Two weeks in Thailand.

I have been away.

Everyone starts perking up when I say I've been away for two weeks. "Ooh, where did you go? Who did you go with? Did you have fun?" The answers are, Thailand, about 700 men and no, not really. It was with the army, on re-service.

I decided to go all teenage and keep a log of what happened there. I actually wanted to bring a laptop for that purpose, but chickened out at the last moment. The army gets all paranoid about electronic equipment, you see. How are they to know that your automated chicken plucker isn't a secret assassination device, and such. So it was all typed on my phone, and I'm pretty impressed with myself that it spans almost 14,000 words. That's a lot of bollocks to talk, and I am apparently capable of it. No wonder I'm single.

So yes, do enjoy, however much you can enjoy the thoughts of one man on re-service for three weeks.

16 September
After far too much fear-mongering in Singapore, we're in Sai Yok camp, Thailand, at last. If the people in charge had their druthers, we'd have been leashed at the airport. Do not this. Must not that.

Granted, I agree you can't just throw a hundred idiots together and expect them to behave, but some of it was a bit much. We were supposed to wear collared shirts at the airport, because you can't possibly look neat without a collar. And no boots, because we weren't supposed to alert the public that there was an army presence at the airport. Look, a hundred twenty-somethings, all male, all queueing at the same gate is going to attract attention. Especially when they start getting yelled at to, 'Form up into packet level and look for your IC.'

After some serious synchronised ageing, we eventually got on the plane a little after midnight. I got a window seat, which meant I got to mentally go, 'Whee! I'm going to die!' as the plane took off. I've never been great with flying, seeing as how I do so little of it. Very similar to how I am with sex, hmmm.

The flight was only two hours, but got seriously uncomfortable after the first half hour. The air was thin, the pressure kept trying to implode my head and it was fucking freezing. I remembered then, the previous trip with the army, six years ago. I think it might have been my first flight ever, and I really did think I was going to die, and panicked. People walking around normally confused me. Didn't they realise we were all going to die? I'm a little better now. Less, 'I'm going to die!' and more, 'This is really piss-offing.'

We reached the Bangkok airport at something like 2am, Thai time. Did you know not all airports are 24 hours? You probably do. I had no idea, and it was interesting, being in a dark, deserted airport that serves a rather busy city in the day. Interesting for about ten minutes. The only things to see were the men I would be seeing for the next two weeks. And probably naked, at the showers. I shuddered,even though it was not cold.

Eventually, we got shunted into buses for the four-hour drive to the camp. Most of the bus ride was uncomfortable sleep punctuated with flashes of irritation, every time I just managed to fall asleep and the bus went over a huge bump. The seats were tiny, and I ended up inadvertently snuggling up to the guy next to me. We woke at the same time, practically in each other's arms. We solemnly said nothing to each other.

Finally, the camp. After getting shouted at a little bit, we picked up our bags and got assigned beds. The barracks looked, smelled, sounded and worked like a piece of shit built sixty years ago out of wood. Yay, 2cm foam mattresses. Yay, heavily vandalised metal lockers that have no working parts. Aha, I hear you say, a locker has no working parts. Lockers are supposed to have doors, maybe a shelf, yes? Not these. They were the equivalent of an elderly person in a poor country. Broken too many times and mended badly with duct tape.

There was a parade. It was thousands of men standing in the same hall, shuffling their feet on command. After the requisite number of well-intentioned buzzwords were droned at us in a speech from some really important person, we were allowed to leave.

Yay, canteen. This is the centre of the camp, it seems. It has food that is not crap and inexpensive. Touristy stuff that we couldn't give a shit about in Singapore but cannot resist now. Internet cafes that sometimes work. And Thai girls who flirt on demand so you buy their food. Sometimes, it's attractive and effective. The other times, you realise with horror that it's a man with long hair.

We did some actual army work, the boys and I. And then rewarded ourselves by returning to the canteen and eating and drinking ourselves stupid.

So here I lie on my 2cm mattress, having had to listen to just about everyone else kiss their girlfriends good night. 'No, you hang up! Hee hee!' And I am sleeping in a room with fifty men. And I have to wake at six tomorrow morning. It is depressing. Perhaps I will spend the rest of my money on tom yam soup tomorrow and hope for a peaceful, sour death from overdose.

Well, this will probably be the longest log for this trip. Hopefully, not the last. 

17 September
The night was cold. I know this because I was dragged, slowly but inevitably awake, by the sensation of having to pee like a motherfucker.

It was a Bad Move, albeit involuntary. The thing with nice rustic places like this camp is, when it's 2am in the morning, it is creepy as shit. Just to make a point, the creepiest images surfaced in my mind, from all the horror movies I had the stupidity to watch. Have you any idea what it feels like to be at a urinal, certain that the head of that little boy from Ju-On was going to pop around the corner?

I made it back to bed, only tripping over five things in the dark. And then I had to contend with Adrian's snoring. Oh, people snore, get over it, I hear you say. His snoring is of a special calibre. If snoring indicated penis size, he would have to keep it coiled around his waist. It sounds like someone trying to kill a pig with a chainsaw.

We're just back from breakfast, which was shit. And he's doing it again. But it is all right when I'm not trying to sleep. Kind of like murderous background muzak.

Well, that was a fair bit for it being 8.30am. About weather, toiletry habits and snoring. You content genius, Tim. Let's see what you can come up with later.

Right. Fifteen hours later, there remains nothing noteworthy. A lot of work was done today, in the face of bureacracy. There is this to be said - if we do go to war, Singapore will probably roll over and die. The bulk of our defense seems to be the reservice troops. People like me, except less awesome. People who don't want to be here, but still try to do a good job. Except the army actually makes it hard for us to do that.

Going by general sentiment, hearsay and drawn conclusions - ten retarded people do the planning for the whole army. We had a compulsory form to fill out a few days ago, in Singapore. Apparently the army's hired some consultant for what must be a lot of money, and one of his ideas is forms to ask you what you hope to learn from this exercise, why, and what obstacles stand in the way.

It's really, really stupid. If you're lucky, you're dealing with a lot of people who don't speak English very well, don't give a fuck about it, but still want to finish well, and finish quickly. If you're not, you're dealing with a lot of people who don't speak English very well, don't give a fuck in general, and who will stab your ass outside of camp if you blink the wrong way.

You are giving them learning goal forms to fill out. While refusing to grant essential equipment to troopers with a deadline closer than your testicles to your buttocks. You are not doing well.

Stuff got done, nonetheless. Some table banging necessary. We worked in 40 degree weather. I wake in five hours. I can't sleep naked, mostly because mosquitoes will bite my unmentionables. It is only the second day in Thailand. And I miss...well, things. And people I really shouldn't.

I want my money back.

18 September
4.30am
Finally remembering to put timestamps on these things. It is Not Nice. Not that I've never been awake at this hour, but it's not usually due to: 1. Mosquitoes. 2. Pee. 3. Snoring.

The mosquitoes here must be starved. They bite every exposed surface possible, and then some. I'm wrapped up in a blanket, with an army tee on. They've got my hands and face, fine. But there's a bite on my chest. I have an image of a desperate mosquito repeatedly trying to stab me through a layer of blanket and army tee, screaming, 'COMME ON BAYBEH, MOMMA'S GOTTA EAT!' Well done, mosquito. You'll excuse me for wishing you and your unborn children die in a fire.

Getting up in the middle of the night to have a pee shouldn't normally be an obstacle to continued restful sleep. Here, though, you first have to pass the dexterity test to determine if you're worthy.

Navigate some 10m of narrow walkway in the dark, strewn with new obstacles every day. Then down a long flight of stairs and another 20m to the toilet. Pee while hoping desperately that there are no mummy/little girl combo ghost teams waiting to kill you or laugh at your small penis. And then up the stairs, and through the walkway, back to bed. Congratulations, you have managed to pee successfully, and are now as awake as fuck.

