AFX & Thailand

#11

...Well that was a bit of a delay lol :S
 

First thing's AFX, which was at the end of September hahaaar... It's an annual camp for all cadets, this one being for South Australia. We went to Murray Bridge Training Area and about 12 BH cadets went. There were two companies of around 100, a recruit course and a WO/CUO course for the week. I was Alpha Company Commander, with my unit OC as my mentor, so it was a BH-run COY haha.
 Basically my whole week just involved counting names making sure no cadets went missing and going to orders every night :P But there was heaps of organising for me and we got to have a go on the range and at woodhouse activity centre in the Adelaide Hills. The last day was based on a big scenario for the two companies; all about druggies and finding their stashes… basically :P haha, true story! It went a bit weird when the signallers in each company played around with each other’s radios though… and then the rules went a little lop sided, in A companies mind, we defs won hehe. The weather during the week was interesting, but I’m lucky enough to say I did not wake up in a puddle, unlike others. Like always on anything cadet based I met some cool people. And of course I had heaps of fun, especially upside down on the massive flying fox :D:D:D:D:D
Oh, and Alpha Company (my company) won the whole exercise… f YES!!!!
 

After  that I spent a few days with family in Adelaide, I stayed there with Mum, Dad and Alessando before flying over to our amazing holiday destination…
 

 

Thailand was aaamaaazzzing, loved the resort, the weather, the people, the shopping and the food! We had the best weather, not unbearably hot and humid, but enough to always be able to swim, which we did a lot of. I definitely got my Phuket tan haha, thanks to a good book, “Insurgent” (credit to Tez for that suggestion) and a deck chair by the pool. Got some hilarious tan lines out of it too, actually. We stayed at Graceland Resort and Spa and it was massive. Had about three pools, one about 5m away from the beach, one on the top floor where you can swim up to a ledge looking out to the bottom pool and the sea, and another that was quieter and went straight up to some of the resort’s rooms. Two of them also had a swim up bar ;) Had myself some very noice margaritas thank you very much! The breakfast buffet was also massive and sooo yummy, I may or may not have had waffles and bacon everyday hehehe.

 

We shopped sooooo much, so many bargains- how could we not?! The night markets were huge, you’d get lost in that place. Bangla road was also huge, night clubs (complete with very real lady-boys) and stalls everywhere, same with tattoo shops. I ended up getting a goanna henna on my foot and also a swirly one on my hand, but that got smudged by a lemur I was holding:( The guy shoved it into my hand when I was holding a massive iguana hahaha, worth it! We also went on a day trip to Phi Phi Island and Blue Lagoon, came back on some very choppy waters :S  The elephants were fantastic, we went on a tour to ride them which also included a few cultural demos, like cooking and rubber tapping. We watched an elephant show where they played the harmonica and painted haha. It felt a bit wobbly on the Elephants, but apparently their feet knew where they were going haha, beautiful views on that trek. We went to two theatre shows, Phuket FantaSea and Siam Niramit which was great, the stages had to be made for the show; there was so much detail. A lot of animals too haha, 16 elephants in one of them! At the FantaSea show I got to dress up in a kind of Thai princess outfit, the others wouldn’t do it with me but I had fun by myself! Lol. We wound up at a random snake show somewhere and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life… you know, it’s not every day you get jumping snakes waved in your face  and some other kind of snake escaping  from the little snake keeper area D; Held a python though, that was fun! And watching the guy tease a cobra then kiss it was, um interesting… I guess.  Went to the Big Buddha and got a bracelet blessed by a Monk which was really nice. Because it was a temple they gave me a sarong and shawl at the front gates cause I was wearing singlet a shorts haha.

 

Overall I had heaps of fun and I loved just being able to chill haha, great last official family holiday (maybe) :P Going back home was great though, spending more time with Rosa, Hugo and Ioana back in Adelaide and then seeing Adam and Catty back home, beautiful :P hehe.
 

Well that’s the main events of the past couple of months; I shall fill you in on the fun little things that have been taking up all of my blog-writing time since then later on haha… maybe, if we’re lucky!

Kop Koon Kar :D

-Licul