On arrival, i realised why the camp is much detest as the MORO camp was much cleaner as compared to this. Camp facilities were pretty much used and left over from the previous project group.
But at least i was assigned a decent room, where i am typing this away at 2145LT. This is the second night here.
On the first day (Sat), there was orientation and induction, we were walking up and down the camp site. Its not that big, but there were sure signs of wear and tear around. We didn't do much here, since we understand that the vessel was delayed as the local authorities found some life insects in the containers to be loaded to our camp. It turns out to be a big issue, cause the government is very particular about foreign insects, plants, animal breading in the country and changing the natural habitat of the country. So its more delays until Monday where we will know how long the delay is…
Food in the camp is much lower quality then up there. Meal times is strictly 0500-0600, 1200-1300 and 1800-1900. “Full stop. End of story” No tea breaks in between, no other food sold… No snacks… T_T We had to queue to enter the mess and queue to grab our food. There will always be two choices of meat each meal. but mixed vegs seems to be the staple… There is nothing much to talk about the food there… Oh, yes there is. My dinner tonight was lamb chops n rice. I was greedy as i wanted more sauce to go with the rice. Turn out… The sauce was disgusting!!! Only then i notice nobody takes the sauces… I had to try my best to swallow the food, esp the rice, else i will go hungry at night… Sad…
I did had a chance to go out of camp for a tour coz one Aussie friend that i know when i was in Batam doing the loadout was tagging along another environmental fellow out for inspection. Since i had nothing to do, i wont mind spending some time outside and catching a glimpse of the “outside world”. The client didn't want to follow, simply because in the meeting earlier, we were informed that there was a case of the local people carrying M16s and attacked a group of people carrying camp equipment to another camp. It was calculated almost 0.5 million worth of equipment were destroyed but none was injured. I guess that really scares him a bit since it quite surprising to know that the local people actually managed to get such sophisticated weapons…
Well, with that behind my head, i hopped on to the landrover out of the camp. I wouldn't want to missed my only chance out of the camp! Who knows, i might catch a glimpse of some hard to find birds like the birds of paradise. :P
In the vehicle, i managed to know that the driver is actually a local villager and offered to bring us around his village after the inspection. Yippee~ The road was long, almost 1 hour of driving, and bumpy. Imagine 1 hr of bumper cars rides with constant “bumping” not fun…
So out in the forest, we were inspecting this…
It notice the big opening, that is where the forest was tore down, to make space for the pipe laying… Impressive right? Oh, i didn't mentioned before that PNG has the second largest rainforest in the world! While driving, it trees n trees and more trees!!!
After which we went to the nearby town to have a look.
We are standing on a airstrip that was used in WWII!!!
After that we went to the jetty to have a look.
Look at the endless forest and the long rivers.
Notice that the boat is actually a “dug out” from a long log!!!
Something like this!
We went to a local shop.
This is how it look like inside. They sell almost everything!!!
More surprisingly is, the stall owner is actually Chinese!!! They are from Guangzhou and has been here for more then 10 years!!! They are so nice that they didn't want to charge me for the titbits and drinks that we wanna buy! “Tong xiang” they were saying… lol.
After dinner, i smuggled this from the mess. U all know what is it???
Call me "Swa Ku" but i nvr seen this fruit before! Mostly in photos and pictures but i nvr know they look like this. It Passion Fruit!
That pretty ends my first 4 days in PNG. Very much more to come, though they will be boring since i wont have much chance to step out of the camp… Machiam prison loh… Sigh… Some more no hardship compensation doing this job… Sad…
More to come! “I hope” *Crossfingers*
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