Well at least the place we were sent to for training. The only thing good about the trip there is that this time round, they decided to use air new zealand which had personal entertainment for everyone. Btw the in flight entertainment was very wonky on the way back and it kept hanging, not just for me, but almost everyone's unit.
Lets get back to the crazy down under place ppl call Australia. On the 1st day arriving at the airport at 5.30pm aussie time, you would think that it was good to come in at a time where its cool and the hot sun is on the way down. But unbeknown to us, we will be held for the next 4-5 hours in their quarantine area so that they can conduct a thorough check of our kit bags to ensure we do not bring in any soil or seeds of anykind.
The search was ridiclous I say, short of a strip search, they made us empty the contents of our luggage and our kitbags on tables for them to inspect. The funny thing is that we had to submit our kitbags to our camp a whole week earlier, so why was the search not conducted to our bags then and instead wasted our time doing this at the airport. Imagine 800 or so men with their kitbags, now imagine they only had 6 inspectors.
Now the search took almost 5 hours, its 9ish or 10ish, I had lost track of the time at this point, the last meal anyone of us had was at 4plus on the airplane. Stomachs were growling and ppl were tired as we boarded our bus that is departing for the camp site. 2 hours later we were still in the us but the driver is figuring out where our camp site is, we were lost and hungry no less.
Around midnite, and after 3 U turns, we had finally arrived at our god forsaken camp. The 1st look of teh camp site brought all hopes of any semblence of creature comforts to an end. we were expected to squeeze 2 full grown men with thir kit bags and thei civilian bag into a 2 man tent. Though they say its a 2 man tent, I would say its more like a 2 halfling tent. You cannot stand up straight in it, the 2 safari beds just fitting from head to toe of each bed. You had to some how put the hug kitbag of urs in there with the beds.
The next horror began to unfold, the toilets, which I really mean are just huge pits with a shed covering them, are insane, you can smell this weird foul smell emiting form them when you approach them 50meters away. Then they had constructed some sort of PVC pipe urinal and expected you to aim into the 15cm diameter pipe.
The showers where water proof bags that had a shower head stick out of teh bottom and you are expected to use a pail to fetch teh hot water(what little of it) from outside an dbring it to teh shower room, untie teh ropw hold the bags up there and lower them so you can fill them and then try your hardest to pull them up in place so you can have a decent shower.
Welcome to hell was all I could hear in my head, but thats not why I said Aussie is hell. People complain that its as hot as hell in teh day and cold as hell in the night. Yep its the only place where both hot and cold can be used to describe how hell would be if it was on earth.
That ends part on eof my trip to Aussie, more updates when I get unlazy.
