Guest Blog for Mom's Visit

Hi Everyone,

My mom and I had a great visit this past week. She just left this evening, but fortunately I had her write a guest blog entry before she went! So here it is (all I did was insert the pictures):

Greetings from Singapore! I arrived here Wednesday evening about 11:45 pm after boarding a flight at JFK 9:15 am the day before. Because of a two hour delay at JFK I missed my connection in Hong Kong and had to wait in that airport for four hours for the next flight to Singapore. No one was ever happier to finally be on the ground and see Emily’s smiling face at baggage claim.

Mom arriving at baggage claim

Luckily the next morning I did not feel too jet lagged, and Emily and I were off to explore the city on foot. We stopped for breakfast of soft boiled eggs and kaya toast which is toast spread with coconut and butter. Very good, and I don’t even like coconut. The only disappointment was the coffee. Those of you at my work know how I love my coffee! It is thick and dark, and when you ask for cream they use sweetened condensed milk because fresh milk is scarce here. Too sweet!

Clarke Quay for breakfast

Slightly jet-lagged mom at breakfast -- compare this to the picture of mom at our last breakfast

We walked about five hours around the city center area. Here are some pictures.

Parliament

New Supreme Court building, aka the UFO

St. Andrews Cathedral

Books just like at home...

inside

Marina Bay - outside of the new casino

Marina Bay

The Esplanade or "durian"

In front of the merlion

The famous Fullerton -- used to be the post office

Our matching red ferraris parked outside

We found one of the Salvador Dali statues

That evening we went to Arab Street. Singapore has several distinct ethic communities. This evening we ate at one of the restaurants and had great hummus, and shish ka bob which wasn’t my favorite. After dinner we walked around the area taking in the culture and then stopped at the Blue Jaz, a fun bar for a drink before heading home.

Mom's first Tiger beer

Friday Emily had a big test scheduled for the afternoon. She and I boarded the bus to the Botanical Gardens. To describe the gardens I will quote their pamphlet which states it is Time Magazine’s pick for Asia’s best urban jungle. After having lunch in their fantastic food court, Emily departed for school to take her test, and I was alone in Singapore to wander about the gardens. I headed straight to the National Orchid Garden found within the park. It was an amazing display, and took almost an hour to get through the exhibit.

Friday evening Emily and I decided to take in Chinatown. We went to a very crowded area where there are many restaurants and endless street stalls selling Chinese trinkets, clothing, and etc. It is so colorful and alive with hundreds of people walking through the narrow streets. Emily took me to a restaurant which her fellow local NUS students had taken her. She wanted me to try the dim sum, which was delicious.

Chinatown at night

A gang of white people riding on these drove past us

Outside of Yum Cha

Sentosa Island is Singapore’s beach area. It is actually manmade with imported sand and implanted palm trees. Saturday we decided to go to the beach. To get to Sentosa, you have to take a tram from Vivo City, one of the largest malls I’ve ever seen, also with two amazing food courts. We enjoyed the afternoon swimming and lying on the beach.

Two boys playing in the foot washing fountain

We had some rainy moments, not quite ideal

Did not stop mom from enjoying herself

Now back to the food, I now understand why Emily talks about food so much in her blogs. There are restaurants and street stalls (called hawker centers) everywhere, and many different types of food, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Indonesian, and more. Saturday night we went to what I think is my favorite spot so far, Lau Pa Sat. There are about a hundred stalls set up in and outside the largest remaining cast-iron building in Asia. Iit operates between an older section of Singapore and the newer Business District. The street is closed and set up with many tables and chairs. Again there is such a variety of foods offered, but satay (barbecued meat on a stick) seems to be the specialty here. Great food and what a fun scene.

