Thursday afternoon I took a cab straight to the airport from school and met up with Karlijn and Gerrit (my two absolute favorite people here) and we flew to Jakarta. This turned out to be a pretty crazy trip. I had a revelation about a day in where it just like, "Maddy. This would NOT have been okay with you three months ago. I think we're growing here, girl."
We landed in Jakarta and tried to get a flight from there to, well, anywhere basically (Jakarta is not known to be the nicest place to visit, let alone spend your weekend). Alas, it did not work, so we took option B and rode a bus into the city and found the train station. After a confusing bout of trying to buy tickets that they insisted did not exist, we got a train for the next morning at 8:15am to Yogyakarta (we had wanted to leave the next evening). Although everyone wanted us to take a cab, we chose to walk and finally made it to the street with all the hostels around 9:30-10pm. It's an awesome street with lots of hostels, bars, restaurants, food stalls, and colorful lights. We found a little place with space down a little alley (unfortunately, Karlijn and I got attacked by bed bugs there. Too bad, 'cause it was a cute place with a very nice guy running it). And we found a different hostel that had a mini-van shuttle to Yogy every night. I went to bed (did I mention I had a horrible sore throat and had had minimal sleep the past week because of Joe and Penang? still went, though...) and Gerrit and Karlijn went back to the train station and managed to get a partial refund for our morning tickets.
We spent Friday wandering around Jakarta and I actually really liked it. It was very dirty and polluted and smelly and had a lot of poverty but it was a very real city. Very raw. I think I enjoyed it as much as I did because I was there with good people but the realness and rawness was also an almost refreshing change from rich and regulated Singapore (lots of 'r' adjectives). We took a train (like a poorer version of the MRT) to the old town square (they were filming a car commercial there, actually), had tea in this very elite, colonial but cool restaurant that Lonely Planet suggested (the walls were COVERED, including the bathroom, in framed portraits of all different ages, styles, and people. I saw Bush Senior, Mick Jagger, a young Elton John, the current and two previous queens of Holland - Karlijn pointed them out - Katherine Hepburn and a collection of interesting photos of unidentifiable people) and then spent the rest of the day wandering around. We stumbled upon this very busy and crowded market built into this maze of alleys and ordered nasi goreng (fried rice) because it was the only recognizable thing we could communicate to the smiling guy at a food stall. It was delicious. We also spent considerable time exploring antique shops, which was also very cool.
The mini van that night was supposed to leave at 6pm and arrive at 5-6am. Needless to say, that's not at all what happened. We left aroun 6:45 and drove around Jakarta for about two hours picking up two other guys. That meant that there were seven people in a eight-seater car. It was the three of us (shoved into the middle seat) plus another girl from Holland and then three non-English speakers (including the driver). We made it to Yogy around 10am the next morning - do not ask me how we survived 15hours in the car. The answer probably lies in the four-six bathroom stops (I can't remember the specific number) and our (meaning me, Karlijn, and Gerrit, of course) system of rotating seats so that everyone got slept on the same amount.
Our morning on Saturday consisted of figuring out logistics like a flight back to Jakarta and hostel and temple touring. In the afternoon, we went to beautiful Borobudur, a Buddhist temple built in the 9th century and enjoyed wandering around taking pictures in the rain without umbrella/poncho. Drying off was in order before dinner. We went to a nice restaurant because it was Karlijn's mom's birthday and had some pretty bad food while admiring the food stall below us that had live musicians rocking out. We laughed that we had become so accustomed to eating at relatively sketchy little places and that "nice" restaurants are often not that good - just expensive. I love laughing with them.
Sunday morning we got up suuuuuuper early and went to see the Hindu temple (built in the 9th century as well) called Prambanan. It was a cluster of different towers/temples that were all for different deities, whereas Borobudur was one big temple with lots of Buddhas. Both were made out of big stone bricks with intricate carvings. I wanted to climb them.
Our driver to the temple swung me by the airport at 10am on our way back so I could catch my flight back to Jakarta and then Singapore and I had an easy day of traveling (except they took my deet away at airport security and that did not make me happy). Fit in some good journaling time. Karlijn and Gerrit didn't have class until Tuesday, so got to spend an extra day in Yogyakarta. They should be back now, I'm going to go find out what they did...
I'm so lucky to know such good people all over the world.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Hat Trick (SCS, Broseph, Penang)
Three things from the last two weeks to write about:
1. Camp with Students Care Services
This was definitely a learning experience. I helped organize a two-day camp for seven 13-year olds that involved games, activities, reflection, spending the night at a chalet, and hiking around Pulau Ubin. It was quite the time. Overall, I really enjoyed it, but at the time, it was very difficult. There were teens there that were supposed to help with managing the kids and leading activities but expectations were not set for them and they ended up being more trouble than the kids who were supposed to be participating. It was exhausting trying to get them to set a good example while also leading activities and managing the younger kids. Especially during the value session I led (it went relatively well, all things considered - meaning, rowdy teenage boys who didn't listen to any of the rules and the fact that Singaporeans, in general, don't like to share/talk about feelings).
One thing that I found very different from the states was the issue of liability. In the US, everyone is afraid that everyone else is going to sue them so lots of precautions are taken into consideration. This did not seem to be true in Singapore. For example, I was put in charge of the First Aid (something that I'm really not that qualified for even with my First Aid certification) and found numerous pills in the box that only doctors should be giving out. This was after I found two girls rifling through it while a staff member let them without watching what they were doing. At the end of the camp, the kids were allowed to leave the center on their own and find their way home. In the states, at the end of a camp session, parents have to come claim their kids (sometimes, people even check ID to see if the person is who they say they are) because the camp is considered liable for the child until responsibility is handed off to someone else (preferably a parent).
All in all, though, the camp was a good, fun experience. I especially enjoyed working with the two young women at SCS that invited me to help them plan the camp (I still can't believe they did!). I really missed working with kids and it was especially challenging but interesting to spend time with young teens who could speak English with me but then Chinese to each other when they didn't want me to know what they were saying. Tricky tricky.
2. Broseph in Singapore!
The night after the camp, Joe arrived at 2am and was surprised at how hot and humid it was, even so early in the morning (this surprised turned to displeasure and continued the week he was here). He stayed eight days and we did a lot of different things. I'll list some (or most):
-Wakeboarding (twice, actually. There's a man-made lake specifically for it but you hold onto a cable connected to another cable - not a boat. Joe learned quickly and was attempting jumps by the end and I actually made it a fair distance for my first try!)
-Walking tour of Singapore (saw the Merlion, of course)
-Rock climbing (at one of the gyms with my friend, Liz. Dad bought me a new harness and sent it with Joe and I love it!)
-Lunch with our kind-of uncle and his family (really nice for Joe to meet them)
-out late and long with my friends
-hiking in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (saw monkeys, one of which stole my apple from my hands while I was looking the other way - the highlight of Joe's week and incredibly unexpected considering she jumped really far to grab it and had a baby hanging under her)
-ate prata and kopi
-class (he came to one - his first college class!)
I'm sure there's more that we did, but that's what comes to mind. It was really fun having him here. He's incredibly social - I can take him anywhere and he fits right in. He got along great with my friends, which made life with him here so much easier. It was weird sending him back to Portland because it'll be another five months before I see him again and in that time he'll have graduated from high school, figured out his plans for next year, had an entire summer, and turned nineteen. And who knows what I'll have done by then. Whew.
3. Weekend on Penang, Malaysia
On the plane to Singapore I met this woman, Gloria, who lives part time with her daughter in Portland and most of the time on Penang, an island off the west coast of Malaysia, and she invited me to come visit her there. Karlijn (my best girlfriend here) and I left early Saturday morning (after I slept an hour Friday night since I had to take Joe to the airport at 4am). It was a crazy day of traveling. We took a public bus across the border to Johor Bahru in hopes of getting a cheaper bus to Penang than we would from Singapore. The trip into Malaysia took about an hour and a half longer than we were told it would and then we were herded onto a last minute bus to Penang that was supposed to be direct but ended up stopping KL where we switched buses. Eventually, we made it to the ferry terminal on mainland Malaysia that was supposed to get us to Penang but it was pouring rain and 10pm, which was two hours later than we told Gloria we'd be. Plus, we hadn't eaten anything except grapes, granola bars, and pringles. After calling Gloria from a pay phone, a quick dinner, 15 minute ferry ride, and hour long bus ride, we made it to her condo and collapsed into bed at 1am, very wet from all the rain. It's a good thing Karlijn was there with me because it ended up being a fun adventure instead of a ridiculously frustrating experience.
We got up early the next day and took two buses to Penang Hill where we met two Americans and spent the day riding the very, very, very steep cable car that looks a hundred years old up the hill and then walking around on the top and taking pictures of Georgetown (the really nice town on Penang). It was a long but very nice day. For dinner, we went back to Gloria's and met some of her Dutch friends who ended up living just down the road from Karlijn's house in Holland. They know many of the same people - what a small world.
Monday we spent the morning at the pool at Gloria's condo, ate lunch with her, and then took the bus to Georgetown and spent the afternoon/evening walking around. We both loved Georgetown. All the people were really friendly, there aren't very many tall buildings and most of the architecture is interesting and old. It's easy to walk around, the traffic isn't too bad, and the pace of pedestrians is easygoing. We found this little outdoor cafe in an alley and it turned out to be a highly acclaimed local coffee and toast place. We also got full body massages, which was a lovely way to spend the end of our little holiday.
The night bus left at 10:30pm and we arrived in Singapore at 7:30 this morning. Today and tomorrow will be work days (gah, presentations and group projects!) and then I'm off to Indonesia this weekend with Karlijn and our other really good friend, Gerrit. I'm excited for the three of us to travel together, I think we'll have a wonderful time.
That's all, folks! For those of you in the Pacific Northwest, give it some love for me! Having Joe here sure made me miss the Oregon climate. Not like I didn't before or anything...
1. Camp with Students Care Services
This was definitely a learning experience. I helped organize a two-day camp for seven 13-year olds that involved games, activities, reflection, spending the night at a chalet, and hiking around Pulau Ubin. It was quite the time. Overall, I really enjoyed it, but at the time, it was very difficult. There were teens there that were supposed to help with managing the kids and leading activities but expectations were not set for them and they ended up being more trouble than the kids who were supposed to be participating. It was exhausting trying to get them to set a good example while also leading activities and managing the younger kids. Especially during the value session I led (it went relatively well, all things considered - meaning, rowdy teenage boys who didn't listen to any of the rules and the fact that Singaporeans, in general, don't like to share/talk about feelings).
One thing that I found very different from the states was the issue of liability. In the US, everyone is afraid that everyone else is going to sue them so lots of precautions are taken into consideration. This did not seem to be true in Singapore. For example, I was put in charge of the First Aid (something that I'm really not that qualified for even with my First Aid certification) and found numerous pills in the box that only doctors should be giving out. This was after I found two girls rifling through it while a staff member let them without watching what they were doing. At the end of the camp, the kids were allowed to leave the center on their own and find their way home. In the states, at the end of a camp session, parents have to come claim their kids (sometimes, people even check ID to see if the person is who they say they are) because the camp is considered liable for the child until responsibility is handed off to someone else (preferably a parent).
All in all, though, the camp was a good, fun experience. I especially enjoyed working with the two young women at SCS that invited me to help them plan the camp (I still can't believe they did!). I really missed working with kids and it was especially challenging but interesting to spend time with young teens who could speak English with me but then Chinese to each other when they didn't want me to know what they were saying. Tricky tricky.
2. Broseph in Singapore!
The night after the camp, Joe arrived at 2am and was surprised at how hot and humid it was, even so early in the morning (this surprised turned to displeasure and continued the week he was here). He stayed eight days and we did a lot of different things. I'll list some (or most):
-Wakeboarding (twice, actually. There's a man-made lake specifically for it but you hold onto a cable connected to another cable - not a boat. Joe learned quickly and was attempting jumps by the end and I actually made it a fair distance for my first try!)
-Walking tour of Singapore (saw the Merlion, of course)
-Rock climbing (at one of the gyms with my friend, Liz. Dad bought me a new harness and sent it with Joe and I love it!)
