Here and There and Back Again

Maybe you noticed? Probably not, since I don’t really expect people to come over to my corner of the internet that often unless you’re my mom (hi mom). Anyway, I set up this blog to document my time in Singapore, but I plan to keep using it while I live and study in Costa Rica this summer! So clearly I can’t have a blog title saying “Singapore” anymore can I? 

But before I get ahead of myself, I want to post a few more pictures. Not of places or things I’ve done, but here are some pictures of the wonderful people I met while I was in Singapore. Without them, my experience really would have been so much less. 

(also, sorry the pictures are blurry - I took them off Facebook, and they are also enlarged a bit, so quality is bad…)

My exchange student family ^.^ A lot of Canadians, some Germans, one Dutch, and a few of us representing from America! Of course, everyone isn’t pictured here, but these are mostly the people I’d have dinner with, hang out on top of the art building with, travel with, and generally always have a good time with. And I learned so many things about Canada. Like how they drink milk from bags and have funny names for their money ;) And I also learned about how the Dutch have Zwarte Piet - I’m not explaining that one, just click the link. All of these people are fantastic, and I’m already missing them so much.

My little Singaporean family <3 Sorry I couldn’t find any better pictures, I guess we just spent too much time being awesome than taking pictures of ourselves. Thanks to these people I could walk into school every day and know somebody. They really made school feel like home while I was there. I’m really going to miss ladies nights, sitting outside ADM talking for hours, shenanigans in the sunken plaza, and staying till the wee hours of the morning working on photo projects. It’s amazing to me and a bit sad that I have such good friends now all the way around the world, but I know I’ll see you guys again in the future!

Volunteering for the Singapore Association for the Deaf was something I meant to make a post about earlier. I was so grateful they let me volunteer while I was in Singapore. I learned so much about a different Deaf culture than I’ve been familiar with, and I met a lot of great people who are really doing good in Singapore. For anyone who is planning on going on exchange or traveling, I definitely recommend finding a place to volunteer. It was amazing to meet Singaporeans who shared my interests, and they were all amazing people as well. 

Without all of these people - my professors, the people I met traveling, the aunties and uncles in the canteens and cleaning my dorm, my classmates, my parents (giving my love from halfway around the world), and most of all my new friends - my experience would not have been as fulfilling as it was. So, thank you! And I’ll see you all again <3

Here we go, finally the details of my last big trip of my semester abroad. I can’t believe this all was only three weeks ago (also sorry again for taking three weeks to post this. It’s just me being lazy. It’s really not that hard to upload pictures and write about them, I promise.) Anyway, I was really excited for our trip to Vietnam. We were a big group of girls, and it was promising to be fun. We didn’t go in with too many plans, and it worked out really well overall, in my opinion. 

The plan was to fly into Hanoi, in the northern part of Vietnam, and then to work our way to Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) in the south part of Vietnam over the span of 10 days. The only planning we had done was to book the first couple nights in a hostel (with free airport pickup) to avoid any sketch taxis after being on a plane all morning. This worked out spectacularly when we arrived. They gave us fresh fruit, coffee, and tea when we arrived at the hostel, and according to Mareike and Alexis, the coffee was the best they had ever tasted. I was drinking tea (I just don’t really like coffee, ok?) but when I tried their coffee, even I had to admit it was pretty good. This also was the beginning of the quest for the best Vietnamese coffee, which was incredibly challenging, as almost all the Vietnamese coffee was excellent, or just really strange. 

Once we settled into our room and cleaned up, we went to go eat some lunch, specifically PHO! Pho is basically a noodle soup with your choice of meat, usually beef or chicken, and some herbs. And it’s delicious. David our hostel guy had recommended a place a few blocks away where we could walk and have some of the best pho in town, but it was closed. We decided on the place next door, and we were not disappointed.

Another interesting thing was that every town in Vietnam seemed to have it’s own beer (or two). I ordered a Bia Ha Noi beer with my first meal in Hanoi, and I made it a point to try each beer I could while we were traveling. 

In Hanoi: Bia Ha Noi and Saigon beer
In Hue: Festival, Hue, and Huda beer
In Hoi An: Hoi An, Saigon, and Biere Larue beer

Most of the beers were pretty light, maybe on par with a Coors Light at home or Fireman’s 4 if they were good. But it was fun to try all the different ones!

