Bangkok Pictures [2]

These are all pictures from the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace. I had a terrible time trying to decide which pictures to include and which to leave out. Everything was so intricately created and colorful. We took a ton of pictures!



Now, this may look like a normal picture to you, with a decorated floor and a column holding up the ceiling, but this picture is actually of the ceiling in a temple. That beam is parallel to the floor, not perpendicular. The columns 'holding up' the ceiling are what you see bits of in the lower left and right hand corners. I am including this picture to show that everything, even the ceiling, was intricately decorated.

Bangkok Pictures [1]

The Bangkok group! Left to right, Lane Clark, Kevin Kitchens, Carlanna Cunningham, Bart Stout, Marianna Jewell, Kristen Kerns, me, and Jay Hennington. We booked our tickets together and stayed in the same hostel (in the same room, actually - we booked the 12-bed dorm). There were 12 other people from our GT group who also went to Bangkok and were on our flight, but they stayed in a different hostel.

This is our hostel, Big John's Guesthouse. They had awesome internet, a 24hour cafe and bar, and they were really good for advice about places to go and see and everything. I thought it was a little dodgy in the beginning, but I ended up liking it a lot.

Thai is about as far from the English language as you can get. It's right up there with Chinese and Arabic in my book. The keyboards had both lettering systems on them, and you had to make sure that you were typing in English.

We rode the SkyTrain a lot in Bangkok because it was a really easy way to get around the city. It's kind of like an above-ground subway system. They have signs asking people to give their seats up to the eldery and little children and everything (which I have seen before), but I have never seen one asking me to give up my seat to a monk.

I also don't typically see Muslim praying rooms in the airports back home.

When we headed up to the temples from our hostel, we had to trek all the way across town. We decided to shorten the walk by taking a water taxi up the river to the temples. Rather than take a taxi, we bargained to hire this lovely boat. We didn't actually see the boat before bargaining for it, but I was very excited once I saw it. It was way cool to be zipping along the river in a boat like this. We were very close to the water and going very quickly, and the boat was very colorful (as you can see above).

Along the river, we passed a lot of ports, and many of them had very decorative entrances. This was the style of a lot of the temples that we saw.

Bangkok

Because this is a study abroad, the professors want to give us plenty of time to travel, so we don’t have class on Fridays.  This means that we can leave Thursday evening and come back Sunday night, plenty of time for a quick trip somewhere.  We have lots of trips planned, and this weekend we took our first one to Bangkok, Thailand.

There are a lot of budget airlines operating out of Singapore (as it is the hub for southeast Asia), and we have booked the majority of our flights on JetStar Asia.  When we looked at the website, we got a little worried about the condition and style of the plane, but never fear!  It was a normal plane, just with no amenities (very little room, no first or business class, and nothing free).  We had made reservations at Big John’s Guesthouse, and thankfully Carlanna knew how to get there from the airport.  We took the airport bus, which was air conditioned and easy, but it was a little difficult to get to the hostel from the bus stop.  It was about 11pm, so it was dark, and we didn’t understand how the streets worked or were labeled (especially because it was all in Thai), so we ended up walking through a sketchy alleyway or two before finding our way to the hostel.  Good thing we had a big group of nine people!

No matter how dodgy I thought Big John’s was in the beginning, I really liked staying there by the end.  The bathrooms weren’t the best (especially the showers), and it was kind of weird having a clear sliding glass door to our room, but other than that it was amazing.  It had what amounted to free internet, so we could keep up with our emails and look for things in Bangkok online, and it also had a 24hr café/bar with cheap food (like our 55baht breakfast of two eggs and two pieces of toast).  Oh, and when we were there, the conversion rate was about 1 US$ = 40 baht.  Big John himself was also very knowledgeable about where we should go, good places to hang out, etc.  I am really glad we stayed there.

The first night we were there, we basically all passed out because we were worn out from classes in Singapore.  The next day, we woke up early and headed over to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace.  These places were amazing.  I have never seen anything so intricate and colorful and massive in my life.  The Emerald Buddha is actually a Buddha made of jasper, but the monk who discovered it saw only the green and thought it was made out of emerald.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the temple, but I bought a postcard of the Buddha in each of his different outfits.  He has three outfits that are changed throughout the year in a big ceremony presided over by the king, one for each season (rainy, summer, and winter).