-Lunch with our kind-of uncle and his family (really nice for Joe to meet them)
-out late and long with my friends
-hiking in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (saw monkeys, one of which stole my apple from my hands while I was looking the other way - the highlight of Joe's week and incredibly unexpected considering she jumped really far to grab it and had a baby hanging under her)
-ate prata and kopi
-class (he came to one - his first college class!)
I'm sure there's more that we did, but that's what comes to mind. It was really fun having him here. He's incredibly social - I can take him anywhere and he fits right in. He got along great with my friends, which made life with him here so much easier. It was weird sending him back to Portland because it'll be another five months before I see him again and in that time he'll have graduated from high school, figured out his plans for next year, had an entire summer, and turned nineteen. And who knows what I'll have done by then. Whew.
3. Weekend on Penang, Malaysia
On the plane to Singapore I met this woman, Gloria, who lives part time with her daughter in Portland and most of the time on Penang, an island off the west coast of Malaysia, and she invited me to come visit her there. Karlijn (my best girlfriend here) and I left early Saturday morning (after I slept an hour Friday night since I had to take Joe to the airport at 4am). It was a crazy day of traveling. We took a public bus across the border to Johor Bahru in hopes of getting a cheaper bus to Penang than we would from Singapore. The trip into Malaysia took about an hour and a half longer than we were told it would and then we were herded onto a last minute bus to Penang that was supposed to be direct but ended up stopping KL where we switched buses. Eventually, we made it to the ferry terminal on mainland Malaysia that was supposed to get us to Penang but it was pouring rain and 10pm, which was two hours later than we told Gloria we'd be. Plus, we hadn't eaten anything except grapes, granola bars, and pringles. After calling Gloria from a pay phone, a quick dinner, 15 minute ferry ride, and hour long bus ride, we made it to her condo and collapsed into bed at 1am, very wet from all the rain. It's a good thing Karlijn was there with me because it ended up being a fun adventure instead of a ridiculously frustrating experience.
We got up early the next day and took two buses to Penang Hill where we met two Americans and spent the day riding the very, very, very steep cable car that looks a hundred years old up the hill and then walking around on the top and taking pictures of Georgetown (the really nice town on Penang). It was a long but very nice day. For dinner, we went back to Gloria's and met some of her Dutch friends who ended up living just down the road from Karlijn's house in Holland. They know many of the same people - what a small world.
Monday we spent the morning at the pool at Gloria's condo, ate lunch with her, and then took the bus to Georgetown and spent the afternoon/evening walking around. We both loved Georgetown. All the people were really friendly, there aren't very many tall buildings and most of the architecture is interesting and old. It's easy to walk around, the traffic isn't too bad, and the pace of pedestrians is easygoing. We found this little outdoor cafe in an alley and it turned out to be a highly acclaimed local coffee and toast place. We also got full body massages, which was a lovely way to spend the end of our little holiday.
The night bus left at 10:30pm and we arrived in Singapore at 7:30 this morning. Today and tomorrow will be work days (gah, presentations and group projects!) and then I'm off to Indonesia this weekend with Karlijn and our other really good friend, Gerrit. I'm excited for the three of us to travel together, I think we'll have a wonderful time.
That's all, folks! For those of you in the Pacific Northwest, give it some love for me! Having Joe here sure made me miss the Oregon climate. Not like I didn't before or anything...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Home Sweet Singapore
Hello hello!
Although I don't have any epic adventure stories to catch up, the past two weeks have really been very nice because I've just stayed in Singapore and spent time with friends. Here are some of the things I've been up to:
-Two days after getting back to Singapore, I had dinner with Andrew and Kendra who worked at Westwind when I was a camper. They'd been traveling in SE Asia and were spending one night in Singapore before heading back to the US. It was so wonderful to be able to talk to camp people. I really felt like I got a bit of home that week since I spent time with Nathan from college and then Andrew and Kendra from camp. It's going to be interesting not being there this summer and it was nice to talk to people who have been through that transition.
-I went shopping by myself, something I NEVER do. My experiences here have really been a test of my independence.
-I went climbing a couple of times, which was wonderful, of course (although, now that I've gotten a taste of outdoor climbing I just want more). I usually climb with Liz from the states who is living and working here but last week I also climbed with (another American and exchange student) Scott and it was fun to hear about his climbing experiences, etc.
-Last week, I had dinner with my Singaporean friend, Xintian (she went to Oregon last semester and has been a great help here by showing me around and being very supportive, etc.) and Simeon, the only other student here from Oregon. We went to a delicious Indian food place and exchanged adventure stories and the things we miss from the Northwest.
-I saw two movies in theaters (The Watchmen and He's Just Not That Into You), which is more than I've seen since I've been here and probably longer. It was actually a very nice change of pace and way of spending the evening with friends. Plus, the movies have Chinese subtitles, which is kind of cool.
-Group projects are due soon so I had several meetings for those for different classes and I'm also going to have to start to actually work. Ugh. At least my Black Pacific class is really interesting and the students I'm working with in my other classes are all very nice and fun.
-I'm planning a two day camp with Students Care Services which is like a social work organization that helps at-risk youth in Singapore. The camp is this Tuesday-Wednesday and is for twelve-thirteen year-olds who are transitioning from primary to secondary school. It's just me and these two young women from SCS that are running it. I don't even know how many kids. We're doing a hike on Pulau Ubin (an island for biking and hiking that belongs to Singapore - I went there before with friends, if you recall) so I went there last week to help figure out an appropriate route. I also wrote a value session (holla back, Westwind) and I'm excited to see how it goes!
-Friday night, I went to a Chinese Opera teahouse with three friends where we had a homemade Chinese dinner and then an opera performer came out and explained the meanings of the costumes, make-up, gestures, etc. of Chinese Opera. Then she and another woman performed a short piece for us (there was a group of French people there, too) with slides that explained (in English) what was going on. It was a really cool cultural experience and much more enjoyable than if I'd just gone to a really long Chinese opera because I would have had no idea what was going on.
After that, we met up with other friends and went about exploring the city until the wee hours of the morning.
-Saturday evening started with three of us playing frisbee outside our apartment buildings and we eventually accumulated 9-10 people for dinner. We made (that's right, we actually COOKED) macaroni with lots of cooked vegetables and cheese. We also had juice, watermelon, and ice cream. Back home, this would be a mediocre meal, but here is was INCREDIBLE. Just eating vegetables that weren't cooked with lots of oil and MSG was unbelievable. Plus the cheese. Man oh man. I usually don't even like most of the vegetables that I was so eagerly consuming. This was just heavenly, though. (If you're confused at all by this, please see the food section of a previous post entitled Life In Singapore)
-Today I went to an introduction bellydancing class with Liz (my climbing buddy) and a few other girlfriends. It was so awesome! I'm really a very slow learner and so I'm planning to practice more until I'm able to actually do what we were taught today, but it was fun to just learn a few moves and how to isolate your hips and everything. Basically, it was just an hour of lots of giggling and the really sweet teacher running around and saying things like, "Cute now, girls! Not dirty!","We're so sensual!" and "If you're not jiggling, you're not doing it right - this is not for really skinny girls!" Considering my friends and I were the tallest and "least skinny" (in comparison with the tiny Asian girls), this was quite encouraging. She gave a demonstration at the end and it was phenomenal - made me want to learn more!
-I made a calendar of the rest of my time in Singapore and time is quickly running out! I have a lot of logistics to figure out about the traveling I want to do and what's going on this summer. I've gotten an informal confirmation that I will be interning in KL this summer but I don't have any more information than that yet. Still, it's exciting!
AND JOE GETS HERE FRIDAY! (That's my brother, if you don't know)
All I have to do before then is group projects, prepare a presentation, the kids camp and figure out when/how I'm going to show him everything in Singapore in seven days. Sweet.
Also, Dear Oregon: send me some of your cold and I'll send you some of this never-ending, humid heat. That is all. PS I love you.
Someday soon, I will figure out how to post pictures - for now, find someone with facebook! (which now includes my mother...)
Although I don't have any epic adventure stories to catch up, the past two weeks have really been very nice because I've just stayed in Singapore and spent time with friends. Here are some of the things I've been up to:
-Two days after getting back to Singapore, I had dinner with Andrew and Kendra who worked at Westwind when I was a camper. They'd been traveling in SE Asia and were spending one night in Singapore before heading back to the US. It was so wonderful to be able to talk to camp people. I really felt like I got a bit of home that week since I spent time with Nathan from college and then Andrew and Kendra from camp. It's going to be interesting not being there this summer and it was nice to talk to people who have been through that transition.
-I went shopping by myself, something I NEVER do. My experiences here have really been a test of my independence.
-I went climbing a couple of times, which was wonderful, of course (although, now that I've gotten a taste of outdoor climbing I just want more). I usually climb with Liz from the states who is living and working here but last week I also climbed with (another American and exchange student) Scott and it was fun to hear about his climbing experiences, etc.
-Last week, I had dinner with my Singaporean friend, Xintian (she went to Oregon last semester and has been a great help here by showing me around and being very supportive, etc.) and Simeon, the only other student here from Oregon. We went to a delicious Indian food place and exchanged adventure stories and the things we miss from the Northwest.
-I saw two movies in theaters (The Watchmen and He's Just Not That Into You), which is more than I've seen since I've been here and probably longer. It was actually a very nice change of pace and way of spending the evening with friends. Plus, the movies have Chinese subtitles, which is kind of cool.
-Group projects are due soon so I had several meetings for those for different classes and I'm also going to have to start to actually work. Ugh. At least my Black Pacific class is really interesting and the students I'm working with in my other classes are all very nice and fun.
-I'm planning a two day camp with Students Care Services which is like a social work organization that helps at-risk youth in Singapore. The camp is this Tuesday-Wednesday and is for twelve-thirteen year-olds who are transitioning from primary to secondary school. It's just me and these two young women from SCS that are running it. I don't even know how many kids. We're doing a hike on Pulau Ubin (an island for biking and hiking that belongs to Singapore - I went there before with friends, if you recall) so I went there last week to help figure out an appropriate route. I also wrote a value session (holla back, Westwind) and I'm excited to see how it goes!
-Friday night, I went to a Chinese Opera teahouse with three friends where we had a homemade Chinese dinner and then an opera performer came out and explained the meanings of the costumes, make-up, gestures, etc. of Chinese Opera. Then she and another woman performed a short piece for us (there was a group of French people there, too) with slides that explained (in English) what was going on. It was a really cool cultural experience and much more enjoyable than if I'd just gone to a really long Chinese opera because I would have had no idea what was going on.
After that, we met up with other friends and went about exploring the city until the wee hours of the morning.
-Saturday evening started with three of us playing frisbee outside our apartment buildings and we eventually accumulated 9-10 people for dinner. We made (that's right, we actually COOKED) macaroni with lots of cooked vegetables and cheese. We also had juice, watermelon, and ice cream. Back home, this would be a mediocre meal, but here is was INCREDIBLE. Just eating vegetables that weren't cooked with lots of oil and MSG was unbelievable. Plus the cheese. Man oh man. I usually don't even like most of the vegetables that I was so eagerly consuming. This was just heavenly, though. (If you're confused at all by this, please see the food section of a previous post entitled Life In Singapore)
-Today I went to an introduction bellydancing class with Liz (my climbing buddy) and a few other girlfriends. It was so awesome! I'm really a very slow learner and so I'm planning to practice more until I'm able to actually do what we were taught today, but it was fun to just learn a few moves and how to isolate your hips and everything. Basically, it was just an hour of lots of giggling and the really sweet teacher running around and saying things like, "Cute now, girls! Not dirty!","We're so sensual!" and "If you're not jiggling, you're not doing it right - this is not for really skinny girls!" Considering my friends and I were the tallest and "least skinny" (in comparison with the tiny Asian girls), this was quite encouraging. She gave a demonstration at the end and it was phenomenal - made me want to learn more!
-I made a calendar of the rest of my time in Singapore and time is quickly running out! I have a lot of logistics to figure out about the traveling I want to do and what's going on this summer. I've gotten an informal confirmation that I will be interning in KL this summer but I don't have any more information than that yet. Still, it's exciting!