What happens if you fail the test? Quite likely, you trip along the dark narrow walkway and fall onto a comatose person, dragging whatever you can get a hold of with you while yelling, 'OHSHIT OHSHIT!' The guy you fell on, who doesn't know what the fuck, starts yelling, 'OHSHIT OHSHIT!' as well, flailing wildly and knocking, indeed, shit over. The lights come on and the seventy men you've just wakened stare at you in the arms of another man, your face inches from his. Congratulations, not only have you failed to pee, you also look like you just tried to buttsex someone.

Given that all went well, and you didn't do the buttsex fall, you now want to get back to sleep, yes? That's where Adrian comes in. I swear the little bastard times it. Every time you're just about to drift off into sweet, sweet slumber, the screams of a dying pig slice into your consciousness.

And so it is, that at 4.30am, in a bunk in Thailand, I have done more writing than I do in a month, usually. I will now proceed to read off my phone while crying softly to myself. Let's see what happens later in the day.

...die, Adrian. Please?

10.40pm
Not very much happened, army-wise. Well, except for the usual inefficiency and incompetence in the supposed upper ranks that permeate this organisation. Shamelessly quoting myself, you can't treat us like the indentured slaves we were back in active service. We're reservists now, back but for a few weeks a year. We can and will get pissed off.

At the canteen this morning, I was shopping for earplugs when I noticed a shopkeeper in distress. The shop shuttered-gate thing couldn't fully open. I walk over and offer to help, and after letting me stew in my own fetid juices for a bit, the two mates I was with came over as well.

After much grunting, hammering and screw...drivering, success!! We started going off, and one of the keepers said another had gone to buy Coke to thank us. We gallantly refused, but were overpowered by sheer force of hospitality. And so we strode off, toting two antennae, an oversized wire drum and three cans of Coke. Only in Thailand.

Tonight, I begin my battle vs mosquitoes. I'm sleeping in a fresh set of uniform, sleeves down. Yes, army jammies. And I'm sleeping under a mosquito net - a sort of fine gauze pyramid you stretch over your bed. Cuts airflow by 50% and makes you feel like a princess. Whether or not it has any effect on mosquitoes remains to be seen. I may just keep using it for the princess thing.

Tomorrow, the engineers are going to blow stuff up. Like, for srs, with plastic explosive and stuff. And I'm going to be there, with my karma, next to a shit ton of the stuff.

If I do not make it, please feed my dog and do not smack him too much. He can't help being retarded.

19 September
10am
Hot. Hungry. We're in some patch of Thai wilderness, waiting for everything to be set up so things can go boom. Have been for the past two hours. Presumably, stuff is going on inside there. I should not bemoan my lot, which is an idle one.

Something about being here makes you eat more, I think. I don't usually get hungry this quickly. Then again, it may have to do with the fact that breakfast was a large ladle of noodles fried in deer excrement. I worry that I've gone posh, and a meal that I do not enjoy somehow does not count. Maybe I could go over to the villagers near by and barter for food with...jokes they will not understand. Well, so much for that idea.

It is getting hotter. I'm not even supposed to have my phone with me here, because it apparently may make things go boom. I tried telling them only the iPhone 4 has that effect, mostly on women, but I got yelled at. I also got yelled at for smoking. It was the no-reply-required type of yelling, the basic, 'Fuck you!!' model.

The idea behind the yelling is that there are things that go boom nearby. But the things that go boom are not even within sight. You're allowed to smoke just outside petrol stations, where you can do some real damage. Also, the Thai soldiers are smoking, but the Singapore army will not touch them, literally, if they can at all help it.

If it's safe enough for some people to smoke but not others, one can only conclude that the yelling is less about safety and more about the size of the yeller's penis. I wonder how much I would have to pay one of the untouchable Thai soldiers to go up to that surly old piece and shit and pimpslap him across the face with an old fish.

Right. Now to find a quiet spot to pee. It is pretty much the only legal entertainment here. Well, and apparently discussing football, which the three boys here are doing. I do not Get It, and hope they do not steal my seat. Else I may have to pee on it to save my spot.

A moped has just pulled in, with a mother and son village team on it. 'Cold drink, ice cream, coconut,' she declared. I got a bottle of coffee which was 50% sugar, 45% water. Still nice to have a cold drink.

Also, one of the rare non-fuckhead warrant officers just trot up on foot. Apparently, he has a Thai wife, and speaks the language fluently. The first thing he did was to hop onto one of the Thai trooper's hammock and start humping him from behind. Then he chatted everyone up and started showing them pictures of his Thai wife on his mobile phone while smoking a cigarette. Yes, all at the same place where I get in shit for doing those things.

But it is fine. He's a nice, fun chap, and prolly earned all the perks he enjoys. I am jealous - I'd like to be able to talk to the Thais too. Ah, language.

10.45pm
Well, that was hectic. In a watching-a-snail-die kind of way, where things are happening towards an eventual goal, but ever so slowly. Let's see if I can keep things in order.

Mister Fuckyou made his second appearance. He came up to our little posse and asked who the one smoking was. Wondering just how much fuckyou he wanted to milk out of one cigarette, I raised my hand. No fuckyous. Apparently he wanted to explain that it was necessary for him to do that, and wanted me to understand. 'We must show them (the Thais, presumably) that we are not like that, that we have discipline.' Hey, he's not such a bad chap after all, I thought.

Nope, he was a right fucker. Right after that, his warrant officers and officer friends arrived, and smoked cigarettes all over the place, most very much nearer the explosives than I was. And he was quite happily discussing cures for erectile dysfunction or something, right next to them. Penis over safety theory proved.

And you know, it wouldn't have been so bad, had he not then had the audacity to tell a Thai soldier to put his cigarette out. The sad thing is, most rankers in the army tend to behave like this, rather than the happening hammock humper. Do what I say, not what I FUCKYOU.

The actual blowing up of stuff happened after that. I was hoping to be standing well back looking at chicken shrapnel fly by. No such luck. We were all stuffed into this concrete bunker thing. It's like an upside-down shoebox with the front bit cut out. Except concrete. And there we hung out, with helmets on and fingers in our ears.

So no, no mushroom cloud, no comically dead chicken with Xs for eyes sailing through the air. There was a big bang, though. A series of big bangs, actually - they may even have had enough plastic explosive to finally pop the stick out of Mr Fuckyou's ass. They were grand bangs, with little shockwaves through the ground and everything. But not really worth staying up for, especially when you're facing the bangs buttocks-first, in a concrete shoebox, with a helmet on and fingers in your ears. For close to an hour, in the midday Thai sun.

Before we were allowed to leave the area, we had to do the standard declaration and pat-down thing. It goes, 'I, NRIC rank and name, hereby declare that I do not have any RAI, fireworks or ammunition in my possession, sir.' We repeat after an officer, you see. And then I wondered, in this chant I've been repeating for years, what the hell is RAI? I asked the people around me, and no one knew. I came up with a few possibilities.

Really Axplosive Item? Sounds like a stretch, but this is the same army that pronounces 'strap', 'stripe'. And spells garters, 'gutters'. Or perhaps I could raise my hand and declare Adrian an RAI. 'Yes sir! Adrian is a Really Annoying Item, especially at night. Please take him away. Finally, it could be Really Awesome Item. Which would give me a clean slate. I never have any really awesome items to declare.

In any case, we left the exploded area soon after. Everyone had sunburn - the Thai sun is brutal, and we're all on malaria pills, which apparently increase your sensitivity to sun. It was the pretty kind of sunburn too, the kind that looks like you dashed blusher across the middle of your face. With a quick costume change, we could have gone from mean green soldiers to the starring cast of My Fair Lady.

Some tedious work later, we finally got to hit the canteen to stuff fase. I stuffed mine so massively I worry that I'll have to take a dump in the forest when we're out tomorrow, and in so doing, propel myself by sheer force of excretion over a cliff. These are real dangers, my friend.

