Rest of Thailand

Here are some pictures from the rest of my Thailand Trip:

Sunrise we saw from the train on our arrival to Chiang Mai

Outdoor market near our hostel

The best Thai restaurant ever -- we walked in it by chance on the first morning and wound up talking to two separate expats in their; one asked us where we had heard of the restaurant, and the other was on the board of tourism in Chiang Mai. A great sign for us - we went back three more times in the two days we were there.

My meal that morning, Mango and sticky rice. The rice is cooked specially inside a bamboo shoot and it is sweeter and stickier (and not served hot) -- an awesome combination.

After our meal, we checked into our hostel and then went up the mountain to Doi Suthep, which is a temple on top of a hill that over looks all of Chiang Mai, it is really impressive up there.

Back of Buddha

Stairs going up

View from the top

Also in Chiang Mai, we took a cooking class (I can now cook Pad Thai, among some other food):

Our instructor is at the head of the table. The other students were mostly middle aged Europeans, some of the men really didn't seem to care to be there or pay attention, but we had a great time nonetheless.

Papaya Salad that I made (I made three other entrees as well including pad thai)-- very spicy

Knives for chopping red curry ingredients

Our class hard at work -- we took the half day class but it was still over 4 hours long

After class we walked through a night market outside of the city wall, I obviously had to take a picture of my twin brothers names next to the word thai. Not to worry Tom and John (if you are reading this) I didn't buy these for you.

After the night market, we saw a roadside bar (literally on the sidewalk).

...and an elephant

There are pictures of the King of Thailand (who is now much older than this -- I think in his mid 90s) all over Thailand in every shop and restaurant, and basically anywhere you turn. I liked this picture which we saw in the Chiang Mai cultural museum on our second day there.

I should also note that we went for Thai massages on our second day, which were amazing. I was told beforehand that thai massage hurts more than normal massages but it didn't bother Katie, Albert, or I. I could use one right now.

After Chiang Mai, we went back to Bangkok where I spent the day and night (I flew back to Singapore on Saturday Morning). We visited Jim Thompson's house, A huge shopping center, and a huge complex which sold all electronics. I bought a bootleg copy of snowleopard (operating system for macs) to put on my laptop when I get back.

Photos of the terminal in the airport in Bangkok -- very early in the morning. I had to wake up at 5 am.

I've tried to catch all of you up to speed with this post as far as my pictures go, because I'm very excited for the next post.

Emily

Thailand -- first couple days

I'm going to post this update on the first couple of days in Thailand (Feb 15th - night of the 16th - when we took an overnight train to Chiang Mai) as I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish the whole thing. Also I still haven't found my camera cord (these pictures are stolen from Katie) --hopefully I'll be able to for the rest of my Thailand posts.

Monday (March 1st) I had a group paper due, two presentations to give, and a midterm. Now I can focus on more important things, such as updating my blog.

Where to begin? Its been over two weeks since I've last updated and I spent that time in Thailand and back in school, mostly in the library (that is not even a joke, and the air conditioning here is far too intense for me so I cannot go longer than like 40 minutes without needing to go outside for a break from the cold), catching up on work.

Anyway -- I'll start with Thailand. I loved Thailand -- that is definitely a place that I would love to go back to in the future, and we did not get to any of the southern beaches so I may travel to Phuket (POO - Ket) and the islands down around there for a few days after school is over with some friends.

We arrived in Thailand on Monday afternoon. Katie and I were going to stay in a hostel for Monday night -- "The Overstay", I posted a link to a CNN profile on it in a previous post. We arrived there and they did not seem to realize we were coming. After disappearing upstairs for approximately 20 minutes, the owner brought us up two flights of stairs and through a room of male travelers all sleeping on mats on the floor to our room...

This photo does not include the fan missing from the ceiling and the lock missing from the door. Although I'm glad that you can see the dying plant in the corner and the two mattress pads pushed together to form a bed, oh and of course the one rotting pillow (for the two of us to share?).

We did not wind up staying at the Overstay, we left and Katie and I stayed with her friend Ashley who is from North Carolina, goes to University of South Carolina and is studying this semester at Mahidol University, in the suburbs of Bangkok. Ashley is staying in a building which seems to function as both a hotel and an apartment building. I guess its pretty cheap and its really nice, she has air conditioning (I have been dying in my room back in Singapore, I'm not sure what is with the change).