AND JOE GETS HERE FRIDAY! (That's my brother, if you don't know)
All I have to do before then is group projects, prepare a presentation, the kids camp and figure out when/how I'm going to show him everything in Singapore in seven days. Sweet.
Also, Dear Oregon: send me some of your cold and I'll send you some of this never-ending, humid heat. That is all. PS I love you.
Someday soon, I will figure out how to post pictures - for now, find someone with facebook! (which now includes my mother...)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Thailand
So! To complete my spring break update, I must write about my time in Thailand.
I flew from Phnom Penh to Bangkok on Friday afternoon and then took a bus from the airport to the area of town my hostel was in. The bus ride ended up being an hour and a half, which was longer than my flight there! Finding the hostel was really easy and inside, waiting for me, was my friend Nathan from home (he's studying in Tokyo for the year and we're the only two of our college friends abroad right now). After checking in, we had a delicious reunion dinner at a Thai restaurant (who would've thought, being in Thailand and all) and then basically went to bed.
A few of my friends from Singapore were staying at the same hostel as us so we spent the next day with them (after I did laundry, of course). We managed to cram all five of us into a tiny tuk-tuk and then took a crowded ferry down the river to the Royal Palace where we saw the Emerald Buddha (among other statues and incredible architecture). After that, we went to Wat Pho which houses the reclining Buddha. It was SO COOL. Basically, it's this MASSIVE Buddha that you can't even see all of at once because it's SO BIG. It's shiny and gold and in this building with pillars so you get pockets of space to see it through as you walk around the whole thing. The soles of its feet are black with these intricate designs made of mother of pearl. Way cool. And from it's feet, you can kind of see down it's whole body. That's the most complete view you can get. Fun fact of the day: did you know that it's beyond rude (basically, it's just against the rules) to use any Buddha as a background for a picture with people? You can take pictures of Buddha by itself, but not with you standing in front of it. In Wat Pho, there were many people breaking this rule.
Next, we took a little ferry across the river and went to Wat Arun. You don't go into this one, but it's kind of a tall tower that is intricately decorated with mosaics made from what looks like pieces of broken pottery or china dishes and it has very, very, VERY steep stairs the lead 3/4 of the way up. There's a great view of the river and Bangkok from up there, we were glad we went.
We had dinner in this little hole in the wall Indian restaurant that Lonely Planet recommended that was down a super sketchy alley but was so delicious. After a difficult time negotiating with multiple tuk-tuk drivers, we managed to find one to take us back to the hostel where Nathan and I spent the evening planning for what we were going to do the rest of the week. I had originally planned on going North for some elephant-riding and trekking, but Nathan really wanted to go South to the beautiful beaches. I relented and the next morning we went and bought cheap round-trip (both our flights back home left from Bangkok) night bus tickets, walked around Chinatown for a while, and then took the skytrain (basically equivalent to Singapore's MRT) to this outdoor market place that another American at the hostel had recommended we go to. It was a pretty cool market (although it was very hot) and we had fun walking around and checking stuff out. Nathan hadn't had longans (a fruit kind of like lychees that are little brown balls and then clear and sweet with a seed inside once you peel off the outside shell) so we bought some and ate them in the park and then made our way back to the hostel to grab our stuff and then the bus station where we ate dinner and then boarded our night bus!
The seats were not as big and comfy as the ones on the bus that I'd taken to the Cameron Highlands, but they gave us tons of snacks and a little juice box and played this really bizarre Thai movie that we alternatively enjoyed and were weirded out by. No one on the bus really spoke English, though, so it makes me wonder what we would've done if something had happened/gone wrong. Traveling is tricky! I slept a little, but Nate didn't really sleep at all, so we were tired when we finally arrived in Krabi at 6:45am after 11 hours. The hostel in Krabi town (we wanted to avoid the expensive tourist trap of staying on an actual beach) didn't have our reservation so we just walked up a block and found an even cheaper place that turned out to work really well. They had these pick-up trucks with benches in the back that kind of act like buses that we rode to the beach (about 20 minutes away) and we spent the day on Ao Nang. We took turns swimming (didn't want to abandon our stuff) and got Thai massages in the afternoon (6USD for an hour!). We finished the day by drinking Mai Thai's on the beach (Nathan's treat - it was the deal if I agreed to go South) and then made our way back to Krabi town.
The next day was the BEST. We got up early, got picked up by our guide, and then took a boat to a peninsula where we spent the morning OUTDOOR ROCK CLIMBING. Basically, the best thing ever. We were on the beach (the water was like four yards away from the cliff we were climbing) and although it was really busy (there were seven us in our group and then another couple of groups), it was so much fun. I managed to finish all three of the climbs I tried (one was at least 65+ feet high - I got up to the top and could see everything) and it was ridiculously awesome. AND I ran into the New Zealander that I'd met in the Cameron Highlands! He was also there to climb. Nathan and I decided to spend the rest of the day on the peninsula with this guy, Ben, from Switzerland and we hiked to two other beaches and saw some unbelievably amazing climbers. Awesome. Eventually, we found a very steep "trail" up a cliff to a viewpoint. The trail was all rocks and roots covered in red soil so we were totally soaked with sweat and caked with red powder when we were done, but the view was totally worth it and it was all so much fun. We ate a huge dinner that night, needless to say.
Nate and I spent the next day lounging on another beach and I got royally burned. Now I'm royally tan, which is awesome, but at the time, it was very painful. And I was only in the sun for ten minutes each side and I wore sunscreen AND I was soooooo not as bad as the old tourists on the beach who are basically purple and are all going to die of skin cancer. Gross. That's the thing about these Thai beaches. They are naturally very, very beautiful and I'm really glad I got to see them. However, they are chalk full of white Westerners spending tons of money and baking themselves and they ruin the view. The only locals you run into are ones who are trying to sell you something and they just look so hot and tired. It's hard - I wish the beaches would kick us all off and be their natural, beautiful selves again so that the people wouldn't be forced to succumb to touristic demands all the time, but at the same time, at this point, the locals are dependent on the tourists and would be in a very bad situation if we left. Ultimately, I really enjoyed my time there, but I do not feel the need to go back (unless, of course, it's for some sweet climbing trip or something).
The next day we were too burned and tired and it was very hot, so we basically lounged around all day before taking our night bus except for about an hour and a half where we took a walk on a boardwalk through a mangrove forest, which was very peaceful and a relief from the sun. Our bus left Krabi at 5:30pm Thursday and dropped us in Bangkok at 4:30am Friday (they gave us free dinner! And this time the movie was American - Transporter 3 - but dubbed in Thai) and we immediately went back to the hostel we stayed at before (Nate had a reservation there for Friday night because he wasn't leaving until Saturday morning) and they were nice enough to let us crash on the cushions in the TV room. The next day we didn't feel like braving the city except to eat, so we watched Burn After Reading and Quantum of Solace with some British girls who were also trying to kill time before their flight. I had to get the bus to the airport at four, so said goodbye to Nate that afternoon before flying back here.
The only thing that was really disappointing was that we weren't really able to find really good Pad Thai in Thailand. Weird, right? We had it at least four separate times in a variety of places (nice restaurant, food stall, lunch place, another restaurant) but twice it didn't even have peanuts and it was just less than satisfactory all four times. This breaks my heart. I love pad thai in the US and can't really believe that I like it better than pad thai in Thailand. Oh well. If I go back, I'll keep trying.
Unfortunately, upon arrival in Singapore, I've had to deal with a bout of traveler's diarrhea, but it happens, I knew it would on one of these trips, and I'm just very glad that it wasn't until I got home. And that I have antibiotics.
The last two weeks were really a whole lot of fun and I'm so excited about everything I got to experience. It was also really nice to get back to Singapore. It felt like coming home and that is definitely a good feeling. It's a relief to be able to drink the tap water again and to not have to wear a money belt. And to catch up with my friends here, of course.
The world is wide open!
LOVE,
M-"I just want to climb EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME"-addy
I flew from Phnom Penh to Bangkok on Friday afternoon and then took a bus from the airport to the area of town my hostel was in. The bus ride ended up being an hour and a half, which was longer than my flight there! Finding the hostel was really easy and inside, waiting for me, was my friend Nathan from home (he's studying in Tokyo for the year and we're the only two of our college friends abroad right now). After checking in, we had a delicious reunion dinner at a Thai restaurant (who would've thought, being in Thailand and all) and then basically went to bed.
A few of my friends from Singapore were staying at the same hostel as us so we spent the next day with them (after I did laundry, of course). We managed to cram all five of us into a tiny tuk-tuk and then took a crowded ferry down the river to the Royal Palace where we saw the Emerald Buddha (among other statues and incredible architecture). After that, we went to Wat Pho which houses the reclining Buddha. It was SO COOL. Basically, it's this MASSIVE Buddha that you can't even see all of at once because it's SO BIG. It's shiny and gold and in this building with pillars so you get pockets of space to see it through as you walk around the whole thing. The soles of its feet are black with these intricate designs made of mother of pearl. Way cool. And from it's feet, you can kind of see down it's whole body. That's the most complete view you can get. Fun fact of the day: did you know that it's beyond rude (basically, it's just against the rules) to use any Buddha as a background for a picture with people? You can take pictures of Buddha by itself, but not with you standing in front of it. In Wat Pho, there were many people breaking this rule.
Next, we took a little ferry across the river and went to Wat Arun. You don't go into this one, but it's kind of a tall tower that is intricately decorated with mosaics made from what looks like pieces of broken pottery or china dishes and it has very, very, VERY steep stairs the lead 3/4 of the way up. There's a great view of the river and Bangkok from up there, we were glad we went.
We had dinner in this little hole in the wall Indian restaurant that Lonely Planet recommended that was down a super sketchy alley but was so delicious. After a difficult time negotiating with multiple tuk-tuk drivers, we managed to find one to take us back to the hostel where Nathan and I spent the evening planning for what we were going to do the rest of the week. I had originally planned on going North for some elephant-riding and trekking, but Nathan really wanted to go South to the beautiful beaches. I relented and the next morning we went and bought cheap round-trip (both our flights back home left from Bangkok) night bus tickets, walked around Chinatown for a while, and then took the skytrain (basically equivalent to Singapore's MRT) to this outdoor market place that another American at the hostel had recommended we go to. It was a pretty cool market (although it was very hot) and we had fun walking around and checking stuff out. Nathan hadn't had longans (a fruit kind of like lychees that are little brown balls and then clear and sweet with a seed inside once you peel off the outside shell) so we bought some and ate them in the park and then made our way back to the hostel to grab our stuff and then the bus station where we ate dinner and then boarded our night bus!
The seats were not as big and comfy as the ones on the bus that I'd taken to the Cameron Highlands, but they gave us tons of snacks and a little juice box and played this really bizarre Thai movie that we alternatively enjoyed and were weirded out by. No one on the bus really spoke English, though, so it makes me wonder what we would've done if something had happened/gone wrong. Traveling is tricky! I slept a little, but Nate didn't really sleep at all, so we were tired when we finally arrived in Krabi at 6:45am after 11 hours. The hostel in Krabi town (we wanted to avoid the expensive tourist trap of staying on an actual beach) didn't have our reservation so we just walked up a block and found an even cheaper place that turned out to work really well. They had these pick-up trucks with benches in the back that kind of act like buses that we rode to the beach (about 20 minutes away) and we spent the day on Ao Nang. We took turns swimming (didn't want to abandon our stuff) and got Thai massages in the afternoon (6USD for an hour!). We finished the day by drinking Mai Thai's on the beach (Nathan's treat - it was the deal if I agreed to go South) and then made our way back to Krabi town.
The next day was the BEST. We got up early, got picked up by our guide, and then took a boat to a peninsula where we spent the morning OUTDOOR ROCK CLIMBING. Basically, the best thing ever. We were on the beach (the water was like four yards away from the cliff we were climbing) and although it was really busy (there were seven us in our group and then another couple of groups), it was so much fun. I managed to finish all three of the climbs I tried (one was at least 65+ feet high - I got up to the top and could see everything) and it was ridiculously awesome. AND I ran into the New Zealander that I'd met in the Cameron Highlands! He was also there to climb. Nathan and I decided to spend the rest of the day on the peninsula with this guy, Ben, from Switzerland and we hiked to two other beaches and saw some unbelievably amazing climbers. Awesome. Eventually, we found a very steep "trail" up a cliff to a viewpoint. The trail was all rocks and roots covered in red soil so we were totally soaked with sweat and caked with red powder when we were done, but the view was totally worth it and it was all so much fun. We ate a huge dinner that night, needless to say.