The duders wanted to LAN it up after that. I was a little reluctant - it'd been a long time since I did any sort of gaming, and I don't like to suck. We played DotA, an updated version with which I was unfamiliar, four of us against the CPU. Lo and behold, I did not suck! It's hard to suck with Keeper of the Light, anyway. And though the AI was decent, you'd still need to have the intelligence of a Down's turkey to even come close to losing.

Tomorrow noon, we go out to the jungle. And stay there overnight. See, if you were camping it might be fun. When you're in the army, it's just shit. My old skills of assembling a passable sleeping surface in a confined space will be put to the test. Signallers sleep at the back of the Landrover, you see. Well, if we're lucky. And the available sleeping area is like the plank that friendly pirates make people take walks on, except shorter. You have to fool your body into thinking there is more space so it will go to sleep. And just when you're drifting off, it's likely someone will come and yell at you in an urgent voice. The effect is much like Adrian's snoring, but with words instead of the wail of a dying pig.

We're not supposed to bring our phones out with us to the jungle, as there are going to be explosives again, and phones might set them off. Maybe I should make a trip to the cybercafe tomorrow to reasearch this. I'm pretty sure whoever came up with the rule was watching too many spy movies. But you know what? Even if I presented a thirty-page thesis, 'Phones Do Not Make Things Go Boom, Planes Do. The Words Look Similar But Phones And Planes Are Not The Same', they still wouldn't change their minds. And you'll still get the very same piece of shit who told you not to bring your phone talking into his, right next to the pewpew. Do as I say, not as I do.

Well, maybe I'll leave my phone. When it rains in Thailand, it does not fuck around. Even keeping it snugly between my butt cheeks would not keep it dry - and I would walk funny.

We see how, lah.

20 September
3.30pm
That's the morning gone then. There was much to do in a short time, one of which was giving the medics a crash course on how to operate signal equipment. 'Press this butan. Talk. Talk finish, leggo butan.'

And as you can see, I did bring my phone with me into the jungle. I think it's one of those things - I just want something with a screen and butanz to press. Well, maybe not during sex, though it's very similar. You have something stimulating to monitor, and butanz to press. If you press butanz in right combination, sometimes can execute hadouken.

I slept like a retarded baby last night, with occasional twitches and odd noises, but soundly. The mosquito net appears effective, although that could be a ploy on their part to lure me into a false sense of security. On my last night here, they will swarm and descend upon me like the vegeance of people who get passed over for promotion, and I will be sucked unto nothing but a dry, barren husk. It might happen. The bastards bite my bottom when I poo. Anything that bites bottoms when they are in use is capable of great evil.

Nonetheless, they left me alone last night. And so did my bladder, which normally has a vendetta against me. I slept at eleven and woke a little past seven, feeling quite refreshed. Any more of this decent, wholesome hours shit and I'll have to start injecting heroin just so I don't turn into a...person.

So we're done being busy for a little bit, and are now just slow-cooking in the Thailand heat. Apparently it's not even the hottest time of year - that's in June. That's the time you can fry an egg by just cracking it into the pan and waving it through the air.

And later on, after we're all medium-rare, it will get freezing. I think it's wonderful that Thailand can be the Land of Smiles despite this. Well done, Thai people. If Singaporeans populated this place, it would be known and the Land of Chaocheebye. Like, when tourists visit and ask us how the place is: 'Chaocheebye.'

With a smile, of course.

7pm
We got everything done up. Lots of coordination, and lifting of heavy stuff involved. And then, rain. With lightning. That's Category 1 weather in army vernacular, which means we rip up most of the work and go cower in the truck because otherwise we might get hit by lightning. You can't make this shit up. The Thais were laughing at us, apparently. Sky go boom, Singapore army go poof.

And so I've been sitting in this tonner truck with a bunch of blokes for a few hours. We just ate dinner by electric-lantern light. I do not remember the last experience I had that was equal parts surreal and depressing like this.

We're going to sit here until the bad scary lightning goes away, and then go outside and desperately try to regain some respect from the Thai army. We may have to resort to outright bribery, as they have very little English. 'I give you this goat, you not tell people we hide from big sky bang. Ok?'

Now to find a nearby goat that's for sale.

21 September
5am
It is 5am and I have just eaten a tuna sandwich.

I have had about three hours of sleep, two on a bench in the tonner truck and fitful intervals that add up to about one, seated on a bench with my head on my arms, on the table.

My arm went numb five times because of the crushing weight of the intellect in my head. I am roughly as filthy as a pig who's shat himself. And during my only decent bit of sleep, mosquitoes descended and attempted to kill me by draining my lifeforce through my hands, the only other exposed surface. I guess they wanted to bite fase, but gasp, too ugly.

But it is all ok, because I have just eaten a tuna sandwich. I've always liked tuna sandwiches, but this one was different. It came pre-packed, in a plastic bag, and it was filled with tuna and awesome.

How do the Thais do it? Why is it that all the heavily-marketed, mass-produced baked goods in Singapore taste mediocre at best, and the Thais can produce Fantabulous in a 10x10cm bag? Maybe this is the reason they're so friendly, and smile so much: they have legal heroin-equivalent stimulus readily available, yours for only 10 baht. All that tom yam, pineapple rice and phad thai is just a cover for their true national dish - awesome tuna sandwiches. It was probably a logistical error that resulted in them being delivered here; they were meant for their own Thai troops. And now that I know their secret, I can never leave.

Sorry, I did wax on a bit. The sandwich was the best thing that's happened the past day. Maybe even since I landed in Thailand. In addition to no sleep and mosquitoes, self-important pricks saw fit to come into this HQ tent last night and get in everyone's way while waving their penises around. Pick on this. Brag about that. Turn a 20-second brief into a 40-minute one with constant repetition.

I don't get that. You make your points, speaking slowly if you have to. At the end of it, you do a quick summary. Everyone gets it, more time to do stuff. Is it so hard?

The penis-wavers weren't from this company, mind. Here, they're mostly nice, bland at best. The penis-wavers are the army regulars, here to supervise and make long speeches, point out stupid, petty faults and shout at people who aren't officers.

I'm a little harsh there. A lot of them are nice, but the pricks are the kind of people you wish to be raped by a team of transvestite midgets. And they're all cast from the same mould. You see these people in daily life as well. They need to identify the gene responsible for that behaviour and come up with a vaccination for it. 'So you're in your third trimester, ma'am? We'll need to administer the Anti-Asshole Vaccine now, you'll remember that from your first talk with the doctor. Yes, it's a suppository. Ah yes, ha ha, it's most ironic. We get that a lot. Now if you'd just bend over...'

But yes, the tuna sandwiches. I now have ten of them in my field pack. But what if I'm wrong? What if it's just the misery of being pushed around in the jungle that made them taste so good? Will I find my tuna sandwich, back in daily life?

I think that's everyone's goal, the Tuna Sandwich of Awesome that always tastes good. But maybe the TsoA is just legend, and does not exist. Maybe nothing can taste that good forever.

7.30am
We have moved from our previous base to the base of a hill where they are to make things go boom. The signallers have been put to use as sentries. I get to stay here till something like 5pm, telling the mobile vendors and their children to sod off. In a nice way, of course.

The fear-mongering of the army was shown at its best just now. After a prep talk last night stating we were absolutely, under no conditions to bring our mobile phones out, the same officer who said it asked for our Thai phone numbers just now. Upon seeing that we had switched them off, he said there was no need.

Not that I've been sneaky sneaky about it either. Secure in the knowledge that army signal sets may sometimes actually work, I got clearance for Signals to bring ours. It's just the disparity that bothers me.

It's like a doctor saying to a group that they'll die if they wear cashmere, and then later confessing to a select few that, actually, the worst that could happen is a mild rash. At the next group meeting, the selects turn up in stylish cashmere, catch the eye of the hot nurses and go home with them for wine and sex. The others are, of course, outraged. The doctor shrugs and tells them it's for their own safety. I come up with strange analogies. But I insist that they work.

Oh snap, a dog just trot in sheepishly. And my dog-wrestling skills do not yet extend to those that stand half my height, on all fours.

