Thailand

This past weekend Brett and I experienced, in my opinion, the best (and worst) part of our whole Singapore trip thus far.  We flew from Singapore to Phuket, Thailand on Friday (the 12th) evening and took a cab to our hotel. After we dropped our stuff off we walked just outside to grab dinner at a Lebanese restaurant and consumed some really tasty taco-esque food.  Unfortunately, as we were stuffing our faces it started down-pouring and we were unable to check out the night market.  Oh well, Brett and I aren't big shoppers anyway :)  We hit the hay and woke the next morning to cloudy skies and a slight drizzle, eliminating and hopes of chilling on the beach for a while.  We checked it out anyway, had lunch and then headed to the boat dock to catch our ferry to Koh Phi Phi, an island about 2 hours away via boat.  We started the trip sitting in the bottom of the boat but quickly moved to the top for fresh air and a better view of the landscape.
Thailand is a pretty crazy place geographically, there are random cliffs that jut out of the water and create an unexplainable sense of excitement (weird I know, but the boat rides I know best all take place on the Mississippi haha) and great photo opportunities.  Arriving in Koh Phi Phi made your realize that this place was made for tourism.  Between the two beaches on the northern and southern sides of the island (a short 15 min walk) was a maze of shops, massage parlors, restaurants and quaint hotels all connected by pedestrian paths (there are no cars on the island).  Nothing fancy, everything had the 'laid-back-beach' feel to it.  We walked for 20 mins across the island to our hotel from the boat, ditched our bags and hit up the beach for a couple hours.  From there we had burgers on the beach, hit the showers quick and then stuck our feet in fish tanks (it was a 'fish massage', the fish nibble at your feet and take off all the dead skin; it was a really weird feeling).  Then we went back to the bars to see the fire shows that they put on at night.  It basically consisted of guys with long hair and afro-ninjas twirling sticks engulfed in flames, throwing said sticks in the air, losing track of the sticks in midair three or four times, watching the sticks somehow gravitate towards the same jumpy Asian man in the front row, and laughing as he flew out of his chair every time a fiery stick came down within feet of him.  It was hilarious.  After we were done watching the show we hit the hay and woke up the next morning for our 5 hour trip around an island just off of Koh Phi Phi.

We hopped in the longboat with 6 other people, our guide, and headed toward the island.  The island was amazing, and hard to describe.  Look at the photos!  Haha...it was basically all cliffs surrounded by crystal-clear water.  Paradise.  Our guide had a knack of not really telling us what was going on until the boat stopped all day...so when it did for the first time all he said was, "Anyone want to swim?"  So everyone got out in this cove surrounded by cliffs and swam in water where you could see straight to the sand at the bottom, easily the coolest place I will ever swim in my life.  After that we drove for a while longer, stopped and our guide said "Anyone want to snorkel?"  Of course we said yes.  Then he said, "Anyone want to see shark?  Follow me."  For some weird reason, my adrenaline kicked in and Brett and I followed the guy, and sure enough there were sharks (probably 8 feet long).  It was great!  The seafloor was 5-10 feet down so we could see all of the colorful fish, corals, sea urchins, and big neon colored clams.  After snorkeling we went to the most b-e-a-utiful beach in the world, Maya Beach (also known as "The Beach").  It  was the epitome of pristine.  In a bay surrounded by cliffs was the clearest water and the whitest sand in the world!  We hung out there for an hour before moving on.  After driving to the other side of the island we stopped again and heard, "Snorkeling.  You want to see big shark?  Follow me."  So we did.  Scariest/most amazing thing ever.  This time the ocean floor was probably about 40 feet down, but the sharks were now 15 feet long and traveling in packs.  SO COOL.  I started getting concerned when the schools of fish started swimming around us to avoid the sharks, but it all worked out :) After that we felt like we could take on the world via cliff jumping, so a few of us did that for a bit and then headed back to the dock.

