Back from Thailand

Hey everyone, just wanted to leave a post to say that I made it home from Bangkok (Saturday night) and that I had a fabulous time.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do for Friday of this week and Monday of next week so I am not sure when I will be able to update -- also I currently cannot find my camera cord so I need to find that in order to upload pictures (I actually started taking more pictures in Thailand, hopefully a trend which will continue in the future).

Hope everyone is having a good Lenten season, love you all!

Emily

CHINESE NEW YEAR!

Hey guys, I realize it has been a while since I last posted...however not that much has happened in that time (after writing this entire post, I realized that that is a complete lie and I did have a lot to update on, sorry that this post is so long) . This upcoming week is recess week and we don't have class (I guess Chinese New Year is later this year so they moved our recess week up to avoid giving us more days off) and we've just been hanging out and getting stuff situated to go away for recess week.

So last Friday (the 5th of February), the Singaporeans who studied abroad at UNC took a group of us (mostly UNC and UConn kids) into Chinatown to show us all of the decorations and stalls which were set up for Chinese New Year. I had my best coconut yet here, it was from Thailand and a lot smaller than the other ones that I've had and less sweet, but more refreshing. Anyway there were so many decorations, things for sale, and people everywhere.

Absolutely everywhere you looked

Crowded, decorated Chinatown

Road decorations

There was obviously plenty of eating in this outing (as food is an experience in itself anywhere that you go in Singapore). First we tried Bakkwa which is similar to beef jerky (except so much better) it is dried, salted meat which is served in thin sheets. We had BBQ Pork - so good...I had some more this past weekend. Then we went and ate at Yum Cha Restaurant which is in the heart of Chinatown. We had Dim Sum which is basically a bunch of light dishes which are served with tea and it is usually served for breakfast. We had some really good things -- my favorite had to be Xiao Long Bao which are dumplings that are filled with soup (and fairly hard to eat -- especially because I am bad at using chopsticks, but it should noted that I am also bad at using pens and pencils so I don't expect much improvement with chopsticks) - SO good. Most of what we ate were different types of dumplings and all delicious. This experience has made me put Chinatown, specifically a meal at Yum Cha on the top of my list of things to do when my mom comes to visit.

After our meal, the Singaporeans got the waitress to bring out Lo Hei, which is a salad that is part of a Chinese New Year tradition (its a tradition specific to Singapore). Lo Hei is made of raw fish, raw vegetables, and some other crunchy things (not sure what they were). What you are supposed to do is everyone who is eating will toss up the salad at once -- the higher your tosses go supposedly reflects your increase in luck or fortunes for the upcoming year and I guess you are supposed to try to snatch and eat what other people are throwing up, almost like you are stealing their fortune. Anyway, we threw the salad as high as possible, people were purposely knocking other people's chopsticks down and by the end everyone and everything was covered in the salad (and then we ate it off the table, it was really good) -- the Singaporeans told us they had never seen the salad get that messy before, quite an accomplishment on our parts. It was really fun.

This is a picture from Wikipedia -- apparently Lo Hei is also called Yu Sheng -- this is not quite what our salad looked like, we had more crunchy things and it was piled higher

Everyone who participated (almost everyone at this table has a connection to UNC -- except for Kerry and I [blonde girl] who go to UConn)

Fierce chopstick poses -- as I said earlier I'm not that skilled with chopsticks and it put me at a great disadvantage when throwing the salad up, hopefully that doesn't mean that I won't have good fortunes this year.

What the table looked like after we tossed and then ate the salad. Sorry, staff of yum cha.

So then Saturday (Feb 6th), my friends Charles, Kerry, and I went to City Hall to walk around and wound up going to the Peranakan Museum (Peranakans are the decendents of different races as a result of trading settlements from around the 15th and 16th century -- I think they are most commonly thought of as the decendents of Chinese traders and Malay women, but there are more combinations than that and they aren't just in Singapore I think they are from a variety of straits settlements), which was cool because we didn't know that much about the peranakans before (other than one of my favorite foods here, a type of coconut roll, is peranakan). We got a free tour which was nice because our tour guide was extremely knowledgable, so knowledgeable that our tour took well over two hours.

After the tour we walked around and had planned on going back to NUS for the night but wound up walking by Zouk, which is the most famous club in Singapore and long story short wound up being convinced by other exchange students to get tickets to see Calvin Harris (apparently a world famous DJ, news to me...but he was really good) for 5 sing dollars (usually 30 sing). Calvin Harris was really good and there were SO many people there. The only problem was that my ears wound up ringing all day the next day, and the day after that, and every day basically until Thursday or Friday which put a damper on my week.