Nate and I spent the next day lounging on another beach and I got royally burned. Now I'm royally tan, which is awesome, but at the time, it was very painful. And I was only in the sun for ten minutes each side and I wore sunscreen AND I was soooooo not as bad as the old tourists on the beach who are basically purple and are all going to die of skin cancer. Gross. That's the thing about these Thai beaches. They are naturally very, very beautiful and I'm really glad I got to see them. However, they are chalk full of white Westerners spending tons of money and baking themselves and they ruin the view. The only locals you run into are ones who are trying to sell you something and they just look so hot and tired. It's hard - I wish the beaches would kick us all off and be their natural, beautiful selves again so that the people wouldn't be forced to succumb to touristic demands all the time, but at the same time, at this point, the locals are dependent on the tourists and would be in a very bad situation if we left. Ultimately, I really enjoyed my time there, but I do not feel the need to go back (unless, of course, it's for some sweet climbing trip or something).
The next day we were too burned and tired and it was very hot, so we basically lounged around all day before taking our night bus except for about an hour and a half where we took a walk on a boardwalk through a mangrove forest, which was very peaceful and a relief from the sun. Our bus left Krabi at 5:30pm Thursday and dropped us in Bangkok at 4:30am Friday (they gave us free dinner! And this time the movie was American - Transporter 3 - but dubbed in Thai) and we immediately went back to the hostel we stayed at before (Nate had a reservation there for Friday night because he wasn't leaving until Saturday morning) and they were nice enough to let us crash on the cushions in the TV room. The next day we didn't feel like braving the city except to eat, so we watched Burn After Reading and Quantum of Solace with some British girls who were also trying to kill time before their flight. I had to get the bus to the airport at four, so said goodbye to Nate that afternoon before flying back here.
The only thing that was really disappointing was that we weren't really able to find really good Pad Thai in Thailand. Weird, right? We had it at least four separate times in a variety of places (nice restaurant, food stall, lunch place, another restaurant) but twice it didn't even have peanuts and it was just less than satisfactory all four times. This breaks my heart. I love pad thai in the US and can't really believe that I like it better than pad thai in Thailand. Oh well. If I go back, I'll keep trying.
Unfortunately, upon arrival in Singapore, I've had to deal with a bout of traveler's diarrhea, but it happens, I knew it would on one of these trips, and I'm just very glad that it wasn't until I got home. And that I have antibiotics.
The last two weeks were really a whole lot of fun and I'm so excited about everything I got to experience. It was also really nice to get back to Singapore. It felt like coming home and that is definitely a good feeling. It's a relief to be able to drink the tap water again and to not have to wear a money belt. And to catch up with my friends here, of course.
The world is wide open!
LOVE,
M-"I just want to climb EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME"-addy
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
So the past two weeks have been crazy. Not actually, but it's crazy for me to think how much I've experienced and then try to summarize it in a blog post. Therefore, there will be two - one for Cambodia and one for Thailand.
Phnom Penh.
I arrived in Cambodia, visa in my passport, at 7:30am and was greeted by an old man from my hostel with a sign with my name on it. My first experience in Cambodia was riding in a tuk-tuk, which is like a little carriage attached to a motorbike (the ones in Phnom Penh are bigger, more cushion-y and have an actual bike whereas the ones in Bangkok are kind of all one car thingy with an actual windowshield for the driver and the ones in Southern Thailand have the carriage like a sidecar to the left of the motorbike. They're all open-air, though) to my hostel - so awesome. I was able to eat breakfast and nap a little before meeting up with Shoshana, my professor from Oregon who was traveling through Cambodia and Vietnam, offering her services to different universities and NGOs. The purpose of my trip was to accompany her to the university and take pictures, etc. during her lectures.
It was an incredibly interesting experience because I got to see the city and culture in a way that I would never otherwise be able to. I met local students and talked to one who wanted to practice her English with me. I also got to tour their campus and see basic things like their school bookstore (which is open-aired and outdoors) and compare them with my other university experiences (for instance, they wear uniforms, but not really consistently and I never quite figured out why or who got certain privileges). Shoshana's translator for the lectures was amazing. He's a fourth year psychology student and was basically volunteered for the job because he speaks English so well. The other students also spoke some English, but it was hard to tell how much. Sometimes, another student would jump in to assist the translator and other times Shoshana would make a joke and most of the people in the class would laugh, but the levels of understanding of what she was saying were all different, so there was definitely a need for translation.
The relationship between professors and students was incredibly different than in the states. The office for the psychology department was just a room with a table and bookshelves and some desks, but not at all formal and when we were sitting in there with Professor Hema (the head of the psychology department and our host for the week), some students just meandered in and joined the conversation. She also had a student drive us (and her) in her car one day and Shoshana said that when she went to another professor's house, there were students there just hanging out. Professor Hema's sister is a psychologist and she explained that she is very touchy-feely with her clients and they sit next to each other during sessions and love each other like mother-child. Whoa how you would get sued in the states for that behavior. Or maybe you wouldn't if the fear of it hadn't made everyone so paranoid. Who knows.
I ended up becoming good friends with the guys who ran the hostel. Apparently, it's owned by Australians or something but they were gone, so it was just these three Cambodian guys about my age and then an older man as well. They actually live at the hostel, just sleeping outside on some chairs or behind the counter or on some benches. I figured this out because I got back late one night and they were going to bed but I figured they did something like that because they were always there. Always. I found out later that all their schooling/food, etc. was being paid for by their bosses at the hostel, so they considered themselves very lucky. Shoshana gave me a dozen milk fruit, which had been a gift to her, and I asked the guys how to eat them (you cut them open and eat the milky inside with a spoon - very delicious). Apparently, milk fruit is relatively expensive but a favorite, so they loved me after that. They found out I was a student and one of them took me to his university on his motorbike (whoa scary - I could tell he drove slowly for my sake) and showed me the library (most of the books were in English) and the new building where he studies law. We had somewhat broken conversations about how to apply for university in Cambodia, how to pay, how long you study, when the semesters are, what students do for fun, etc. It was so awesome - when else would I be able to experience something like this? After showing me his school, he took me to the Tuol Sleng Former Prison S.21 Genocide Museum, which had originally been a high school before it was turned into a prison directed by Pol Pot. It was a very graphic museum with disturbing pictures and displays of tools used for torture and what people looked like when they were found there. It was unreal to see the tiny brick cells and large posters of prisoners' faces and then walk back outside into the green courtyard with trees covered with beautiful white blossoms. How can people do these things to people in such a beautiful world?
One of the days, Professor Hema took us to see Father Kevin who is an American that's been in Cambodia for two+ years and runs a home/organization for children ages 4-18 who have HIV/AIDS. We got to see some of the houses and meet some of the children - they jumped all over us and kept trying to get me to come play while Father Kevin was describing how the organization worked. This is a really remarkable place. It was originally meant to be for the children (who are mostly all orphans due to HIV/AIDS) to come to die, but in the last few years they've had several children reach adulthood and it has transformed into a place of hope and one that gives these children a chance for a future. Father Kevin talked about how now that their kids are becoming adults, a new part of the program is figuring out what to do next for them. He also talked about dealing with teenagers and how they experience all the same things that teenagers everywhere do but the consequences are so different and so much greater for them. There's also the issue of grief and how to deal with it because these children are forming bonds with each other that I (and most of us) could never imagine and there's always the risk that they'll prematurely lose each other.
The moment that impacted me the most was walking into one of the houses and seeing this wall that had a poster of different kinds of fruits and a Snow White puzzle and this picture of construction paper flowers that someone had made for a project and realizing that they're just kids like I was. I know that kids everywhere are the same and I know that I know this, but it took seeing this wall for me to really conceptualize that. People are people everywhere.
The last night I was in Phnom Penh, Shoshana had a lot of work that she needed to do to prepare for Vietnam, but I was able to go with one of her friends from the states who was also in Cambodia at the time to a traditional Cambodian dance performance. It was Karen's friends who run the dance company and who choreographed the show in collaboration with a Japanese woman who plays the ichigenkin (a one-string zither). The performance space was a ways outside of Phnom Penh in a jungle-y area and was absolutely beautiful. It was big and open-aired with a roof and the back of the stage was meant to look like an ancient building of some kind with big stone heads of the Buddha (I think). Very, very cool. The dance was interesting too. It was surprising the variety of sounds the zither could make (she was accompanied by a Cambodian band that usually plays the music for this kind of dance) and the young women dancing were making these really difficult and precise positions look very easy. I was impressed.
Other interesting things were the Khmer food (one time, I had this ground pork with rice that was stuck together and crispy like a rice cake and this other time I had this really delicious Khmer crepe thing with chicken, bean sprouts, mint, lettuce and yummy dipping sauce. I also tried Khmer cake which tasted kind of like flan but had the texture of eggy cake) and the Khmer language (languages are always interesting, I think) and learning to brush my teeth with bottled water and not to open my mouth in the shower. I learned to say "no, thank you" automatically to tuk-tuk and motorbikers because they bug you everywhere you go (although not nearly as bad as Thailand). And Cambodia uses the US dollar! Weird. They also have Cambodia riel, but it's so little that it's only really used for street vendors, etc. and you generally pay with US money (that's what comes out of ATMs), although you might get change in both dollars and riel (they don't use coins).
Also, at Wat Phnom, the [man-made] hill with the wat on top that the city is named after (and my hostel was right next to) there were lots of monkeys and an elephant for pictures. One time, I saw a monkey napping with a baby in the mother's lap. So cute, I almost died. Sad because the monkey is domesticated and dirty and has a bad human-food diet, but oh my god it was NAPPING WITH A BABY. So. cute.
On a sad note, there were a lot of children begging on the streets everywhere and they're very persistent. Sometimes I just had to ignore them to get them to go away and that just breaks my heart. They're just kids. Shoshana told me about some organizations that train children and people with disabilities how to make scarfs and statues and jewelry out of silk or wood or other things and then sell them in these nice stores so that they're making a living from an actual craft and not digging through a dump somewhere. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a part of one of these organizations.
One last thing that I don't really know where to fit in but was an important part of my experience: the first night I was there, I had the evening to myself and went and sat outside the hostel with some homework to read. There was this little boy sitting out there (children do a lot of sitting/fidgeting/hanging out in Third World countries - in my experience at least, because there's not much else for them to do) and I started making faces at him until he felt comfortable enough to sit in the chair next to mine. I drew a circle on my homework and then handed him the pen and he drew a circle and then handed it back to me. We went back and forth like this for a while until he felt comfortable enough to draw on his own. At one point, I figured out he was writing his name (I thought he was maybe three or four but it's really difficult to tell ages in Cambodia because they're all really small and young looking so he was probably seven-ish) so I wrote mine and then he started to copy mine. Eventually, a little girl joined us too and we spent a good hour+ drawing and writing and communicating without language together. It was very fun and once again goes to show that kids are kids/people are people everywhere. And I want to work with them.
Wow, the world is so big.
Next up, Thailand!
Phnom Penh.
I arrived in Cambodia, visa in my passport, at 7:30am and was greeted by an old man from my hostel with a sign with my name on it. My first experience in Cambodia was riding in a tuk-tuk, which is like a little carriage attached to a motorbike (the ones in Phnom Penh are bigger, more cushion-y and have an actual bike whereas the ones in Bangkok are kind of all one car thingy with an actual windowshield for the driver and the ones in Southern Thailand have the carriage like a sidecar to the left of the motorbike. They're all open-air, though) to my hostel - so awesome. I was able to eat breakfast and nap a little before meeting up with Shoshana, my professor from Oregon who was traveling through Cambodia and Vietnam, offering her services to different universities and NGOs. The purpose of my trip was to accompany her to the university and take pictures, etc. during her lectures.