Unfortunately it was time to leave Koh Phi Phi via boat.  Taking the ferry to Krabi, we arrived, found a hotel, and then proceeded to a carnival for dinner.  Sounds fun?  It was at the time, right up to the point where Brett and I couldn't digest food correctly for a week.  Something we ate didn't agree with either of us...it unfortunately left us feeling like crap for the last stretch of the trip.  Thankfully we didn't have much planned for the last day, so we simply ended up laying on the beach, soaking up some sun, and taking in the views at Railay Beach.  From there we took the boat back to Phuket, stayed in a hostel and headed back to Singapore the next morning.  Overall the trip consisted of my favorite and least favorite parts of this whole adventure thus far.  Koh Phi Phi was paradise, and being sick for a week was not.  Either way, it was a great experience :)  Check out all of the Thailand photos here.

Kuala Lumpur

The Batu Caves

Howdy everyone!  I'm getting sick and tired of studying for my Chinese I final so I'm going to take a break and update this badboy.  Its been a while since the last one!  I've unfortunately just been doing school stuff, I guess thats alright though because that is the real reason I came here.  So yeah, this past weekend Brett and I decided to take a quick little trip to see the capitol of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.  We got on a bus at 11:30 pm and drove for 5 hours (filling up the tank with about 3 hours of sleep to run on for the day) to the capitol.  Amazingly enough nothing was really happening in downtown KL at 4:30 am, who knew?  The bus dropped us off at a huge mall called 'Times Square'; unfortunately it was closed in the wee hours of the morning.  We explored for about 10 minutes before we realized that we were hungry and had no Malaysian money...and all of the exchangers were closed for another 5 hours!  So we had a quick breakfast of a granola bar and a handful of peanuts, it got us through the next couple hours :)  From the mall we took a taxi (that happily accepted our Singapore money) to the Batu Caves, a huge cave that appears to rise out of the ground from nowhere.  As we waited for the cave to open/the sun to rise a random local man approached us and gave us the lowdown on the cave, people, and ceremony.  He also told us that there was a train just a short walk away so we could save money by taking that versus the taxi.  AND at that point we still had no Malaysian currency but this guy was nice enough to exchange money with us!  It was a huge help, we wouldn't have gotten much farther without him.  If you're reading this mister, THANK YOU!  After our encounter with the good samaritan we took a short hike up the 272 steps to the top and saw a bunch of people preparing for that morning's ceremony.  It was a really neat area, the cave was ginormous!  Once we had snapped a couple quality pictures we headed toward the train and took it back downtown in the direction of the KL Tower.  In one of the train stations we stopped for a highly nutritious McDonald's breakfast consisting of a sausage/egg/cheese McMuffin, hashbrowns and coffee.  Note to self: Never allow Brett to drink coffee again.  Crazyness is sure to ensue :)  (I can already tell you that he's not going to like that comment haha)
Following our much-needed breakfast we went to the KL Tower and got to go up to the observation deck, providing us with a great view of the city and the Petronas Towers.  Once we completed our handheld video player tour of KL we took the elevator back down to the ground and began our walk to the Petronas Towers.  Once we got there Brett was telling me that people come to the Towers at 6 am to get a ticket to take a tour of the bridge connecting the two Towers, but sometimes people don't show up to go on the tour and it is occasionally possible to take their spots.  Now I don't know how lucky you have to be to find a cancellation, but we felt like a million bucks when the guy told us that he had two spots left just for us!  It was great :)  The view was awesome, and I'm really glad that lady luck was on our side that day.  We took some great pictures, took a taxi back to the mall (it was raining, we aren't that lazy I promise) and wandered around for a while until our bus was ready to leave.  We were feeling pretty good about ourselves considering we just hit all of the major spots in KL in a mere 12 hours.  It was a quick, efficient, and highly enjoyable trip that I will remember for a long time.  To see all of the KL photos, click here.