We can only hope dog does not go boom.

10am
Got a bit of sleep in the back of this Landrover. It hasn't been that long, but here are some more illustrations of the effects of power on different people.

I sudden had another bloke join the radio net. He declared himself a sentry, and wanted to do a radio check. From tone of voice and incompetence with signal protocol, you could tell this was An Officer.

One sentry responded to his check with, 'Radio check ok, out.' The response was swift from this prick. 'Soldier. You dun Out.'

Out is the equivalent of, 'I have nothing further for you.' But there's a penis thing where you're not supposed to Out a superior officer, because their pride gets all butthurt. The prick officers, on the other hand, simply say whatever they want. This is not effective communication.

'Ok that's fine and...the enemy is here! Get the guns! Nothing further, out.' 

'Dun you daire owt me, soldier!! Soldier!! U come bak!!'

I can see that happening, very clearly. This particular prick officer is a Major, and seems to have got to that rank by credit of being able to breathe. The transformation is remarkable. It's like watching a pile of shit...grow bigger.
Mr Fuckyou also made an appearance, pulling up in a rover. While we tried to get approval for his entry, he scowled, and when we went over again to ask him what his role was, he demanded to know why we didn't ask him to begin with, and drove off in a huff. Mr Fuckyou is nearly the highest rank an NCO can hit.

Finally, I stopped yet another rover. The vehicle commander beams. I politely ask who he is, and he looks a little startled, but tells me he's Colonel Suchsuch, and that he was the exercise conductor. Whee, I just casually stopped someone who's a step away from being a general. Very in keeping with my karma.

I tell him I can't let him in without approval, and he nods, sure, no problem. And then I can't reach the person with the approval stick, and he just hangs out with my sentry mate, Ben. After what would have been well past the fuckyou threshold for the other pricks, I aplogise, tell him I'll keep trying to reach the approval stick person. Sure, no problem, once again.

And then stuff blew up, and it was apparent why I couldn't reach the right person. He was busy supervising stuff getting blown up. I hop down and light a cigarette, since we had to wait for the whole series of explosions to end. It was a bit of a test on my part, I guess. Yeap, all he said was, 'Make sure you're away from the vehicle while you're smoking.'

He leaves, saying that since he'd missed it, he'd come back later for the next one, and there was no need to bother anyone now. And he thanked us, and waved as he left. Ben and I were all aww. He was a good looking chap, too.

He didn't look a day past thirty-five, and he was in great shape. Definitely an Untouchable - looks good, sounds good, well established and...nice. Asshole. I mean that in a good way.

Maybe the prick behaviour from the others are a simple case of metaphorical penis envy. It's hard to look at yourself and feel good, after you see people like that.

Scratch that, it's all-round penis envy. I'm sure that Colonel's well hung, to boot. And that when he finishes his business in Thailand, he'll go back to his mansion where his supermodel/doctor wife and his millionaire-at-age-20 entrepreneur son and humanitarian rights leader daughter.

And there will be an incestuous orgy. There's bound to be. Nobody can be that perfect without a little secret they keep hidden from the world.

11.15am
Gods. It was only a second, but I clearly saw two flies have sex on my leg. Yes, doggy style, and she was twitching her wings in presumed ecstasy.

I mean, I guess I always knew it at the back of my head, but it's definitely a new low to see flies getting more action than me.

1.30pm
The mobile vendors started a small fire to burn up their used plastic cups. Being bored shitless, I went to throw wood on it. My antics attracted Ben, and Aaron, a medic the signallers have adopted. It's amazing how entertaining a fire can be.

A Thai driver also came over for a look, and I mimed warming my hands at the fire. He blinked. 'Hot!' he said, pointing up at the sky. We chuckled, and he went off to tell his friend about crazy Singaporean boys who build fires to warm themselves in the 2000-degree noon sun.

We heard a rover coming out of the Boomz area, and scurried back to our own rover to whistle nonchalantly. It was Mr Fuckyou. Sure enough, he stopped at the fire and got out. 'Who started this fire? Cannot be you guys right?' Aaron was able to answer confidently that we did not start the fire. So we helped put it out. And Mr Fuckyou was so amused at what he termed, 'firefighting with water-bottles', that we had to wait for him to take his camera out for a picture.

Then we had to sit through quite a bit of, 'There was one time when...' with him. It was decently amusing, and showed a slightly lighter side of him. Underneath that gruff, tough exterior, there was a cranky old man underneath. Nothing wrong with that - I'll prolly be a cranky old man myself. The talk ended with penis carvings and the pixellation of genitals in Japanese porn. Really. Just so you know.

The colonel came again, just. This time, a little less patient. Still smiled when he came in, but when I couldn't reach approval people again, he got out of the car and started talking about backup processes, how there must always be a flow, and such. Then he stopped himself, because he realized it was Not My Fault.

Good thing the right person came back just then, and he was cleared for entry. He started talking about processes again for a bit, and I told him that actually, it was only the two times he came by that I couldn't get people. Which was true, mind. I didn't think it necessary to explain about my karma. It seemed to mollify him, and he said something about Murphy's Law, except I think he called it the rule of Murphy or something. I bit my tongue. I'd just barely escaped a chiding from a colonel with the equivalent of, 'Look, a flying pig!' Correcting him at this point would be like getting a forced castration, ending up merely circumsized, then saying, 'Nya nya you missed.'

Ooh, Mr Dun Out Me just barged into the boom area, after I told him I couldn't get to the approval people. No boom yet, but we can always hope.

5pm
Dragonflies fill the evening sky
I know not why
Insect orgy?

9.45pm
Overheard conversation can be amusing. In the next bed, a signaller is discussing an academic question about magnets with his wife-to-be. Punctuation is smoochy noises. A couple beds down, they are discussing foot fungus, and how one guy has it so bad it hurts and itches at the same time. Late last night in the jungle, I heard, 'I think the thing about him is, he finds you attractive.' A serious discussion between two men.

There's a lot of empty conversation floating around. We all feign interest, ask questions, make attempts at jokes. Are we really a social species, then?

Being an awkward child, it was easier to avoid strange company and read something. This lifted a little with age, and I am now almost well-adjusted. It's become a matter of fact to try to read which buttons to push, and what's likely to work, and then apply pressure. You don't make friends that way, though.

One can feel alone sometimes, despite being connected to the internet and hence, the civilised world. Banter is easier to initiate on the internet, but the end result is much the same as IRL. You know you're both doing it just to pass the time, and not to seem standoffish. You might even enjoy it, for a little bit, until the awkward pause that no one can fill. But of course, you have options, a hundred little reasons to excuse yourself. And by the time you get back, more fillers would have presented themselves. The loo was nice. The food's arriving, I can't wait. Check out that girl/guy. While you were away, I licked your spoon.

Well, maybe not the last one. I don't actually tell anyone when I do that.

No, I don't have a point.

22 September
10pm
We woke up this morning with some alarm. Apparently, military police were going to come inspect our bunks, because we were handling explosives, and might have smuggled some back to blow up the neighbour's cat with. They take no chances when it comes to pewpew.

Of course, the big worry was that pretty much all of us are contravening the restriction on phones with cameras, a bloody annoying ruling. And so, the whole lot of us put our phones into little bags and tossed them into a box, which was then hidden. If you'd just read that last sentence on its own, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a day in the life of someone in boarding school.

I wrote a little earlier about the comfort that something with butanz and a screen brings me - but even I had no idea how much. As it stands, it's a little weird, being unable to contact anyone in Singapore. Not that I do a lot of that to begin with, but the option was always there.

With a Thai SIM in this phone, any call or text is bad news, because only army people have this number. But it was still nice to have. I read off it, write on it, and if I feel sappy, I can read through my old texts. And then this morning, suddenly no more.

We didn't have that much to do, though, and ended up spending the day at the cybercafe at the canteen, playing DotA and Counter-Strike. Replacement butanz and screens, you see. It was fun, although I felt really retarded at using the pewter after we were done. Meh, I used to be decent at games.