It was an incredibly interesting experience because I got to see the city and culture in a way that I would never otherwise be able to. I met local students and talked to one who wanted to practice her English with me. I also got to tour their campus and see basic things like their school bookstore (which is open-aired and outdoors) and compare them with my other university experiences (for instance, they wear uniforms, but not really consistently and I never quite figured out why or who got certain privileges). Shoshana's translator for the lectures was amazing. He's a fourth year psychology student and was basically volunteered for the job because he speaks English so well. The other students also spoke some English, but it was hard to tell how much. Sometimes, another student would jump in to assist the translator and other times Shoshana would make a joke and most of the people in the class would laugh, but the levels of understanding of what she was saying were all different, so there was definitely a need for translation.
The relationship between professors and students was incredibly different than in the states. The office for the psychology department was just a room with a table and bookshelves and some desks, but not at all formal and when we were sitting in there with Professor Hema (the head of the psychology department and our host for the week), some students just meandered in and joined the conversation. She also had a student drive us (and her) in her car one day and Shoshana said that when she went to another professor's house, there were students there just hanging out. Professor Hema's sister is a psychologist and she explained that she is very touchy-feely with her clients and they sit next to each other during sessions and love each other like mother-child. Whoa how you would get sued in the states for that behavior. Or maybe you wouldn't if the fear of it hadn't made everyone so paranoid. Who knows.
I ended up becoming good friends with the guys who ran the hostel. Apparently, it's owned by Australians or something but they were gone, so it was just these three Cambodian guys about my age and then an older man as well. They actually live at the hostel, just sleeping outside on some chairs or behind the counter or on some benches. I figured this out because I got back late one night and they were going to bed but I figured they did something like that because they were always there. Always. I found out later that all their schooling/food, etc. was being paid for by their bosses at the hostel, so they considered themselves very lucky. Shoshana gave me a dozen milk fruit, which had been a gift to her, and I asked the guys how to eat them (you cut them open and eat the milky inside with a spoon - very delicious). Apparently, milk fruit is relatively expensive but a favorite, so they loved me after that. They found out I was a student and one of them took me to his university on his motorbike (whoa scary - I could tell he drove slowly for my sake) and showed me the library (most of the books were in English) and the new building where he studies law. We had somewhat broken conversations about how to apply for university in Cambodia, how to pay, how long you study, when the semesters are, what students do for fun, etc. It was so awesome - when else would I be able to experience something like this? After showing me his school, he took me to the Tuol Sleng Former Prison S.21 Genocide Museum, which had originally been a high school before it was turned into a prison directed by Pol Pot. It was a very graphic museum with disturbing pictures and displays of tools used for torture and what people looked like when they were found there. It was unreal to see the tiny brick cells and large posters of prisoners' faces and then walk back outside into the green courtyard with trees covered with beautiful white blossoms. How can people do these things to people in such a beautiful world?
One of the days, Professor Hema took us to see Father Kevin who is an American that's been in Cambodia for two+ years and runs a home/organization for children ages 4-18 who have HIV/AIDS. We got to see some of the houses and meet some of the children - they jumped all over us and kept trying to get me to come play while Father Kevin was describing how the organization worked. This is a really remarkable place. It was originally meant to be for the children (who are mostly all orphans due to HIV/AIDS) to come to die, but in the last few years they've had several children reach adulthood and it has transformed into a place of hope and one that gives these children a chance for a future. Father Kevin talked about how now that their kids are becoming adults, a new part of the program is figuring out what to do next for them. He also talked about dealing with teenagers and how they experience all the same things that teenagers everywhere do but the consequences are so different and so much greater for them. There's also the issue of grief and how to deal with it because these children are forming bonds with each other that I (and most of us) could never imagine and there's always the risk that they'll prematurely lose each other.
The moment that impacted me the most was walking into one of the houses and seeing this wall that had a poster of different kinds of fruits and a Snow White puzzle and this picture of construction paper flowers that someone had made for a project and realizing that they're just kids like I was. I know that kids everywhere are the same and I know that I know this, but it took seeing this wall for me to really conceptualize that. People are people everywhere.
The last night I was in Phnom Penh, Shoshana had a lot of work that she needed to do to prepare for Vietnam, but I was able to go with one of her friends from the states who was also in Cambodia at the time to a traditional Cambodian dance performance. It was Karen's friends who run the dance company and who choreographed the show in collaboration with a Japanese woman who plays the ichigenkin (a one-string zither). The performance space was a ways outside of Phnom Penh in a jungle-y area and was absolutely beautiful. It was big and open-aired with a roof and the back of the stage was meant to look like an ancient building of some kind with big stone heads of the Buddha (I think). Very, very cool. The dance was interesting too. It was surprising the variety of sounds the zither could make (she was accompanied by a Cambodian band that usually plays the music for this kind of dance) and the young women dancing were making these really difficult and precise positions look very easy. I was impressed.
Other interesting things were the Khmer food (one time, I had this ground pork with rice that was stuck together and crispy like a rice cake and this other time I had this really delicious Khmer crepe thing with chicken, bean sprouts, mint, lettuce and yummy dipping sauce. I also tried Khmer cake which tasted kind of like flan but had the texture of eggy cake) and the Khmer language (languages are always interesting, I think) and learning to brush my teeth with bottled water and not to open my mouth in the shower. I learned to say "no, thank you" automatically to tuk-tuk and motorbikers because they bug you everywhere you go (although not nearly as bad as Thailand). And Cambodia uses the US dollar! Weird. They also have Cambodia riel, but it's so little that it's only really used for street vendors, etc. and you generally pay with US money (that's what comes out of ATMs), although you might get change in both dollars and riel (they don't use coins).
Also, at Wat Phnom, the [man-made] hill with the wat on top that the city is named after (and my hostel was right next to) there were lots of monkeys and an elephant for pictures. One time, I saw a monkey napping with a baby in the mother's lap. So cute, I almost died. Sad because the monkey is domesticated and dirty and has a bad human-food diet, but oh my god it was NAPPING WITH A BABY. So. cute.
On a sad note, there were a lot of children begging on the streets everywhere and they're very persistent. Sometimes I just had to ignore them to get them to go away and that just breaks my heart. They're just kids. Shoshana told me about some organizations that train children and people with disabilities how to make scarfs and statues and jewelry out of silk or wood or other things and then sell them in these nice stores so that they're making a living from an actual craft and not digging through a dump somewhere. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a part of one of these organizations.
One last thing that I don't really know where to fit in but was an important part of my experience: the first night I was there, I had the evening to myself and went and sat outside the hostel with some homework to read. There was this little boy sitting out there (children do a lot of sitting/fidgeting/hanging out in Third World countries - in my experience at least, because there's not much else for them to do) and I started making faces at him until he felt comfortable enough to sit in the chair next to mine. I drew a circle on my homework and then handed him the pen and he drew a circle and then handed it back to me. We went back and forth like this for a while until he felt comfortable enough to draw on his own. At one point, I figured out he was writing his name (I thought he was maybe three or four but it's really difficult to tell ages in Cambodia because they're all really small and young looking so he was probably seven-ish) so I wrote mine and then he started to copy mine. Eventually, a little girl joined us too and we spent a good hour+ drawing and writing and communicating without language together. It was very fun and once again goes to show that kids are kids/people are people everywhere. And I want to work with them.
Wow, the world is so big.
Next up, Thailand!
Friday, February 13, 2009
Life In Singapore
In an effort to procrastinate all the homework and logistics I have to figure out before leaving on Monday, I'm writing this to fill you all in on some of the details of daily life. Not everything is big, exciting trips to exotic places. I'm also going to school, you know. Well, sort of.
(This is also just for me to remember it all once I'm back, so these details may not be of interest to my general readership. I advise you to skim and read the sections that are most interesting to you. Beware: this is going to be epic)
FOOD
The cheapest food here (2-4 Sing dollars per meal) is sold in hawker centers which are basically food centers (the cheaper ones are outdoors) just filled with a bunch of food stalls of Chinese, Muslim, Indian, vegetarian (usually just one stall dedicated to that) food and usually a drink stand or two. If they're really nice hawker centers (like ones on campus) they might have Japanese, Indonesian or a place where you select some items (like wontons, tofu, veggies, squid, other unrecognizable things...) and they'll boil them and put them over noodles for you or just stalls with more variety. I eat a lot of Indian because I find that (besides being delicious in general) it has more flavor a lot of the time, is pretty recognizable, and you can't always taste the MSG.
My FAVORITE thing to eat is called prata (or roti prata. In Malaysia, it was called roti canai). It's kind of like fried naan, but not so bready. It's just dough that they spread out into a thin circle and then grill on a massive hot plate. It's served with a bowl of curry that you dip it in. Most basic Indian stalls have plain, egg, cheese, onion, and a combination of those. There are a couple of hard-to-reach places that I've found that have a vast variety of kinds like pineapple, kaya (this coconut butter stuff they put on toast here), chocolate, butter, and more that I can't think of. My absolute favorite is banana. Lucky for me, the two guys that run the Indian place in the hawker center near my apartment (one old guy who speaks a little English and another one who might be his son in his early 30s? who speaks English fluently) know me and my friends and always get ready and smile at when they see us coming. We have such a good relationship with them now that if I bring a banana, they will make me a banana prata and only charge me for a plain one (70 cents). It's fantastic.
The supermarkets have everything for the most part but a few things have come up. There's no health food section or anything and most of the bread is pure white. It's really difficult to find wheat bread and when you do, it's hard to judge whether it's really any healthier. I've managed to find Adam's peanut butter, much to my relief, but only at a specific store, so I have to go out of my way to get it. I usually keep pb and j fixings in my fridge, plus yogurt and eggs that I've boiled in my kettle (that's another thing, they don't refrigerate their eggs) for breakfast and whatever produce I've gotten from the fruit stall nearby (I love having watermelon when it shouldn't be in season! And I can get a bunch of bananas for only a dollar!). Dinner is always eaten out and sometimes lunch as well. Healthy is real hard to do here when rice or noodles (or prata) is served with every meal.
DRINK
The drink that seems to have taken over Singapore is called Milo. It's just chocolate powder made into hot or iced liquid (like ovaltine or something) but it's actually really good. It's everywhere, plus the company makes other things like little chocolate 'nuggets' and energy bars and cereal. I'm pretty sure Milo has athletic clubs or campaigns for kids or something like that because the label is all over bus stops, etc.
The vending machines usually have a variety of very corn syrupy tea, coke, little cans of cold sweetened coffee, and soya bean milk which is like super super sweet, not-grainy soy milk. I really like it, but I am not fooled by how it pretends to be healthy, oh no. When you get it 'fresh' from a drink stand, they put some syrup in your glass first. What do you bet it's corn syrup or some other kind of liquid sugar? That is what makes it delicious, though.
At the nicer hawker centers, there's lots of fruit/fruit juice stands (piece of watermelon or pineapple for 40 cents!). Some of the REALLY nice ones have sugarcane juice that they make in front of you by putting canes through this crushing machine and then straining the juice for you (I don't really like the caney after taste). Many places also have whole coconuts that they'll chop a hole in for you and give you a straw and a spoon (you'd love it, Dad). I don't really like the milk but I love scooping out the meat and eating it.
Most places have lime juice, grass jelly drink, barley drink, tea with milk, ice lemon tea, etc. My favorite thing to drink is called teh tarik. It's sold at most drink stands and some Indian/Muslim places. It's kind of like chai but spicier - like Indian chai. It's made with tea, evaporated and condensed milk and then poured from glass to glass high in the air to make it all frothy. SO GOOD. My friends and I had to cut back because we would just keep ordering them and then realize that at dinner alone we'd had 2-3 and then we'd go back in the evening to get more. mmmmmmmmm. OH MAN I also just discovered teh halia which is exactly like teh tarik except that it's ginger tea. SO SO SO GOOD.
