YEAR 6 RESIDENTIAL 2020: KANCHANABURI

I watched fellow students craning their necks to wave goodbye to their parents. I was so excited and nervous at the same time. The Kanchanaburi trip was finally starting! This trip taught me all sorts of things and had such an amazing time and I will never forget it.

When I arrived at the hotel, we did some indoor and outdoor house activities. My favourite part of the day was definitely playing games indoors because I learnt a lot of creative activities to participate in with my friends. The first day was set aside for settling in and having fun! However, the teachers told us that we had a BIG day ahead of us.

Upon waking on the Tuesday morning, we had breakfast and made our way to ‘Elephant World’. It was a relief to me that elephants there are treated with as much respect as people. We made grass balls and fed them directly into the elephant’s mouth! In the afternoon, we got stuck into activities relating to our current school topic of World War 2 by visiting the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery & the Kanchanaburi War Museum. I think all of us were deeply shocked by how badly the prisoners of war (POWs) were treated. I learnt that we have to do our best to make sure such a catastrophe must not happen again.

Wednesday was really fun because we did a lot of unique activities. I especially liked ‘Gagaball’ because it was a combination of so many sports put together. Afterwards, I had to pour out SO much sand out of my shoe back into the Gagaball sandpit. We certainly worked up a sweat, trying to outsmart each other!

On Thursday, Hellfire Pass was awaiting. I had been to Hellfire pass when I was a child but I couldn’t really remember much because I was really young. This time, I was determined to remember all the information that I could. We hiked down slowly and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sharp edges protruded on the harshly carved walls. A fully grown tree sprouted it’s way to the very top of the 26 m trench, it’s green leaves poking out into the lush forest. The tools that POWs had used to carve out the channel were neatly propped against the walls. When it was time for our 2 minutes silence, I paid all the respect I could to the POWs who had died here.

When we arrived back to the hotel, we partook in a much lighter activity by making our own Somtam! It was actually the first time I had tried Somtam so I was a bit nervous at first but it was actually delicious! That evening, our teachers had planned a range of cool activities to round out the trip. My favourite evening activity was Eggbert because it was fun to design our own way of preventing the egg from cracking when we dropped it from the 3rd floor. Mr Ayliffe’s ‘know your teacher’ quiz was also entertaining! I learnt a lot of new information about our class teachers and TAs.

To conclude, this year’s Kanchanaburi trip was really enjoyable and I learnt many new things. I also made a couple of new friends from City Campus and I can’t wait to see them again when they join Riverside in August, and to sharing more eye-opening experiences with them on next year’s residential!