The Dark Dark Night

Sunday, November 16, 2008

I am back from 3 weeks of training in Republic of china(ROC) or more commonly called Taiwan. Not for tour or what, but for training. Army training to be exact. It is something I never wanted to do. But going overseas is a good experience to have. Although it is so much more torturous.

When we first reach there, we we stunned. No because of what we see there but is the temperature. Somehow we were convinced that we will train in a cooling environment back in Singapore. But when we walked out of the gate, we found ourselves in a temperature similar to Singapore if not hotter.

We walked through the hilly terrains of the central region of Taiwan. Climbed the famous 404 mountain and walked more than we can calculate. We went through navigation exercise from the south to the north of Taiwan. Sounds crazy? It really is. We have to carry a heavy load on us and walked through the journey. Not to mention climb mountains and cross rivers. We have a timing to keep and checkpoints to find. Not to mention when we get lost in the mountains. The extra miles that we have to walk. The temperature is also not helping us in anything.

After the navigation, we went for exercise warrior. We were really like warriors. Casting the long walk we have aside. We got lost many times during our march to our location. We climbed countless mountains and many difficult terrains. We harbour on slopes and sleep on them and wake up to fight our objectives. We even sleep in orange plantations and pomelo plantations. The worse part is that we stay on the tallest hill for 4 days compared to the rest who stayed on hills half as tall as ours. Which means we have to climb up and down whenever we go out for missions. It is really a killer for all of us. The hottest weather we encountered was WGBT 22.7. Another 0.3 and we have to cancel the training. That is how hot the weather is.

On our last night on the hill, we encountered a cold front. The temperature went down to about 12 degree Celsius. We were shivering and feeling very cold. What makes things worse was a big rain before that which made us all wet. We nearly went into hypothermia. It is sold cold that we were forced to shift harbour to the foot of the mountain where the weather is not as cold. But it is still the same because we were all wet. We had to walk don't know how long to fight our final objective which tested all our endurance.

The last few days of our training and in camp, the weather went down to 10 degrees. It was another shock to us all. We will never get to experience all these when we were in Singapore or even in tekong. So in general, it is all a bitter sweet memory which we will never forget and will pass down the memories to others.

The last 3 days 2 nights was our tour of Taiwan. It was short and we really miss it very much. We went to 2 theme parks and some historical places. But what is best is the free and easy after dinner which we were looking forward to. I eat many nice food and went to places I wanted to go. I also bought a few gifts for my friends. Too bad I don't have much money with me, or I will buy more. I am now broke and need to wait for my next pay to have some money to use. Sad.

Next up, my 3sg journey. It will begin in 1 weeks time.

After all these unforgetab

zihao blogged at 11/16/2008 11:51:00 AM

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