conquering the wall

I never thought wall climbing was such a difficult sport. We're signing up for a beginner's rock climbing course in Petchaburi or Lopburi, and one of the perks is we get to practice on a wall in Imperial Ladprao. We probably are gluttons for public humiliation -- Imperial Ladprao is a mall frequented by locals (translation: no English signs, foreigners, or anything remotely farang here), and the wall we had to climb was right in the middle of the mall.

I used to not understand the wall climbers of Power Up when they had a demo wall at the Alabang Town Center a few years ago. I thought they were all crazy to even try something in a public place. Little did I know I'd have the balls to do the same thing. Good thing is, chances of me bumping into some I know here are slim to none. Whew!

Climbing in itself was manageable, but staying on one spot while figuring out the next step was something else. I didn't reach the top though, was 2 meters away but gave up when I couldn't get any higher because my hands were simply too slippery to hold on. Turns out I was holding on to the holds with the wrong grip, thus exerting too much effort on the wrong thing. Oh well, not too bad for a first-timer. The 2 girls who were helping us - Piyao and Dee - were such inspiring climbers because they would go up and down effortlessly. They said that we weren't so hopeless, and with a few more Sundays before our real climb, we'd be able to hack it.

Tiring as it was, we're all going back there on Sunday... minus the sore muscles and long fingernails of course.