GPS Laos trip

SABAIDEE!!!! im back from my GPS trip to Laos!

okay i tried to upload this video for the past 2 hours but its not working :(
Its actually a tour of Ryce's homestay house in Laos, her backyard actually. It's like a mini-zoo with cows feeding on grass and its truly magical.

And the peter i mentioned in my video, is our guide. He's like this big shot who connects villages to foreign aid and helps them, and he wears a lot of string bracelets on both hands, which is given to him by villagers out of respect. He's quite gay. No, he's really gay im not kidding.

okay so we went there to teach children, and mainly because we managed to raise USD 12,000 to install a water filtration system in the village so that they can have clean drinking water, and not from the rivers.

so we went to this village, about 3 hours drive from the airport, and we had homestays at 4 different houses. I was staying at the village chief's place, and it was quite okay. Like really kampong full swing style, with the wooden floors and cold water scooped from a well-tub-thing, and we slept at the attic.

daily routine is like this:

6.45am wake up
7am breakfast
7.45am walk to sch
8am- 11.30am teach pri sch
11.30-1pm come home eat lunch, nap
1.30-4.30pm teach sec sch
4.30pm-6pm come home shower, free time
6pm dinner
7.30pm-9.30pm sharing session among ourselves
BY 10PM SLEEP ALREADY

seriously, over there you just MUST wake up early sleep early. often, i wake up as early as 5am for no reason and by 9pm im super sleepy already. Actually by 9pm all the villagers go to bed already.

so that was the routine for like 7 days.
there were some special days, when we had a tour to the water facilitation system place, or this one day trip to vang vieng, which was a touristy place for RnR.

which was where the prices were ridiculous for many things, and we slept in a sleazy chalet place for USD10 a night, i bought my beerlao tank top, and went to trek in caves and kayaked down the river.

and thus my bad sunburn and mosquito bites, sigh.

ANYWAY, i felt that this was a really good trip to Laos, and im glad i went, even though i complained so much about it before the trip. the village has this 5 year agreement to have foreign aid, and they are in their 4th year, so there were many other singapore teams who have come before us, and in a way i felt very discouraged, and wonder if what im doing, is even of impact to them.


but then again, these kids have impacted me a lot, even though ive gone through so many other experiences, met a lot of people, had a lot of good teachers, etc.
and im sure they would never have guessed that i still remember their faces, their names, even those from cambodia, which i went 18 months ago. Yes, i do still remember and feel the impact they've left me. So i guess it's the same, vice versa.

Also even if the art activities we've done with them, weren't meaningful enough, or the english we taught them, will all be forgotten, at least they've learnt it then, and at least they've been happy and really enjoyed themselves then.

So yup, this is my conclusion of Laos trip, and even though im back for more than 24 hours already, all this still feels like a dream, the experience is so surreal, as if ive never been to Laos at all. Which is really weird. Laos is like this fusion of everything, modernisation but yet backwards, French/Thai/touristy influences...

abrupt end. k bye!