there and back again

some of the general impressions from 3 weeks in thailand.





- weather: HOT HOT HOT. Oh, did I mention hot?





- terrain: bamboo forests. Thorny trees. Dead trees. Knolls the size of
bt timah (and bigger), with slopes made up of loose pebbles and rocks,
and sand. Treacherous as hell to go up and down. Especially if you have
to drag a @$&^$ coil of concertina wire with you.





- training: zombiefying. Especially when doing 6 missions in 3 days -
digging, marching, charging up knolls, and doing it all continuously,
on a couple hours' sleep. Definitely the most exhausting experience of
my life.





- food: pretty good, on the whole. Even the cookhouse stuff was nice. One of the few positives in thailand.





- canteen: well-stocked. Lots of food stalls (which all sell about the
same stuff), an ice cream stall with terrific chocolate parfaits and
lychee freeze, merchandise stores selling bootleg stuff from LV, Gucci,
Prada, Esprit etc etc.. (no I didn't buy anything; I'm not that
interested in luxury brands, and I hate bargaining. So too bad for me.)





- R & R: boring. Got ferried around in comfy aircon coaches with
army vehicles as escorts like some warlord's entourage, causing massive
traffic jams wherever we went. Kinda cool. Unfortunately our coach
driver's idea of entertainment was to play the same VCD - which had
some truly dreadful MTVs - over and over again. (Consequently I'm now
experiencing severe mental instability and emotional trauma, which I'm
trying to counter by playing my entire MP3 collection at full blast.)
Eventually he got his hands on a thai version of 'starship troopers';
making up our own dialogue was probably the most fun we had during
R&R.





there's a lot of stuff that happened in thailand. The most interesting
bits are unfortunately those that I think are least suitable for
writing down here. Like how I sprained (and resprained) my ankle. What
happened during the worst day of my life. Events like the accident and
the garbage bag fiasco. The ninja vans. And so on.





it's good to be back.