I forgot to mention that we almost didn’t get into the temple.  Most of the people in Bangkok are really nice, but there are definitely people out there who want to take advantage of the tourists.  One scam is to pretend to be an official or something like that, waylay the tourist by telling them that the site they want to see is temporarily closed, and kindly offering them a cheap taxi to some other good location.  This taxi will then take you to some predetermined spot where you will be strongly encouraged to buy what are most likely stolen or fake goods, and they will make sure you will be so lost that you cannot find your way back.  We almost got taken in by the scam (they stopped us by telling us that we couldn’t go in because we weren’t properly dressed), but we finally wised up and remembered about the scam when they got very insistent about getting us taxis and that the temple would re-open at 1pm for us.

After the temple, we got some lunch and then split up to do different shopping.  Half the group went to a cheap market for some clothes (specifically pants for the boys to wear to the club that night) and the other half went shopping for gems.  We all met up later back at the hostel, showed off our purchases, and got ready to head out to the club.

We had made plans to meet up with the other 12 GT kids at a club called Q Bar before even getting to Bangkok, but after talking to Big John, we realized that there were much better places to go.  He recommended Santika, and it was amazing.  They had a live band that played everything from Linkin Park to Eminem to pop Thai music.  They had smaller rooms dedicated to different kinds of music, and there was no cover charge.  As a whole group, we all had a blast, and that is something that is difficult to do with 21 different people.  We all stayed out really late dancing and singing and hanging out.

The next morning, after sleeping in some, we all got breakfast and then headed out to do some damage shopping.  There is a really large market, the Chatuchak Market, which is only open on Saturdays and Sundays.  To give you some idea of how large this place is, something like 200,000 people visit it every day (on the weekends).  It was massive and crowded.  You also had to bargain with people for prices.  I am really bad at bargaining, but I did OK on what I really wanted.  I am going to have to work on my skills before I get to China.  The group also went to some other shopping places, and soon enough it was dinnertime.  One of the owners of a shop we were in recommended a good restaurant, so we had a nice sit down meal before doing our nighttime thing.  Rather than going out that night, I opted to go to the movies to see X3 with some people.  I like going to movies in different countries because it’s such a different cultural experience everywhere you go.  In Thailand, we watched all of the previews, and then a screen came up asking us to stand and pay our respects to His Majesty the King.  What followed next was basically three minutes of propaganda for the king, complete with the elderly, the children, and inspirational music.  We were not expecting that at all.

The next morning, our last morning in Bangkok, we did what anyone visiting Thailand would do – got Thai massages!  A full body one hour massage is 200 baht (about US$5), and it was amazing.  I have never gotten a massage like that before.  They twist your limbs all around and use everything from their hands to feet to arms.  It’s crazy!  Some people had gotten one the night before, so they got a one hour foot massage rather than the full body that morning.  I can’t wait to be in Thailand again to get cheap amazing massages like that.

After the massage, we checked out of our hostel and made our way to the airport via taxi.  Taxis are much easier to get in Bangkok than in Thailand, but you have to make sure they don’t rip you off.  The taxi drivers will conveniently ‘forget’ to turn on the meter for the trip, so at the end you will have to bargain with them for your fare.  We always made sure the meter was running because our bargaining skills were not up to par.

And that was Bangkok!  We met up with the other group at the airport and sat with them on the plane, and now we are all back at NUS trying to recover from the weekend and still find time to get all of our work done.  It’s really rather crazy right now.

Sentosa Island and movies

Last week was a busy one for all of us.  We had two quizzes, several adventures, and the great packing experience for getting to Bangkok for our first weekend trip.

Because our classes are so time intensive, everything is very rushed.  We have had class for a week now (five days’ worth) and we have already had two quizzes.  In one case, we had class in the morning, and the material that we covered was on the afternoon quiz!  When a class is this intensive, it can get crazy very quickly.  Now, we only have two more days of lecture, but we have one quiz and two papers to complete in that time period.  These classes really are a bit stressful for a study abroad!