Another interesting thing about Hanoi: all of the streets were named after the type of items they sold on that street (or maybe the items are sold there because it is named that way). For example, we were on a street named after chicken (gà), and there were other streets named after silk (lụa) or shoes (giày), and all you would be able to find on those streets were silk shops, or shoe shops. It was really interesting. No need to drive from store to store looking for the perfect pair of shoes, they’re all in one place.

On the first day in Hanoi we visited the Hỏa Lò Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton) where they kept U.S. pilots (including John McCain) during the Vietnam War. The prison had a long history before that, being used by the French to hold Vietnamese political prisoners then the Vietnamese took it back over and used it for their political prisoners, along with U.S. pilots. What I found troubling about visiting here was that they seemed to show all the U.S. pilots as enjoying themselves. Having Christmas dinner. Writing lots of letters to their families at home. Getting lots of outdoors time gardening and feeding the chickens. It seemed so wrong so see them enjoying themselves. That’s not what prison is for. But if you look closely at the pictures, none of the pilots were smiling. It started to become clear that the Vietnamese were creating this propaganda of how well they were treating our pilots, and the only thing the pilots could do was frown as deeply as they could so as not to endorse the propaganda.

Just keep in mind whenever you’re traveling that, yes, you’re there to learn about other cultures and history from different points of view, but keep in mind that everyone skews history in their favor, including the U.S. and including Vietnam.

After having a couple days to explore Hanoi, which was a really fascinating city, we booked an overnight cruise for Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay was something we all refused to miss even though there was no way to do it without being uber-tourists. For the first time, we were the people following the guy with the flag around… But once we got to our boat, it didn’t matter anymore. They served us good food, and the bay was beautiful. We had a few scheduled activities, like going to a lookout point for photo ops and a “beach,” and going through some caves (which were cool, but our guide didn’t know much about them and just kept pointing out interestingly-shaped rocks instead of giving us actual historical information about how the caves were formed or anything useful). As touristy (and kind of stupid) as those activities were, the best activity by far was being able to kayak around Ha Long Bay. We were able to finally go off on our own, and as long as we could find our way back to the boat we could go wherever we wanted. 

Some of the girls kayaking! We saw a couple monkeys and a cool cave/alcove place, and just generally had a good time floating around.

When we arrived back in Hanoi the next day, we all decided it was time to move on to the next city. After two hours of debating whether to go to Sapa to see the tiered rice fields or onward south to Hue, we finally booked a night train to Hue. I was really excited for this leg of the trip, because Hue is one of the closest cities to the demilitarized zone in Vietnam, where a lot of the historical sites are. This was part of the reason why I was so excited for the trip to Vietnam in general. But first we had to get there. The train ride was not the most comfortable. We were all on the top bunk (out of THREE bunks), and pretty cramped. Mareike and I were in the same cabin, and there was a super creepy old man with only one eye on the bunk below me, so both of us were nervous to look down. In the morning there was also an annoying lady practicing singing in our cabin. Mareike luckily managed to sleep through this…

We finally arrived in Hue and headed to a hostel we had read about in the Lonely Planet, hoping they would have vacancies. They did, and we dropped everything off and went for food, as usual.

Hue was a cool town, with a nice river and some cute shops. It was much more walkable than Hanoi, mainly because the traffic was infinitely less crazy and sometimes people even obeyed traffic lights. Actually traffic lights existed here. The walk down the river was nice - there were lots of students out studying and walking around, and it didn’t feel touristy at all. It actually started to feel uncomfortable at some points because people would openly stare, just because we looked out of place as a large group of white girls. oops.

On our last full day in Hue, Alexis and I went on a tour of the DMZ (demilitarized zone), while the others rented bikes and rode around town. Getting to and around the DMZ was A LOT of driving. SO MUCH DRIVING. I think we actually drove from the east side of Vietnam to the west (it’s not actually that far to be honest though). The most interesting part of the DMZ was the Vinh Moc Tunnels, where some Vietnamese people lived for up to five years during the bombings in the Vietnam War. Some of the tunnels were dug down to 25 meters deep. Around 60 families lived in the tunnels and as many as 17 children were born inside. 

This is an old radio tower that they used to use to broadcast war news and propaganda.

Each of these tombstones are marked with the words:
Chưa Biết Tên: Unknown Name
Liệt Sỹ: Martyr
These tombstones represent the approximately 200,000-500,000 Vietnamese that died in the war.