CLOTHES
Everyone here dresses really nicely all the time. Back home, I wear my t-shirts all the time and when I wear anything else, I feel like I'm dressing up or something. It didn't occur to me until I was packing for the Cameron Highlands that I don't ever where my t-shirts out of the house here (well, unless I'm just going to the hawker center). I'm way too dressed down if I do. I always have to pack a sweater to go to school because of the air conditioning. Literally, I bring the warmest sweaters I have to class, and I'm still cold. One girl who is doing the same exchange as me except backwards (she's from NUS going to UO) next fall, said the other day in our air-con classroom, "oh I'm so cold! I'll never survive in Oregon! Is it cold there? Do I need to bring a coat?" I told her of course she'll need a coat because she'll be there for fall and winter, but I didn't know how to explain that the cold you feel from an air-conditioner is very different from the cold you feel from a winter day. She'll find out soon, I guess!
BATHROOMS
Or 'toilets,' as everyone says here. In Singapore, most bathrooms are stalls with western toilets and then one stall at the end with a squat toilet. In Malaysia, it's mostly all squat toilets and hoses (in addition to toilet paper most of the time) but when there are western toilets, the seats are always up. I think the women just prefer to squat. As a professional outdoor reliever (thank you, Mom), the squat toilets do not phase me (although, I did take a picture of the first one I used - before I used it, don't worry. TMI?).
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
The MRT is the train that goes all over the city. It generally runs every six minutes (more often during peak hours) 6am-11:30pm every day and is very efficient and always on time. There's a station very conveniently located by my apartment but it doesn't go straight to school, so I tend to take a couple of buses to get to campus. If I leave my house at 9:30am, I can catch two buses and get to my class that starts at 10:10am just on time. They have these little plastic cards called ez-link cards that you have to "top-up" periodically and you just scan it every time you enter and leave a station so it calculates how far you went and therefore, how much they should charge you (same goes for buses). You get in big big trouble if you don't scan properly on entry and exiting because they think you're trying to get out of paying the correct fee. Apparently, ez-link cards are also taking over Singapore because they're trying to get people to use them to pay for other things as well (such as printing in the school library). Singapore is big on efficiency.
The really interesting/weird/disturbing/sometimes comical thing about the MRT is the anti-terrorist campaign they have going. They have little TV screens on the landings at the stations and also on the trains and when they're not advertising movies, they play this tape that they've made that's supposed to keep people informed about looking out for "suspicious looking persons or items" (this is also periodically said over the intercom. That and "please encourage older persons to hold on to the rail or to take the lift"). There's two different versions of the video. They both start with images of bombings that have occurred on public transportation in other parts of the world (such as the one in London a couple years ago) and then a guy comes on and says that they should have been prevented and this is what you can do to keep Singapore safe. They go on to show a dramatized seen of a very suspicious looking young man in a black baseball cap carrying a big, bulky black bag get on the train very suspiciously, sit down very suspiciously, and stow his bag under a seat very suspiciously. The whole time, this older woman is watching him and when he gets up to leave, she confronts him about leaving the bag behind but he denies that it's his. She then bolts to the button on the wall of the train that you push to talk to the driver in case of an emergency and they go through this whole scene of what to say and what to do if you're a passenger on the train and it stops for an unknown emergency (my favorite part is when they tell you that if you feel sick or nauseas, just breathe deeply and wait for medical people to arrive while showing a clip of a woman clutching her chest and taking huge, heaving breathes and backing into a little corner, all the while looking confused rather than like she's going to throw up).
The shorter version of the video just shows the woman watching the young man but not doing anything and then he gets off the train and as it's driving away, he checks his watch, pulls out a little black remote, and presses a button. It then shows the train rounding a bend in a tunnel, disappearing from view, and then BLOWING UP. As in, there's computerized fire and smoke that comes rushing down the tunnel towards the camera. The video then says something like, "Don't let this happen." Whoa whoa whoa. Freaky freaky freaky. But that's the point, right? Scare everyone so nothing ever happens. hmmmm. In line with that, there's also all these bulletin boards around town with messages like "less crime is not no crime" and "a walk a day keeps the fats away." Well, thank you, Singapore. I'll keep those things in mind.
CLASSES
I'm actually only in taking three classes which means I only have class on Mondays and Thursdays. They're long days, though. And it turns out, those are the worst days to have class (besides Friday), because most people have Monday off for traveling or Thursday and Friday off for that reason. When we went to the Cameron Highlands, we had to leave Thursday night because I had class that day and then I had to come back on Sunday for class on Monday while my friends got to stay for another day of hiking. Plus, everyone goes out on Wednesdays (it's ladies' night) and I either have to stay in, or leave way early. But enough whining. I only have class two days a week. (Don't worry - I'm definitely finding productive ways to occupy myself on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but that's for another post another day)
I'm in two social work (SW) classes, both of which only meet once a week for lecture and once every other week for tutorial (or discussion, as we call it in Eugene). All classes, no matter what they are, are two hours (Thursdays, I have three in a row without breaks) I was supposed to take a third social work class that met on Tuesdays, but it was this huge, boring lecture and I'm really not in Singapore to be in a class like that where all I get graded on is how well I regurgitate the information for the final exam. Luckily, my adviser back home understood. Both SW classes are relatively low-level and not too much daily work. That also means they're not that interesting, though. One is a research class that I'm finding difficult because what is discussed in lecture does not really apply to the project we're supposed to be doing and we've only had two tutorials which have been discouraging rather than helpful because we do mini activities and then go through and get told what we did poorly or just plain wrong. Our introduction and literature review for our research project is due Monday and I don't think anyone in the class is really clear on what it was supposed to be exactly. Ack. At least I like the two girls I'm doing the project with. The professor that does the lectures is a really nice lady, but she really doesn't know how to teach at all. She's Indian and her accent is pretty hard to understand - which she knows, but that means that she stops all the time and says (Ferris Bueller style), "Do you understand?...Does anyone understand?...Sigh...You don't understand. How should I explain..." The thing is, we probably would understand if she just gave us a minute to process what she was saying and if her examples matched her powerpoint better. Alas, the pressure to understand everything perfectly immediately really ways on the class and hardly anyone ever responds.
My other SW professor is very nice and has a lot of experience and conducts the class with humor and patience. It's the material, though, that's not that stimulating. I'm also not really clear on what assignments or readings we have because there's no syllabus and he didn't care if we bought the book. I don't even know what the book is. I've tried to express my concern about this, but he was so relaxed about it all that I've decided not to worry because every will reveal itself in good time.
The third class I'm taking is in the University Scholars Programme, which is the NUS equivalent to the UO honors college. It even has a student computer lab and hang out room (minus the HC's wonderful, big purple couches). This class is AWESOME. It's so awesome that I enjoy going Monday mornings (minus the getting out of bed part) and I'm only a little bitter about missing out on majority of Wednesday evenings with my friends. The professor is from the states (Pennsylvania, maybe?) but she's been in Singapore a while. She obviously loves her job and her students and creates a very open and accepting class environment. We have this online forum thing for just the students in the class that we communicate on (she comments too) so that we can continue our discussions from class. It's a small class (maybe twenty students?) and one guy is even putting together a contact list so that we can all be friends as well as classmates.
The class itself is called Historicizing the Black Pacific. It's hard to describe what this means, especially considering that the definition of this is part of our ongoing discussion in class and also on the forum. To make it really simple, I guess I could say that it's studying the relationship (and the history of) African Americans and Asian culture and vice versa. Except even broader than that. But it's cool because there are three American students (including me) plus the American professor who knows a whole lot about Asia and Singapore and history in general and then a bunch of really intellectually-minded Singaporean students. And we're talking about stuff that all of us live but didn't really know and we have different perspectives that we have to come together with in order to really explore the topic.
That's why I was really put-off when one of my classmates told me that she thinks I "think differently than we do." The thing was, I shared with the class some of the stuff that she and I had disagreed on and there were people nodding along and agreeing with me, so I know I was not alone in my opinions. I know that sometimes I will - and do - think differently than the people I come in contact with because I've grown up in an entirely different place but it's hard to find where the line is drawn between it being a cultural difference and just a difference of opinion that's based in the fact that every person is different. I disagree with people all the time at home but never have to question why - people disagree. Duh. But here, there's a whole new element and occasionally, I feel labeled with my 'American-ness' in an unfair way, and other times I can recognize that that is what's influencing how I think. But I mean, come on. Two of the American guys I'm good friends with here are openly conservative and I'm very openly liberal and I'm sure we disagree on PLENTY but all three of us are American. And yet, we think differently than each other.
GUM (on a lighter note)
I miss it. I really do. I didn't think I would but man oh man, sometimes my breath smells or my mouth tastes gross or I've just eaten something really spicy and all I want is GUM. (For those of you who don't know, it's not sold in Singapore.) Luckily, I've been traveling outside of the country and get to indulge during those trips.
POLICE (or something...)
I don't see them very often, but I feel like they're used just for fear like the terrorist videos. They may not be police, but every once and a while, they're just there, in the MRT stations. The first time I saw it, I was waiting to meet someone at this one station and these two young guys in army-looking uniforms, big heavy boots, and hats (kind of like berets) came walking to the area by where you enter and exit the station and then just stopped and stood there, still and silent, for like ten minutes. The only movement besides shifting that they made was when one looked at his watch and then they abruptly started walking away, probably to another station where they would stand intimidatingly. Bottom-line: follow the rules in Singapore.
VALENTINE'S DAY (+PDA IN GENERAL)
It's absolutely ridiculous. Valentine's Day (today, actually) has literally taken over NUS. Even in the USP lounge. It's a mess. In the lounge, people hung thousands of signs with pictures and love notes, someone set up a shrine for a friend, someone else made a cardboard coffin for a reason I didn't really understand, and other people wrote love notes all over the glass windows in some kind of washable pen.
The minute February hit, there was this Cafe L'Amour set up in the main walkway of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences building outside the library and as V-Day got closer, it just got worse. They were selling roses, bouquets of other flowers, chocolates, cupcakes, clothing, jewelry, music, and other love paraphernalia. There were hundreds of strings of little red and pink hearts hanging from the ceiling and arrows taped to the ground leading you to the "cafe." I even got emails about spreading the love campaigns, etc. For someone who is very neutral about Valentine's Day (I generally think it's pretty silly, but I don't hate it or wear black to symbolize my dark, emo side as some people do), it was very overwhelming. I should have taken a picture.
There's actually a lot of PDA in Singapore - a lot more than I expected, really. And I feel like it's different, somehow, than the PDA in the states. There is never any question of if two people are together or not. People just cuddle and kiss and hold each other everywhere - on the MRT, on benches, in malls. I thought it was like that in the states too, but, for some reason, I feel like it's a little more subtle - or at least most of the time. So I guess it makes sense that Valentine's Day is a big deal here. Although, my Singaporean friends were not fans of the overly decorated passageway or lounge.
And this brings me to the conclusion of my very informative, very long post. If for nothing else, it will be well-worth for me to have it once I'm back in the states and trying to remember all the little details that seemed so natural when I was living here. Goal: learn how to make prata. I will wow you all with it's deliciousness.
Signing off by wishing my beautiful state, Oregon, a very happy 150th birthday! In celebration, I very appropriately listened to Raina's song, O Oregon.
Happy birthday, home!
(This is also just for me to remember it all once I'm back, so these details may not be of interest to my general readership. I advise you to skim and read the sections that are most interesting to you. Beware: this is going to be epic)
FOOD
The cheapest food here (2-4 Sing dollars per meal) is sold in hawker centers which are basically food centers (the cheaper ones are outdoors) just filled with a bunch of food stalls of Chinese, Muslim, Indian, vegetarian (usually just one stall dedicated to that) food and usually a drink stand or two. If they're really nice hawker centers (like ones on campus) they might have Japanese, Indonesian or a place where you select some items (like wontons, tofu, veggies, squid, other unrecognizable things...) and they'll boil them and put them over noodles for you or just stalls with more variety. I eat a lot of Indian because I find that (besides being delicious in general) it has more flavor a lot of the time, is pretty recognizable, and you can't always taste the MSG.
My FAVORITE thing to eat is called prata (or roti prata. In Malaysia, it was called roti canai). It's kind of like fried naan, but not so bready. It's just dough that they spread out into a thin circle and then grill on a massive hot plate. It's served with a bowl of curry that you dip it in. Most basic Indian stalls have plain, egg, cheese, onion, and a combination of those. There are a couple of hard-to-reach places that I've found that have a vast variety of kinds like pineapple, kaya (this coconut butter stuff they put on toast here), chocolate, butter, and more that I can't think of. My absolute favorite is banana. Lucky for me, the two guys that run the Indian place in the hawker center near my apartment (one old guy who speaks a little English and another one who might be his son in his early 30s? who speaks English fluently) know me and my friends and always get ready and smile at when they see us coming. We have such a good relationship with them now that if I bring a banana, they will make me a banana prata and only charge me for a plain one (70 cents). It's fantastic.