Oh, and the military police didn't come, after all. My phone has a scratch on the screen now, all for nothing. There's still a chance they could come at 2am, kick open the doors and drag everyone off the beds. 'Get down, motherfucker! Camera phone eh, you...you...pervert! You're going to pay for that!' And then we blow them up with our smuggled explosives.

The highlight of today was, I took a shit so big, I clogged the toilet. The ones here don't have Gale Force 5 flushes like back home, so they're actually fairly easy to clog. Still, I was impressed, when I looked at the size of the thing. It very nicely illustrated why the phrase, 'full of shit' is derogatory. It was a strange medley of disgust and pride that I felt.

Especially when I had to break it up with a stick.

10.30pm
I nearly overheard what's happening in Naruto Shippuuden, walking downstairs for a smoke. Bastards.

23 September
1pm
Stuff to do, stuff got done. Now it looks like we're going to spend the day on LAN again, what with it being our last hurrah before three days in the jungle.

I am broke. I can't remember how much money I brought over here either. I think I had 4,000 baht to begin with, which is a little less than two hundred dollars. I have 120 baht now, and will toss another hundred dollars into the kitty.

5.15pm
Well, there goes the afternoon. Four games or so of DotA, all with people. Who knew it was such a universal language? We ended up playing with our exercise evaluaters. Perhaps winning most of the games was not a good idea. No credit to me though, I'm still five flavours of suck.

There is, in the bin downstairs, a pair of what looks suspiciously like white panties. I fear even my own innsatiable curosity will not suffice to tempt closer examination. Mystery number 2: of all the clothes I washed, only this vest turned out smelling like ass. I do not think I have pissed off anyone in this camp. Not enough for them to defile my clothes, anyway. Ass-singlet will have to remain a mystery.

10.30pm
Everyone is a-scurrying, packing this and prepping that for the move-out tomorrow. With fanfare like an incontinent racoon peeing itself, tomorrow will be It.

Your seventh year of re-service, you see, seems to be your evaluation year. You go for a big fuck-off exercise, and people who tend to be not worth the air they consume will observe you, and pass judgement. If you do well, your last three years will be easier. Not-so-well and those years will be tougher. If you accidentally blow up a villager's goat, the whole company must bend over and take it up the ass from Motumbo, the African wonder. He is already standing by.

The blokes are already counting the days. We leave tomorrow afternoon and come back Monday evening. After that it's cleaning up and returning the equipment, a dinner with dancing transvestites, and an Educational Tour, where NSmen invade town, leer at women and buy shit. And then we go home. We're all going to get dumped at the airport at something like 2am, with our handcarry and our kitbags. Total size and weight: one small pony. Ways to get home that don't cost you your firstborn child: none. Still, no one's going to complain at this point. I may kiss the ground. Not because I like Singapore very much, but because life in rural Thailand is shit. Maybe I could get away with kissing and SIA stewardess. You think?

I wonder if Goat misses me. It's the thing with retarded friendly dogs. Even with Hitler, they go apeshit happy, jumping up and down and saying, 'AI AM SO FUCKING HAPPY TO SEE YOO YOO YOO OMFG!!' He'll probably have no idea who I am until I smack him for something. And then he'll do the 'oh it is you wai you do this 2 me i only eat carpet not wrong,' look, with the moist eyes thing. He is very good at the moist eyes thing. Sometimes I smack him for no reason, just so I can learn from him.

For better or for worse, we head out tomorrow. It has been surprisingly decent here so far, given the circumstances. I will try not to get bitten by a yet-undiscovered species of venomous spider. Given my karma, it won't even kill me, just give me life-long halitosis, hair loss and an even smaller penis, or something.

That would be pretty wicked venom, actually. Slow-acting, but guaranteed to make the victim kill himself.

24 September
11.30am
Perhaps one of the few good things about the army is how it allows you to keep bits of your youth. Platoon One just did a little cheer thing, downstairs, with the platoon sergeant leading and some thirty men roaring a generally positive response. These are all men either pushing thirty or denying it. Try to get that sort of reaction out of them in daily life and they'll probably tell you to go fuck spider.

There is a kitty that has decided we probably will not try to eat it. It has taken up residence here, usually crouched at some corner, looking pathetic. The poor creature is skin and bones. I tried feeding it a packet of combat rations, and all it did was lick it a bit. Its teeth look weird and sparse, and I never saw it take a bite. I hope it will be ok, maybe wait for cars to run over snails for it to lap up.

7.30pm
There has been a lot of work done. I am quite knackered, which is a polite way of saying near death. I have drunk and sweat roughly five litres, and I am soaked in my own excrement. Well fine, the last bit was a bit melodramatic, but sweat is an excrement.

It was the hole digging that did it. Everything else seemed fairly sunshine and butterflies in comparison. The hole, it is called a shellscrape. A coffin-hole thing that has to fit you inside so your back is level with the ground. This is for when fiery death rains from the skies with artillery bombardment. This is the best they could come up with for defense against artillery: self-burial.

And this is hardly scratching the surface of the first night. And it looks like rain, so there will be Mud. And it's roughly 1 2/3 holes dug, 5 1/3 to go.

I am not a happy trooper.

25 September
12.30am
With some expert help from Andy, the company sergeant major, we now have five shellscrapes. Andy attacked the ground viciously and methodically, like it had kidnapped his family and left the cap off the toothpaste. Our uniforms are beginning to dry, which is a relief. In doing so, they are also beginning to smell, which is not so much a relief. By tomorrow afternoon, all camouflage will be rendered useless. An enemy soldier who knows what he's doing can just creep around and sniff out the combined stink of 117 men.

So far, there are no mosquitoes, except for the one I killed. I suspect being this far out in the Thai wilderness has bred them for intelligence. You only bite the snoring ones if you want to survive. The one I killed was probably a bit Down's.

The storemen are outside doing sentry duty. They are supposed to challenge people who want to enter and ask them for the day's password. So far, they have challenged...no people, and are currently talking about X-men, and making pewpew noises. And now, about cutting off limbs of people who offend them. I have every confidence they'll do it. They have that reclusive, doesn't fit it anywhere, face like a paedophile schoolteacher thing going for them. Oh, these are the same two that were talking about, '...he finds you attractive.' Creepy. I must not tell them where I live.

Neo will be back in an hour to take over...signaller duty. And then I can sleep on three planks again. Joy.

10am
You'd think after sleeping about two hours' worth on planks and at the table, with mosquitoes having formed the Mobile Itch Squad, target: me, I'd be dying for another rest. And you would be right.

The second shift change was at 7.30am. I got about fifteen minutes in at the back of a rover before it got too hot. I tried to sleep, despite. But when it's willpower VS heat, heat always wins. That's why you don't take girls to cold places if you want them to take their clothes off. Not that I would know. Very few girls take their clothes off for me, except if they want them washed.

Even my subconscious appears to have low self esteem. One of the plank-bed dreams was of me being invited to a high-end club by some Untouchables. For some reason, I agreed. Once we got there, the main guy I knew plopped into a table for two with his girlfriend. And the other gorgeous guys and girls walked on, so I followed. Then they met their friends at another table and all settled in. There was no space for me.

I walked on to the loo, a little WTFed, thinking I'd just wash up and leave. Then the army guys came in. It was very important. They were there to warn me that someone I had offended had declared that he was going to kill me. That night.

No, it appears I am not that well-adjusted.

By way of experiment, I put a wad of chewed gum on top of an ant nest just now. The ants were all intrigued, but could not do the heave ho and away we go thing. I think they started trying, and then the gum surprised them by being both stuck to the ground and refreshingly minty. I will go check on it later. Perhaps if left undisturbed, the ants will build a little shrine over it and worship it like a god. All hail Blobulous, He who does not provide succor, but can be relied on to give minty fresh breath.

There was music playing earlier, quite loudly too. It was Thai umch umch. At nine in the morning, in Thai wilderness. Wai, I do not know. Perhaps the officers were practicing a Wondergirls routine to surprise us with, at the big dinner at the end of all this.

