Upon reaching the very deserted military airport we had to take a 2.5 hours bus ride to reach our new home the SAIYOK CAMP. Saiyok Camp was really big and we lived with the Thai soldiers. The very first day of our arrival we had a lot of admin work to be settled. Luckily Chen had already done some of the maps since he's the advance party but there were still lots more maps to be settled. When we finally had time to visit the canteen we were greeted by a lot of trannies... The most famous one was none other than the Jennie... I have to admit that the canteen was like a mini shopping mall, selling all sorts of things and the quality was not bad. Though the stuffs were mostly fakes, they were of quite good quality and pretty cheap. The food there was really nice and damn cheap too. On many days we when we felt that we are too loaded we even had zhu chao.

We set off for our first exercise on the 3rd day if I didn't remember wrongly. For that particular exercise we played as enemies again and we really kicked certain infantry companies' butts. We did mortar drills too and we had to deploy again and again until we felt like throwing our stuff at the crappy F.S.O. He's just like any other officers, talked and sounded really nice but as a sergeants I knew it's all bull shit... They could not see what's happening on the actual ground most of the time and just crapped on during debriefs like things were really as easy as they said. While we were doing our own stuff we were lucky enough to witness the locals' weekly ritual. One amazing thing was that the vendors they literally followed us everywhere. They simply brought all their stuff from Saiyok to Khao Meng which was like 2 hours ride away. They were so enterprising and while we thought that we were clinching good deals we were actually being over-charged compared to the shops outside the military sites.

When we got back to Saiyok had our happy hour which most of us drank like there was no tomorrow and some of us got really high. I was the duty specialist the next day and I had to literally wake each and every one of the men up because all of them were knocked out by the alcohol the night before. That night itself we guys had fun watching some Thai dancers performing for us and the guys were all trying to take photos with the dancers. That evening before the night fell we were very lucky to witness a rainbow and CO thought that's a good sign for our coming ATEC.

ATEC finally started after 2 years. I would be short on the details. There's only one particular mission that was worth mentioning. Mission 2 was the most exciting yet the most slack mission out of the 3. For some reason F.S.O. deployed us besides an axis which was being guarded by the enemies. We tried to be tactical as we approached the deployment site. But something unexpected happened which led to the exciting car chase later on. As it's really dark that night and we were being tactical, as the vehicle commander of the 2nd vehicle, I was only able to see the dim red lights of the 1st vehicle. Upon reaching a cross junction, the red lights of the 1st vehicle suddenly shot ahead many meters and I hurried the driver to catch up with it. When we came to a halt at the next T-junction I realised something that was seriously wrong! The vehicle I had been following was a civilian's vehicle! Somewhere along the road I had lost the 1st vehicle! The convoy immediately came to a halt and we tried to make contact with PC through the signal set. PC then informed us that his vehicle was already destroyed by the enemy and he sounded very pissed with us. But GO TO HELL LINUS! It's not like it's our fault that we lost contact with you, you as the point vehicle never make sure the ones behind were following you! Don't you know the responsibilities of the point vehicle when traveling in a convoy? When making any turn YOU are to slow down and make sure that the vehicle behind you knows that it's supposed to make a turn! Stop acting like you are so HIGH AND MIGHTY and you are so smart that everyone around you are supposed to know what the hack you are thinking when you say "you all know what I mean la hor" everytime you give a briefing. You always think people are stupid and don't know what to do but GO TO HELL LINUS, you are supposed to convey your ideas to us and not always ask sarcastic questions like "then what are you waiting for?" For your information, most of the times we are waiting for you to give the green light or sometimes we really don't know what the hell you want and it's nothing about our IQ but rather that you are a weirdo so we don't think like you do so you have to tell us! I seriously think you lack of communication skills so you should go for some courses to pick them up. For all the times you made sarcastic remarks about other officers like Da Hua or even the one you called Chicken Fucker, I felt that actually you were much much much worse than them. You think you are close with the men and the specialists suck but let me tell you one thing! A lot of us including the men think you are fucking UNPROFESSIONAL! You are biased to the core and you only dare to throw your weight around at certain men only. Men who are useful to you or you don't dare to touch you simply close your eyes or rather you turn blind! Yes I admit what you only dare say behind some of us specialists that we may hardly shout or have much control over the men but at least we are not biased like you. If we don't shout at some men, we don't shout at the others unless they deserve it. We don't suck their cocks like you do. We don't shout because to us all of them are of our age and they deserve to be treated like a human being unlike when in BMT and we understand that shouting will not help at all. Oh yes you may think you are capable and I admit that you do more work than our ex-PC but in terms of EQ I think you are better too simply because you are a fucking hypocrite! Of course I could not say all these in front of you but not because I am a hypocrite but because of your rank I don't want to get into unnecessary troubles as I still have to attend university. I think I wasted too much of my efforts writing about you and I should stop here and go on with the rest of my Thailand experience. After we had made contact with PC he instructed us to go back to link up with him. It's like how stupid! He's angry we lost him but if we had not we would have died with him and now he wanted us to go back and die! And so we went and when we came to the cross junction I saw his vehicle on the right which meant he turned left just now on the way and so my vehicle slowed down to find him. Suddenly my PS shouted from the back and screamed at us to get away from there. That's when I realised all those people standing around my PC's vehicle were all staring at us in shock and confusion and when we started to accelerate they too quickly got on their vehicle and started firing at us! They were the enemies! As we sped off 2 of our vehicles were shot down but we drove away anyway. After some distance we went into hiding and discussed about what to do next. Then the umpire messaged us that the 2 vehicles that were destroyed needed to go back to the spot where they were destroyed and so the 2 vehicles left and we were left with only 2 vehicles. And then came PC's instruction to head back to south to link up with him which would mean to go back to the cross junction again! S this time we approached the cross junction with caution and we switched off the headlights. As we came to the cross junction we suddenly switched on the lights again and accelerated past the junction, hoping to catch the enemies off guard. When we slowed down at the T-junction again to look for PC this time, I was suddenly blinded by the reflections of the high beams of a vehicle which was coming at us at high speed from behind! We accelerated immediately and made a left turn onto the main road. This was the beginning of the dramatic car chase. The enemy vehicles continued to pursue us at high speed, at a speed which was considered cheating for a tank as they were actually rovers simulating tanks. Suddenly Zelgan's TES set sounded and followed by everyone else's on the vehicle. We were killed in action! The "damaged" vehicles came to a halt and everyone got off. We were recorded as killed in action by the umpires and that's the end of our 2nd mission! I would say that's actually a blessing in disguise because even if we were to deploy successfully at the designated site, we would have been wiped out ultimately since it's just besides the enemy's axis and our effort would have been wasted. The rest of the ATEC were just like any other exercises we had before except that this time we had very friendly umpires who even cooked maggi with us.

After ATEC the days we spent at Saiyok Camp were just canteen and LAN and bargaining with the shopkeepers so I would not say much about that. We guys were busy taking pictures with the pretty ladies over there! And then we set off for our R & R. I thought the R & R was actually much better than what everyone else thought. I was fascinated by the locals' cultures and their ways of living. We went to the Death Railway, the zoo, the Floating Market. We really had a lot of fun for those who were going there for the 1st time. As for shopping we went to this giant supermarket known as Big C. For the R and R it's better if you look at the photos than hear me describe them. So go take a look at the pictures! Finally we embarked on our trip back to Singapore and it's really goodbye to Thailand! By the time we touched down we all knew that ORD was imminent and we went home all feeling good about it... I forgot about one thing... I think the 0730 incident was very funny! Haha...