its just as what cheryl described it to me early this morning in the cab back to our homes in serangoon - its been exactly a week, but its as if we haven't lost any time or were gone at all, especially since the whole level of us went at the same time...
but more so for my class, the wonderful ppl of five.nine.chronicles...
its like we've been in this bubble, taken away from the technologically-dependent, internet-driven world that we take for granted to live in another country where no one exists but the 22 of us (excluding 2 guardians
and i have had the best week of this year, and we're not even half way through it yet...
reading my classmates' blogs that have been updated, the posts have been reminiscent, dwelling more on the significance of the emotions the trip has left us rather than the events of the trip itself, and in the sense there is some truth in that - how we feel about it is way more important than it...
but i'll blog it for memory's sake, just like i do for every trip... its a preservation thing i'll look back on with smiles...
i gave the rugby final on wednesday the 23rd a miss only because i'd successfully cleared all the assignments due pre-oep early that morning, so i spent the time packing and watching heroes/american idol instead...
like everyone else, i was ecstatically excited, and i really could not wait to get to the airport on thursday...
so 12 hours later i met the rest of the class at gate 11 of terminal 2...
while checking in, two unfortunate things happened -
1) joash lost his class hoodie
2) lex was delayed coz of some moe fault
was chatting to sean in pre-u sem about it for most of the time before boarding...
while waiting to board, i witnessed for the first time the successful solving of a rubic's cube by cielo... and this would be a regular occurrence through the rest of the trip...
the flight itself was pretty boring... me/joash/johnchris chose the worst seats, so couldn't play cards..
there isn't a discernible difference between silkair's economy class seats and those on the budget liner i sat on going to phuket 6 months back, only that there was food and drinks, and the flight was unusually longer at 1 hour 40 mins...
upon landing, we emerged in the sunlight of phuket to the sight of a bus that would be our transport for the next 7 days...
and the first thing i said to daryl was - my gosh, its a mobile brothel!
and like i told mel/cielo before getting darren to snap pics of it, the bus really gave a whole new meaning to what we know of pimp my ride...
the whole thing was red with pink curtains and a dragon motif, and was 2 storeys tall...
but it was quite comfortable, and i slept most of the way to the nature resort, our first of 3 accommodations...
gerald, the class jet-lagged sleeper, found it humourous to take a video of everyone sleeping just so he could say "hah, i win!" at the end of it... x)
upon arriving at our destination, we stepped out of the bus' air-conditioned comfort not knowing it would be another 50 hours or so before we experienced aircon comfort again...
the nature resort emphasized more on nature than resort, and there were tonnes of trees, unknown crawling/flying thingys and a spirit home (it was on the map of the place, not sure what spirits it was home to though)...
standing in line to get my key, johnchris behind me commented that survivor could have been filmed there...
i also say...
it was definitely the worst of the 3 lodgings we'd experience, but it was fun in the way that each hut was so open that we could literally shout up or down the hill to find ppl or arrange where the night's meeting/party would be...
i was in no.21...
played a few rounds of 10-player heart attack, the first of countless noisy affairs...
after taking a few shots of the place, we met for a short briefing at the lobby hut, where i saw a shirt that said Hot Dirty Builders for the first time and knew that i would buy it no matter what...
and that's exactly what we were gonna be for the next 2 days...
after the briefing, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner...
the food through the entire trip wasn't particularly great... it was really singaporean chinese all the way through, and i'm not sure if that was intentional... if i want thai food i'l stick with my 5102 and 5106 and thai express...
it wasn't bad by any standards, but there just wasn't one instance where i sat up and said "wow, that's good stuff"...
whatever the case, the restaurant was hardly as interesting at getting there...
the entire class piled into 2 pickup trucks that would be our primary means of transport to and from the construction site, and as low-tech as it was, it was really really fun...
getting back to the tvc, i popped by gerald/joash's room for the prayer meeting, a commitment that a few of us made for the duration of the trip...