And now, ten precious minutes before the end of my break, I will head back. It is too hot to do anything. If sweating required effort, it would be too hot to sweat. I suspect I will spend mostly of the day working on ripening my odour.

12pm
I am running out of ways to describe heat, so let me take a last stab at it. This heat is like the one a midget would experience, if he were shoved whole between a sumo wrestler's buttocks, and said buttocks were then rapidly vibrated. This takes place in a sauna, and the sumo wrestler has not washed for a week. Yes, I think I've managed to capture it.

There has been a srs bznz hornet buzzing about for the past hour. Unlike the wimpy black wasps in Singapore who go to pottery class, this one is mainly yellow, which we all know is a universal colour message for danger and the Chinese. There is nothing Chinese about this wasp, except its being annoying and potentially painful. It is all danger. And it just hovered around my head for ten seconds, as if  passing judgement.

Just like spies licensed to kill, I attract danger, only in a really crap, non-sexy way. Yeah, the name's Tim. Tim Danger (hornets) Drake.

7.10pm
Just like in an RPG, I have now achieved a new level of personal funk. It has gone from Unwashed Irish Beard to Forgotten Sweaty Running Socks. I wilt plants in my path. I kill small wildlife that are standing downwind. But does it work on mosquitoes? Bah. Maybe I should try chatting up girls like this. Gods know nothing else has worked so far.

I have also borrowed money and bought myself a drink and a packet of fried instant noodles. It's impressive, the tenacity of these mobile vendors that we call the ninja vans. Presumably, it allows them a fairly decent living. See, in Singapore, ten thousand goverment agencies would be on you like a retarded elephant. You'd get fined for illegal hawking on several counts and told to get a license from the goverment, with money that you didn't have even before the fines. All for trying to make a living with what is probably your last option. Go, Singapore.

The drink also allowed me to ascertain that I am not an alcoholic. A mate bought the drinks, you see, and just selected two bottles of soda at random. I was with him and saw golden beer cans floating in the ice. Resist one time. Later, I decided to change my drink and went back to ask if they had coffee. Yes, and he had to trawl for it at the bottom of the cooler. Cannot find. He grabbed a beer and nudged me. No language was necessary for the message, 'Why not try a cool, refreshing beer instead?' to come across. Only 20 baht. Resist second time, although my longing stare prolly gave me away.

See, see. Not alcoholic. Responsible adult who just happens to occasionally do stupid things. Besides, if I had taken it, he might have peeled his mask off and revealed himself to be military police.

I kinda regret my decision, though. Boo, being responsible.

People have been making fun of my Chinese.Apparently I sound funny, and they've talen to replying me in English when I speak to them in Chinese. Bad enough, that, but in addition, perhaps from lack of use, my latent stutter comes out a lot more often in Chinese. It is Not Fair. I haven't got any Chinese vocabulary to speak of, but I can speak Singapore Pidgin Chinese, dammit. Grew up on the stuff.

We're on the way to a river now, so we can cross it. Yes, that's the only purpose, and it sounds a bit retarded when plainly stated. No one says, 'Hey, I'm just going to nip down to the traffic light downstairs, cross it and come right back.' It's to give us Experience, you see. How else do you think we level up our funk. Today was valuable Experience in maintaining sanity and skin intregrity under the sun. Next is Experience is sitting on a boat while it goes vroom over river. And to come, with 1.5x Experience: walking a very long distance while carrying heavy shit.

Right. Onward to splashy splashy with crocodiles. The crossing will apparently take until morning, and that's if we're lucky. The crocodiles will have plenty of time to size us up. Hopefully, I haven't put on enough weight to look succulent yet.

26 September
8am
This entry has been brought to you by one of our medics, Cheong. Ever the willing hand to begin with, he has just shared some of his tinned tom yam tuna and bread with me. Between that and the bit of sleep I got, I feel ready to move...a small rock.

Last night was pretty brutal, mostly from the lack of sleep over two days. It started off ok - we watched this big fuck-off vehicle, about 1 1/2 double-decked buses, transform before our eyes. The vehicle was sort of ovoid-shaped, and when they drove it to the water line, the top split in half down its length and unfolder to the ground like mechanical wings. Then they drove the thing into the river. It was a boat! That one was meant for transporting the vehicles. Most of the troopers had to take little aluminum speedboats that held nine. Clambering down a steep slope to get into the boat, something solid thwacked the ground at my feet and plopped into the water. I was sure it was my phone, and was already steeling myself for the loss. As you can see, it was, instead, a rock.

The cruise down the river was pretty decent, actually. If you excuse the fact that the first question the boatman asked was, 'Where are we going?'. Followed by, 'Where is that?' We did land eventually, and thus, after a lot of larking about, began my roughly 3km walk, carrying Heavy Shit.

Every time we stopped for some reason, mosquitoes would dive in for the buffet, holding their noses. And I got a heat rash, where random points of you feel like you got stabbed with a needle laced with itching powder. Prickly Heat powder, or snake powder as we call it here, works a treat. Also, prickly heat sounds inscrutable until you experience it. Then you realise it's a very literal description.

Then, quite near our destination, one of the men had a seizure. They called it, 'fits'. I'm not sure which is correct. Fists clenched, body rigid, gasping for air and such. The evacuation was quite drama, with lots of cars and shouting and lights on the wheezing patient. You would have loved it. After he left, the platoon sergeant was sick with worry. With a little prodding from the OC, he revealed that just before they moved out, he had fucked the seizure guy. Gave him a dressing down, if you're not familiar with the word used this context, and strange images are forming in your head. Don't worry, only in Singapore. Yes, the cheap plot device of someone worried sick, because the last words he exchanged with someone who had just taken ill were harsh ones, was employed in real life. 

My last awakening was to a strange officer, peering over me with the OC. His signal set had stopped working, and he was very nice and apologetic about wanting me to have a look. Dazed and confused, I prodded it with a mental stick, and everything seemed fine...aha, one switch switched to the switch the switch should not switch to. I switched it. Problem solved. Apparently the banter was that he must make it worth my while, and he fished out a pack of cigarettes. I don't do the polite refusal thing, especially not when I'm running low on fags, and the item in question happens to be fags. I felt accomplished.

And now I sit, with heat building outside but also with the occasional mitigating breeze. I am back in my rover, fed, powdered and with the task of communication. This is the way things should be. For the next day and a half, mind. If I had to do this forever, I would connect the circuit to my nipples and shock myself to death.

The OC has gone to sleep - the poor sap slept less than I did. His eyes, fairly small to begin with, were so squinty he looked in a perpetual state of constipation. You would love him, Helen. He's tall too, and works in finance. It could be a match made in...remote Thailand.

27 September
9.45am
As we draw towards the end of the exercise, there is increasingly less for me to do. There is no need for updates, reports or requests for such and such. I am left to my own devices while the OC works on a laptop and prints stuff, powered off a generator. Ah, technology. Maybe some day they'll work out a way of air-conditioning...the country.

It is too hot to sleep in the rover once again, but it is ok. Fuelled by the carrying of heavy shit, the digging of holes, the staying awake and possibly, not having shat in three days, I slept the sleep of coma patients last night, lost to the world. I woke refreshed, bushy-tailed and with no idea where the fuck I was. I so seldom leave the house for any time that I still get that, 'Wait, this isn't my room, WTF.' feeling in the mornings.

A Thai friend of my drivers came over to peer at me and went away. Then he came back and asked how many times I'd been here. 'I use see you somethingsomething,' he said. I think he meant that I look familiar. Gods, the number of times I get that. There are apparently a lot of people who look like confused goats in the world. Or maybe, this being rural Thailand, he had seen an actual confused goat that I reminded him of.

So now I sit amiably with them, watching a bridge being constructed across a small stream. It involves heavy metal and lots of mechanical lifting. ...I realise I've just described a workout at the gym, but you know what I mean. The OC is done with his stuff, and apparently we're waiting for a Thai general to come and see how we do things. We're due back in camp today - it's just a matter of when.