Because it is a study abroad, the professors do try to give us time to experience the cities we are living in, though, rather than keep everything confined to a classroom.  So, last Tuesday, instead of having a normal lecture, the entire class went on a field trip to Sentosa Island.  Sentosa Island is a tourist magnet, even for Singapore citizens.  It is a bit of a destination spot.  We went there on a field trip because they have a good museum about the history of Singapore and the surrounding areas, including the cultural backgrounds.  The professors arranged for a bus to take us there, took us through the museum, and then we were left to our own devices.  Sentosa Island has a range of activities, everything from luge racing to food and coffee to an artificial beach that is known as the best one in Singapore.  We hung out by the beach for a long time (after the luge racing, of course) as one big group, just enjoying being out in Singapore.  I made sure to catch the laser light show before leaving.  It’s the Magical Sentosa laser light and music show, and it is like no laser light show I have ever seen before.  It had a distinctly Asian flavor, what with the new technology and the anime-type characters projected onto the water fountains.  We definitely made jokes about it, but it was still fun.  And free!  After the show we made our way to the gondolas to get back to the mainland and wandered back toward NUS (the university).

One other exciting thing that happened last week is that I finally got to see The Da Vinci Code.  We were going to see it on the night that it came out (and therefore before anyone on the east coast could see it), but it was sold out until the midnight showing, and I was too tired to see it that late.  Instead, we bought tickets online for the 8pm showing on Wednesday night.  We went ahead and went into town right after class to read and study at Starbuck’s before the movie, but we ended up wandering around running errands and not getting much studying done.  I really enjoyed the movie, although I was disappointed that they changed the ending so much.  It’s understandable, though, because a movie is very different from a book.  I really like seeing movies in different countries because it varies so much from culture to culture.  So far, I have seen movies in the USA, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and Thailand.  Whew!

Pictures: Singapore Finance District

Singapore is a very westernized Asian city. It has grown enormously in recent decades to become a world economic center. The skyline of the central business district (or finance district) reflects this growth. The towers are very tall!

Just a closer view of the towers, one more from ground perspective.

Patrick Odneal, myself, Bart Stout, Kevin Kitchens, and Marianna Jewell playing around on a fountain / pool of water near the finance district.

The skyling is gorgeous during the day, but it is even more amazing by night. We went downtown for Jaime's 21st birthday, and the place where we ate dinner was right on the water. So nice!

This is the Esplanade - Theater. It is nicknamed 'The Durien' because it looks remarkably like a durien, which is a fruit common to this area. Apparently, locals really like the taste and smell of a durien, but tourists can't stand it. I will try to track one down to try, but they are out of season right now and hard to find.

This is the Merlion statue in the heart of Singapore. The statue, half lion half mermaid, is supposed to be the symbol of Singapore. Many people just think it's a crazy statue.

Dodgy Adventures in Singapore

It’s the end of our first weekend here in Asia, and tomorrow begins the regular schedule of class Monday – Thursday followed by a long weekend to travel. We’ve been here since Wednesday evening, and we’re getting a lot more comfortable walking around the campus and navigating our way into the city.

We had class Friday morning and afternoon as well as Saturday morning, so school is already in full swing. This study abroad is sponsored by the school of Industrial and Systems Engineering, which means we are all ISyE students. While here in Asia, we are taking four classes, one at a time for a little more than two weeks each. The time table is very intensive, but hopefully taking the classes in Asia will take the edge off. Our classes are

• HTS 2602: Asia in the Modern World


• ISyE 3039: Quality Systems


• ISyE 3103: Supply Chain Models – Logistics


• ISyE 3104: Into to Supply Chain Modeling

These ISyE courses are good ones to take in Asia because we get to study some of these concepts in a real world environment, such as the port of Singapore and Chinese factories.

