Rash Rash

It's been a few days since I got back from my recent school trip. It was good because the trip opened my eyes to see many things beyond my own perspectives. This time, we traveled to the mountains where the Hmong Tribe people stayed. Holey moley! It was a good 1 hr off-road experience which at some point of time I had wanted to throw up. My admiration to the villagers who chose to stay in this village and have limited access to the outside world.

The last time where I really roughed it out in a camping experience was probably 2 years ago when I still followed on the adventure trips. We had tents this time, pretty luxurious because the tent is built inside a shelter so doesn't matter about rain and shine but BUGS!!! Yes! Bugs!!! Horrible... I even squashed something to death below the tent. It looked like a scorpion. You can imagine the smell it gave out after being dead. For a few days? I don't know, really. I thought it would have been the lizard that I tried to chase around. Anyway, the toilet was the biggest challenge even though I do not have to dig my own hole. It's actually a modern squat toilet but with a thousand and one bugs flying inside, squatting and cold, it really took me out of my comfort zone for that. I have all the comfy for camping so that wasn't a problem at all.

One of the mornings, I woke up at 5.30am, the first to be awake. My mind was thinking. I couldn't get back to sleep and I was in major reflective thoughts. While I was reflecting and writing, there was this big stick insect that starting to crawl into the room right next to my leg. My first reaction was to kill because we spared no insects that looks like spiders. After I tried to squash it with my feet, I then realized that it wasn't a spider but a harmless stick insect. I watched it recovered from its unconsciousness and pulling itself slowly away from me with its crippled legs. I felt so bad at that moment and regretted in my rashness for not checking properly before reacting.

How many times do we often get rash over things before we checked them out properly? Like the saying goes, what's said cannot be taken back. You can apologize a thousand times but the crack has been made. Words, not always and necessarily help to mend such hurts. This was one of the greatest lesson I learnt on this trip. To not over-react and "kill" something innocent along the way. Better to be safe than sorry is not always the best option.