Camping, round one

In Thailand all students are a member of the scouts, it's a huge tradition. In my school the kids came in their scout uniforms every Thursday, regardless of whether or not they had any scout activities going on.

This would be my first of two camping trips. Firstly, I didn't realise this camping trip involved a school. I had been invited camping by Ben a few weeks ago, and gladly accepted. I had seriously no idea what to expect. I thought it would be me, him, the guy whose come out with us a few times. With a tent, out in the middle of nowhere, maybe a jungle or on the side of a mountain.

It was in fact, Ben's school that we were going camping with, as part of the scouts. He arrived to pick me up and we drove to the school. Ben's school is a secondary school and college. He only teaches in the college and his class were all college students. All the college students came as well as the oldest year group at the secondary school. I drive to the camp with Ben.

At the camp the kids sit down in the 'square' and there is a debriefing. They are then taken off by the camp staff to do initial 'welcome' talks. While they are in the main flag field, the teachers start checking all of the student's bags. They were looking for contraband, like cigarettes and alcohol. Once the bags were all checked, anything that was found to have something suspicious in was brought to the front. Then the teachers headed to their rooms to dump their bags. I headed off with Ben and a few others to the other side of the camp, about a mile away.

Suddenly it changed, it went from an out door field with old fashioned climbing equipment, over growth and generally a real outdoor-camping feel, to a high end, very posh camping resort. It had out door swimming pools, quad bikes, paint-balling, abseiling, kiaking, canoeing and much more. And the room was amazing. Big, soft beds, air conditioning and hot water! And internet. This was going to be a good weekend.

For the afternoon on the first day, the Friday, they did a trek all around the camp, meeting groups of scout leaders (teachers like Ben) and had to repeating some slogans, perform some group activities and get a booked signed before moving on.

In the evening we ate outside, there was a huge variety of food and we were very close to a river. The camp itself was up in the mountains and a river ran straight through it. The view on the first night was amazing.

Every single student in Thailand is a member of the scouts. It's a huge tradition out there and at my school every Thursday they would come into school in scout uniform, regardless of whether or no scout activities were going on.

That night they had music and giant bomb fires and it was a late night making sure all the students had gone to bed. When I finally got into bed I fell straight to sleep.

In the morning we all got up for breakfast and then had our 'activities' assigned to us. Groups of scouts moved between each activity, and they varied from individual challenges to team challenges. Before and after they began there was more scout chants to remember and some games to play. I was given a megaphone with one group, and checked to see what basic English action words they knew, like, sit down, stand up, jump, roll, ext.

The activity I spent most of the day on was a rope line they had to walk along. But me and other teachers would kick at the rope, making it wobble back and forth, making it much more difficult. It was a lot of fun.

In this picture we can see one of the teachers "attacking" one of the students with a type of Poison Ivy. Thailand once again giving the middle finger to health and safety...

In the afternoon I moved around to see all the activities, a few of which can be seen below...

Once that was over, and after dinner, there were more camp fires, more music and dancing, more fun. It was another good, but exhausting night. I again slept very well. The next day on Sunday morning there was more scout specific stuff that the teachers didn't really take much part in, it was a mass meeting all run by the staff who worked at the camp. While this was going on, I attacked the adventure-ness of the luxury part of the camp.

Paint-balling, abseiling, quad biking and then went for a swim to end the afternoon. There was no lunch, the camp started to empty and the students began to pile back into the coaches. Camp was over.
I went back home with Ben. But this entire weekend had cost me nothing at all. I wanted to do something to say thanks. We were passing through an area that Ben boasted did the best steaks in Thailand.

"I'll buy us a steak lunch."
"Okay!"

It was a good steak. It really was. It was served with milk, and I think what Ben was trying to tell me, was the milk I was drinking came from the cow I was eating... if that was the case, wow! That's just so strange!

We stopped off at some shops on the way back, and I didn't get home until the early evening. After my morning of charging around I was very tired. I had school first thing in the morning, so I had a chilled night working on lesson plans for the next few days and went to sleep nice and early.