XTREME MMM]

Arrived home after early hours this morning (Friday 19th) form the RFC, to some very sad news.

To all past RFC officials & competitors:-

Mr. Thomas Chai passed away in his sleep in the early hours at his home Thursday (18th) morning.

Those that had the privilege of knowing Thomas will surely miss this gentlemen. Thomas was a very long serving member of the RFC, Borneo Safari and other Asian Events.

Thomas was the Competition Manager of this years RFC. I was lucky enough to have breakfast with him on Wednesday morning before he left for home.

He joins a list of outstanding characters of the RFC that have passed on over the years. They are all remembered and come back to life at the next RFC.

Good bye my friend.


David (MMM) Metcalfe
RFC Representative.

[ROBZ]

Check this out!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH-XYIjpWiw

[XTREME MMM]

Check this out!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH-XYIjpWiw

yes we were all a bit bored and in jungle mood. And before you say it, you are correct I cannot sing.


Cheers
MMM

PS, my appoligises to Don for killing his great song.

[bowtie landie]

Dave,

maybe you could sell an album to raise money for angel flight - you may get 1 or even 2 dollars for it!!!!

Good to see you letting your hair down Dave

Peter K

[butler built racing]

Hi Dave, just read about Thomas,what a great loss to everyone that new him. i feel quite sad to think that i have such good memeries of our time spent during the 2007 rfc. please send my condolenses. On to the subject of your singing [tounge in cheek] i can relate to your performance filling in time. can someone put this on disc and play it at round 1 saturday night?

[cicak]

please no more jungle singing from MMM

All we heard was elephants and tigers crying from the wailing coming from our tent as a very happy MMM belted out words we had never heard.

I reckon his singing caused RED to crack its newly built head hahahaha. Now we know why RED broke down.