Sentosa Island

The Merlion

So I've been really lazy/busy with class lately and haven't been updating this badboy...but here we go! Thursday Brett, Darryl (new guy we met, he's from Arizona!) and I went to a place called Sentosa Island, Singapore's resort area.  Very touristy.  But its a must-see place, so we checked it out.  We took the bus (if we want to go anywhere outside of campus the bus is a necessity) to the monorail that took us to the island.  As we arrived the first thing we saw was a giant replica of the Merlion, Singapore's national 'mascot'.  Kinda like the United State's eagle.  Except the eagle is actually real.  Anyway, after we saw that we did a little hiking through the island trails and wandered upon the zipline.  We HAD to try it out, it took us right down to the beach!  So we got all suited up for the ride, took it down to the beach and continued our journey down by the water.  From there we took a bridge to the 'Southernmost Part of Continental Asia'.  It was a little island with a great view...of the ocean filled with cargo ships.  It was quite a dreary sight actually. There were TONS of ships waiting to get filled up at the shipyard; this unfortunately has taken the blue out of the water in Singapore's ocean and made it murky.  I needed to cheer up so we wandered around on the beach and threw the frisbee around for a bit (easily the best part of my day, frisbee + beach = AMAZING).  To wrap up the day we got food, ate on the beach, and headed home.  If you would like to see some more pictures, check them out here.

Zipline! (Boats in the background)

Domestic Adventures

Henderson Waves Bridge

Brett and I decided to check out a couple of 'must see' places around Singapore the past couple days.  Tuesday we went on a hike through a number of parks, starting in Kent Ridge Park (the site of the last battle on Singapore ground in WWII).  From there we walked through some gardens in Telok Blangah Hill Park, then got on what was called the Canopy Trail (a path as tall as the trees! haha).  We continued hiking over the Henderson Waves Bridge, one of the 10 engineering marvels of the world?  Question mark?  Brett read it in a book, I guess :)  It was pretty neat regardless, and unfortunately tough to get a good picture of.  The bridge took us to a great spot to snap a couple of pictures of the city.

Singapore!

These photos were taken from the highest point in Singapore, Mount Faber (I think this means the highest point while you're still on the ground, those buildings downtown are clearly higher than us haha).  It was a great spot, you could see 360 degrees around the country.

Flight of the Swans Sculpture

The next day we moseyed to the botanical gardens.  While there we checked out Swan Lake and the Flight of the Swans Sculpture.  We didn't see Lancelot or Elaine though...kinda sad about that.  We also saw some lilly ponds, crazy huge trees and quite a few flowers.  I don't think that it was flower season here so there weren't as many as we hoped.  Oh well, it was cool nonetheless.

If you want to see some more pictures, check out this link.

Feel Free to Comment!

I really have no clue if people actually read this baby or not...but if you do, you should leave comments!  I mean, you don't have to.  But if you have any questions or comments you should make them known!  That is all.

A Couple Major Differences

A lot of people have been asking me what some of the biggest differences have been so far.  So I made a list!

1.  Money - In Singapore they use what is called the Singapore Dollar.  There are 2, 5, 10 and 50 dollar bills and coins worth 1 dollar, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cents.  Price wise, everything here at the University is way cheaper than in the US (something about because its owned by the goverment, I dunno).  For example, we eat meals in the dining center for S$2.50 or S$3 (S$ means Singapore Dollar) versus the $8 we pay at ISU.

2.  Breakfast - APPARENTLY, breakfast doesn't exist here.  Its not that they don't eat in the mornings, they just have the same thing for all three meals.  WHO DOES THAT?  So the other day Brett and I went to the dining center at 7am and had pork and rice.  With a cup of broth to drink.  No cereal, no bagels, no OJ.  Oh yeah did I mention that we had broth to drink?  Yeah, no one drinks regular liquids with their meals.  Wow.

3.  Word Differences - We had one heck of a time trying to purchase the lil baby you're seeing on the right there.  CELL PHONES don't exist here.  They have HAND PHONES if you need one.  But no CELL PHONES.  Oh and neither do PAY AS YOU GO or PAY BY THE MINUTE phones.  But they do have phones that you can TOP UP.  Also, when I walked into the store the other day I was asked, "How can I please you?"  Yes, she did work at the store.  :)

4.  Height - Walked into the grocery store.  Easily the tallest person there.  Kinda freaked me out.

5.  Accents -  Almost everyone has accents here (except for the guy that we met from Arizona, but he doesn't count).  I can usually understand about 90% of the things that people are saying, Brett is lucky to understand 50%.  It is HILARIOUS.  We'll talk to someone for a while, walk away and then he'll turn to me and just say, "What?"  He gets so confused!  He approaches people to ask them questions and will just smile and pray that he understands enough to answer his question.  He also prays that they don't ask him a question because if they do and he doesn't catch it, he'll just stand there.  Its so funny.  Sorry Brett, I had to say something...