So Thursday of this past week (Feb 11th), a group of us went over to Arab Street to get dinner. Arab Street is a really cool place, they have a lot of resturaunts which serve mostly Middle Eastern food and there are also a lot of places where you can smoke shisha (synonym of hookah) -- often times on an oriental rug along the side of the road. I absolutely love hummus so I was really excited -- we sat on a rug at a low table and I ate pita bread with a bunch of different spreads, one of them was hummus, one of them was eggplant based, and sadly I didn't actually know what the other ones were but it was so good (just like all of the food that you can get in Singapore). Not even that much more expensive than the hawker centers.

Friday night (the 12th) we went into Chinatown to check it out. It was pretty crowded and we just walked around for a while (a long while, and the city is starting to come together in my head now --- I kind of understand where different places fit geographically). Sadly, I wound up having my first McDonald's experience in Singapore on Friday night (I don't even eat McDonald's at home).

Yesterday (13th) was the big celebration of Chinese New Year, today is the actual day and everyone spends it with their families. Not a lot of people were on campus because many had gone home and a lot of exchange students have left to travel already. They served a meal for us at our dorm which was good and gave us chocolate coins and oranges (auspicious for Chinese New Year, as long as you take them in twos), it was really nice. We then went over to Marina Bay where there was a stage set up and people were performing. We walked around there for a little bit -- took a group picture with the Snake (all of us born in 1989 -- some are year of the dragon, lucky and one is year of the horse -- the baby of the group). It said for the snake that workwise we would be prosperous this year, but relationship wise we would be suspicious of our partner and unhappy because of that (I'm not sure if this is for this upcoming year or for our whole life...I'm going to hope for just the year). We then decided to go over to Chinatown to see the fireworks their at midnight -- stopped at McDonalds on the way because everything was so crowded (two times in one day, I'm very disappointed in myself). Got to Chinatown just in time for the midnight countdown, and got stuck in a huge crowd behind a wall so missed the fireworks, but saw a little bit of confetti, which made up for it. A lot of pushing and shoving was involved in getting out of Chinatown after midnight, not terribly pleasant -- I basically took a bath in other peoples' sweat -- I was happy to get out of the crowd.

Anyway, that is what I have been up to in Singapore since Kuala Lumpur (aside from schoolwork). And I am currently packing because tomorrow my friends Albert, Katie, and I are flying to Bangkok where we will spend tomorrow night and Tuesday before taking an overnight train up to Chiang Mai, which according to Wikipedia is the "largest and most culturally significant city in Northern Thailand).

So look for Bangkok (red star) and Chiang Mai is circled in red

We will spend Wednesday and Thursday in Chiang Mai and are taking another overnight train back to Bangkok for Friday and I had a midterm scheduled for Monday so I fly out on Saturday morning (with a 4-hour layover in KL it is going to take me all day to get back), however my prof rescheduled the midterm last week so its basically pointless for me to take all that time to fly back on Saturday, when my friends are taking a direct flight on Sunday morning, oh well.

Things I am looking forward to in Thailand

• Food - which I've heard is amazing...most especially spring rolls and fresh vegetables
• In Bangkok we are staying with my friend Katie's friend from home who is studying abroad in Bangkok (she is also coming to visit us in Singapore eventually), but she won't be there on Monday night, so we are staying at a hostel which is a converted whorehouse and supposedly haunted, here is a CNN review of it: The Overstay
• Shopping - I have bought basically nothing in Singapore and am excited for cheaper things in Bangkok
• Cooking Class - we are looking into taking a Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai (Albert's idea) I am really excited to see what it is like
• Elephant Nature Park - I was originally excited to ride an elephant in Chiang Mai until we found out that most of the elephants are not treated properly. While you aren't allowed to ride elephants at the Elephant Nature Park, it serves as a refuge for elephants which have previously been abused and you can wash and feed them.
  
• There is a world famous DJ (Tiesto) performing in Bangkok on Friday -- he is apparently one of the best -- If I go I will most certainly buy earplugs
• No other definite plans yet, but I will certainly let you know sometime two weeks from now when I have time to blog.

So you won't hear from me for a little bit, but I promise to have lots of pictures for my next post.

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone, and of course, Gong Xi Fa Chi!!!

Emily

Day 31... I've been here so long that counting is getting difficult

Sorry it has taken me so long to post, I've been fairly busy this week considering that I am in school (and I finally have a finished copy of my resume, hurray!).