I hope soon. I know I say I'd try everything once, but shitting in the woods is something best left to the experts. With my karma, a scorpion will sidle up, find my balls threatening and sting them. The fact that the agony and surprise from this will result in him covered in poo will be no consolation to my great balls on fire.

Besides, the swelling of my balls would make my penis look even smaller.

1pm
Surprisingly, we're ready to go back to camp. The end of the exercise was a Thai general coming down to have a gander. It was work deja vu. One general, a posse ten deep and three people taking pictures and filming the thing.

The general himself was exactly like the VIPs back home, too. Everyone fawning over him, he himself seemed nice and smiley enough, if somewhat disinterested. He was there to watch the completion of the bridge thing. The last component wasn't working, though, so they used the crane to move shit up and down, and told him it was underway.

We drove to meet up with the rest of the blokes afterwards. I went about giving away our combabt rations to the mobile vendors, and five boxes of batteries to the Thai soldiers. The number of half-naked men in that area was palpable. Yes, I know naked men in general are palpable, but there were a lot of men who had no business being out of clothes. Palpable ne plus ultra, they were. You could feel the jiggles through the air. But ok lah, as if I'm in shape, myself.

It's now raining fairly heavily, and I am getting wet. It's the final touch to the funk of this uniform. I think I'll seal it up in a plastic bag or something, so if I have a son, I can fling it at him when he turns 18. 'This is what the army smells like, Pubert. Don't get any ideas about signing on.'

Yes, I will fight hard for my son's name to be Pubert.

28 September
7am
I think I slept at 10pm last night and now, have just woken at 7am. This is bad. There is no heroin available to counter this...normalcy. Already, I'm thinking it's not so bad; I'll have more time to wash my clothes and such. See what pushing thirty does to you, people. Fight it for as long you can.

For srs though, it was pretty easy to fall asleep last night, we were so tired. And like the knockout in the rover, it was pretty restful. I think quality of sleep counts for a lot. After a whole day asleep on a concrete floor, lying in a pool of your own vomit, you're still going to wake up and go, 'Ugh, my head. And what's thi...oh, vomit. Ugh.' That's not restful. But if you sleep for four hours and wake up in a king-sized bed next to Jessica Alba, you'd be rested as fuck. 'Mmm where am I? Who's thi...oh. Oh, I remember now. Mmm. Grope.'

Not that I'm going to hit that quality of sleep in my life, but last evening did wear us out. The heavy rain continued all the way back to camp and for hours beyond. We had to do the packing and returning of signal sets for about three hours, most of it runnning around in the rain. Once again, I had a new, full understanding of a phrase - soaked to the skin. And then we washed and headed to the canteen, where I had every intention of getting drunk. I got stuck after the first bottle of beer, bloated, and drowsy. I tell you, this ageing thing.

For the rush of work we did last night, the day is now our oyster. It should be a day of gaming and an evening of drink. But who knows, I might end up knitting instead, the rate I'm becoming Normal People.

Next thing you know, I'd have quit smoking and taken up competitive cooking.

10.30pm
The Thais really are the friendliest. On the way to the canteen, a Thai liaison I spoke to maybe once was hanging around our block. I asked what he was doing there, and he said he just wanted to say goodbye to everyone. We spoke as far as a five-word vocabulary on both sides permitted, and then he gave me a hug and told me he would miss me. Very few people give me hugs, let alone tell me they'll miss me. My dog doesn't count. Certainly a good start to the day.

We played a few games, and in between, the OC called and asked if I would be the MC for tomorrow's end-of-trip dinner. A little WTF. I'm supposed to have a paragraph to read. Hmmm. He has no idea what he's getting into, especially if I'm drunk beforehand.

After lunch, it was back to our block to settle up the last of our equipment. And guess where we ended up after? Smart. It's the only place to go, period. The alternative is to go...running. I figured I've de-toxxed enough over the course of this trip as is. So we played a few more games, and got our buttox kicked by people. All through, there were a hundred men outside, drinking beer by the case and cheering each other on.

That was fine. Everyone was in high spirits. The shit hit the fan when they started the yam sengs, though. No idea what a yam seng is? I tell you. Like how the Japanese bow and the Thai sai, you can pick out the Singaporeans if they yam seng.

Many people. Singaporean, almost always Chinese. Want to toast. One guy starts shouting YAM, dragging the syllable as long as possible. He would rather implode a lung rather than truncate the YAM, it's that bad. The rest of the many people, upon hearing the YAM, start shouting the same thing, like lemmings flinging themselves over a cliff. A hundred men shouting the word YAM as loudly and as long as they can is not a pretty sight. Then, when the YAM dies out, everyone shouts SENG, and there is much rejoicing.

Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.

I just went downstairs on an errand, and saw the Thai liaison from this morning. He said he was invited to beer by his Singapore mates, but his Thai friend said it was not to be; that tonight was for the Singaporeans to enjoy themselves, not the Thais. I don't get it. He seemed genuinely disappointed, too. Maybe his friend just wanted to spare him the yam sengs, I don't know. But he would have been top on the list of people I'd like to have a beer with. Bah. Even in their own country, we push people around. Go, us.

He also had a stag beetle on his hand, that I got to play with, yay. Hopefully, a better memory will come along to replace my last of this trip to Thailand - a morose, really nice Thai guy whose name I don't even know, and a stag beetle crawling on my finger. Well ok, I just want the morose bit replaced. The stag beetle was pretty awesome.

Tomorrow may be amusing. Someone came in to declare that such-and-such said the Platoon 1 sergeant couldn't hold his drink, and challenged him to a drink-off tomorrow. Last man standing wins. I personally don't think it will happen, what with the big dinner. And drink-offs don't happen as neatly as they do in the movies, where they just keel over amusingly. Almost certainly, there will be vomitting. I'm torn between wanting to watch in a morbid kind of way, and wanting to avoid the shouting, cheering and testosterone flying through the air. Not being able to drink very well is a good thing, people. You spend less to get drunk. But as always, it's about penis.

I wonder what the female equivalent would be. All I can think of is...bags. Yes, they may have bag-offs. I'm not sure how they work, though. Not the bag-offs -  women in general. Bag-offs are fairly simple affairs. Whoever pays the most for an inedible bit of dead cow, wins.

...with that statement, I think I've just guaranteed I'm never going to get laid.

29 September
7am
It is just as I feared. I am Waking Up Early For No Bloody Reason. It's not like I have an agenda to rush here either. You wake up early, about all you have to keep you amused is trying to time Adrian's next snore. Ah, the days of waking up at noon, blinking twice and then rolling over again.

The beetle was back again, downstairs. Some of the blokes called it a rhino beetle. They may be right - it only has one horn. Having seen it manhandled last night, I was able to pick it up fearlessly. That's when I found out it hisses. Not aggressively though, just a kind of pfft noise. Like, 'Oh sheesh, haven't you had enough? Yes, I'm a giant beetle, get over it,' contained in one noise. I put it on Adrian, but there was no reaction. Then I put it on the windowsill to try to get a picture with better light, and it flew off. Its flying off is quite impressive. It opens its wing cases first for a bit and starts flapping its wings in place. Then, as if a mechanical voice somewhere announced, 'Beetle cleared for flight,' it launches.

I should have fed it to Adrian - his mouth opens quite wide at the peak of his snore. Oh don't worry, the Thai liaison assured me it was edible.

7pm
Well, the MC script was shit. Though it was certainly fun making a few hundred men rise at my command. Stand up from their seats, that is. And I did manage to have a beer with the earnest Thai guy after all, just before dinner started. It was sweet, he told me he was really happy that we could have a drink together.

My job is done until two hours later, when I tell everyone to bug off. We are now watching scantily-clad Thai girls gyrate to umch umch umch. They're singing, but we pretty much don't care. Two weeks of no women, pretty much, for all of us. I think I spot some discreet below-pants movement at the tables.

