So, I have been in Asia for the past 6 weeks or so, based in Singapore with weekly trips to Bangkok, Thailand.
I must say that both Singapore and Thailand are truly amazing places. I must also say that they have things we just don't have in Los Angeles, both good and not so good.
Examples in Singapore: good: Mangostines, bad: small bugs that bite me and leave a puffy red swelling the diameter of a soda can
Examples in Thailand: good: beautiful temples, bad: dysentery
So: the backstory:
I am here in Singapore working as an Art Director for Jeremy Railton on 4 attractions at the new casino that is being built at Resorts World on Sentosa Island in Singapore. Our main fabrication vendor is based in Bangkok, Thailand.
I flew out to Singapore from Los Angeles at the beginning of August. I landed on a Tuesday, was at the site office on Wednesday and then flew to Bangkok on Thursday and then back to Singapore on Friday. I (unknowingly) drank the water and got dysentery. Luckily, it was amild case and the doctor near our hotel (and the hotel is a whole 'nother blog in and of itself) immediately diagnosed me with dysentery and gave me antibiotics. So, I suffered through about 3 days of it, got the antibiotics and was all better about 5 days later. Jeremy was not so lucky. He also got dysentery and then flew back to the US, where it took his doctor about 2 weeks to get him all sorted and back to health.
So, that's the dysentery from Thailand story. Now for the puffy red bug bite story:
Part of my daily (well every other day-ly) routine is to go out to several of the attraction sites to review the current progress. Now, remember that we are essentially in a rain forest about 4 feet from the equator. This is hard to visualize as Singapore is now a large city that pretty much does a Disney Spray to keep the bugs to a minimum. However, the construction site that we work on has literally been carved out of the jungle. Where the raw concrete and dirt end, the jungle begins (I'll dig up and upload some pics soon). So, between the jungle being very close, the fast that it rains regularly, is more huimd than Florida and there is a fair amount of standing water, bugs are pretty common. Now, I haven't really ahd any issues with the bugs other than a couple of mosquito bites. However, on my Thursday evening site walk with young Rob Palmer, I got bit about 3 times by a small bug that looked like a small black fly. I had a couple of mosquito bite looking bumps on my left arm and didn't think much of them until...I woke up Friday morning to several large red puffy areas on my hand, wrist and near my elbow. Over the course of the day they got redder, itchier and hotter. I didn't get off work in time to go to the local clinic by the hotel, so I waited until this morning.
In explaining to the doctor the whole bug bite and swelling thing, he looked at them and said that he knew what caused it (though he couldn't recall the name of the insect) and that I was lucky as sometimes the bites blister within minutes of the person being bitten. Well, I now have some anitbacterial cream and the swelling and itching and redness are going away.
So, for all the fun I am having working on this project and with my co-workers (again, another blog on them at a later date) I am running into some things that I would most likely never see back home.
On the up side, the food both in Singapore and Bangkok is AH-MAY-ZING!
Ciao
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