liberated and empowered, and i'm not crapping you

i'm back from the trip. have been back for 4 days, to be honest, but the hectic whirlpool of city life tends to suck my lifeforce away like a man who's just stumbled out of the Saharan desert to find an ice cold bottle of Coke sitting right at his feet, replete with a wedge of lemon and a straw. in this situation, if he doesn't suck at the coke with all the mighty power of a titan, spartan and the hulk added together, then he's more than likely catatonic from dehydration. but i digress.

the trip was a mighty, mighty time of ministry. usually, i would choose to describe ministry as being a source of comfort. a time of introspection and genuflection. a moment of repentance and covenance with God. but this time, this time, i'm brought to my knees and more. it was a titanic wave of might that burst into my life like a supernova and illuminated previously darkened innermost desires and insitinctive needs. it was a healer and a tutor, a judge and a shelter. personification is but one means by which i can attempt to describe how i was so touched by my experiences, but never will these feeble allusions be adequate. nevermind - a day's experience transcends a thousands scrolls, anyway. (and kudos to the chinese sage/scholar/proverb man who said du2 wan4 juan3 shu1 bu4 ru2 xing2 wan4 li3 lu4 - reading 10,000 books is lesser than travelling 10,000li)

i entered the trip with a heart filled brimful with apprehension and anticipation. apprehension, because i know that i had been through a dark spot of spiritual parlaying with the devil even a week prior to embarkment, and in my opinion, i worried about being a liability and weak link in the team. thank God for dorothy, who opened her heart and shared about her own concerns and fears, that i found yet another beacon of light in those times of despair and gloom. thank God for His love and His masterful plans for me, and the innumerous blessings of friends who surrounded me with their love. thus i commenced the week long journey with 20 others to northern thailand, starting with the seemingly innocuous budget flight that nearly threatened to remove the loose screws of my head during descent to Suvarabhumi Airport in BKK- poor pressurization equipment, i say, is a menace to public health. anyway, i'm jumping all over the place, so do forgive me for my mad hatter thoughts. i'll try to keep this soliloquy to its proper chronological order, but i assure you, with the rainbow spangled pile of experiences, it's going to be an uphill task. so hang on, bear with me, and try to enjoy the ride.

i woke at 3am on the morning of the 13th, tense right down to the miniature-est muscle fibre bundles of my toes, complete with frizzy hair - anxiety and excitement brings out the best of non-caffeinated highs in people. washed, brushed, dressed and breakfasted with a hearty bowl of banana nut crunch cereal before setting off for the airport, as i (rightly) anticipated an arduous course of starvation later on in the day due to the breakneck speed of commuting. Dad was a good sport and gave me a lift to changi, despite the fact that he really needed his sleep (sorry dad) and it was my responsibility to get there myself, but anyway he slipped me an extra 50 bucks too, on the way there. i remember androitly informing him in a droll voice that i wouldn't need the extra money and lugging a 0.000001g note around was going to make me feel very stressed for the next 7 days, but i think God (whom, i postulate, created the saying: Father knows best) was in a particularly humorous mood that day and decided to show me just how much i was going to thank my father for the 50 bucks in the next 6 days. perhaps it's the lack of judgment in a female, but then again, i now am of the persuasion that fathers do know best, right alongside the irrefutable lifestyle facts that guys do in fact make decisions faster and drive better. 5 minutes away from changi airport, as i glimpsed my first sight of the control tower, i began breaking into a gregorian chant litany of "oh my gosh i can't believe i'm going to fly to thailand, like, right now", repeated at 2 second intervals for approximately 60mil times. it was a miracle (or the effects of sheer exhaustion) that my father didn't reach over from his driver's seat and bonk me forcefully on my head to shut my gab, but anyway i was making a nuisance of myself and he didn't try to stop me much, besides the one time he asked me irritably: so do you want to turn back and not go? of course i said no. and of course, i continued my chanting till we pulled up outside the imposing glass doors of T1. right after i stepped out of the car, i met min darling, whose parents also escorted her to the airport to see her off. unfortunately, in the excitement of the moment and the abjectly frightening realization that i was now committed to a one-way-no-turning-back path, i forgot to kiss my dad before he drove away. which was one of the bigger regrets in my heart then, but i trust in God to bless all my family even as i abscond to the ends of the earth.