The supermarkets have everything for the most part but a few things have come up. There's no health food section or anything and most of the bread is pure white. It's really difficult to find wheat bread and when you do, it's hard to judge whether it's really any healthier. I've managed to find Adam's peanut butter, much to my relief, but only at a specific store, so I have to go out of my way to get it. I usually keep pb and j fixings in my fridge, plus yogurt and eggs that I've boiled in my kettle (that's another thing, they don't refrigerate their eggs) for breakfast and whatever produce I've gotten from the fruit stall nearby (I love having watermelon when it shouldn't be in season! And I can get a bunch of bananas for only a dollar!). Dinner is always eaten out and sometimes lunch as well. Healthy is real hard to do here when rice or noodles (or prata) is served with every meal.
DRINK
The drink that seems to have taken over Singapore is called Milo. It's just chocolate powder made into hot or iced liquid (like ovaltine or something) but it's actually really good. It's everywhere, plus the company makes other things like little chocolate 'nuggets' and energy bars and cereal. I'm pretty sure Milo has athletic clubs or campaigns for kids or something like that because the label is all over bus stops, etc.
The vending machines usually have a variety of very corn syrupy tea, coke, little cans of cold sweetened coffee, and soya bean milk which is like super super sweet, not-grainy soy milk. I really like it, but I am not fooled by how it pretends to be healthy, oh no. When you get it 'fresh' from a drink stand, they put some syrup in your glass first. What do you bet it's corn syrup or some other kind of liquid sugar? That is what makes it delicious, though.
At the nicer hawker centers, there's lots of fruit/fruit juice stands (piece of watermelon or pineapple for 40 cents!). Some of the REALLY nice ones have sugarcane juice that they make in front of you by putting canes through this crushing machine and then straining the juice for you (I don't really like the caney after taste). Many places also have whole coconuts that they'll chop a hole in for you and give you a straw and a spoon (you'd love it, Dad). I don't really like the milk but I love scooping out the meat and eating it.
Most places have lime juice, grass jelly drink, barley drink, tea with milk, ice lemon tea, etc. My favorite thing to drink is called teh tarik. It's sold at most drink stands and some Indian/Muslim places. It's kind of like chai but spicier - like Indian chai. It's made with tea, evaporated and condensed milk and then poured from glass to glass high in the air to make it all frothy. SO GOOD. My friends and I had to cut back because we would just keep ordering them and then realize that at dinner alone we'd had 2-3 and then we'd go back in the evening to get more. mmmmmmmmm. OH MAN I also just discovered teh halia which is exactly like teh tarik except that it's ginger tea. SO SO SO GOOD.
CLOTHES
Everyone here dresses really nicely all the time. Back home, I wear my t-shirts all the time and when I wear anything else, I feel like I'm dressing up or something. It didn't occur to me until I was packing for the Cameron Highlands that I don't ever where my t-shirts out of the house here (well, unless I'm just going to the hawker center). I'm way too dressed down if I do. I always have to pack a sweater to go to school because of the air conditioning. Literally, I bring the warmest sweaters I have to class, and I'm still cold. One girl who is doing the same exchange as me except backwards (she's from NUS going to UO) next fall, said the other day in our air-con classroom, "oh I'm so cold! I'll never survive in Oregon! Is it cold there? Do I need to bring a coat?" I told her of course she'll need a coat because she'll be there for fall and winter, but I didn't know how to explain that the cold you feel from an air-conditioner is very different from the cold you feel from a winter day. She'll find out soon, I guess!
BATHROOMS
Or 'toilets,' as everyone says here. In Singapore, most bathrooms are stalls with western toilets and then one stall at the end with a squat toilet. In Malaysia, it's mostly all squat toilets and hoses (in addition to toilet paper most of the time) but when there are western toilets, the seats are always up. I think the women just prefer to squat. As a professional outdoor reliever (thank you, Mom), the squat toilets do not phase me (although, I did take a picture of the first one I used - before I used it, don't worry. TMI?).
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
The MRT is the train that goes all over the city. It generally runs every six minutes (more often during peak hours) 6am-11:30pm every day and is very efficient and always on time. There's a station very conveniently located by my apartment but it doesn't go straight to school, so I tend to take a couple of buses to get to campus. If I leave my house at 9:30am, I can catch two buses and get to my class that starts at 10:10am just on time. They have these little plastic cards called ez-link cards that you have to "top-up" periodically and you just scan it every time you enter and leave a station so it calculates how far you went and therefore, how much they should charge you (same goes for buses). You get in big big trouble if you don't scan properly on entry and exiting because they think you're trying to get out of paying the correct fee. Apparently, ez-link cards are also taking over Singapore because they're trying to get people to use them to pay for other things as well (such as printing in the school library). Singapore is big on efficiency.
The really interesting/weird/disturbing/sometimes comical thing about the MRT is the anti-terrorist campaign they have going. They have little TV screens on the landings at the stations and also on the trains and when they're not advertising movies, they play this tape that they've made that's supposed to keep people informed about looking out for "suspicious looking persons or items" (this is also periodically said over the intercom. That and "please encourage older persons to hold on to the rail or to take the lift"). There's two different versions of the video. They both start with images of bombings that have occurred on public transportation in other parts of the world (such as the one in London a couple years ago) and then a guy comes on and says that they should have been prevented and this is what you can do to keep Singapore safe. They go on to show a dramatized seen of a very suspicious looking young man in a black baseball cap carrying a big, bulky black bag get on the train very suspiciously, sit down very suspiciously, and stow his bag under a seat very suspiciously. The whole time, this older woman is watching him and when he gets up to leave, she confronts him about leaving the bag behind but he denies that it's his. She then bolts to the button on the wall of the train that you push to talk to the driver in case of an emergency and they go through this whole scene of what to say and what to do if you're a passenger on the train and it stops for an unknown emergency (my favorite part is when they tell you that if you feel sick or nauseas, just breathe deeply and wait for medical people to arrive while showing a clip of a woman clutching her chest and taking huge, heaving breathes and backing into a little corner, all the while looking confused rather than like she's going to throw up).
The shorter version of the video just shows the woman watching the young man but not doing anything and then he gets off the train and as it's driving away, he checks his watch, pulls out a little black remote, and presses a button. It then shows the train rounding a bend in a tunnel, disappearing from view, and then BLOWING UP. As in, there's computerized fire and smoke that comes rushing down the tunnel towards the camera. The video then says something like, "Don't let this happen." Whoa whoa whoa. Freaky freaky freaky. But that's the point, right? Scare everyone so nothing ever happens. hmmmm. In line with that, there's also all these bulletin boards around town with messages like "less crime is not no crime" and "a walk a day keeps the fats away." Well, thank you, Singapore. I'll keep those things in mind.
CLASSES
I'm actually only in taking three classes which means I only have class on Mondays and Thursdays. They're long days, though. And it turns out, those are the worst days to have class (besides Friday), because most people have Monday off for traveling or Thursday and Friday off for that reason. When we went to the Cameron Highlands, we had to leave Thursday night because I had class that day and then I had to come back on Sunday for class on Monday while my friends got to stay for another day of hiking. Plus, everyone goes out on Wednesdays (it's ladies' night) and I either have to stay in, or leave way early. But enough whining. I only have class two days a week. (Don't worry - I'm definitely finding productive ways to occupy myself on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but that's for another post another day)
I'm in two social work (SW) classes, both of which only meet once a week for lecture and once every other week for tutorial (or discussion, as we call it in Eugene). All classes, no matter what they are, are two hours (Thursdays, I have three in a row without breaks) I was supposed to take a third social work class that met on Tuesdays, but it was this huge, boring lecture and I'm really not in Singapore to be in a class like that where all I get graded on is how well I regurgitate the information for the final exam. Luckily, my adviser back home understood. Both SW classes are relatively low-level and not too much daily work. That also means they're not that interesting, though. One is a research class that I'm finding difficult because what is discussed in lecture does not really apply to the project we're supposed to be doing and we've only had two tutorials which have been discouraging rather than helpful because we do mini activities and then go through and get told what we did poorly or just plain wrong. Our introduction and literature review for our research project is due Monday and I don't think anyone in the class is really clear on what it was supposed to be exactly. Ack. At least I like the two girls I'm doing the project with. The professor that does the lectures is a really nice lady, but she really doesn't know how to teach at all. She's Indian and her accent is pretty hard to understand - which she knows, but that means that she stops all the time and says (Ferris Bueller style), "Do you understand?...Does anyone understand?...Sigh...You don't understand. How should I explain..." The thing is, we probably would understand if she just gave us a minute to process what she was saying and if her examples matched her powerpoint better. Alas, the pressure to understand everything perfectly immediately really ways on the class and hardly anyone ever responds.
My other SW professor is very nice and has a lot of experience and conducts the class with humor and patience. It's the material, though, that's not that stimulating. I'm also not really clear on what assignments or readings we have because there's no syllabus and he didn't care if we bought the book. I don't even know what the book is. I've tried to express my concern about this, but he was so relaxed about it all that I've decided not to worry because every will reveal itself in good time.
The third class I'm taking is in the University Scholars Programme, which is the NUS equivalent to the UO honors college. It even has a student computer lab and hang out room (minus the HC's wonderful, big purple couches). This class is AWESOME. It's so awesome that I enjoy going Monday mornings (minus the getting out of bed part) and I'm only a little bitter about missing out on majority of Wednesday evenings with my friends. The professor is from the states (Pennsylvania, maybe?) but she's been in Singapore a while. She obviously loves her job and her students and creates a very open and accepting class environment. We have this online forum thing for just the students in the class that we communicate on (she comments too) so that we can continue our discussions from class. It's a small class (maybe twenty students?) and one guy is even putting together a contact list so that we can all be friends as well as classmates.
The class itself is called Historicizing the Black Pacific. It's hard to describe what this means, especially considering that the definition of this is part of our ongoing discussion in class and also on the forum. To make it really simple, I guess I could say that it's studying the relationship (and the history of) African Americans and Asian culture and vice versa. Except even broader than that. But it's cool because there are three American students (including me) plus the American professor who knows a whole lot about Asia and Singapore and history in general and then a bunch of really intellectually-minded Singaporean students. And we're talking about stuff that all of us live but didn't really know and we have different perspectives that we have to come together with in order to really explore the topic.
That's why I was really put-off when one of my classmates told me that she thinks I "think differently than we do." The thing was, I shared with the class some of the stuff that she and I had disagreed on and there were people nodding along and agreeing with me, so I know I was not alone in my opinions. I know that sometimes I will - and do - think differently than the people I come in contact with because I've grown up in an entirely different place but it's hard to find where the line is drawn between it being a cultural difference and just a difference of opinion that's based in the fact that every person is different. I disagree with people all the time at home but never have to question why - people disagree. Duh. But here, there's a whole new element and occasionally, I feel labeled with my 'American-ness' in an unfair way, and other times I can recognize that that is what's influencing how I think. But I mean, come on. Two of the American guys I'm good friends with here are openly conservative and I'm very openly liberal and I'm sure we disagree on PLENTY but all three of us are American. And yet, we think differently than each other.
GUM (on a lighter note)
I miss it. I really do. I didn't think I would but man oh man, sometimes my breath smells or my mouth tastes gross or I've just eaten something really spicy and all I want is GUM. (For those of you who don't know, it's not sold in Singapore.) Luckily, I've been traveling outside of the country and get to indulge during those trips.
POLICE (or something...)
I don't see them very often, but I feel like they're used just for fear like the terrorist videos. They may not be police, but every once and a while, they're just there, in the MRT stations. The first time I saw it, I was waiting to meet someone at this one station and these two young guys in army-looking uniforms, big heavy boots, and hats (kind of like berets) came walking to the area by where you enter and exit the station and then just stopped and stood there, still and silent, for like ten minutes. The only movement besides shifting that they made was when one looked at his watch and then they abruptly started walking away, probably to another station where they would stand intimidatingly. Bottom-line: follow the rules in Singapore.