Bali

A crude map of where we went, a 260 km journey

So...Bali.  Pretty great adventure.  Brett and I flew from Singapore to Bali on Saturday the 18th of September.  In the airport, before takeoff, we each exchanged  US dollars to Indonesian Rupiah.  Aka we gave the exchange people about 350 USD and received 2.85 MILLION rupiah.  It was pretty awesome.  Anyway...the flight was a mere 2 hours (cake compared to the 28 it took to get here) and thankfully quite uneventful.  We went through customs in a relatively short amount of time and made it to the hotel in Kuta around 9 pm that night.  The hotel was awesome; it was a 5 minute walk to the beach, provided free breakfast (all of the hotels we stayed at had free breakfast) and had 2 beds for us to sleep in.  Sounds pretty normal, except for the fact that I payed $6.50 for one night's stay.  All of the hotels were dirt cheap and were actually really nice, not reflective of the prices at all.  After we dropped our stuff off in the room we wandered around a few of the shops that were close by.  And thats when it all started.  You see, in Bali people are DYING to sell you something.  Anything.  If you walk into their store they will try their hardest to prevent you from leaving empty-handed by slashing prices to the extreme.  For example, one lady initially wanted 150,000 rupiah (1 USD is about 9000 rupiah) for a wooden carving.  She sold it to Brett for 35,000 rupiah, about one-fifth the price as he was walking out the door.  It was insane and provided for some great bargains.  After our first shopping experience, we went to Uncle Norm's bar.  It was really chill; they had a live band every night and gave us a good place to unwind and prepare for the coming days.

One of the hotels we stayed at

We woke up early the next day (Sunday) and went surfing.  We rented us some boards and hit the waves for about 2 hours, catching some good waves along the way.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of this experience because we were advised not to leave our cameras on the beach...oh well.  We took it pretty easy the rest of the day, just chilled on the beach and explored Kuta for a while before retreating to the bars again and hitting the hay.  Monday was the true start to our adventures in Bali; we rented motorbikes for four days and drove them all over the island.  At first we were going to rent them from the hotel, but they didn't have any type of insurance deal.  So the guy that we were talking to from the hotel flagged down his buddy from the street and we rented from him (all I could think to myself at this point was 'shady...').  Eventually we worked out a deal with the guy where we payed about $8 a day, including insurance that covered everything.  We asked him what would happen if the bike was stolen and he said that he would drive to wherever we were and bring us new bikes.  It was pretty sketchy, but it all worked out in the end :)  Finally we got on the road and began tackling the beast that is the streets of Indonesia.  It was pretty insane and impossible to describe completely.  Basically you just need to understand the hierarchy of vehicles; the biggest ones go where they want, everyone else falls in line.  Or in most cases everyone just zips around the bigger vehicles.  For example, if there were cars waiting in a traffic jam, the motorbikes aren't going to wait.  They are either going to squeeze between the cars or drive on the sidewalk.  It was crazy, but you get used to it.  So we somehow made it through the city to the country roads, headed for the town of Ubud.  These roads were much friendlier and provided us with lots to see on the 2 hour trip.  Upon arriving in Ubud a man rode up to us and asked if we needed a place to stay, we said yes, and he took us to his hotel (another cheap price).  We ditched our bikes and backpacks and got dinner (we had hamburgers for the first time in 2 months!) and proceeded to wander around looking at the shops filled with crafts, carvings and paintings.  We then swam in the hotel's pool before hitting the hay for the night.

The rice paddies

We woke the next morning (Tuesday) and had a free breakfast of pancakes, tea and fruit.  I however didn't eat all of my papaya.  So this little monkey ran up seconds after we got up and ate it for me; it was pretty funny.  We then packed and went to the monkey forest (a forest with temples and was full of monkeys, who would've guessed?) for a couple hours before we continued our journey.  After driving for about 45 minutes we came to the town of Tegallalang.  Here we came across some pretty amazing terraces used for rice paddies.  It doesn't sound like much, but they were really cool.  We kept driving for another hour or so before we came across some of Indonesia's law enforcement.  (Before we left I did a little research about these guys.  Apparently the system is extremely corrupt and cops in Bali just pull people over to fine them if they don't have proper licenses or registration.  They don't do anything about it, they simply pocket the money and send you on your way.)  So, we decided to put a little something else I learned online to the test.  We both pulled out our licenses from home and attempted to convince them that they were international licenses.  It either worked, or they got sick of us because we were sent on our way after about 5 minutes.  I couldn't stop smiling as we drove away :)  Ten more minutes of driving got us to Mount Batur, an active volcano about 5,600 feet tall.  As we arrived, a guy named Tobali drove up to us and took us to a delicious buffet (I reminded myself what being full felt like haha), led us to a hotel, set us up with a guide to climb the volcano, showed us to dinner, tuned up our bikes and took us to the biggest temple in all of Bali.  In return for all of his help, he took us to his art gallery and we bought some really cool artwork from him.  It was a great trade-off.