in the chillingly cryogenic environment of the airport, i was reconciled with the team of mission troopers - there was nicole, wanting, min dear, dani, dot, jo, and me for the gals' side; anand, sam, simon, weiyi, aric, ryan, josh, garry, daniel, ps tang, jon choo, jon tang, ivan and nick to make up the full strength of the team with their masculinity. it was almost surreal to see 21 very very psyched up youngsters prance around the airport with freaking big bags, oblivious to the unearthly hour (5am) and the more than irked glances from fellow budget passengers trying to get themselves checked in at the queue made eternal by our entourage. it was the very first time i've left the country without the company of my family - even at the ripe old age of 19. goes to show how much of a greenhouse flower i am, but i thank God for the opportunity.

the flight itself took no more than 2.5hrs, and was rather uneventful save for the disturbing fact that anand was seated next to me (just kidding! :D) and the crazy pressurization upon descent. after we passed customs, it was a straight, no-nonsense rush for the 2 minivans, hired for the entire duration of the trip to convey us comfortably from BKK to noh bo and back. our collection of luggages and personal effects would have put imelda marcos to great shame, but then again, we hail from bright, sunny and kiasu singapore, so there wasn't much to be said in self-defence. the vans were fitted out with state-of-the-art entertainment systems and full blast airconditioning, which ensured that most of us could get the sleep, rest and relaxation we wanted for the 12hr ride across the countryside up to the myanmese-thai border. unfortunately, even as i artfully doled out cinnarizine to my fellow mission troopers to ward off motion sickness, my self-assuredness kicked me hard in the butt - i believe i was the only one of 2 people physically ill on the upwards trip out of the entire bus' capacity of 11 passengers (driver not counted!) and thus had to suffer the humiliation of trying valiantly (and failing) to find a rubbish bin to dispose of the bag of puke over at mae sot, our last pitstop for dinner before noh bo proper. dinner was a grand affair, though marred slightly by the ominous warnings akin to armeggeddon prophesies by ps tang, who more than gravely informed us that it would be our "last meal" that looked half decent and was actually half edible until we complete the mission trip from noh bo in 4 days' time. that was probably not a very wise announcement to make, considering the fact that garry had, by then, acquired a state of semi-lunacy and was still serving as our treasurer. upon the go-ahead, he went all out nuts and ordered a full meal for himself, permitted us to order a large deluxe pizza for 6 people to share, and even had a chicken cordon bleu as the 2nd helping for himself again even as most of the team had lumbered off to semi-consciousness following supremely good food of thunderously sinful proportions. the quality of the food surprised even a cynic as myself - the decor of the place was, arguably, equivalent to the better haunted places of singapore, replete with spectacular displays of spiderwebs and knobbly wooden furniture and dingy lighting, but the food, wow. you wouldn't believe the fact that they managed to give authentic french/italian names to the dishes proffered on the menu, let along be able to serve up every single thing listed on the 20plus page long bound catalogue AND still not compromise on quantity or quality. i think they deserve 3 more michelin stars than those fools who grill half a tomato with sea salt over in the posh corners of the world - they've conquered the limitations of space, time and supply to overwhelm our tastebuds with a gastronomic feast fit for an upmarket restaurant in milan. but anyway, we chalked up a combined bill of 2000+ baht, equivalent to 100 plus singapore bucks, and probably more than what the proprietors could count for the entire night after we left their place in stunning shambles and emptied their stores of all wheat, flour and oil. in the course of dinner, our party was graced by the presence of rev yee, who was the dean of the anglican ministry in noh bo, as well as a few other very prominent missionaries on their way back to BKK.

dinner done, we hauled ass and moved onwards to noh bo academy. that was another 2.5hrs and honestly, just as i was about to seriously consider relinquishing my weak stomach's grip on the wonderful dinner thanks to the bumpy ride, we arrived at a pitch dark place, where all we could see was a wizened old man's face (the schoolteacher) lit by a single light bulb suspended in midair. it was drizzling lightly, heralding our arrival as missionaries and youth workers with more than a little dampness and chill. after 30 arduous minutes of luggage passing along a human chain (no porters, steep stairs, pitch black = logistic disaster) we managed to settle in, get ourselves showered with ice cold water (i was amazed not to find icicles forming on my hair after i rained a bucketful of the noxious stuff down my head) and tucked in for the night. and that was just how we spent our first night in noh bo - in accompaniment with many exotic bugs, beetles, flies, insects of unknown species and origin, candlelight, the stink of insect coils and a curiously hard and scratchy hand-woven tatami.

i'll tell about the 2nd day's adventures in the next post! :D