Laos gift of sight mission
this is my 99th post! so fast huh!
This post is going to be about my laos trip from the 9 of december to the 17 of december, i hope i can recapture my memories and narrate it into a fabulous post for myself and anyone who reads =)
On the first day, i was really kinda sick of going to the airport already, usually when i travel on the airplane, i would get this magical and excited feeling. This was not so on the first day, i am blaming it on the thailand trip which was just 5 days before this trip. No more magical, excited, anxious and looking forward to flying on the not soo smooth silk airways, it was replaced by a feeling of dread and just "zzzzzz" or sian-ness. I met those people who were going on the same mission and did a little self introduction. They are all older then me though some did bring their children or childrens friend or friends children along, closest to my age was an 18 year old girl from tjc. My aunt met her colleague from her school nygh. Her colleague was really a warm and friendly lady, but after i told her i was from choir, she kept asking me to sing. She had a son which was from ajc and my age too , so i sorta like talked to him while waiting for the plane.
* Some introduction to this mission*
THis trip is a trip to laos to help the villagers there prescible and dispense eyeglasses so that they can see, so its called the Gift of Sight mission. I went there with my aunt and my cousin adela. Its a cooperation of two teams, one from singapore ( lions international) and one from luxxutica*( i tink its spelt like that) international. So from the singapore team we have the lions and henderson and clementi woods and extras like us going. WE are not part of lions, neither are we part of henderson secondary / clementi woods secondary.
So we transfered a flight from singapore to bangkok and then bangkok to vientiane, the captial of Laos. Laos airport was really small, there were only two conveyer belts and one duty free shop inside. There was only two air passages that could connect the aeroplane to the airport. SO its pretty small. We stayed at novotel in vientiane to wait for the children from henderson who will join us on the second day, i was supposed to share a room with another Lions member who is a complete stranger, luckly he dug into his own pocket and said he wanted a seperate room. SO i got a room to myself =). It was kinda hard adjusting to the room that was given at first, the location of the room was kinda ghostly, imagine a dark hallway, dimly litted, crisp air and silence whistles of the ventilation. Now place a room at the furthest end of the hallway, that was my allocated room. When i walked there, i could feel shivers going down my spine and my hands were breaking into cold sweat, i went into the room and felt a ghostly presence. Not wanting to indulge in such a spooky atmosphere anymore, i ran back to the counter at the first floor to ask for a room change. It was much better when they changed the room, it was changed to the room beside the flight of stairs that led directly down to the lounge, so it was much much better then that ugly and dark room all the way down the hallway. It was hard getting sleep on the first and second night, maybe its because its my first time travelling without my parents overseas to such a faraway land, or maybe its just the lousy mattress that had a spring jutting into my back when i laid on it. Luckily there was a bible by the bedside, so i guess Jesus must have known that i would face this obstacle and hence saved me by placing a bible by the bedside to strengthen me.
So on the second day my aunt brought us on a tour around vientiane. We went to the morning market which had many friendly DVD shops which are banned in singapore, many fake mp3 and old television sets. I guess it looks old because singapore is just so darn advanced. After visiting the morning market, we had a drink at one of their local coffeee houses, i got myself a chocolate drink. OK i didnt know chocolate drinks could actually taste this darn good! it was just super super thick and rich with chocolate. imagine just drinking milo powder by itself, thats how concentrated it was! o my! i could not even finish a 250 ml cup cause it was darn heaty and i could almost feel my nose spilling out blood. Now i look at milo drinks a different way.
We ate lunch at a cafe, it was kinda upper class i guess as the only customers we saw were like ang mo's. No local went there. It even had wi-fi, now thats just pretty darn amazing, but the bill was pretty darn expensive too. After we had our fill, we went to visit papaya spa, but unfortunately, it was closed on mondays. Hence we went to a salon which caught my cousin's eye. There my aunt did her hair wash and my cousin and i dyed our hair. The results wasnt very obvious, i didnt look like i had dark brown hair and my cousins hair looked like it was only dyed at the front. Guess you cannot expect much for a $16 bucks dye job.