Band on top of the drink stand, doing excellent black eyed peas renditions

So many people on the street

Mom enjoys trying satay, and another Tiger beer

On Sunday morning, Emily and I went to church and then decided it was time to hit Orchard Road, a street with high-end shops and malls. It is the place to shop in Singapore. Although we did make two small purchases, most of our time was spent being shocked at the price tags. Later in the day, I went with Emily out to see her school for my first visit. NUS is a very large University with about 30,000 students. Emily lives in a high-rise dorm with many international and exchange students. We were able to use the internet and Skype home in Simsbury for the first time on my trip, because my hotel only offered the internet for a fee. After visiting her school we ended the evening with yet another meal at a Hawker center aptly named Gluttons Bay.

The church we went to, don't be fooled into thinking that this is a regular occurrence

Walk back to the hotel along the river

My vogue mother in front of Chanel, Orchard Road

Grandma Fran, I didn't know you had a property in Singapore!

Dinner at Gluttons' Bay, note the delicious chicken wings

View of the city at night

Our longest walk home ever

Monday Emily has classes all day so I was on my own. After breakfast I decided to visit the Asian Civilization Museum. After a ride with a cab driver who didn’t understand English, and as I don’t understand Chinese, I ended up at the wrong museum! At that point I got out of the cab, pulled my city map from my purse and set off. I happen to be the worse map reader I know, but somehow I managed to find the right museum. They offer free tours twice a day, but I was not there at the right time. I wandered through all the displays and found them very interesting, but I made a recommendation to Emily to take the tour when she goes, because it will be much more informative. Emily came back to the hotel to meet me at about 6pm. Our plans were to meet some of Emily’s friends from school and go out to dinner. We headed out to her campus and met up with Kerry who is a fellow UCONN student from Somers, and Simon who is a student from New Zealand. Because of Skype and Emily’s blog I felt as if I already knew both of them! Kerry is here for one semester like Emily, but Simon is a full time student at NUS. He recently spent a semester studying in Finland. We went to a Japanese restaurant for sushi which was the best I’ve ever had. The conversation was great with the three students talking about their travels, campus life, studies, fellow students and funny life observations in general. I also got to meet Katie, another good friend of Emily’s from the Univ. of North Carolina who had spent the evening entertaining her sister who is here for a visit, so was not able to join us for dinner.

View of our hotel, taken on mom's day by herself

The statue of Raffles

Simon, Kerry, and I before dinner with Mom

Mom and I at dinner

Today is Tuesday, my last day. Emily and I have one or two more things we want to fit in before I leave. One is to have a Singapore Sling at the famous Raffles Hotel where they were invented. We plan to share one since they cost 30 Sing dollars, or about $21.00 US dollars! I have had a wonderful trip probably better than I even thought I would. Singapore is so interesting and alive, but the best part is seeing Emily really taking advantage of this great opportunity. She has made great interesting friends, is doing well in her studies, is exploring Singapore and all the culture, and has taken advantage of travel opportunities to other countries nearby. BUT we do look forward to seeing her home in May!

See you soon, Terri

Our pictures from today:

Breakfast on the last day, quite a change from the picture above

I thought that the name was funny

Mom checks out the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

View from the inside

Raffles

The sugary Singapore Sling

At the airport, thanks for coming, Mom!!

Mom Visits

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd leave a short update....

I'm excited because my mother is currently traveling to visit me. She will be getting in at 7 pm tomorrow my time--I cannot wait to spend the week with her. Also she is bringing me the means to get the pictures off of my camera and onto my computer (not that I take that many photos anyway).

As I mentioned last week - we went to a Holi Festival on Saturday, which is a celebration of spring where participants throw colored chalk and water at each other. I know that it is celebrated by more than one religion, but there is a religious significance which you can read about. The man in charge at our festival told us that Holi is important because you can't see Spring arrive in Singapore the way you can in regions with seasons, so they show color change themselves, with chalk.

There was a stage set up on the grounds and there were a bunch of performers and there was dancing among the audience, it was a really lively/fun event and even though I'm pretty sure that the clothes that I wore are ruined, I'm so glad that I went!

I do not appreciate chalk being rubbed on my face

Three of us at the festival

Random Holi Participants

In the MRT Station on the way home.

Looking clean on the bus ride home

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

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