Team Singapore Schools moved into the official tournament hotel, the Ubon International Hotel today and was pleasantly surprised with the level of comfort afforded by the hotel. we thought that the hotel would be small and dirty but we were wrong as it turned out to be clean and sparkling.
We travelled on a 45 mins journey passing through farms with a lot of cows grazing on the grass and lo and behold we reached an amazing sports complex inthe middle of nowhere called the Thung Burapa Sports Complex. The Under 15s trained on one pitch and we trained on the other training pitc.h. There was also the main pitch which we were not alowed to train on as it will be used as the tournment pitch.
The goalkeepers (Sun Gang Yi and us) trained with Coach Zaman for 30 minutes while the rest of the Under 18s went through their paces with Coach Saswa nd Coach Nor Halis. We joined the whole team for the rest of the session to work on setpieces and team defensive tactics. It was a good and fruitful workout
We were impressed with the level of thought and organization the Thais have put into organizing the tournament. From the team buses provided to the Thai students who were at our training venue to pick up and clean up after us, we were amazed and appreciative of our hosts.
We returned to our hotel for dinner and had our nightly refections thereafter headed by Mr Shashi. We were alll determined to prepare well for our first match against Macau on Sunday.
Hamzah and Syahmi