The next morning (Wednesday) we woke up at 3:30 am and hiked two hours to the top of the volcano with our guide and a bunch of French people to see the sunrise.  We made it to the top about a half hour before sunrise, only to discover dense clouds hiding vision of everything.  It was sad at the time.  But then our guide made us a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs by putting the eggs in a hole in the volcano for 10 minutes, this healed the sadness a little :) Those little holes were extremely hot, easily hotter than an oven.  We waited for a bit to see if the clouds were going to clear, but after they didn't we began our 3 hour descent back down.  At about 1/4 of the way down the clouds finally disappeared and we got an amazing view of the lake on the east side of the volcano and everything surrounding it.  We then continued our descent, checking out the crater in the middle and a cave full of bats along the way.  The whole thing was a great experience, easily my favorite part of the trip.  Brett and I got back to the hotel, washed up, grabbed some lunch on the way out and kept driving toward the north coast.  When we got there we were again greeted by a guy from a hotel and he took us to his place.  We ditched our stuff and hit up the beach and swam in the ocean for a couple hours.  The one thing unique to the north shore is the black sand due to the volcanic rock; it was different.  We had some delicious fresh marlin for dinner that night, followed by a native dance performed by some of the locals.  

Mount Batur

We hit the road the next morning (Thursday) for the last day of driving.  Our path back to Kuta took us past a refreshing waterfall (Gitgit Waterfall) and the twin lakes.  Unfortunately, it started downpouring so I couldn't get any good photos of the lakes.  We also went to Tannah Lot temple, the temple on the ocean.  It looked really cool and provided for some nice pictures.  We finished the trip to Kuta through heavy traffic and breathed a sigh of relief when we finally handed the motorbike keys back to the owner.  This ended the craziest part of the trip, but I'm glad we went for the motorbikes.  It totally immersed us in the ways of the island and definitely gave us a little excitement along the way.  Brett and I spent that night chilling in the bar, listening to the live band and getting some needed recuperation from all the traveling.  The next morning (Friday) we hit up the waves again, this time with some boogieboards.  After some showers and a lunch of kebabs we hired a driver (it was cheaper than a taxi) to take us to the temple of Uluwatu on the southern cliffs of Bali.  Following some great pictures at the temple we hit up a BBQ'd seafood place and finally made our way to the airport.  Overall it was an awesome trip that provided us with tons of adventure, great photos and good times.

Tannah Lot Temple

(Spoiler alert: I'm about to steal Brett's ending)

On the summit of the volcano we got to talking to the Frenchies and one of them summed up Bali quite nicely.  He said, "Here on Bali there are three religions: Christianity, Buddism and Hinduism.  But they all share the same god...RUPIAH!"  Haha, everyone got a good laugh from that.  The people on Bali are all really friendly, especially when you buy a little something from 'em :) Check out all of the photos here.

Closing Ceremonies

So its been approximately one million years since I've posted anything...blame school.  I was kinda sad that I actually had to do classwork these past two weeks; I keep forgetting thats the real reason I'm here...but with midterms just around the corner it was time to do some studying.

Anyway, 2 weeks ago Thursday (August 26) Brett and I decided that it would be cool to go see the closing ceremonies of the first ever Youth Olympic Games that took place here in Singapore.  We took the bus to the marina bay area near downtown.  The stage that the big event was held on actually floats, making it able to be moved anywhere around the bay!  It was a true engineering marvel :)  When we got there we received (along with everyone else you see) a big bag full of random things that symbolized either the Games or Singapore.  There was a Singapore flag, an Olympic flag, an awesome hat, washable tattoos, a muffin (it was delicious), a bottle of water and other things that I am currently forgetting...but it was a nice surprise!  I couldn't believe that the thousands of people there got all of this stuff.  Pretty crazy.  The actual ceremony consisted of a short concert by I-don't-know-who (that means I'm not sure who they were, not an actual band name), some dances, the legit Olympic removing of the flag, fireworks and more dancing!  It was pretty neat; now I can say that I went to the first-ever Youth Olympic Games.  Check out some more pics here.