After class on Saturday, we had the rest of the weekend free to explore whatever we wanted. We had gone into Orchard Road the previous evening to try and see The Da Vinci Code, but it was sold out until the midnight showing, and I was too tired to wait up to see it then. There were four of us who decided we didn’t want to wait up, so we went for a drink before heading back to NUS. On Saturday afternoon, most people relaxed for awhile, just taking care of the little things around campus that needed to be done. I joined the gym that is part of our dorm complex, so I went running for awhile and caught up on reading. Mainly, we started planning out our weekend travels and such as well as planning our big evening out. We aren’t anticipating being in Singapore on another weekend because of travelling, so we wanted to take advantage of this one weekend here.

After reading through our guidebooks, we discovered that Singapore is the home to the premiere club in southeast Asia, Zouk (http://www.zoukclub.com.sg). This is a massive dance club, encompassing three different clubs, each with multiple rooms, as well as a wine bar. It attracts world-famous DJs and is the place to see and be seen in Singapore. We got all dressed up, determined the many transfers we had to take to get there on public transportation (bus – bus – train – walk), and headed out after hanging out with the rest of the group. When we finally got there, it definitely lived up to our expectations. This is a really cool club with great everything. It probably would have been even better if we could have gotten in! 4 of the 7 in our group didn’t bring any ID with them, so they couldn’t get in. We didn’t want to stay without them, so we all caught a van back to NUS after much deliberation and arguing to get in. In hindsight, it seems quite obvious that a country who hangs people for drug trafficking is fairly strict on letting people into a club, but at least now we know!

Even though we went out, I still woke up as early as on a normal day here. Our big plan for Sunday was to go to the zoo and the botanical gardens, but unfortunately for us the long forecast scattered thunderstorms showed up this morning. It poured until about 1pm. While it did stop eventually, none of us was too sure if it was going to start again (we are in the tropics after all), so we decided to head into Little India and the neighbouring areas to visit the temples and mosques and check out the shopping stalls. We took taxis to the Sultan Mosque, the largest mosque in Singapore. We had to cover up with floor length long sleeve robes provided by the mosque, and we weren’t allowed in the main prayer room. We could see inside, however, and it was a neat experience to see all of the floor mats laid out for the prayer times. I hadn’t been to a mosque before, but Islam is more prevalent here than in other areas I have been before. After leaving the mosque, we wandered around the surrounding streets and shops, particularly Arab Street. This street is known for its wide array of vendors and shops, and everything is brightly coloured and ornate and fabulous. The fabrics that we found were incredible. Once we all (we being the girls) decide what we want made in China, we may return to buy our fabric here.

After wandering down Arab Street, we had decided to walk over to Little India to see the Hindu temples and an important Buddhist temple in that area of town. This was actually the dodgiest walk I have ever taken in my life. We followed the map from Point A to Point B, but our map failed to indicate that we were walking through the ghetto. We were the only white people around. Singapore is in Asia, but there are still a fair amount of white European ex-pats and tourists everywhere. Just not here! I have never felt more out of place in my life. It’s a good thing we were in such a large group (eight people) because a few of us swear that several groups of men followed us around, most likely pickpockets who never got the opportunity with our group. The temples were really cool, and we survived the trip, but man, it was dodgy.

After that experience, we came back to NUS only to turn around to go back to town for dinner half an hour later. One of the group members turned 21 today, so we all went into town to have dinner on the water. There are a lot of birthdays on this trip, at least four, and we only have about 24 people total. It was a gorgeous night because the rain from earlier had cooled off the air and humidity, and it was fun being at dinner with the entire group. We walked around the waterfront for awhile longer before getting cabs back. This city is really very pretty at night with a lot going on all the time. I also found out today that there is a 24hour shopping centre not too far from where we were, so we may have to be checking that out soon.

Travel to Singapore

I’m in Singapore!  This is the official beginning of my first official Georgia Tech study abroad, and it is taking me through Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Beijing, and perhaps even Cambodia or someplace else equally exciting.  Singapore is our first stop, and we will be here for five weeks.  It took us quite some time to get here.  The majority of the study abroad group booked on the group flight, so we all traveled together to Singapore.  We left Atlanta at 7.20pm on Monday evening and landed in Singapore at 10.45pm Wednesday evening after going through both L.A. and Beijing.  We had some long flights, but everyone was very excited, so the time passed quickly.