More anon. I have gyrating Thai girls to watch.

30 September
9.30am
There was a lot of drink last night, and a lot of, 'Nonono sir you cannot go without drinking one glass with us.' It started innocently, with a bottle of whiskey being passed around. I went to get some beer for the table from the canteen, and got mildly told off, and to stop, by the OC. But he came into his own that night. After some people with sticks up their asses complained about our excessive drinking, he went and got approval from the colonel (yes, the same one), and proceeded to march in case after case of beer. The desire to spite can be a powerful thing. Between the semi-salacious dancing on stage and the free flow of alcohol, I think it's safe to say we all enjoyed ourselves. The food was crap, mind.

The OC got as close as possible to keeling over without actually doing so, and after much revelry and a-toasting in the dining hall, we headed to the canteen to...do more drinking and toasting. Shamefully, I took part in the toasting. Peer pressure and alcohol, lah. The OC gets all emo when drunk, apparently. He spent much of the night telling us, essentially, how much he fucking loved us and how great we were. Camaraderie is also free-flow with the alcohol, you see. A little earlier, he came to me and said he still remembered the article I wrote about him, after the very first exercise we had. 'Back then, I was too young, too rushed,' quoth he. 'Quite alright, you've changed now. Now, I can say I'm proud to be under your command.' Someone else put those words in my mouth, I think. Oh all right, the drama aside, he is indeed a fairly nice chap now.

After all the toasting was done, we watched someone juggle beer bottles. He was pretty good, and only broke three bottles. I walked  back with one of the signallers, who was quite far gone. Once back in the bunk, concern gave way to malicious glee. Here, finally, was someone who's ended up more drunk than me. So I attempted to strip him and whipped him with a belt. The whole thing's down on video somewhere - a medic was quite happy to record the whole thing for us.

We've actually just left the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum. I like museums, but not when it's with with hundreds of men in a space the size of a largish house. So I came back to the bus to do some writing - already, the seductive lashes of procrastination blink at me. An easy summary of the museum, just like any museum about the war: the Japanese were real fuckers at the time. But that's ok, now that they're channeling their energy into producing bizarre porn. The most interesting exhibit in the museum was a white tourist girl with rather nice breasts. And the most interesting thing I learned from that stop is that Nestle makes drinking water.

Seriously, put some thought into your supposed educational tours, assholes. I can practically see the thought process behind it. What's wholesome and educational? Museum. Ok go nearest one. Nevermind that there's hardly time to see anything or that we have something like four hundred men. Museum. Museum good.

Now, we're off to the floating market at the river Kua(?). Another place that's perfect to flood with hundreds of NSmen. We were told, very strictly, not to wear anything Army on this tour, or people will notice and there will be, presumably, Trouble. Just like the Changi Airport situation, who ELSE but the army moves men around by the hundreds? 'It's ok one. We dun wear army army thing, no one will tink got something going on.' With brilliant planning like this that relies on the presumed stupidity of other people for camouflage, do we really want the same people planning our wars?

Well, let's hope the market's good for a few laughs. If I get to see a goat swimming in the river along a boat, it would be worth having to sit through the rest of the bullshit on this trip. I don't think they transport them that way though. An accident may need to be arranged.

11.05am
The officer bluff. He said the trip to the market would probably be less than an hour. It wouldn't be so bad if the bus wasn't so shit. There is some legroom, but that's all it's got going for it. The air conditioning is terrible, and the vehicle suspension appears designed to cause the maximum amount of motion sickness possible. The guy behind me just proved this by vomitting discreetly into a Ziploc bag. Perhaps he wants to save it for later.

11.55am
There has been misrepresentation. There is a river, but no floaty market. It appears this is one of the tourist hotspots. Costume jewelry, designer knockoffs and things to put on shelves are housed all around the area. I was quite happy to be able to see the Thais in their natural habitat. There were teenagers with hairstyles that need an entire jar of wax to create. Pretty girls not in skimpy clothing. I even got to see one young girl picking her nose. Not bad for the retarded half-hour of time we were given. Some people take longer than that just to have a poo, and we're supposed to see the sights in that time. Another fifteen minutes and I might have met a beautiful girl to form a lasting and meaningful relationship with. Or at least, a quick shag. Now we'll never know.

We went on a railway that goes over the river. Coming from pasturised Singapore, it was a bit of a shocker. Their warning system for 'train is coming' is a man with a red flag, and some horns. All along the bit over the river, there are platforms at the side. You stand on these to take pictures, and also to make way for the train, which passes 10cm from your face. There are also gaps in the track. Big gaps. Big gaps that a cow could fall through. In Thailand, the one safety measure is to count on the general populace not being retarded, which I heartily agree with. When they started putting in doors at the above-ground MRT stations, it was mildly insulting. 'We don't trust you to not go down to the tracks and....frolic, or something. Here's some doors.'

I ate a yam ice cream, and what may be the best fried chicken skewer in my life. The skewer cost 10 baht. 10 baht! You'd be lucky to get a chicken toenail for that in Singapore. Two of these skewers would be a meal in themselves. A tender, moist, delicious meal. Just the way I'd migrate to Australia to vote for the Sex Party, I'd...well, not migrate...maybe hang around Thailand for a couple months, subsisting on 10 baht skewers.

5pm
Lunch was a nondescript if somewhat lavish affair at a posh-looking floating restaurant on the river, seemingly to make up for the lack of floatiness at the last stop. We're now just leaving a gigantic mall called Future Park, or something like that. Malls are known for their educational value, you see, which is why it's on our Educational Tour.

The first thing that strikes you, this being Bangkok proper and a two-hour drive from the last vestiges of the countryside, is that finally, not everyone is brown. No one here has to go out in the sun to put the cows to pasture and milk the chickens every day. Cities breed pale faces, sort of by default. And then we all go out and try to get a healthy tan going, when all we need to do is rear goats for a month.

Every mall is much like the next, and us Singaporeans were right at home. What differences there were, I quite agree with. There is more seating, for one. Where back home, you pretty much have to walk into a restaurant just to sit down, there's seating aplenty here. There's a lot more hanging out here for that reason, and not just by young people. You'll find happening teenagers hanging out next to aunties knitting.

You get schoolgirls at malls, yes? It's like they have a quota to meet - each mall must attract X schoolgirls a day. What with the odd philosophy on uniforms, and the general attractiveness of Thai girls, I think it's safe to say Bangkok breeds a better class of schoolgirl. To look at, anyway.

It appears that they have no uniforms, as such. As long as you wear a white top and black bottom, you're ok for school. Young attractive girls who want attention pounce on this. Skirts are cut just below the buttocks, and though it seems showing cleavage is the line thou shalt not cross, there is nothing to stop them wearing the thinnest white shirts they can find. It's like the sexy type of school uniform people wear for role-play sex, except it's an actual uniform. On rather underaged girls. I'm probably already writing more about them than what's legal. I should stop.

But seriously, those figures.

I actually really wanted a massage. But what with the generous hour we were given, by the time I found one, I had half an hour left. It was that and the price. Not cheap at all. I contemplated trying to negotiate a price to get someone to scratch my back for fifteen minutes, but I do not speak Thai. And now I leave the mall a sore, itchy man.

7.40pm
I've only just found out that maybe airports don't close, unlike what I said on day one. This is the Old Bangkok Airport, you see, and since the new one was completed, has fallen into relative disuse. See what happens when you don't read about international affairs? Now, this airport seems to be used for small domestic flights, chartered ones like ours and the bulk shipping of retarded animals to be released into the wild.

We are a little over an hour away from boarding the flight back. Unless they've catered some sort of surprise sex party on the plane, it's likely to be uneventful. Well, frustrating if anything, trying to get a taxi to go across the island, from Changi Airport, with bags the size of mammoth testicles.

And so ends this admittedly none-too-eventful account. If it were a movie, the ending theme song would be Baa Baa Black Sheep, it's that bad. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did not enjoy being there.

Anon.