Hectic week, for sure for sure. Spent quite a bit of it working fairly hard finishing up a project, and also tidying up loose ends so that when I head to Thailand I don’t have to worry that things might break! (famous last words or what)
On Wed I think it was, met up with Mandy (the Canadian climber I met here that I’m heading to Thailand with, and her boyf Scott – cool guy – an engineer too ;) ) aaanyway – she’d been in touch with the red cross, and told them where we were going and asked what we could do to help.
They said, that if we wanted to, we could head to Paan mam khem (or something like that) it’s 50km North of Phuket…and help out. They also said that as they couldn’t guarantee water / lodgings etc.. that it was really up to us to see what could be done. They also suggested some things that we could usefully bring over to help.
So very much last minute we had a sausage bbq in work (which my friend Bex organised magnificently) and managed to raise $208.. which is pretty incredible really. I cycled off around town – and at most places I went (Bivouac 30%, High Country 20%, Simpsons Pharmacy (10%… hmmmm…) and the last one – who’s name I’m afraid I forget – had a *very* helpful lady, who rang the wholesaler (as I’d pretty much run most places out of water purification gear) and got their contents – or quite a lot – shipped over – and they gave me everything at cost price.. so that was great. Really, an incredible response.
Also – Maeve who works in the hospital managed to procure some odds and ends.. so you can see here what we ended up with.. not bad for 24 hours work really.
So it is all quite exciting… no idea what I’m really getting myself into here.. nor really how I’m going to meet up with my friends down in Krabi (I have a hotel address…) but I’m quite sure twill all work out. I definatly feel happier that we’re going to try to help out for a week (yes, will still climb for a week too). We may get there and find that they don’t need us.. but it’s right to try (methinks)
And then to make the week even better! A friend of mine from primary school (Linda Tormey) arrived into ChCh.. so has been just lovely hanging out with her.
Today we (Linda, Glynn, Emma, Dave, John and I) headed to boulder at castle hill, and we also took in Cave Stream – a fun 30 min caving trip – really nice on a hot day (which it was)
Here Glynn’s attempting a V4 I think (which John eventually got)
Anyway, that’s about all from me probably for the next fortnight.. but ‘cha never know!
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