VALENTINE'S DAY (+PDA IN GENERAL)
It's absolutely ridiculous. Valentine's Day (today, actually) has literally taken over NUS. Even in the USP lounge. It's a mess. In the lounge, people hung thousands of signs with pictures and love notes, someone set up a shrine for a friend, someone else made a cardboard coffin for a reason I didn't really understand, and other people wrote love notes all over the glass windows in some kind of washable pen.
The minute February hit, there was this Cafe L'Amour set up in the main walkway of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences building outside the library and as V-Day got closer, it just got worse. They were selling roses, bouquets of other flowers, chocolates, cupcakes, clothing, jewelry, music, and other love paraphernalia. There were hundreds of strings of little red and pink hearts hanging from the ceiling and arrows taped to the ground leading you to the "cafe." I even got emails about spreading the love campaigns, etc. For someone who is very neutral about Valentine's Day (I generally think it's pretty silly, but I don't hate it or wear black to symbolize my dark, emo side as some people do), it was very overwhelming. I should have taken a picture.
There's actually a lot of PDA in Singapore - a lot more than I expected, really. And I feel like it's different, somehow, than the PDA in the states. There is never any question of if two people are together or not. People just cuddle and kiss and hold each other everywhere - on the MRT, on benches, in malls. I thought it was like that in the states too, but, for some reason, I feel like it's a little more subtle - or at least most of the time. So I guess it makes sense that Valentine's Day is a big deal here. Although, my Singaporean friends were not fans of the overly decorated passageway or lounge.
And this brings me to the conclusion of my very informative, very long post. If for nothing else, it will be well-worth for me to have it once I'm back in the states and trying to remember all the little details that seemed so natural when I was living here. Goal: learn how to make prata. I will wow you all with it's deliciousness.
Signing off by wishing my beautiful state, Oregon, a very happy 150th birthday! In celebration, I very appropriately listened to Raina's song, O Oregon.
Happy birthday, home!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Entry Between Epic Adventures
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia=SO BEAUTIFUL
The night bus worked out fantastically well. Big, comfy seats that lay back really far and not too much air-con. There were only six of us on the bus and so at 4:30am our bus driver woke us up and told us to get on this other bus (same company, I think). In my groggy state I didn't really realize how sketchy it was that two buses just pulled over on the side of the highway in Malaysia and swapped passengers. But oh well. We (me and Karlijn [car-line] and Jo - my two travel partners) figured that our bus driver just wanted to get ride of us so he didn't have to drive the whole way and could have the morning off.
Our hostel was awesome and we shared a dorm room with two guys, one from Barcelona who is traveling around the world by bike (he had a sweet bike, Dad) and the other from New Zealand. We also met this 79 year old man who was born in America but lives in Spain for three months out of the year and then travels the other nine. I hope to be that badass when I'm 79.
Friday, we walked from one town to another and got caught in a really long, strong downpour and wandered into this merchandise/strawberry-selling place (CH is famous for their tea and strawberries) on the side of the road that took pity on us and gave us plastic bags for ponchos and really ugly strawberry umbrellas (they probably couldn't sell them, they're that ugly - I kept mine, though). We went to a Buddhist temple that was very beautiful, ate some lunch, took a nap, hung around and then went to dinner with our new friends. We got a steamboat which is this big pot of boiling broth and then tons of plates of raw chicken, beef, prawns, jellyfish, tofu, eggs, noodles, and veggies and you cook it in the broth and then eat it. No one explained to us what to do so we ended up overflowing it the first time and our waiter laughed at us. All in good fun, though. The hostel had a "Jungle Bar" and we sat around an outdoor fire and drank tea and talked. It was SO refreshing to get away from the heat. It felt like a late May-early June night in Oregon. I wore the only two sweaters I brought to Singapore and was still a bit on the chilly side.
Saturday, we did an all day tour (very touristy but totally worth it). It was us three girls, our friend from New Zealand, a couple from Norway, a couple from the Czech Republic and our guide, Spencer, all crammed into a land rover. We drove up this crazy road that shouldn't be considered a road and then trekked for an hour+ into the jungle with Spencer telling us all these things about the area and the plants, etc., until we reached a place where we saw the BIGGEST FLOWER IN THE WORLD. Here's the catch: it's actually a mushroom. BUT it looks and blooms like a flower, so everyone considers it one. In fact, I had this flower book when I was little that I LOVED and it was in it and I kept thinking about how cool it would be to see it someday and low-and-behold, I got to! My seven-year-old self was so very happy. It smelled rancid too, just like my book promised it would.
On the way back, we (well, some of us. The Norwegian couple turned out to be rich snobs who weren't adventurous at all) went swimming in this very cold, very nice waterfall pool thing. The water was clean enough to drink.
Stop number two was an aboriginal village where they taught us to shoot blow sticks (blow guns?). I got the dart thingy in the center of the target on my first try. Boom baby. I felt weird about the whole thing, though, because Spencer said we could walk around the village and we were totally just these white, western elitist tourists who were intruding on the daily life of this village. We played peek-a-boo with the kids, which they loved, and they waved us goodbye but I could tell that the women of the village were not pleased. Apparently, they get invaded by a tourist group everyday. That would piss me off too.
After lunch, we went to a tea farm and saw all these rolling hills of tea plants (this is what google images will show you when you search for CH). It was amazing. So green, so pretty, and the bushes were strong enough to hold you, so I totally stretched out on them for awhile before we went to the tea factory and cafe. I love tea.
At the Butterfly Farm we got to hold lots of crazy bugs, etc. such as butterflies (duh), turtles, frogs, and, wait for it...SCORPIONS. I told the guy handing them out that I would only hold it long enough for my picture to be taken and then he had to take it back, which he agreed to - right before it put one in my hand and then another one on my shoulder. My SHOULDER. By my FACE. Gah.
The strawberry farm was pretty uninteresting except for the fact that they sold all sorts of delicious strawberry things so we stuffed ourselves with waffles, scones with fresh jam, and strawberries covered in chocolate and whipped cream. My internal season clock was way thrown off though because it's winter back home so I should definitely not be eating strawberries. It's not the season for strawberries! Oh wait, I'm living in perpetual summer.
Saturday was pretty similar to Friday night and I had to get up Sunday morning to come back to Singapore because I had class Monday. My friends had breakfast with me and then we walked through the little farmer's market and bought some fruit and then I got on the bus. Four stops and nine hours later I was back in the heat. Whew.
I'm spending this week getting ready for the next two weeks of traveling (well, and I went climbing this morning - totally shredded my hands but that's what makes me so awesome)! I take off for Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Monday to meet up with my professor from home and then I go straight from there to Bangkok on Friday to meet up with Nathan from home and I come back a week later! The plan right now is to do awesome university stuff in Cambodia, fly to Bangkok and spend a couple days there (maybe we'll run into the dozens of other exchange students from NUS that will be there) and then head north in search of elephants (and tigers and rock climbing?...)! Expect numerous epic posts about those adventures upon my return!
LOVE,
M-"I want to see the world through tea"-addy
The night bus worked out fantastically well. Big, comfy seats that lay back really far and not too much air-con. There were only six of us on the bus and so at 4:30am our bus driver woke us up and told us to get on this other bus (same company, I think). In my groggy state I didn't really realize how sketchy it was that two buses just pulled over on the side of the highway in Malaysia and swapped passengers. But oh well. We (me and Karlijn [car-line] and Jo - my two travel partners) figured that our bus driver just wanted to get ride of us so he didn't have to drive the whole way and could have the morning off.
Our hostel was awesome and we shared a dorm room with two guys, one from Barcelona who is traveling around the world by bike (he had a sweet bike, Dad) and the other from New Zealand. We also met this 79 year old man who was born in America but lives in Spain for three months out of the year and then travels the other nine. I hope to be that badass when I'm 79.
Friday, we walked from one town to another and got caught in a really long, strong downpour and wandered into this merchandise/strawberry-selling place (CH is famous for their tea and strawberries) on the side of the road that took pity on us and gave us plastic bags for ponchos and really ugly strawberry umbrellas (they probably couldn't sell them, they're that ugly - I kept mine, though). We went to a Buddhist temple that was very beautiful, ate some lunch, took a nap, hung around and then went to dinner with our new friends. We got a steamboat which is this big pot of boiling broth and then tons of plates of raw chicken, beef, prawns, jellyfish, tofu, eggs, noodles, and veggies and you cook it in the broth and then eat it. No one explained to us what to do so we ended up overflowing it the first time and our waiter laughed at us. All in good fun, though. The hostel had a "Jungle Bar" and we sat around an outdoor fire and drank tea and talked. It was SO refreshing to get away from the heat. It felt like a late May-early June night in Oregon. I wore the only two sweaters I brought to Singapore and was still a bit on the chilly side.
Saturday, we did an all day tour (very touristy but totally worth it). It was us three girls, our friend from New Zealand, a couple from Norway, a couple from the Czech Republic and our guide, Spencer, all crammed into a land rover. We drove up this crazy road that shouldn't be considered a road and then trekked for an hour+ into the jungle with Spencer telling us all these things about the area and the plants, etc., until we reached a place where we saw the BIGGEST FLOWER IN THE WORLD. Here's the catch: it's actually a mushroom. BUT it looks and blooms like a flower, so everyone considers it one. In fact, I had this flower book when I was little that I LOVED and it was in it and I kept thinking about how cool it would be to see it someday and low-and-behold, I got to! My seven-year-old self was so very happy. It smelled rancid too, just like my book promised it would.
On the way back, we (well, some of us. The Norwegian couple turned out to be rich snobs who weren't adventurous at all) went swimming in this very cold, very nice waterfall pool thing. The water was clean enough to drink.
Stop number two was an aboriginal village where they taught us to shoot blow sticks (blow guns?). I got the dart thingy in the center of the target on my first try. Boom baby. I felt weird about the whole thing, though, because Spencer said we could walk around the village and we were totally just these white, western elitist tourists who were intruding on the daily life of this village. We played peek-a-boo with the kids, which they loved, and they waved us goodbye but I could tell that the women of the village were not pleased. Apparently, they get invaded by a tourist group everyday. That would piss me off too.
After lunch, we went to a tea farm and saw all these rolling hills of tea plants (this is what google images will show you when you search for CH). It was amazing. So green, so pretty, and the bushes were strong enough to hold you, so I totally stretched out on them for awhile before we went to the tea factory and cafe. I love tea.
At the Butterfly Farm we got to hold lots of crazy bugs, etc. such as butterflies (duh), turtles, frogs, and, wait for it...SCORPIONS. I told the guy handing them out that I would only hold it long enough for my picture to be taken and then he had to take it back, which he agreed to - right before it put one in my hand and then another one on my shoulder. My SHOULDER. By my FACE. Gah.
The strawberry farm was pretty uninteresting except for the fact that they sold all sorts of delicious strawberry things so we stuffed ourselves with waffles, scones with fresh jam, and strawberries covered in chocolate and whipped cream. My internal season clock was way thrown off though because it's winter back home so I should definitely not be eating strawberries. It's not the season for strawberries! Oh wait, I'm living in perpetual summer.
Saturday was pretty similar to Friday night and I had to get up Sunday morning to come back to Singapore because I had class Monday. My friends had breakfast with me and then we walked through the little farmer's market and bought some fruit and then I got on the bus. Four stops and nine hours later I was back in the heat. Whew.
I'm spending this week getting ready for the next two weeks of traveling (well, and I went climbing this morning - totally shredded my hands but that's what makes me so awesome)! I take off for Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Monday to meet up with my professor from home and then I go straight from there to Bangkok on Friday to meet up with Nathan from home and I come back a week later! The plan right now is to do awesome university stuff in Cambodia, fly to Bangkok and spend a couple days there (maybe we'll run into the dozens of other exchange students from NUS that will be there) and then head north in search of elephants (and tigers and rock climbing?...)! Expect numerous epic posts about those adventures upon my return!
LOVE,
M-"I want to see the world through tea"-addy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