We also had a beach day in Hue, which was really relaxing. The water was clear, and the beach was close to empty. I’ve learned in SE Asia that for a group of white girls who only have bikinis to wear to the beach, an empty beach is a blessing. Otherwise, people stare openly at you because you aren’t completely covered up. We spent the day laying out, reading, swimming, an relaxing.

From Hue, we left on a four-hour bus ride to Hoi An, another smaller town famous for its tailor-made clothes. It was crazy when we arrived - nearly every other store was a tailor shop or a shoe shop. Apparently people come from all around the world to Hoi An to have clothes made. Alexis got a sweet professional dress, and I got an awesome pair of blue oxford shoes. They measured my feet and everything, and they had them ready by that evening. 

The wet market in Hoi An was incredibly vibrant. Out along the streets were all the food and produce vendors, and just a few steps back would be the shoe and jewelry stores again. People would cruise by on their motorbikes and bicycles, and it seemed like there were no rules on the streets. People strolled up the center of the street, bikes and motorcycles weaved around and honked until they got through. And no one was bothered. The vegetable ladies didn’t seem worried about getting exhaust or dirt all over their veggies.

Also, the conical hats are not just a tourist thing. They really do wear them, all the time.

One of my favorite places in Hoi An was Reaching Out Tea House. Reaching Out is an organization in Hoi An that helps the disabled, and all of the employees of the tea house were deaf or hearing impaired. I really wanted to see if I could try signing with them, but as soon as I tried, I realized that wasn’t going to work. I just stuck with the basic sign for “thank you” which they seemed to understand. You ordered your tea and snacks by bubbling in a little card. Then if you needed anything, you could point at the little word blocks they had like “bill,” “ice,” or “thank you.” It was so peaceful and calm inside, and my herbal tea was fantastic.

This lady makes lanterns by hand. Everyone in Hoi An seemed to be a craftsman of some sort. Clothes, shoes, lanterns, jewelry, you name it.

I flew out of Da Nang (the next city over from Hoi An) to Ho Chi Minh, then back to Singapore. At this point I wasn’t really realizing that in less than 12 hours, at 6 a.m. I would be on the long journey back to Texas. 

Sorrrrrrry I haven’t really updated in forever because I got so caught up with exams, saying goodbyes, making the last memories, traveling to Vietnam, making the trek over five plane rides to get home, then just enjoying chilling at home for a few days. So now here I am, 20 days since my last post (ooops), finally updating about things that happened weeks ago. 

So this update will be about my trip to Cambodia, my first experience traveling by myself. I ended up going along because it just kind of worked out that everyone I wanted to travel with had already been, or was going as part of their massive after-exams trip, which I didn’t have time to do.

Traveling alone was quite a liberating feeling - I could do exactly what I wanted, and I didn’t have to make any compromises with people on activities, food, or anything else. Also, I’m one of those people who sometimes just needs some good alone time to think, relax and appreciate things.

First thing in the morning, I flew into Phnom Penh. I had a few hours before I was planning to catch the bus to Siem Reap, so I went to the Genocide Museum, also known as the S21 Prison. The museum was the old prison where Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge held and killed their prisoners, people who they saw as a threat to their reign - basically anyone smart, talented, anyone who wore glasses, etc. It was devastating, and to think this was happening in the 1970s. Only 40 years ago.

Those are the beds that some of the prisoners would sleep on, if they were lucky enough to get a bed. Many of the prisoners were held in tiny brick cells, hardly big enough to stand up. All the photos are of each of the prisoners. They documented each prisoner and all of their personal information. So many of them were children too.

Rules of the Prison
The Security of Regulation:

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions - don’t turn them away
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all of the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

I’ve never really been a superstitious person or believed in spirits, but this prison was one place where I felt like there was some sort of presence. All these people murdered with no closure or peace. 

After being thoroughly depressed, I caught the but to Siem Reap, where I checked into my hostel and stayed inside all night because it was pouring rain. Also, I had to be up at 5 a.m. the next morning to go with my tuk tuk driver to see Angkor Wat sunrise. 