6.  American Food -  So we've tried eating at a couple major chain food places since we've been here to see what the differences are.  McDonalds is basically the same, minus the fact that real beef is a rarity here.  They either have chicken or pork burgers.  We also tried Pizza Hut.  Besides pepperoni pizza, everything is different!  They have all kinds of crazy seafood pizzas, asian soups and NO SAUSAGE.  There's chicken sausage if you're interested...
And no, your eyes aren't deceiving you.   MCDONALDS DELIVERS!  I laughed so hard when I saw this guy.

8.  Transportation -  Oh yeah.  They drive on the wrong side of the road.  Who knew?

About time...

We finally made it.

The trip started out at about 4am CT, way too early.  Brett and I got on the first flight at 6:20 after saying goodbye to our parents (mom said she only used 4 kleenexes, I'm so proud of her!).  You know how you always see 'that guy' in the airport?  The one that you just say to yourself, 'theres no way that I'll have to sit by him.'?  Well today it was this lil skiny asian dude who was standing there talking to someone on the phone.  But he just kept repeating the same thing over and over about 12 times, no joke.  "Time? Time? Time? Time? Clock? Clock? Clock? Clock? Numbers? Numbers? Numbers? Numbers?"  He was crazy.  We walked past him, smiled to ourselves, got on the plane, AND THERE HE WAS, in the same row, right next to us!  What are the odds?!?  We flew with him to Houston in 2 hours and had a 2 hour layover.  Thankfully he disappeared after that.  Continental got about 200 people seated for our next flight to Tokyo before they decided it would be a good idea to ask everyone to get off the plane for maintenance reasons.  That was awesome, not.

QUICK STORY - As I was packing, I had everything stuffed into my carry-on EXCEPT my neck pillow that my mother made me purchase :) So...she said, "Instead of finding a place for it, just wear it around the airport on your neck!" She was joking, I promise.  The sad thing is, I saw this 'awesome' guy in the Houston airport with his straw hat and his neck pillow around his neck.  It made me laugh! Thanks mom :)

We all got back on the plane after about 45 mins.  For all of you people out there who complain about being short, don't.  Sitting on a plane for 13 hours would've been much more enjoyable if I was 5' tall.  Oh, and another thing.  Airplane food? Yeah, that stuff is TERRIBLE.  I was gonna take a picture of it but I didn't wanna risk breaking my camera.  I ended up snacking on nutter butters, delicious cookies that Heather made, and deer jerky made by good ol' Ben Dennis.  That stuff was real good.  Over the course of the flight I ended up watching She's Out of my League (great movie! I'd suggest it), Bounty Hunter (poor), Family guy, The Office, Bolt, half of Clash of the Titans (poopy), Two and a Half Men and even had time for a virtual round of mini golf.  Great success.  We got off the plane and I had too see what Mac and Don's steakhouse tasted like.  Amazingly, potatoes here taste like potatoes there!  Who'd've thunk?  Then we got on the last flight from Tokyo to Singapore, I slept like a baby for 6ish hours.  The rest is boring, we eventually made it to our rooms safe and sound with all of our luggage.  I was quite pleased.  One day down, 4.5 months to go.

Flight Info

So I'm sitting here avoiding packing again... For those of you who don't know, I'm going on this 4.5 month 'vacation' with my buddy Brett from ISU.  He also has a blog and I just checked his out.  Apparently its cool to put the whole flight itinerary on a blog so...basically we fly out of Des Moines at 6:20am Friday and roughly 28 hours later (after going through Houston and Tokyo) we arrive in Singapore.  Its gonna suck/rock.  Thankfully momma hunting made me purchase a neck pillow so now according to her my flight won't be nearly as bad :) Thanks mom!

Does this work?

I'm really sick of packing and getting everything ready...so I decided to set this lil baby up!  Not gonna lie, its pretty intimidating knowing that people will read all of the junk that you put on these things.  So we'll see how this works out.