Day 3 The final day, two of our party left and it was just me, Scott, and Bangkok for the day. So the first thing we did on our last day was to hit the temple of the Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho (“wat-po”). The Buddha was fantastic! It was absolutely huge, 15 meters high and 46 meters long, that’s almost half a football field. It is totally plated in gold except the bottom of the feet, which are marble and have various designs that show the 108 characteristics of Buddha. I wish I had a decent camera so that I could [View Full Entry]

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Thailand Pt. 2-Bangkok We arrived in Bangkok at night and then took a cab to our hostel, which took forever to find because not a single cab driver had ever heard of the hostel. After driving by it two or three times we finally managed to spot it. It was a very cheap hostel with 10 bunk bed style dorms and ceiling fans, so we had some hot nights there. Day 1 The first day’s goal was to cover the sites in Bangkok. Before we even did that though, I went off on my own to fulfill one of my goals [View Full Entry]

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For my mid semester break I traveled to Thailand with two other fellow exchange students, both of whom are from RPI. There is so much that I did that I’m going to do this in two parts. The first part of Thailand was Phuket; we got there at night and then spent three full days there. Arrival: We went to Patong Beach, which is the major tourist spot on the west side of the island, spent about an hour walking around to find a cheap place to stay and we ended up booking at this nice place on a backstreet for [View Full Entry]

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PHUKET: At NTU they give us a mid semester break so I went to Thailand for 6 days, this was after I enjoyed Formula 1 for the weekend. In this excerpt I'm going to cover the first 3 days which was spent in and around Phuket. Now for some background information concerning Thailand. It is a country who's market is based on bargaining; only set prices are on food, metered taxis, and ticket fares to museums and temples. The currency used is the Thai Baht; one US Dollar=33 Baht, or to make it easier, 100 Baht =3 USD (approx). I was [View Full Entry]

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Tioman: An island off the east coast of Malaysia, it was depicted as the exotic "Bali Hai" in the musical South Pacific in 58', then in 1970 was voted most beautiful island, and rightfully so. I took a weekend trip with three other people and it was fantastic. We left on Friday morning traveled across the border to Johor Bahru (JB), Malaysia. We pulled into a bus depot in a public transportation bus from SG, as soon as the doors open I heard several voices yelling "Get off! Get off! Get Off!" I thought there was a fire or a bomb [View Full Entry]

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Sorry it's been a little long since my last entry. I have been running around like crazy for the last couple of weeks doing all kinds of fun stuff. Some of that stuff was going to East Coast Park (a beach in Singapore), taking a trip to the Singapore Zoo, and last weekend I went to Batam, Indonesia to go cable skiing. EAST COAST PARK: The park is located on the East side of the island. It is approximately 4 km long (2.5 mi.) and it is decoarated with lovely palm trees, quiet ponds, and biking/rollerblading paths. It takes about 1 [View Full Entry]

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NATIONAL DAY: Last Sunday, August 9th of 2009, was Singapore's 44th National Day. Singapore was originally a British colony (along w/ the rest of those islands in southeast Asia) until 1963 when it, along with it's neighboring countries were able to acheive independance from Britain and merged together to form the federation of Malaysia. However this ended up being an unsuitable arrangement for Singapore; so in less than two years they seceded and became an independant Republic on August 9th 1965 (they were recognised in the UN before that year was over). So, being that it is still a ver [View Full Entry]

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My Journey to Singapore took a total of 25 hours (I slept about 3-5 hrs of it). including two layovers; one in Detroit and the other at Narita, Tokyo. In Tokyo I had about two hours before my next flight, so I decided to explore the airport, which sounds really lame; but I found some cool stuff and I managed to get myself kicked out of a private lounge (I walked in thinking it was a normal bar). I saw calamari and some type of fish bagged up and hanging in a small store. I also bought myself my own beer [View Full Entry]

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