[18 Nov 2015]
I’m alone in the house, awaiting a package which I lamely arranged to be sent today, despite the fact that I was supposed to head out with a few friends for lunch.
I miss Thailand.
Usually, long times spent cooped up with dozens of other guys would result in both homesickness and arguments; neither of which actually happened.
The weather decided to introduce itself with 3 days of intermittent showers, most times lasting no more than a few minutes, but with once lasting way into the night like the white noise of radio silence.
My bunk, on the second floor, was a 50-metre long corridor split into 3 sections through the long-side: beds and lockers both on the left and right and an empty passageway through the middle, which were all shared by either 72 men or 100 men which the doors on both sides claimed in conflict.
Much like in Jurong, I took pride in waking up the first every morning, setting my alarm (John Cena’s “The Time Is Now”) 10 minutes before the reveille timing so that I could pop down to the toilet (a separate block from the bunks), have my teeth brushed and face washed, come back up and turn the lights on to wake everyone else up. Every time I woke up, I’d look down the long aisle to see at least 31 other cadavers, still against cool fluorescent glow of the toilet block’s lights.
The first couple of days were spent in denial / recuperating / doing stores, also termed as the admin phase (gonna steal Chin Ying’s terminology)
[2 Jan 2015]
People were adjusting to the new lifestyle of having to hand-wash clothes, and missing the canteen which had the most fantastic of food (which would numb our desire for canteen food in Jurong Camp months later). I say “missing” as the commanders erroneously allowed everyone to spend much of the first afternoon in the canteen purchasing a SIM card, which meant that everyone gorged themselves silly on wondrous Thai food and drinks.
Me? I sat alone, benumbed by the thought of those I respected smoking and whilst gulping down Iced Cappuccino in a daze. This would be a trend for the next few times we visited the canteen.
There were 2 brands of SIM card, TrueMove and AIS. Ray Yan, who’d arrived at Sai Yok Camp a week before, told me to purchase TrueMove as he was using AIS which was slower than molasses flowing uphill in January. I had to ask him several times about this due to my numbness and magical ability that day to lose all concentration once he mentioned the third word in any sentence (sorry).
Unfortunately, as I would find out later, everyone who just arrived had bought TrueMove which meant that AIS was freed from its shackles and TrueMove became the new dial-up modem of this camp. Whatsapp messages took 2 minutes to transmit, media took 2 hours and Instagram was a luxury for those whom were willing to wake up at 2AM to browse it.
Beyond the first couple of days were preparations; stores had to be moved, sandbags were to be filled and…
Ah, whatever I’d say would be kind of pointless seeing how nobody really cares and that I’ve written it down mostly in my little Moleskine.
This picture’s of a checkpoint we journeyed by on the fourth day as part of a navigation exercise. The locals were friendly and the food (coconut ice cream and Pad Thai) was ephemeral. There was a point where we set off from a checkpoint and bashed through a forest, a river (which I fell into, obviously) and at least 2 farm plots before reaching the original checkpoint again. Fond memories.
Every night when we returned to our bunks after dinner (excellent, by the way), we would find quite a few flying bugs on our beds which became a non-issue by pretty much the second night.
There was a night where I laid on my bed and watched Perks of Being a Wallflower which was a huge stress relief and made me feel empty for ages afterwards. It was raining, and the breeze tickled my toes.
Beyond the admin phase was the training phase which condensed all we had learnt into 3 days of retraining.
There was 1 final day of “recovery”, which meant doing stores for the whole damn day (imagine winding up 300m worth of wire 12 times). I got to go with the tonner to the vehicle sheds to attach a trailer, which is more fun than it sounds. I also got to play with puppies!
Then came the actual exercise.
Deployment was done in an open field. I nearly suffered from a heat stroke, kids ran about selling drinks to us and life went on.
The rest was interesting as it was mostly detached from what we had learnt from the past 1 year or so of being Combat Engineers. I don’t think I’m allowed to say much on a public platform as this but… let’s just say the other platoons did what they were supposed to do and we were allocated all the explosive tasks.
I remember sitting alone at the base of Eagle Hill, under the glorious full moon, fiddling with wires and blocks of explosives and tossing bamboo leaves all over as camoflauge.
I slept on the grassy ground near the detonators and woke up to a crimson sky and birdsong. From the utility pouch of my vest, I retrieved some biscuits and started munching them, amusedly being reminded of a scene in Fury. (As I always do in my usual dreamy state, I associate cool movies with what I do in life)
Later on, the explosives went off without a hitch and the shockwaves were an odd relief, like a bugle that indicated that all was over and I could relax.
After the final detonation of another charge 2 days later, I wrote a quote from Fury on the walls of the bomb shelter: “A man is only as strong as the man beside him.”
I like to think that it’s gonna inspire someone in the future, at least more than the 300 ‘ORD LO’ messages scratched around the bunker as well.
When it all ended, heat rashes merely prickled my skin and we spent an afternoon dragging stores back to the containers and cleaning ourselves up.
The next 2 days were simply packing what was left and drinking ourselves silly in the evenings.
The final day was spent waiting 3 hours at our void deck with our duffle bags for the buses to arrive, going to the JEATH war museum and going to the airport.
Before we got on the plane back, I had dinner with my #ULTIMATEFANS friends at the airport; an all-day breakfast, which included a cup of coffee, milk, orange juice and a plate of bacon, salad, bread and eggs, together with a mug of Singha. This meant that I had 4 cups of drink and a table full of mockery. Who cares, I got tipsy for the third night running.
On the plane, I got a playful punch on the arm, and I smiled for the last time in Thailand.
—
[29 Jan 2015]
There’s much that I’ve left out, about the smokes and the scorn and the but my mood isn’t like that right now.
33 days to ORD and I’m weirdly not looking forward to it…