I have never been on a group study abroad before.  I have been abroad several times, and just returned from a year studying in New Zealand, but I did all of that on my own.  I found my own way through the airports, traveled how I liked, and didn’t have to worry about anyone else’s schedules or problems.  Traveling with a group is much different.  You have a lot more people to look out for, and you also have to make sure you don’t lose anyone.

That being said, I have really enjoyed traveling with this group so far.  We had roughly twenty people on this group flight, and that was a great thing during the ten hour layover in Beijing.  Many of us didn’t know each other before this trip, so we spent a good deal of time getting to know each other and having fun.  Our first day of travel coincided with my 21st birthday, so several of us had a late lunch / early dinner in Chili’s to celebrate before getting on the plane to L.A., and we also socialized on the plane.  We weren’t too interested in watching the in-flight movies.  Many of us made our last phone calls in the international terminal before leaving the USA, and we also scrounged around for food because we hadn’t eaten in quite some time.  By the time we left L.A., it was 4.30am by our body clocks, so we were also trying to stay awake so we would sleep all the way to Beijing.

Our flight to Beijing was more than 12 hours long.  I sleep well enough on planes, especially when I wear myself out beforehand, so I was able to sleep for about 7.5 hours.  I have never been to Asia before, so even being in the airport was a new experience.  We only have one native speaker in the group, and he was very instrumental in guiding us through the airport.  None of us had any trouble getting through customs, but once we got out into the main part of the airport, we had no idea how to pass the 10 hour layover.  Most of us were hungry, and the rest of us had nothing better to do, so we scoped out a restaurant on the upper floor and then migrated to two large tables there.  We the proceeded to spend the rest of our layover eating, talking, playing cards, and learning bits of Chinese from the waitresses in the restaurant.  We were there from roughly 5am to 12 noon and ate two full meals there.  When I first learned that we were going to have a ten hour layover, I thought it was going to be very painful, but it was actually a lot of fun getting to know the rest of the people on the trip.

By the time we got on the plane to head to Singapore, most of us were exhausted (since we had been up since 1.30am or so), and we all passed out on the plane.  I didn’t even notice the flight attendant throw away my dinner and return my tray table to its upright position!  It ended up being a very good thing that we were all asleep because our flight was delayed for an hour.  The pilots had to alter our flight course after we were in the air, and it added an extra hour of flying time.  No one even noticed until we all woke up for landing.  We rushed through customs and collected our bags and left to meet Professor Zhou, our trip coordinator who is also from Georgia Tech.  He had arrived the previous day and met us at the airport with transportation back to our dorms and keys for our rooms.  As soon as we walked out of the airport to go to the bus, we realized that we were in Singapore.  It was 11.15pm and still incredibly warm and humid.  Singapore is a lot closer to the equator than many of us realized, and but once you get here there is no missing that fact.  It is very warm and humid!

While in Singapore, we are studying at the National University of Singapore (NUS).  We take two classes here, a history class and an industrial engineering class.  We are staying in dorms on campus, and they are pretty nice.  We all have individual rooms with private bathrooms.  My room has a ton of windows, and everyone has air conditioning as well (essential for being so close to the equator).  Today we had an orientation session to find our way around NUS.  NUS is sometimes referred to as the National University of Steps because there are so many staircases.  I have never been anywhere that has so many staircases!  The campus is also really pretty.  It is huge, and the administration has put in plenty of green space, gardens, flowers, etc.  The university is so large that we have to take a bus to class and then somehow find our way around the engineering buildings, so wish us luck not getting lost!

After orientation, we all headed downtown to go to Immigration to get our Student Passes (a document you need to be able to move in and out of Singapore), and then we stayed downtown to explore.  We took the subway to City Hall and walked all over the east side of the city, stopping for good Asian food (I had a curry) and to take lots of pictures.  Singapore is a very, very clean city.  It has one of the most beautiful skylines in the world, and it also has a lot of interesting sculptures and distractions.  My group ran into the rest of the group at a restaurant by the river, so we all went out for a drink and some karaoke before heading back to the university.  We had some minor trouble hailing a taxi, but I am sure that the longer we are here, the easier it will be to find our way around.  This city is a lot bigger than Wellington, more the size of Atlanta, but hopefully we’ll manage!