Ashley took us to a night market which seemed to only sell clothes for girls our age. It was heaven. Imagine Forever21 but 20X bigger (maybe more than that) and 100X more selection (similar quality clothing is what I'm told).The only problem is that a lot of the clothes are pretty small and they don't make things in different sizes -- the women are also pretty blunt and will not hesitate to tell you if they don't think something will fit you. This caused a problem for me on my last night in Bangkok when I was considering buying a dress which I really liked, but wasn't sure if I wanted to spend anymore money (it was less than 7 American dollars...) and I asked the woman if she thought it would fit me and she told me that she thought I was too big. At that point I bought the dress to spite her. (The dress does fit me, however the woman may have been referencing that it would be too short for me...).

After the market we went to Khaosan Road which wikipedia describes as a "backpacker ghetto" which is interesting. It is a small road in central Bangkok which is lined with restaurants, bars, food stalls, stores, etc. There were certainly some interesting people to be seen.

Here Katie, Ashley, and I (from right to left) in a bar on Khaosan -- note the bags toward the back of the table. Ashley is actually coming to visit Singapore today, we are very excited.

Our third traveler, Albert stayed with a friend of a friend at King Mongkut's University of Technology in North Bangkok. We met up with them on Tuesday and got to see a little of the campus and went out to lunch with Tom (the boy Albert stayed with, a Thai student at the university) and a bunch of his friends. Lunch was good, however it was the first time I have eaten something so hot that my mouth was set on fire in Asia. I'm not quite sure what the culprit was (potentially this raw papaya salad which has chili peppers hiding in it)-- but it was to happen again, more than once in Chiang Mai.

Here we all are after lunch. I sat and talked mostly with the two girls to the left of me in this picture -- one was from DC originally and the other is from Sri Lanka (bet you cant guess which one is from DC)

After lunch we went to walk around Wat Pho (aka Temple of the Reclining Buddha), which is one of the oldest Wats in Bangkok. The complex had some really beautiful architecture and motifs and the buddha was massive.

Albert and I in the complex (did not realize that I was completely under dressed until afterwards, good lesson for the future)

Reclining Buddha's head - this thing is really impressive to see up close, it is massive. I have a picture where I am also in it - I'll have to post it once I find the camera cord.

View from the feet...the reclining position of Buddha signifies his passing into Nirvana.

Mother of pearl feet which show 108 images of Buddha

After we walked around the somewhat peaceful (with the exception of several tourists) grounds for a while, we took a tuk tuk (picture below) over to Platinum Mall - 6 floors and crammed with stores and people -

First of many Tuk Tuk rides

Platinum Mall was a mad house I didn't even wind up buying anything (huge shock). After an hour or so there it was time to head to the train station where we took an overnight train to Chiang Mai.

Few points -

• First - overnight trains are amazing and we had more fun than I imagined possible on the overnight sleeper trains to and from Chiang Mai
• Second -I really wish that they taught more Asian history in schools in America (or that I had at least taken some Asian history classes -- or any parts of the world besides America and Western Europe -- I have taken multiple classes which have covered either American or European history). When my parents and I went to London to visit Luke (who was studying abroad at the time) I felt like I was pretty familiar with a lot of the historical things that we saw. That is almost never the case when I see things here -- I feel like I'm missing out in a big way on not having much background information -- still trying to learn as much as I can though.

So thats about it for this entry -- I have a couple of group projects to work on and a test to study for before my mom comes so I don't know when I'll post again -- probably in the next day or two.

Things I am excited for:

• Holi Festival this Saturday - also called the Festival of Colors - I know that it takes place in the spring and have heard that it involves throwing colored chalk at people -- I'm currently reading the wikipedia article, so I'll get back to you on the significance
• Terri Donohue arrives on Wednesday night to stay for almost a week. Cannot wait to hang out and see Singapore with my mom
• I have to study for a test this weekend -- cannot think of a third one

Heard that the weather in CT was over 40 degrees (F) yesterday, sounds like spring is not thaaaat far off and I'm excited for all of you!

Emily

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.