Siem Reap, Cambodia

My apologies for taking a while to post about my trip to Cambodia! The past week and a half have been a bit hectic with interviews and schoolwork. And…..I’m lazy.

The first of our four days in Cambodia was spent in Siem Reap. Well, almost a day. We took a night bus from Phnom Penh that left at midnight and arrived at 5:00am. From there, we bought our tickets to go see the 3 big temples of Siem Reap ($37 USD, pretty expensive actually but well worth it).

Temple #1: Angkor Wat

Oh my, it was so cool! It’s the largest religious monument in the world. By 6:00am there were at least 1,000+ people, probably more, gathered there to watch the sun rise over the temple. I took some pretty sweet pictures of it, which you can see below:

*Disclaimer* All photos past Angkor Wat were taken on my phone. I forgot to charge my camera before leaving for Cambodia. Classic Peter move, am I right?

Temple #2: Ta Prohm

Another cool temple! This temple was far smaller, and far less intact than Angkor Wat. There were crumbling rocks everywhere, as well as trees within and without the temple. It was actually really cool, but by this time we were exhausted from the lack of sleep on the night bus and immediately going straight to sight seeing. Here are some pictures:

Temple #3: Bayon

I feel like Lara Croft! One of the Tomb Raider movies was filmed at Bayon, which I think is pretty cool! Bayon was less intact than Angkor Wat, but more than Ta Prohm. Here, I came across a girl traveling alone, and I could tell she wanted me to take a picture of her but she didn’t know how to communicate. She tried speaking in 3 or 4 different languages before she spoke some words in French. I was excited to speak a little French, and we agreed to take a photo of each other! Here are some pictures of Bayon:

It was a short day in Siem Reap. We were only there for 7 hours, and we took a day bus back to Phnom Penh. I tried to fall asleep but occasionally a beetle would fly out of the air conditioning above my head and so I decided I wanted to stay awake. Good times!

Stay-cation

This past weekend was dedicated to re-exploring the downtown area of Singapore! Most of the students I know were in Thailand, but luckily there were a few here to come on a few city excursions.

Marina Bay: Marina Bay is exactly what it sounds like, a bay. It is surrounded by luxurious hotels, namely Marina Bay Sands, high end shopping, and eating. On Friday nights there is a water show in front of the hotel. The show is about 30 minutes long, where clips are projected on 50-foot walls of water being sprayed in the bay. There was music to accompany it, along with a few hundred people of all ages.

Gardens By The Bay: I really could not put what the Gardens are into words. These massive, glowing figures that look like trees span the whole garden. Again, there was a light and music show on Friday night which I think was one of the coolest things I have ever experienced. The 15 minute session consisted of numerous pieces from all around Asia, with the lights on the tree figures adjusting to the beat and rhythm of each piece. It had poured just before we arrived, so nobody was really sitting, but the a few hundred people standing still and looking straight up was still quite the sight to see.

Skyline: There is a lot of debate in the US centered upon which city has the prettiest skyline. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, to name a few. I don’t care. Singapore is cooler. The buildings are smaller, but I think it’s cooler.

Marina Bay Sands:

Gardens By The Bay:

Skyline w/ Model:

Skyline w/o Model:

Disclaimer: Some of the pictures are just a little blurry. I'm still practicing with my camera, and I will get better!

What's Next: Feb. 10-13th I will be traveling to both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia. 

Malaysia #2

Trip #2 to Malaysia, just one week after my first trip, did not go nearly as smoothly. Two other guys from U of I and I went on a 3 day trip that was organized through a local company. The company had organized it for students from the 3 main SG Universities that were here on exchange.

It was incredibly unorganized, the “beautiful” hotel that they had put us up in was quite gross, and everything took a million years to accomplish because it was Chinese New Year.

On top of all that, I lost my American iPhone.

Short post, I don’t want to talk about this trip!

Malaysia #1

Hello! My apologies for not posting in roughly two weeks. The past two weeks I have been on two different trips to Malaysia. Both trips had their highs and lows, but unfortunately the lows dominated trip #2. Overall, I think I’ve seen enough of Malaysia for this semester, and possibly my lifetime! Here’s a summary:

Trip #1 - I took this trip with some of the U of I students, as well as a new friend from Elon University. It was a five day trip, starting with a flight into Kuala Lumpur immediately followed by a 5 hour bus ride to Cameron Highlands. Cameron Highlands was very interesting, with its 3 different little towns. The only real complaint I have about it was getting there. Our bus took 5 hours to get there, with the driver stopping to eat dinner (not mentioned in the itinerary), but worse things could have happened. We arrived late, and woke up the next morning to take our tour of the area. The tour cost 26 RM which is roughly $5, and included a bunch of stops to local attractions. My favorite was definitely the bee farm that they took us to. We got to try some real honey! Other stops included a strawberry farm, a butterfly/insect/snake/rabbit farm, and the legendary tea plantation. We spent the whole day there, and then hopped back on the bus to Kuala Lumpur arriving late at night once again.

