javamama

Spa Susi and I are leaving Singapore soon so we're having a garage sale. We have a used Garmin etrex legend for sale for $50. We also have a collection of travel adventure books, backpacks and other miscellaneous gear for sale. If you're interested in the gps or in listings of other items for sale, call or sms Spa Susi at 90222171.

This is really horrible news. Some of my best ever caching days have been in Anza Borrego. And I know that my geocaching visits cause way less impact than the activities of most non-geocaching visitors I've passed when I'm there. Anyone know of any geocachers who are members or make donations to the Anza Borrego Foundation that helps raise money to buy up land to grow the park? If a head on approach hasn't gotten the park administration to see reason, maybe we need to come in from the side?

Hi all San Diego cachers. My "temporary" stay in Singapore has just been extended indefinitely. I'm back in San Diego for a month trying to settle things here. The hardest part is trying to find a good active outdoor home for my sweet boxer dalmation geocaching dog. She's spent the last 4.5 years staying with a friend who can't keep her permanently. I could take her to Singapore, but I know she'll be much happier continuing her active hiking/geocaching life in San Diego than she would being an apartment/urban dog in Singapore. She's 8 years old, but other than a little white around the muzzle she's not showing her age. She's an outdoor dog who's used to living in a fenced backyard and sleeping in a kennel in the garage. She's a sweet, lovable dog who's good with other dogs, cats and older children. She's a great hiking companion and she loves nothing better than going geocaching with me when I'm in San Diego. Right now, she's living in San Diego Country Estates in Ramona. If any Ramona or other rural San Diego cachers or their friends have room in their yards and hearts for a wonderful doggie companion, please contact me. Javamama

Spa Susi and I found one cache when we were in Hanoi and we've done a lot of caching around SE Asia. We'd love to see more caches in Vietnam and other nearby countries. When I'm travelling, I enjoy caches that are "a bit" off the beaten track the best. By "a bit" off the beaten track, I mean a cache that takes me to a place I wouldn't have gone to otherwise, but that is easy to get to as a day trip from a place I'm likely to be staying. For a place like Vietnam where there aren't a lot of local cachers, easy transportation options to the location to draw tourists seems like a must. If it's too hard to get to a cache, not many tourists are likely to make the effort. Putting good instructions on how to get to a cache using public or hired transportation is key. Selecting interesting locations is also very important if you're asking people to spend a precious vacation day searching for a cache. The cache on Tam Island near Nha Trang looks like a good example of a cool vacation cache. It looks like there are regular boat trips there that would make an interesting day out. Plant a few more like that in the area and you'll for sure lure me and Spa Susi up for a visit. Cheryl

Hey KiwiGary, First I gotta say I love your avatar. Spa Susi and I found that figurine in a cache on our trip to South Island. It reminded me of how Spa Susi looks when she's following me on the trail so we kept it. If you're looking for jungle walks another fabulous day out is the Woodcutter Trail. You can do Morning Forest walk and Morning Forrest Walk 2 by thsalbert and keep walking to Susi's House and Decoy Cache on the far end of the trail. This is jungle trekking at it's finest and a side of Singapore that most tourists never see. If you're need detailed instructions on how to find the starting point and how to get back after you exit the trail let me know. If you're keen to do some jungle trekking, but feeling uncomfortable going out alone, let me and Spa Susi know. Now that we've found almost all of the caches in Singapore we're back to trekking on the weekends. We'd be happy to give you a taste of the jungle if we're in town when you're here. If you're Garmin users there's an excellent free map that you can download for Singapore. It's routable and very useful for giving cab drivers directions when they don't have a clue where you're trying to get to. It also shows a lot of Singapore trails that you won't find on any other maps. It's really awesome. We're long overdue for a Singapore cache event. I'll consult with Spa Susi, Indiana Janes and some of the other local cachers to see if we can put something together. Javamama

Hey all. Ever since coming to Singapore, I've been proud to live in the top caching country in SE Asia. I was scanning other countries last week and saw that Thailand is closing the gap fast. They have 103 active caches, most of which have come online just this yeat At the same time, it seems like the scene in Singapore is slowing down. Nations has a good excuse. Ed and Horney Toad left. What's up with everyone else???? Spa Susi and I want new caches to find. I hear the Janes are pacing themselves so they don't run out the last few caches too soon. I bet Jughead09 is looking for more excuses to skip school How about we celebrate the recent national day by making sure Singapore stays the top caching country in the region? Here's a challenge to everyone. Let's get to 200 active caches by the end of September and let's all try to bring one new cacher into the game. What do you think? Can we do it? Spa Susi and I have an awesome multi-puzzle cache planned. We're also going to go back to our roots with some "simple" jungle bashing hides. How about the rest of you? Can?????

Just before taking my first geocaching trip to Australia, I turned on the TV every night only to find some show on about all the creatures down under that can kill you. By the time I got there I was totally paranoid about snakes and spiders. Armed with a stick I safely made my way through a number of bushwalking, caching adventures and was starting to calm down. Just about then, while walking through some tall bush, zeroing in on a cache, I felt a sudden sharp pain under my arm. Convinced I had been bitten by one of those nasty spiders I heard about, my mind raced.... Can Spa Susi get me to a hospital before I die? Is there an antivenom for this spider or am I doomed? Suddenly I felt another jab then another, then another. I ran down the hill, still convinced it was a spider and that I would soon be unconscious. I started screaming for my caching buddy, Spa Susi to come help me. She started down and then suddenly screamed WASPS!!!!! and started running down the hill. Her last leap onto the road was a mistake and she went sprawling on the blacktop, cracking a couple of ribs along the way. Not fun, but at least not deadly.

Spa Susi and I have a friend who lives in Manilla. We might take a trip to see her in August, especially if there are more caches within easy striking distance of Manila. If we go and there are no caches to find, we may plant a few and have our friend maintain them. When will you be visiting?

And how to forget Pathseeker? Congratulations on #150! (You know I don't count those locationless lah )

Hey Metro. I see you just hit #100 too. Congratulations!

Hey thsalbert - Was just looking through logs and noticed you just picked up number 100. Congratulations!

I always go on an online ordering spree before each trip for stuff that's expensive to ship to Singapore. Travel bugs are easy to carry so I would be happy to bring some back if people are interested in saving on shipping costs. I won't be going again until Feb-March, but if you're not in a hurry, I'd be happy to bring back some bugs.

I was recently in the market for a new gps. Since I already had a Nokia 6680 I decided to give geocaching by smart phone a go. I'm using a GlobalSat Bluetooth gps ($129) and Smartgps software. It has all the basic features I need, but I haven't been using it for long so the jury is still out on how I'll like it. I can download geocaching waypoints from my pocket queries - after converting to the correct format using gsak. Once the waypoints are loaded, I can set the software to go to any selected waypoint. It has three views, a map view (if you have a map loaded), a navigation view and a satellite view. If I want to, I can also set the software to send a text message with my position at regular intervals to anyone else's handphone - kind of cool when I'm out solo hiking. Pros: I live in Singapore and the available maps for Garmin and Magellen are pathetic. There are excellent maps available for for PDAs and Smartphones that are compatible with Smartgps. For paperless caching, I used to carry my Garmin gps, my PDA with Mobipocket cache descriptions, a digital camera and my Nokia was always with me. Now I clip the gps receiver on my bag and the only piece of electronics I need is my Nokia - which I always have with me. Cons: The features in the Smartphone version of mobipocket and Smartgps are somewhat limited than the PDA versions. For example, in Mobipocket there are no search function so you have to scroll to find a cache. This is ok in Singapore where I only have about 10 caches loaded at any one time, but when I go to San Diego next week, I'm going to have to use my pda so I can quickly find a cache. Stability of the position reading. The satellite signal I get is incredible. Even in heavy trees or inside my building I get at least 5 strong satellite signals - WAY better than my garmin etrex. The only problem is that this doesn't translate to a stable reading of my position. When I get close to a cache the reading is very erratic - much worse than either the garmin or the magellen. I've heard that there's a way to reset the gps for walking instead of car use that will help this, but I haven't had time to figure this out yet. Even with an unstable reading, I'm doing ok finding caches, but the next time I hide one, I'll use my garmin to record the coordinates.

I'm back from my trip to Sri Lanka and ready to plan a caching event. Ok Ed, it won't be a farewell, just a get together for all Singapore cachers old and new. I'll be away the last weeked in November and the first weekend in December. How does the weekend of 17 Dec work for you and your family? Anyone else out there want to help put this event together? I missed the first Singapore geocaching event hosted by Nations, but I heard it was very well planned and fun for all. Some help to make this event equally memorable would be appreciated. Team Dragon - How about taking some time away from diving to hide a few more caches in or near Manilla? I've got a friend there who keeps bugging Spa Susi and me to come visit. Some cool new caches in the area would be great enticement to make the trip.

Hey Ed, On to better topics. Yes, we must try to pull together an Ed and family farewell event cache. You've been too important to building up the local game for us to let you go without a sendoff. What is a good weekend for you? I don't know if I could ever put together an event that matches the fun it sounds like you all had at the picnic Nations pulled together, but I'm willing to give it a go. Javamama

Hi Yizhe, I appreciate your clarification, but I must admit that I still have some objections to your post. First, as erik, the Singapore administrator for geocaching.com points out, privately organized gps treasure hunting events are not geocaching. I think it's fantastic if you want to get Singapore kids out in the woods doing some kind of gps treasure hunt. But, please remember these organized activities are not geocaching. Geocaching is the trademark name for caches that are placed and posted on the Groundspeak website. Groundspeak has successfully prosecuted a number of cases of people infringing on their trademark. Singapore is well know for their strong enforcement of international patent and trademark laws so I think you should beware of trying to call what you're doing geocaching without having explicit permission from Groundspeak. Second, either you missed the PM Goh national day speech that Spa Susi referred to in her post, or you have access to a set of National Park rules that are not available to the general public. PM Goh's message at his last national day was that the new policy in Singapore is that if it's not explicitly prohibited, it should be assumed to be ok. I took that to heart and I read over the Singapore National Parks rules that are posted on all of their signboards, on their website and I even went so far as to read the Parks and Trees Act and Parks and Trees Regulations of 2005. I didn't see anywhere in the rules that geocaching is prohibited so I took PM Goh's advice and hid my first Singapore geocache in a public park in an area that did not risk damaging wildlife or the environment. If PM Goh said I don't need permission, I'm not going to ask for permission. If you go and find some geocaches in Singapore, you will see that the caches in Singapore National Parks are similarly well placed so as to minimize environmental impact or off-trail activity. I believe that most of the active Singapore cachers are nature lovers who love this game because it takes us to the few green spaces that exist on this little, urban island. The last thing we want to do is damage the environment. So, please don't act like you're doing the local geocaching community a favor by asking for permission for us to do geocaching in Singapore parks. At best, we are allowed to continue to do something we've been doing without any issues or objections. At worst, there are new restrictions on the game that make it less fun for the people here who play this game. Javamama

Hi Ed, Sorry to hear you'll be leaving us in December. Please don't completely dispair over the sad state of geocaching back home. I too get frustrated by all the 1*,1* film containers hidden in parking lots, but there are thousands of caches surrounding any US city that are worth hunting for. When I want a real hunt, I just set my query to only send me >2 for both difficulty and terrain. It may mean I need to do a little driving to get to the trailhead, but once there it's almost always worth the effort. The Arizona high-desert is a fabulous place to explore - in winter, of course. I bet you can find some awesome caches there. Javamama

Hi Yizhe, Great to see all the new interest in geocaching in Singapore. Personally, I'm not a big fan of local variations of geocaching or more "organization" from local companies or authorities around the game. For me the coolest thing about this game is that it is pretty much a self-organized and regulated community. I love that all I have to do to play this game is go on the web, download a waypoint to my gps and I'm on my way. It lets me play and explore Singapore (and the rest of the world) at my own pace. I also love that anyone who plays can hide a cache. Making this a big competition, making it a time-driven event or putting more rules on cache placements would ruin the fun for me. Some of the things you're talking about (bigger prizes, corporate sponsorship, specific events, etc) sound a lot more like treasure hunting than geocaching. I know there is a huge, well-organized treasure hunting community in Malaysia that Spa Susi's brother belongs to. Instead of trying to modify geocaching, maybe you should be working to bring treasure hunting to Singapore? I can send you some contact information for the Malaysian group if you're interested. If geocaching continues to get popular in Singapore, I do expect that at some point the national parks will weigh in and come up with geocaching policy. Perhaps it's good for the local caching community to be proactive and ask them to embrace this game as a healthy activity? Javamama