The Land of Thousand Smiles (and Fun!)

21st August 2009 to 30th August 2009

Petchaburi, Thailand

Hurray! Back to Thailand again! This time for something even more fun - three camps in ten days! Woot!

For those who doesn't know yet, I actually have an adopted family in Thailand. Well, I was sort of 'adopted'. I have two elder sisters Ammy and Ally, two younger sisters Af and If and a brother Earth, who is the youngest. Of course that is on top of my real sister. Oh did I mean all five of them are Scouts and so are my god-parents!

It all happened in Oct 2008 during the Thailand National Rover Moot. I've met the sisters previously in a seminar in 2007, but I have never seen their youngest brother. It was the first time I met him and I was thinking that I've always been the only son and have no brothers so why not take him as my god-brother. Earth being the youngest with FOUR elder sisters, he agreed without thinking much! At the end of the camp, we met up with the whole family and Ally mentioned that to her father and to my surprise, he acknowledged me as his 'son' too. Now I try to make it a point to visit them at least once a year.

Fun fact here: Of course the family speaks Thai and I do not. I only speak very basic Thai, not even conversational. But I understand a little of Teochew which is what my god-parents speak, but none of the siblings understood. Just a little sneaky thing when the parents wanted to joke about the siblings to me without them understanding. Haha!

Back to the camps. The first camp was the main reason I flew there in the first place. It was Thailand's first Scouts of the World Award Discovery Workshop. I went there to help them run the camp and also speak a little about the programme in Singapore. The Thai workshop was modified from Singapore's, but added with their own flavour, so as to speak. The participants had tons of fun, interaction and role-play (damn I must say that they are good!). It was enriching for me even despite having conducted so many Discovery workshops. I guess we are all learning every moment.

Camp two was an interesting one. The elder sisters actually run their own campsite and their campsite is registered with Hosteling International (HI). HI is a collective of youth hostels all around the world that caters to youth's needs when they are traveling. HI happens to be bringing in a group of youths from all over Asia-Pacific to Thailand for some exchange programmes and tours, and the elder sisters were their host. So I was with them to help them run some of the programmes and assist in shuffling them around. Well, not really a tough job (well tougher than handling Scouts of course), and I get to tour around abit too.

The last camp was great and it's something I wouldn't get to experience in Singapore. It was a Greenpeace camp. Greenpeace movement is actually not allowed in Singapore due to the strict laws and intolerance of activists (which explains the absence of it). 'Protests' in Singapore are usually done the civil way - you got to register and 'protest' about it at only one allocated location; or otherwise what we would call citizen pressure (by getting citizens involved and start talking about it. If it gets big soon enough, the government would start to take notice of the issue).

Well of course the camp ain't about protesting, but more of education and fun. Together with the Greenpeace youths, we made mud bricks and built a wall then ends off with a huge windmill. When the windmill spins, it generates enough electricity to light up LEDs that connected to it, creating a display of colourful lightings. And of course that's not all, we had a fun day at the river after the whole project was done!  Damn the water was freezing, but good food after warmed us up.

Well in between the three camps, I had some spare time to meet up with friends and got to visit some places. And definitely caught up with the whole family for dinner. This is exactly why I love Thailand - everyone wants to meet up when you drop by. Haha!

The ten days flew past and sadly I had to say farewell. I was fortunate enough that Golf (a friend of the family and me) offered to send me to the airport. As much as I like the country, I hate the traffic and I was almost late for my flight! But then again, if Golf had never sent me off, I would have never made it in time and that's bad cause I have another flight the day after!!

Now I'm waiting for the right time to fly back to Thailand again!