I really enjoyed Kuala Lumpur! We had a jam packed day, starting with the Batu Caves. We climbed the hundreds of stairs, my shirt turning light grey to dark with sweat, and walked into the crumbling temples that remained at the top.

After that, we headed to the central market. This was my first ever experience in a real bargain market. I didn’t really test my true skills, however, when asked to pay 20 RM for a pair of sunglasses, I managed to get it down to 15 ($3 US). Everything was very obviously fake, but I still got a kick out of people selling “Gucci” and “Prada” bags on a street corner.

Finally, my favorite part of the five days. My group met up with a woman named Cynthia Wong in Malaysia. My friend Tricia was put into contact with her through one of the deans in the College of Business! Cynthia was an honors business student at the University of Illinois, and after working for a few years decided to move across the world to Malaysia. She now teaches yoga, which I have learned is incredibly difficult. We went to one of her yoga class events which was on top of a very tall building, in a metal dome. It was very peaceful, and an experience I’d like to try again! After, we went out to dinner with Cynthia and a bunch of her local friends and had some great conversation!

For Everyone, But Mostly Eric Ure

This is more of a shout-out post, but everyone is welcome to read!

Eric,

I am writing this to you because you studied civil engineering, and I think you would really be fascinated by NTU. It has a renowned civil engineering program, and it’s especially cool because the program is small, and the students get to work on real projects on campus.

The roads here are very interesting. The entire campus is located on an enormous hill. Looking at a map, I cannot see any logic to how the roads fit into each other, but somehow they do. Every road is curved, I don’t think there’s a single road here on campus that is a straightaway for more than 100m. Also, the roads are all connected through roundabouts. They obviously exist, but I have seen more roundabouts on just this campus than I have seen in the US in total. I don’t think taking pictures of some of the streets would be that valuable, so here’s a campus map:

I know it’s not your specific area, but I would assume irrigation systems would fall under civil engineering too, right? Walking around campus, I feel as if I’m in one big Chamber of Secrets. There are drains everywhere you look, and all of the sides of the hills are cut into with concrete filtering the water to the bottom of campus. Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, the bottom of campus is where Hall 7 is located. I guess this is vital, as it rains rather frequently here.

Anyways, I just thought you’d be interested! Feel free to google image search the campus a little more. I think you would enjoy it here!

Teh Bing

Making friends here with other exchange students is incredibly easy. That unfortunately does not hold true for some of the local students. Only having class on Wednesday and Thursday does not make it any easier. Most of the full time students will only speak English when speaking with a native English speaker, but I will not let that stop me.

I have managed to make one friend in Hall 7, and his name is Teh Bing. He doesn’t speak any English, is always sitting around the Hall 7 common room, and I honestly am not sure if he is enrolled in any class. We first met in the common room, and since then I see him every day at Hall 7. We usually just acknowledge each other with eye contact, but I am going to try to get to know him better as the semester goes on. Unfortunately, he does not have a visa. I only mention this because a lot of people create stronger connections through travel, but Teh Bing will not be able to tag along with us.

I will be providing updates about my friendship with Teh Bing throughout the semester. I want to try and get close with at least one local!

Pulau Ubin

On January 14th, I was given the opportunity to go to a small island off of the coast of Singapore called Pulau Ubin. The island was originally inhabited by a few thousand people around 60 years ago, but most moved away once all of the granite had been cleaned out of the quarries. We were told that only a few hundred locals live there today, and that seems correct with what we saw.

The program was through NTU, and it was only for exchange students. We were broken into groups which helped me get to meet some other awesome students. I met some students from Pittsburgh, Maryland, Toronto, South Korea, and more. We were led by two NTU students who were also Singapore natives.

The island is not that large, in fact, I’m pretty sure we walked most of it in the 4(ish) hours that we were touring it. It’s mostly very dense forest, but there are some paths that are built into the water. We weaved in and out different parts of the island until we could barely walk anymore. The hills took a toll on everyone, but the scenery was great enough that we kept the complaining in our head.

Here are some photos that I took: