Tuesday, December 27, 2005
I'm back!
Yay!!! i'm finally back home after 20 days in thailand. its oh so goooood to be home! i miss sg food! but alas, my prolonged bronchitis means i still hafta refrain from the good food. oh well, better recuperate first.
my stay in thailand wasn't all that bad actually. my location most of the time - ban jalae, chiangrai. its the hill tribe we were helping. in total, we built 7 toilets, a water tank and constructed the water source area. but actually, the villagers did much more than we did bcoz there was so much we juz couldn't and didn't know how to do. so basically, we were their bangladeshie manual labour. wat the villagers can do with juz bamboo is amazing. their houses were all made of bamboo and wood. ladders, tools, fences, watever were all made of bamboo. even food is cooked in bamboo. their strength is even more scary. an old grandmama can carry thrice the weight i carry up the mountain strapped to her head.
i cant believe the number of mountains/hills i climbed during the trip. but thank God i didn't go on the 7km climb up to a beautiful plateau one fri afternoon coz i wasn't feeling well. or i really would have died. the bad things about the trip is the cold and my illness. i set off on 5dec already ill and didn't fully recover thruout. it was rather bad and i was the weakest link of the team. both my mucus and phlegm had blood, i was coughing non-stop, many nites i wanted to puke, had fever several times too. hahahha, very bad rite? but i pulled thru with faith and help from my frens and finally i'm back here safe again! =) so happy. oh, about the cold. i think it drops to like 5degress at nite and i didn't bring thermal wear, so everynite i clothed myself in 7-8layers on top, 2 track pants, 2 socks and socks as gloves. hahaha, my fren said i'm BIG FOOT of Ban Jalae. altho we shower at around 4pm, the water is freezing cold - i'm so grateful for hot showers now.
its quite funny the things we encountered. my house was the most problematic in fact. a cat who crept in the first few nites thru the gap in the door to sleep with us - we've since closed up the gap everynite b4 we slp. i was really freaked out the first few nites coz i could feel footsteps but cant see anyone. a spider as big as my palm, with 7 legs, scuttering around in our house. a rat or most prob a few, digging at the packs of wheat n rice at nite while we slp. a drunkard who threw glass bottles at the bottom of our house one nite. teenage boys spying on us across the river one nite - i'm convinced they wanted to steal our underwear.
after this trip, i feel that there's little that i cant survive thru. there's little that can be worse. i really wouldn't wanna experience anything worse in fact.
i spent every single baht when i was in bangkok. aiiiz.... everything in thailand is really freaking cheap. upon walking home on the last nite, i was left with 250.35 baht. and who would haf tot there was a nite street bazaar that nite and i juz had to buy that pair of super pretty white shoes for mama which costs 250baht. and so i was left with .35baht. hahahha, which is equivalent to nothing. my baggage was 16kg when i departed thailand, altho i gave alot of clothes away to my host family. i arrived with only 12.5kg b4.
ohoh, on a happy note, i lost weight!!!!!!! all the climbing and cold worked wonders.
cant wait to meet up with everyone. so do contact me k? i'm super free and got no plans!
~~~ Angela 9:37 PM