So completely disregard the hearsay in my previous post that Kuala Lumpur is nothing special. My experience in KL was amazing. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, it was the perfect weekend to go because it coincided with the annual Thaipusam festival, which takes place at the Batu Caves right outside of Malaysia (the Batu Caves constitute one of the biggest Hindu shrines outside of India).

We left NUS early Friday morning. It took us about two hours to get across Singapore and through both the Singaporean and Malaysian border checkpoints. We then took a bus to KL (about a 5-6 hour journey).

As you can see, the bus was extremely comfortable.

Friday evening/afternoon was spent walking around KL (mostly everything we wanted to see wound up being around a 25 min walk from the hostel).

We went up through the city jungle to the KL tower and found a pack of monkeys.

Trash Monkey

We went to the central market where we decided to try out a fish spa. The spas have tanks of fish that feed/live off of dead skin and you put your feet and hands into the tanks. I would advise against the foot tank if you are ticklish.

I was a big baby and it took me basically the whole amount of time to put my feet all the way in

This Australian boy was far braver than I

After the Central Market, we took advantage of the fact that Elliott from UConn half grew up in Hong Kong (half in Connecticut) and can speak Cantonese and Mandarin (Ben from UNC who is sitting next to me in the above picture spent a few years growing up in China and has since studied Mandarin -- as far as I can tell he is really good at it) -- we went to a roadside place owned and operated by a man who only spoke Cantonese who made us the most amazing meal. His specialty was cooking/boiling/frying? meat in a tea type mixture -- we tried the pork, fish, and chicken -- all delicious. After dinner we walked through Chinatown to see what knockoffs we could find. After about an hour long debate at a sunglass hut we got a good deal on some fake sunglasses. Look for the sunglasses in the group pictures further down.

Saturday was the Thaipusam festival which takes place on the full moon of every January and the largest festival happens in Kuala Lumpur. We had to get up at 7 in order to make a 1.5 hour journey (by monorail and train) to the Batu Caves. The caves are only at the end part of the festival -- by the time they got to the caves, the participants had already walked for several hours (from the city). So, I don't know enough about the festival to feel confident in my ability to tell you about it, but basically the general purpose of the festival is to celebrate the birth of the god Murugun -- people who participate do so because they want to "avert a great calamity" (thank you, Wikipedia) and they make a vow to take a kavadi (some kind of physical burden) up inside the caves. The kavadis vary -- the most common one was a pot full of milk which men and women carried on their heads. Some of the men carried large canopies up to the temple instead -- some of them had pierced their skin (many people had bells or fruit hooked to their backs) and some had rods through their mouths which prevented them from speaking.

This man has bells hooked into his back

Some of the chains hanging down (if not all) are hooked into this mans body

Those quills are sticking out of his body

The burdens that these men carried were unreal, and these three men did not even have the most painful looking kavadis that we saw on Saturday.

This is a picture of all of us in front of the stairs leading up to the caves. We waited in line to get up to the caves for well over an hour -- It was so hot outside that sweat was pouring off of my legs and splashing on the ground (I don't even know if I have sweated this much in Bikram Yoga before).

Over a million people were at the caves on Saturday (forget about personal space). We literally got pushed up the stairs because the crowd was so big, it was a little bit scary (but not as scary as coming back down the stairs).

When we finally got up into the caves we realized that there would be more waiting involved


A slightly creepy picture of me inside the caves

Everyone -- looking up at a white man who had climbed some scaffolding in order to take a picture

View from the top

On Sunday morning, we woke up early again (third day in a row, struggle) in order to get tickets to walk on the sky bridge in between the Petronas Towers (in the informational video before we went up it was pronounced petRO-nass and Malaysia was pronounced Muh-Lay-See-UH).

3-D informational movie before we got to go up, it was basically about Petronas and oil

All of us on the sky bridge

Towers from outside


Then we started to get creative...


Kerry taking a picture of John (traveler from the UK who was staying in our hostel) with the towers


The UConn kids decided it was necessary to do "U-S-A"


This is some of us in front of the hostel we stayed at (with our fake sunglasses on)

So before we caught the bus later in the afternoon five of us (in the above picture) decided to check out early and go see the National Mosque. We had to take the monorail and walk a large amount - it was quite a trek to get there.

National Mosque

And then this happened...

Apparently there are only certain hours for Non-Muslim tourists to visit the mosque and we missed them, maybe next time


At least we had the opportunity to take one more group picture with our new sunglasses

Anyway, no big plans for this weekend -- so far tomorrow night the Singaporeans who did their exchange at UNC are taking us out to dinner in Chinatown, so I'll report back after that.