it was really cool, knowing that there were christians in class that were united in the same purpose...
the rest of the night was spent at another room (can't remember whose at the moment), but most of us had an early night...
day 2 dawned early at about 6 local time (7 singapore), and breakfast was brief before we pick-up trucked to nam khem, the construction site of 52 houses...
after applying sun block. insect repellent and work gloves, we split ourselves into a few groups to tackle different tasks...
me/gabriel/jim/songyeong/matthew would become the go-to crew for roof tile lifting, and in the span of the morning, we moved 4 roofs, or a total of 588 tiles that weighed slightly over 4kg each...
it was assembly-line style, from ground level to 2nd level through an open window (or the space where a window would soon be), a skill that ould come in useful the rest of our time there...
lunch was at a nearby restaurant, and i sat with cielo/gabriel/matthew, along with a dog named Dog, a regular companion for the 2 days we lunched there...
then it was back to the work site, where we became part of an extensive clean up process the villagers had embarked upon...
the funniest part of it was trying to break up cement heaps that had dried up on the ground with a hammer, and the funniest moment of the day had to be cheryl/jim/mel/chunwui/me taking a pic with one hugeass rock we successfully broke off the ground...
but after that we were asked to go help construct a dam, and the shovelling involved was definitely the most tiring part of all the work i did there...
soon after it was back to tvc, dinner at the same restaurant, a visit to the supermarket that would come to love us for the ridiculous amounts of baht we spent on snacks there, and then back to tvc again...
played cards with gabriel/shaoxiong/matthew at johnchris' room before the prayer meeting at joash's, then it was a bitch session (one of many during the trip) at cheryl/mel's room, before we decided it was too close to youknowwho's room, so we moved down to 23/22, can't remember which... it was a hilarious night of random songs, lex skits and trying to prepare a song for gerald's birthday on saturday, which we had to cover up as a song to sing while constructing instead... x)
day 3 was early as usual, breakfast with the fighting cats and then back to nam khem...
helped mai/mel with cement mixing before going on painting duty, which wasn't back-breaking, but extremely dirty...
my shoes were without a doubt the dirtiest in the entire class after those 2 days...
at lunch i sat with daryl/mel/cielo, the ppl whom i had talked to for most of lunch the day before, then 2 hours of cleanup with mel/johnchris/mai before our stint as constuction workers ended...
like what jim said on the first day there - "my mother told me that if i didn't study hard, i'd end up as a constuction worker... now i study hard and go to acsi, i still become a construction worker"
but it was tonnes of fun at certain points, and just before we turned in our gloves, signed our names and took a final group shot, we were all lazing at a particular house, sitting on planks and just chatting, a completely unplanned gathering that, to me at least, holds alota significance...
just before that, we engaged in the only task that involved the majority of the class - moving about 450 bricks between 3 houses (the brick throwing by cielo/cheryl was really funny), and from where i see it, it really made the class work as one, and it was a bonding experience i look back on with contentment... =)
the ride away from nam khem was hilarious, with alota random songs and other shit...
we stopped for ice-cream on the way to our next hotel, and when we got off at the khao lak orchid beach resort, waving bye to the rest of the volunteers was bittersweet...
those ppl are the ones with heart, working tirelessly even as we were dying after only 2 days...
my prayers go out to them and the good work they have chosen...
we were greeted at the resort by a banner that exclaimed "Welcome volunteers of Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)", and that was the tone that was set for the next 4 days and 3 nights we would spend there...
if what we had been staying in for the last 2 nights was hell, then we had just stepped into heaven...
the place was amazingly luxurious, and the rooms were really really spacious, but the best part of it all was that every facility that was available was completely our's, as there were only 4 other rooms in the entire hotel that were occupied, and those guests were hardly around at all...
having the entire beack to yourself is a feeling that i won't soon forget, being able to scream yourself silly without other ppl looking at you like some nutcase...
while some of the class played volleyball, me/daryl/darren/mel lazed on the deck chairs before going to beach 'cos of the arrival of a certain lemming...
mel and i found a spot deep enough in the water not to get cut by the extremely sharp corals that had been washed up, and it was not long before the rest of the class joined us...
we spent most of the time burying gerald in the sand, but that led to a rather unfortunate loss of a ring (metaphorically) that we would spent hours both on the beack, the pool and our rooms talking about and trying to solve...
played monkey in the pool with mel/joash/jim/elliot/gerald/cielo before going for dinner at the hotel restaurant...
our plans for gerald's surprise cake thingy kinda didn't succeed, but it was fun nonetheless...
what happened was that we had planned to gather at cheryl's room to wait for the cake to come, then get gerald to his own room and wait for what he would think is another prayer meeting, and then we'd surprise him with the cake...
but in the end, while we were lighting the candles outside his room, he came out looking for the prayer meeting ppl, and after a split second of shock, we just burst out in happy birthday...
but funnier still was what happened while we were waiting for the cake...
cheryl's room received a call which mel picked up...
mel was like hello, and the person at the other line went hello as well, and this back-and-forth thing continued for some time, so mel concluded that it must be a prank caller, so she enquired with all the gusto of a prank call victim -
"are you a creepy stalker who is going to kill us and paint the room red with our blood?"
and then she seemed to collapse and passed the phone to me, and when i answered, i found out that it was just the cake delivery guy confirming our order, so i was like yes you can bring it now...
ONLY mel is able to accuse our cake guy of being a Psycho-esque killer... x)
cheryl/cielo/gerald told us they were going to the beack to star gaze, which really worried their roommates mel and joash, so elliot/me stayed behind to keep them company...
played 3 games of 7-slot poker with elliot (i won 2) before going out just before midnight to find them...
in the end they had heeded our cautioning and only went to the field to star gaze...
the next day dawned a little later at 8 local time, and breakfast was tonnes better at the hotel...
played table tennis with gabriel/john chris/matthew before heading to the orphanage...
personally, i was a little worried because of the severe language barrier, but i needn't have...
if anyone wondered why lex is the noisy character he is, the answer to that question was clearly answered at the orphanage...
he was abso-bloody-lutely brilliant with the kids, and i honestly think we would never have made it through the day so successfully without him and his antics...
the whole day passed by quickly, and i think all of us had alota fun at it as well...
while we were waiting to board the bus, the kids there sang this song of blessing for us, and it was one of those moments where you feel that the simplicity, purity and innocence of the scene was priceless...
we left the place more blessed than whatever we had given them...
before heading to the hotel, we stopped by a few landmarks that remind the thai ppl of the tragedy of december 2004, and seeing the memorial, washed up boats and what not was quite sobering...
'cos it was the global day of prayer, the worship/prayer meeting that sunday night was better attended and focussed on just how fortunate we were compared to these ppl...
went with mel/cielo/gerald/elliot/joash to star gaze again, and lex came later...
unlike the clear sky of the previous, i was conned, and all i could see was a firefly...
and i was eaten alive by mosquitoes the whole hour or so there...
we had hoped that day 5 wouldn't require us to do much heavy lifting or getting dirty anymore, but that was not to be as the jungle trek in the afternoon left many with splinters and the like...
the first half of it wasn't too bad, just lazing on a canoe while a rower rowed us to our lunch destination...
it was novel for the first half an hour or so, with lex/cheryl (chex as they would soon come to be known) providing the necessary entertainment from their canoe...
but after that, the rest of the journey was immensely boring, and mai/me/mel/darren who were in the first 2 canoes just slept most of the way to the restaurant...
food there was pretty good, and there was tonnes of it, with 2 ppl sharing like 8 or so dishes...
and the first of 3 or 4 instances involving on of the ying yang guardians (again, not my label) occurred, over the silliest of things such as talking too loudly... like huh...
we then set off for the hills (literally) to trek some mountain to see some big tree...
the 2km up was really hard, and the ppl in front kept having to wait for the ppl at the rear... john chris and i were like singing s club 7 jingles the last few minutes of the trek, and when we finally arrived at said tree, it was not worth the sweat...
after some camwhoring, we went down the same way, and this time i took up the rear with chunwui/cheryl/elliot...
once back at the hotel, we made for the beaches, where we witnessed the most amaing sunset and a double rainbow...
for half an hour or so we just caught waves as they came in, laughing ourselves silly...
the second of the yingyang occurrences happened shortly after, but the beach and sea were definitely worth it...
and it also led to one of the funniest bitch sessions after that in 222 that turned into another lex skit...
plus we celebrated cielo's 19th by watching her keep the age-old tradition of jumping the number of years you have to grow an inch taller or something like that... x)
so the next day i left 210 for the next resort, which lies somewhere in between 2 and 1 in terms of standard...
during breakfast, i told mel that the previous day at the beach, the final wave we caught before leaving knocked my glasses off my face, but considering what was going on at that time, i didn't see it wise to tell anyone, and since no one noticed, i simply slipped on my spare pair and was done with it...
even till now, only she and ted kin (who overheard) know, and that makes 4 of us who've had unfortunate ends to our specs...
the first was darren while shovelling on day 3, then it was ted kin during the trek earlier on day 5, gerald's pair was unexpectedly crushed by cielo while stargazing on day 4, and finally me...
we headed for phuket island after spending 5 days in the thai south so far, and our first port of call was a pier to transfer to a long-tailed boat for a ride to james bond island...
the ride there wasn't too unpleasant, but when we got there, things took a severe turn...
first off, it started to rain, so most of the time we were huddled in some cave...
i got conned of 500baht while buying something, but whatever...
and most of the guys got something akin to the jack johnson-esque necklace john chris was wearing around his neck...
the ride away from the island to a water village restaurant was an adventure in itself...
it was raining like heck, and me/jim/chunwui/joash were like huddled beneath 3 ponchos trying to no drown...
there was lots of crab during lunch, but i was too wet to bother eating or do any shopping after, so just kept jc/tedkin company as they finished the food at their respective tables...
we arrived at our phuket hotel shortly after, played some table tennis/pool, then it was off to another hotel for dinner...
the buffet there was the meal i personally enjoyed most, and i successfully sampled every dish there was, save for the pasta that came in 5 different colours, coz i only discovered it was behind the divider late in the evening...
we shopped at bit at ocean plaza before walking back...
just like at patong last year, the androgyny and promiscuity was not lacking...
after the last prayer meeting, we met at jim's room to watch nightmare on elm's street, and now i know why its a classic slasher flick...
a few of us stayed behind to recap pirates 2 as we were planning to watch at world's end the following night back in singapore...
slept at 2, woke up at 9ish, had breakfast with jim/chunwui, table tennis with matthew, then packed for the airport...
the rest of day 7 was spent on lunch and on the bus to the airport, and the flight back was brief...
oh and spending a collective 4000baht on Dunkin' Donuts, love them to bits...
and one final class pic before we headed home...
cheryl/jc/gerald/cielo/elliot/tedkin/me met at lido to watch pirates 3 at 915...
lex was at dinner with us, but decided not to watch after all, so we had an extra ticket...
had i known we were gonna watch at lido, i would have exchanged my free movie passes for our said tickets, but alas it was not to be...
(instead i went to watch shrek 3 on friday night)
chatted a bit outside shaw before we took 3 separate cabs back...
and so it was the end of phuket '07, a trip i will miss for a long time to come, and a time when five.nine was bonded closer than ever before, and probably ever will be...
but now its 3 weeks to my 4 days of exams, and i have some things to prove to myself that i have not done so since leaving nj...
trip the light fantastic,
jlc(aines).
five.nine.chronicles.(owns)
