Lard

Rise and shine in the beautiful miao village. The beautiful villagers cooked for us some bao (which is totally different from the baos of Singapore, but nonetheless delicious) J After a lazy morning, we went about setting up the medical check up area for the villagers! But the weather wasn’t to our favour and it started drizzling, so we had to move under the shelter. In total, we moved our layout 3 times HAHHAHA.

So at 12 noon, just after lunch, we opened the medical check up area for the public. We managed to screen the staff of the church first. Slowly but surely, the villagers started trickling in. Most had problems that  were due to repetitive farming activities (e.g osteoarthritis). A few interesting cases along the way as well. However, due to poor communication with our coordinator, we did not see as many villagers as we wanted to see.  In the end we managed to screen roughly 25 people from the village. Hopefully helping them in 1 way or another.

Before we knew it, it was our favourite time of the day, DINNER TIME!!! We got our hands into helping the villagers cook, from chopping chickens to pork to veggies to chili, and frying everything in salt, lard, salt, lard, salt, lard and a little bit of chili. (which is still hot).

After dinner, Wang shifu, took out a super long rope where we played tug of war and limbo low HAHAHAH

All in all, not too bad of day! Sorry guys i dont have too may photos of today, would post up whatever i have

Miao village

So we left our guest house to start our supposedly 2-3 hour journey to the  (village name). 30 minutes down the road, we stopped at a chinese Sinopec station for what was supposedly the best toilet before we enter the village. And after just 45 minutes in the car, we arrived at our village of the miao people. It was a picturesueqe town nestled between the valley of the mountains. We met with the church pastor, Wang shifu and quickly settled into our simple but beautiful accommodations. There were no shower facilities available, and the most basic of toilets (only a hole in the ground).

So we spent the first day in the miao village marveling at the rows of corn that were drying on the roofs of the villagers, they were to be made into food for the pigs (it was a hell lot of corn). Next we had a short introduction to the village and its surrounding mountains. Really picturesque views of the mountains that surrounded the village. With nothing left for the rest of the day, we had an opportunity to be sheperds. With a piece of stick and 20 sheep’s + 2 cows, we embarked on our adventure to the top of the mountain where apparently the grass is always greener.  Views were nice at the top though.

In the evening, Wang shifu invited us to join his church service. We sat around the first few pews and the miao people sang beautiful renditions of a couples of church songs.

We are all ready and rested for the next day J

 

POD 1#

First stop over, the land of a thousand smiles (for a short 45 minutes). We embarked on our first adventure, finding out where the best restaurant in the airport was (as recommended by Amos).  Mango sticky rice and thai milk tea filled our stomachs, though many of us were still craving for phad thai ;) Our group still unfamiliar with each other, kept relatively quiet while we ate our sticky rice. Hope that during these next 11 days, we can bond into a cohesive medical term and by the end of this trip, grow into a close knit group. I am sure that there would be many challenges along the way during the trip, and the bright minds in our group would come together to jump across these hurdles J Now off to our second part of journey to Kunming China!!!! WOOHOOO.

So the usual formalities of passing through the Chinese police station too pass them some forms and off we went to our accommodations. Pretty good accommodations (y)! Everything is provided for in this placeJ. Grabbing our SIM cards (through the help of a policeman..ahem ahem) and getting dinner and some dumpling place (I think Pings Dumplings, Clayton, copied their idea from this place)! Hahaha, guys don’t be fooled by the Ma La noodles. The Liew brothers tried the Ma La noodles and I think tomorrow, we would be pooping out fire. You could say it is our BAPTISM by FIRE!!!!

Back at our accommodations, we met up with Diana and Martin again who briefed us on our plans here in Kunming. Looks like we have much to do in the next couples of weeks, but I’m sure it would be fun and rewarding!

Till then here are some photos of our accommodations!!!!