The camp is located on Pulau Besar, an island near Mersing, off the east coast of Malaysia, and four hours by bus from Singapore, which is the departure point for most campers. It is owned and operated by Jim and Junia Baker, Americans who live and work in Singapore. The counselors are teachers and college students from the United States. There is one counselor for each group of six campers and each group makes up a team that does chores and activities together.
The island has beautiful white beaches, colorful coral reefs and dense tropical rain forest. Campers and counselors take a one-hour boat trip from Mersing to the island. There are several small resorts but never very many people. The camp is in a fenced coconut grove 0 meters from the beach.
The camp is small and campers feel as if they are part of a big family. There are 30 campers and 6 counselors per session. They sleep in 12 small cabins on comfortable canvas cots.
Camp Castaway offers three different programs during the summer holidays---7, 13 and 19 days. The programs feature water sports, serious and silly competitions and quiet times, during which the campers create a newsletter, write home and do crafts. Campers also hike through the rain forest and ride the surf on boogie boards.
The campers learn to sail, snorkel and water ski and participate in a regatta at the end of each session. Counselors are on hand to help them learn or improve their skills. There are talent shows and campfires, featuring camp legends, songs and ghost stories. Other evening events are bingo night, a human scavenger hunt and flashlight tag.
All these activities and new experiences build self-confidence and awareness of self and others. Best of all, the campers find new friends and make memories to treasure for a lifetime.
The 19-day session is even more fun and highly popular with campers who are returning for their second or third years. The first part of this program is described in preceding paragraphs. By day 13, when the shorter-session campers leave, extended-session campers have learned to sail and water ski and are ready for new challenges. And we provide them!
They sail in two-man Toppers to other islands in the area and camp out; they climb a 2,000-foot mountain and view the South China Sea from an exhilarating height. They also are allowed a degree of choice during this time to zero in on special interests or learn more about some aspect of camp life that particularly interests them.
fax:+65 6468 8768
