Welcome to my Annual Camp 05 – Hainan photoblog. Not really a blog but sort of a diary to record my feelings and thoughts and actions over at Hainan. Enjoy reading.
WARNING: Picutures are taken at low resolution. This means that you’ll have to bear blurred or pixellated images of you click on the thumbnails.
Day #1 – Singapore to Haikou to Xin Jing Village
Singapore Changi Aiport control tower, taken from Terminal 1
Arrived at Singapore Changi Aiport at 1pm in the afternoon. Felt God damn stupid as I reached 3 hours prior to the plane flight VF8626. Anyway, reaching early is much better than arriving late. My flight leaves at 4pm, and we are only checking in at like, 3pm. So I hang out with the NCC people going to the Hainan camp. I only know a few of them so I can use my waiting time to mix around with the rest. 2 hours of socialising, how tiring.
My flight is leaving for Haikou Meilan Airport a1600 hours.
Yes I know we’re flying with ValuAir. The Perth people (people who signed up for the Perth Annual Camp) are flying with Singapore Airlines. ValuAir serves meals to us too, just that we do not have the chance to play Supermario or watch some TV programmes during the flight. Anyway I spent most of the time talking, playing cards and sleeping (unlike Bork who I think is busy eating).
Chekcing our baggae in and getting our boarding pass.
The only disadvantage flying with Valuair is that the process of checking in our luggages rocks. The efficiency is so impressive and good that it took a wholly 1 hour to check those bags in and get your damn boarding pass. The workers at the counter are communicating not via computers but shouting some weird names and codes to each other while labelling our luggages. No wonder they took so long. And some of them are seen gossipping. Wow.
Our plane.
Wnet through the custom. The custom officer told me that there is some problem with my student pass. So instead of clearing the custom easily I had to make a meaningless trip to the custom office to explain everything. The custom officer even asked me whether my student pass is a fake. Hello? Do you think I have the guts to bring a fake one? Bleh.
Our terminal is D43. One of the furthest. Tour guide explained that we’re taking ValuAir. Okay, sort of discrimination.
Flying sky high.
Yay, food!
Hungry? Bon Airpettit. Sort of a cute name. Hehe. Like how they manipulate Bon Appetit.
Tasty food.
Lunch is rice, black pepper chicken, pricked vegetables, plain water and jelly. The rice is hard, so hard that I would prefer munching on the shell. Black pepper chicken is pepperless, so let’s call it black chicken then. Pricked vegetables are great, but very salty, like being cooked in seawater. Plain water is okay, but the jelly tastes like yoghurt. It’s jelly, anyway.
Card playing.
Mr Tan (deputy headmaster) told us not to bring poker cards since we’re going there to learn and not to play these stuff which can be done back in Singapore. Obviously somebody brought them here to entertain themselves and to waste time. Fun watching how they screwed the game of bridge. :D
The plane touched down at 8pm at Haikou Meilan Airport. Only the Hainan tour guide is there to welcome us. According to the itenary the Xin Jing Village peeps are supposed to welcome us too. Maybe they’re too busy preparing supper for us. Group A and B took 2 different buses (I’m in B), and so we departed for Xin Jing Village at Wen Chang. The journey took 2 hours. This meant that we people spent a wholly 6 hours travelling + 2 hours wasted waiting for the flight.
Supper time. From left: Shan Jin, Kep Tian, Mr X and Lu Jie (the one eating).
It’s supper time when we reached Xin Jing village. Along the bumpy road to the village (the road is just sand and dirt, not tarmac) we saw a small community with LAN shops, restaurant and a school. We thought that’s the village we’re going to stay for the next 4 days. Wrong. That’s Guan Nan Village. Xin Jing Village is much deeper into the woods.
My room.
After supper we’re arranged to stay in 3 houses. The first one has 2 rooms, each has a capacity of 10. Second has has 2 rooms too, 6 people per room. The last one has 2 rooms again, 8 people per room. Me, Shan Jin, Yuanjun, Lu Jie, Wei Xiang and Jason took the second house. 3 double deckers. I took the upper bed nearest to the window, so that I won’t feel too warm if the weather goes cranky. Sleep.