The sunrise was really lovely, even though it was pretty cloudy. My tuk tuk driver apologized to me later about how cloudy my sunrise was and that it wasn’t good, but told him I didn’t mind, and I still enjoyed it. When you go to watch the sunrise, there is a horde of tourists over on the left side crowded around this little pond of murky water because they want to capture the reflection of the sunrise. That’s all well and good, but I headed over to the opposite side of the grounds and found a nice shady spot in a smaller stone temple where I could watch the sunrise and relax in the shade - instead of being pushed around by a bunch of annoying people posing and taking bad pictures.

The temples in Angkor were really magnificent, even if they did all start to look the same. For me, it was really interesting to walk around in temples made of stone. They felt so much older and more permanent than many of the temples I’ve visited in other places. It felt like there was a lot of history that happened here because the temples were so old. One of my favorites was Bayon, the one in the picture on the right. Carved into all the walls and towers were faces. If you look closely you can see them everywhere. 

These pictures are from Ta Prohm, a temple that was completely run over by trees. It was amazing looking around at how powerful nature could be. So many trees just grew and enveloped all the walls and hallways. The selling point of this temple was that Tomb Raider was shot here, so everyone wanted a picture with the trees. It was actually kind of ruined for me, sadly, because there was a giant tour group in there while I was wandering around, and they kept wandering into my pictures and yelling at their annoying kids. 

The picture on the left here of the little stones is something I found really interesting. I kept seeing them in all the Angkor temples, and I didn’t know what they were. Finally, I looked it up and discovered that it is a Buddhist tradition of stacking stones for good fortune. Sometimes each stone can represent well-wishes for each family member, or sometimes travelers come along and stack one more stone in hopes of good fortune. In other places around the world they are used as guide markers on hiking trails because it’s clearly done by man - it’s highly uncommon for more than two or three stones to be stacked naturally in the wild.

Close-ups of some of the detail in the temples and the Bayon faces.

After all my templing (it has become a verb now - “going templing,” “Are you templing tomorrow?” “I’m all templed out,” etc.), I went back to the hostel for a nap and a swim and tried to decide what to do for the evening, while it poured rain outside. I decided to go on a sunset ATV tour, which was a great choice, It was just me and two retired Australian man, and we followed out guide out to the rice fields and countryside. I loved getting out of the town because we were able to drive along some backroads and see some of the farming population in Siem Reap. It was stunning scenery and fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time to see how some of the farmers lived. One good part though was the children. While we were riding around in the evening, there were a lot of children running around and playing. At first I would try to drive slowly and carefully by them, until I realized what they really wanted was some fun. It had been raining pretty hard earlier, so there were a lot of puddles and standing water on the road, so every time I drove by a group of kids I would make sure to give them a good splash. They would shriek and laugh and then wave while we drove away. It’s heartwarming to see kids so happy at the littlest things.

The last day in Siem Reap, I did a cooking class and got to wander around the wet market for a little while. Despite the smell, the market was awesome. It was super busy and bustling with people doing their daily food shopping for fresh meats and veggies. All the women just squat there for hours and sell their food all day. It’s really amazing how cheerful they can be for hours on end chopping meat and dealing with the crowds. Especially amazing how well behaved the cute little naked boy was!

The trip back to Singapore was grueling though. I took a night bus back from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, which was bumpy, crowded, and slightly terrifying. We were on these weird bed semi-cushioned things, which were bunked, and doubled up with two people in each one. So I was laying on the ground of the bus next to this nice Cambodian woman, and I had maybe three feet of space above me to the bed on top. Then there were two stories on the bus, so we were even more doubled. And the bus driver drove like a crazy person. I just tried to sleep and ignore it, then I got really cold and was trying to cover myself with my scarf. It wasn’t really working, and the nice Cambodian woman shared her blanket with me because she saw me shivering. By the time I got off the bus, my stomach was feeling really grumpy. The last thing I ate in Siem Reap was some street food rice, and I found myself really regretting that decision as I got off the bus and immediately tried to find a bathroom. I had mild food poisoning all day. No throwing up, but…yeah. I made my way to the airport and waited around until my flight back to Singapore in the afternoon. P.S. There is nothing to do in Phnom Penh Airport.

Overall, the trip was really good, and I loved the feeling of being able to do whatever I wanted, when I wanted. It definitely sparked the urge to do more traveling on my own in the future. 

Eating chips and salsa in my bed, putting off unpacking until tomorrow. It’s good to be home, but I already miss Singapore.

Falling into a warm pile of freshly laundered clothes is just not the same when you live in a country as hot as Singapore and your room has no air-con…