18 – 19 August 2018 – 50 people including students and lecturers from Chinese Medicine Department participated in a field trip to Genting Highland and Janda Baik, Pahang. The trip was organised by IMU Chinese Medicine faculty and executed by the CM215 students. Throughout the visit to the herb farm at Genting Highland IONPARK, Janda Baik Man Yue Yuan and Janda Baik Sungai Kuali, 2 local herb experts, Yang Sok Hoong and Pie Wan Koon were invited as guests. They guided participants along the farms and even roadside to introduce the herbs. Participants learnt to study the herbs by seeing, smelling, touching and tasting the herbs. Preceptors also taught the students methods of identification and specific processing, indications and dosage used for each herb.
One of the students, Desmond said that he was looking forward to the trip weeks ahead of it. He prepared himself with herbal knowledge learnt from class to ensure he could get to know more details about the herbs. During the trip, he was glad that he could identify a few herbs mentioned by the preceptors by appearance and name. When he raised a few questions about herbs, he was very impressed when the preceptors were able to identify different herbs in a huge mixture of luxuriant plants and received detailed answers for preceptors. He hopes to gain from participating in more herb farm trips to widen his horizons and improve his understanding towards Chinese Medicine herbs. Participants found the field trip both fun and educational as they have learnt more than just knowledge about local herbs.
Student leader of the organising committee, Amiera said that it was a big challenge for her and her peers to organise such an event as the number of participants almost doubled from the field trips organised in previous years. Despite the issues and difficulties they have encountered during the planning, under the guidance of Chinese Medicine faculty and with their teamwork, the committee worked hard enough to solve all the problems and ensured the smooth running of the event. Eventually, participants were satisfied about the trip and learnt a lot from it, too.
Amiera said that the trip did not only teach her about Malaysia local herbs, she also learnt about teamwork, communication skill, organisation flow and the valuable experience to be an organiser in the big event. This field trip enhanced the bond among students and lecturers. Everyone cherishes the lovely memories during the trip and look forward to more events like this.