WE walked around for a bit at the city centre of vientiane and ate from a roadside prata store, the prata there had condensed milk spilled onto it and sugar. No curry like singapore. For dinner/supper i had a giant hamburger and my cousin had a steak, my aunt had fried rice. THe hamburger was soooooo huge that it lasted me for day threes 6 hour bus journey to the province where our mission was going to start.
I shall blog about day three tomorrow . I stil got darn hw to do
it was at; 5:29 AM
Due to a popular request from ernie, i shall blog about thailand though i just came back from laos.
The memory is not really fresh but i guess i can still talk about some interesting parts of it.
Thailand trip was like last week third to 6 of december. Took thai airways there, the airplane advertisement is an irony. THey say " Thai airways.....Smoooooth as silk" when they finish showing you how not to drown with the lifevest, and when the plane rattles and rolls, smooth is the last thing on yr mind.
When i saw thailand airport, i was like woah shit! its sooo damn big! and its pretty nice too. Flashback to my past experiences in thailand.
I was primary 2
i went with my family and another friend family
i got tummy ache and could not go into their *snowcity* which was supposed to be damn good
i broke the hotel room glass cup and tried to hide it in the dustbin but was discovered when we were leaving for our flight
i broke a vase when i was playing catching with my friends at this store, the vase was taller then me
Sooooo when someone says thailand i get all this negative images, o ya one more , i went to pukhet the last time and guess where i saw my hotel in picture again?
It was on the straits times when they featured the place tsunami happen to drop by and i saw what was supposed to be the hotel i stayed in. The macdonals outside had a W instead of a M. Yupps that sorta like sums my whole thailand memory.
But when i saw the airport, hope ignited in my heart, like a spark in the darkest night. Suddenly the disturbing images i had of thailand slowly faded away, like a shooting star. ok this is really poetic. But yea it was really nice
however after stepping into the airport....i was like... is this completed? ok what i saw was , let me try to describe it, imagine underground carpark, the grey concrete. got that image? ok paint that all over our singapore airport and minus away the heavily carpeted floors. Thats thailand international airport for you. But it was still big on the inside. Way better then their previous one.
SO we went in blah blah took a coach to the hotel which was called patu( sth sth) princess hotel which was located in the heart of the city, like mandarin hotel in singapore. the best part was, it was connected to a shopping complex called MBK! like they hav an enterance from the hotel to the shopping complex! how cool is that! ok the shopping was kinda nothing special, the foodcourt there sorta like uses a card or coupon system, so like u wanna buy u go there and tap the card then at the end when u exit then u pay at one shot.
We visited the kings palace in thailand. Took a boat there from one of the sky train( mrt) stations. the sky train is more passenger friendly then the one in singapore. In singapore the hand hold/ rail is just one stright bar and it sorta like cuts off where the doors are at. So if u are standing near the door u got nothing to hold except the glass door which doesnt assure you that u wont fall. The skytrain however has handrails stretching all the way to the doors so u can hold it even if u lean next to the door, which is good design and good thought. singapore should learn from them. The palace was really big and they had temples in the palace, thailand is a buddist state so they had the buddist temples inside the palace. It was really grand, everything was painted in gold and alot of time must have been spent buidling it. But it was really commericalised. What do i mean, first you have to pay an enterance fee to visit it, secondly the king does not stay there, he stays at the side where the gate is so big and mighty its unclimbable. So the part we went were for like tourist. THirdly people there were selling those lotus plants they use for their offerings to tourist and last but not the least significant, there was a souvenior shop.
who knows next time they might build a macdonals there
yupps so it was really crowded and hot, so after awhile you get pissed off and just wanna get out of the huge maze of people and concrete.
We visted chinatown too, kinda like singapore chinatown just that they bbq seafood there openly and speak thai.
we also had a thai massage which was kinda crap
1hr massage
40 minutes spent on the leg
what sort of full body massage is that
might as well call it lower limb massage.
nothing really special happened after that
shopping centres hav metal detector doors that u must go through before u can enter
throw a stone and u can hit a police officer
yupp that sorta sums up thailand
at least thats my image of thailand for now.
it was at; 7:46 AM
