**Where oh where shall our camp be held?**

So on the assumption that you attend Hope Adults Church Camp year after year... Did it ever occur to you how the venue of the camp was decided? Did you ever wonder what in the world do the church camp committee members do? What goes on behind the scenes leading to the actual days of the camp itself? Ok, if you did not wonder about such things... heheh...I guess you may have taken both the camp and the church camp committee members for granted!! Heheh.. JUST KIDDING. =)

Here on this blog, we're going to tell you everything about Adults Church Camp 2007...how the venue was decided, how preparations and considerations were taken into account just to make Adults Church Camp 2007 an enjoyable camp filled with prevailing memories, teachings and experiences.... and of most of all an amazing encounter with God for each and everyone of us
during the camp.

And so it goes that one fine Friday night last year, 8th September 2006 it was, some of the church camp committee members went up to Malaysia for the one of many recce trip to find out more about the hotels we have narrowed down for our church camp this year.

We set off from Singapore after work and drove up all the way to Port Dickson to find out more about the Tiara Resort. We arrived in Port Dickson pretty late at about 2ish am and turned in. Here's a view of how the bedroom in Tiara's resorts looked like.

Not too bad, a pretty decent bedroom. However, with approximately 5 hours of journey time from Singapore to Port Dickson, we decided that it may be a tad too far to have the Adults church camp there.Thus, Tiara resort was not selected.

Next on the list was Palace of the Golden Horses. Now, some of you may have heard about this hotel and perhaps even visited this hotel before. It's a 6 stars hotel and it lives up to its name...almost every part of the hotel you can spot some horse statues, portraits, emblems... basically anything horse-related. Apparently the owner of the hotel was a horse lover and was really passionate about it. Check out the pics below and have a look yourself.

The mesmerising ceiling mural at the grand lobby

The Concierge of Palace of the Golden Horses

The centerpiece of attraction at the restaurant

Even the lamp piece in the bedrooms have horse motifs!

Well, needless to say, all of us fell in love with this place. However, fearing that all this pomp & luxuriant pleasantries would distract our campers from the main purpose, the camp committee felt it was safer not to host our adults camp here....well ok, honestly it was the cost and nothing else that was the deciding factor! We didn't want the camp to cost over $500!!!

So, after wiping the drool from our mouths, we moved on to the Grand Seasons Hotel K.L. The hotel looked pleasant and welcoming and we viewed the bedrooms. Here's a pic of the bedroom for your viewing...

Not too bad huh? HOWEVER...when we arrived at the main ballroom we were greeted by this view...

A pair of columns blocking the view of the stage! Unanimously, all the committee members said no way. Well, its wasn't because of any fengshui reasons but rather with an expected 800 campers this year in the main ballroom for most of the time, it will be very disruptive for half the people getting blocked by the 2 columns. So sadly the Grand Seasons Hotel was a no go as well.

And so with that, our recce trip ended without finding a suitable location. We all headed back to Singapore determined to continue scouring the continent for a suitable location! =)