Bintan

This past weekend Brett and I took a little trip to Bintan, Indonesia.  We started on our adventure by taking the bus for 30 mins, the train for 30 mins and another bus for 10 mins.  After arriving at the ferry port, we rode on a boat for 2 hours, went through customs and took a 45 min bus ride to the place we were staying.  It was quite the expedition!  When we finally got there we were expecting a picturesque place with a relaxed atmosphere; it was definitely picturesque but we weren't aware that there were 30 other exchange students from all over the world staying there at the same time!  It was a crazy coincidence, there were Spaniards, Canadians, Americans, Germans, you name it, they were probably there.  It was fun, met a bunch of swell foreigners and chilled till the wee hours of the night.  The next morning we decided to do some snorkeling using our newly-purchased snorkels and masks (we figured it would be a good investment, especially when we go to Thailand or Vietnam).  There were crabs, lots of different fish, hermit crabs and odd-looking-octopus-things.  Thankfully no sharks. (The guy who sold us the snorkeling equipment said the one bonus of snorkeling over scuba diving was that there are no bubbles to scare to scare away the sharks so we'd have a better chance of seeing one!  Yikes.  I successfully avoided any bubble-fearing sharks though.)

This was where we stayed; about 12 US dollars a night.  Very nice.

That afternoon we checked out the other beaches and basically just relaxed the rest of the day.  We took it easy that evening and the next morning and headed back to Singapore Sunday afternoon.  It was a great trip, had nice weather and got some quality sun.  Great success.  If you want to see more pictures click here.

National Day

I would like to start by saying this; you will never find a cleaner downtown then the one in Singapore.  It almost seemed unreal.  Not a single piece of trash on the ground as far as the eye could see!  We went downtown on Singapore's National Day (their Independence Day) to take part in all of the festivities.  As we arrived, we walked around for a while before settling down along the street preparing for the fireworks.  Before they started there was a parade that consisted of what seemed like the country's whole armed forces driving down the street.  Jeeps, humvees, mobile bridges and tanks all lead the way followed by a couple hundred marching soldiers.  As soon as they passed the fireworks went off; after they were finished we took some photos of downtown as seen from the marina.  It was pretty neat seeing everything lit up!  To see some more photos click here.

THE ZOO!

You aren't human if you don't love the zoo.  Yeah, I feel bad for the animals.  But think about it this way; the animals live their whole lives scavenging for food and protecting their young.  What does the zoo do for the animals?  Feed them and give them protection.  Perfect.

I just realized how dumb the above paragraph is.  Oh well.

ANYWAY, Brett and I went to the zoo.  And it rocked.  Nothing really gives me that same excitement that I get from looking a lazy lion in the eyes :)  We saw all kinds of insane animals.  Huge twelve-foot crocodiles, exotic big cats (white tiger, regular tiger, jaguar, lion, the leopard was hiding), elephants, big ol' rhinos, monkeys and giraffes were some of the token animals we saw.  There was one area that housed 100 baboons, it was huge!  Some lesser known, yet still awesome animals were wallabys, tree-kangaroos, and KOMODO DRAGONS.  Yeah, dragons.  But nothing can top the orangutans.  Or the ring-tailed lemurs.  The orangutans had a giant tree-filled area all to themselves.  I don't really know why I thought they were so awesome, they just were.  Check out the video below.

And the lemurs were AWESOME.  We were in an enclosed area where all of the animals ran free; thats where we met all of the 'King Julians' (some little kid kept saying 'mom, look at all the King Julians!'  Its from the movie Madagascar).  They were climbing all over the place within half an arms length.  It was tight.  I got some alright pics but their movement was so darty that it was kinda tough :(

After the main zoo, Brett and I downed a family feast from KFC and headed to the night safari.  It was basically the zoo with nocturnal animals; hyenas, tigers, etc.  And lots of different types of deer and pigs. I said to Brett, "Not super impressed with the night safari; if I want to see any deer or pigs I'll just go home."  Good ol' Iowa.  

Check out all 144 zoo pics here.