Sunday, 22 November 2009/17:07
yay! aft 1week of separation frm my com, caused by some RAM prob, i'm finally back to blog abt my SC camp!
Sawat dee khrap!
So, for this post, i wld b showing here what i wrote in a notebook which i brought with me everywhere i went in Chiangmai so that i could write in it whenever sth that is worth recording down happened.
This will be the unabridged version of my record of the camp..whenever explanations are needed to make the record clearer, they wld b in brackets *( ).
Here it starts:
11 Nov 7.30am Changi Airport gate D40
sitting beside eugene, jun heng, marcus, benjamin. benjamin n peter talking opposite me.
eugene using his sis hp, 8.1mp
*(this is referring to his hp camera)
girls keep taking photos. boys?没事做...
wanted to read "merchant of Venice", but too noisy. Finally, Joene took a photo of us! eugene, jun heng, marcus, songshan, arthur and a sec4 guy.
eugene is taking a photo of me recording history!
*(he did it using his hp, so i dont have the photo. bef this, he used my cam and took a photo of the girls(其实是偷拍）)
~end of record bef flight, gonna talk with frens~
7.55am on-board the plane.
sitting between benjamin and Florence
10.15am had breakfast on plane. chicken porridge(congee).plaster dropped.didnt get to read newspaper
*(I took 2 or 3 newspapers bef the flight, which was too short for me to finish reading them. In fact, i didnt even start)
didnt finish Act 1 Scene 1 of MV
*(MV-Merchant of Venice. the stupid introduction and character analysis is 17pages long..n i read them cos they're impnt)
10.20am Plane descending! Bangkok! I am in Thailand!
BKK time 10.25am sitting beside Ying Xuan
*(BKK time is 1h earlier than SGP time)
just now took passport photo, made visa, 4photos--200thb *(SGD8）
*(thb--thai baht, the thai currency, 1sgd---23.53thb)
1sms--$1.50 *(i sent an sms home so i discovered the cost)
BKK time 11.32am *(flight) frm bkk to chm, safe landing
General knowledge abt Thailand *(provided by the tour guide)
-3 seasons (winter, summer, rainy season)
*(below is a video i took when on the bus.)
*(Observations: 1. Photos praising the King everywhere
*(see the staircase of 306steps?)
*(the entrance to the temple.
*(this is what the temple is famous for: the stupa!
*(inside the temple)
2. Their electric cables above the ground)
BKK time 1.25pm finished lunch, gonna visit a temple (2nd in Chiangmai *(to be built)) on a mountain. 306steps *(on a staircase) to the temple. founded 1385.
Their zodiac signs:pig out, elephant in.
*(this is talking abt the thai zodiac signs.they have 12 signs like the Chinese do. the only difference is that pig is replaced by elephant in Thai signs. Thai people consider pigs lazy, slacking creatures.)
*(see the staircase of 306steps?)*(the entrance to the temple.in the photo: eugene, marcus, jun jie)
*(this is what the temple is famous for: the stupa!A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics.
It was under maintenance so u can see the
scaffolding)
*(inside the temple)*(the never-changing ancient temple and the ever-changing world)
*(as the temple's altitude is 1678m, the view frm there is vry nice. Took the following video. The long stripe of land is the airport.)
jun heng n ben
eugene n i
BKK time 3.10pm. tuk tuk truck.
we're on a pick-up truck! 1501!*(the plate no.) it's fast! dangerous! the wind's strong on the truck. *(with) eugene, jun heng, marcus, ben, Florence, yu rong, lovell, bridget, yingjia. we're shaking! unstable! 我还想活咧!
*(well, this shows how the situation was like on the speeding tuk tuk truck)
3.25pm arrived at a commercialised village
*(it seemed to me that the presence of that village is simple for the need of tourism..the villagers there really know how to make money: traditional costume rental, and many souvenir shops selling basically the same stuff)
*(deadly beauty--this is the flower of the OPIUM plant..Chiangmai was once a place to produce opium..)
*(in the photo:Arthur, Ben, Eugene, Marcus, Songshan n i)
a french-speaking diamond seller
*(this is abt my encounter with a local man who sells 'precious stones'. I was standing and talking with my friends on the street, where there were many souvenir shops. Then, a local came and asked us if we would like to buy some of his 'precious stones', surprisingly in Chinese:你们要买宝石吗？ Since i didnt want to buy any of his 'precious stones', and i didnt want him to continue to pester us, i used a language which i didnt expect him to understand--la francais.. i said to him in french that we did not want to buy his stones.
and to my GREAT surprise, he said to me 'vous ete francais'?(u r a french?)! Astonished, i told him 'er....je parle la francais", n he just replied "c'est bon", which means "it's gd!"
It must be his years of experience selling things to the tourists that trained him to speak many languages. i was really impressed. Still, i didnt buy his goods.)
*(for the villagers, it may just be another day receiving the tourists, but for us, it was a valuable experience. )
BKK 4.25pm back on the tuk tuk. safe journey
while chatting, eugene started a sick topic by saying that in Thailand, monks are not supposed to come into contact with women. Weilee misinterpreted and thought that he was referring to all the men, she she doubted how they're gonna have babies. Wonders about the process of reproduction.
~crapping~
*(by then we were on the way to our hotel. The sch played a prank on us: the hotel they booked, which was a dilapidated abt 8storey building, was located right behind a very high class and luxurious hotel..then our bus went past the grand hotel 1st and started to decelerate..we were all amazed by the generosity of the sch, believing that we were gonna live in that hotel..juz then, the bus turned into an alley, and to my great disappointment it stopped in front of a "Star Hotel"...)
*(well, it may appear to be quite comfortable in the pics, thanks to my cam, but in fact its not..eugene n marcus found some black substances in their kettle..i'm in same room as arthur)
*(the following record is made on my hp while dining in the hotel, since i didn't have my notebook with me)
BKK time 7.10pm restaurant. steamboat dinner. sitting between Fabian n cheery. On same table as my grp.
*(it indeed feels weird to be eating Chinese steamboat while in a thai restaurant...)
*(LAST PHOTO TAKEN OF THE DAY:)
*(thai tv news programme..taken when arthur n i were watching tv bef sleeping)
~end of record for day 1~
~to be continued~
