Joshua Gonya
I'm from Blackstone, MA and I am spending a semester abroad at NTU in SingaporeJosh Gonya
Travel Blog Posts
December 3rd 2009
Penang Getting there After the trip to Bali, I did 2 whole full days of classes before I took off to travel again. It was very last minute, but roundtrip tickets only cost 20 SGD (approx 63 USD). I was invited by 6 other gentlemen, and I was running out of time in Singapore. So once again classes came second and away I went. Penang is an island on the top northwest of Malaysia. It is considered the food capital of Malaysia and it also features the longest bridge in SE Asia at 13.2 km. I booked my flight later than the rest of my party, so consequently my flight times were slightly different in order to get a cheaper price. So on the flight to Penang, I was with one other person (who also booked ... read more
December 2nd 2009
Bali was my vacation trip. If I were to sum up the entire trip, I would describe it as a series of sunsets and sunrises. I left on a Wednesday afternoon, thereby missing quite a lot of class; but I ask myself, “how often am I in SE Asia?” That is how I justify skipping out during the middle of the week. Anyways, I traveled with two Americans (one being my roommate), two Scandinavians, and a Canadian. Bali is an Island that is part of Indonesia; the people down there are primarily Buddhist. They’re economy is based on tourism if you’re by the beach, or rice farming if you live inland. The currency in Bali is the Indonesian rupiah, 1 USD=10,000 INR. For this trip I tried to learn some useful phrases, this is what ... read more
November 19th 2009
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 have gotten all of it in a single photo, and at the same time showed its size in proper perspective. Instead I can just say it was…impressive. We decided to leave the “Oriental City” and ... read more
November 8th 2009
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 in Bangkok. I woke up early in the morning to go suit hunting. I found this little spot of the main road very close to where we were staying, and I went in and spent ... read more
October 25th 2009
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 three nights. We only checked in 2 people for the purpose of saving money and the idea was to sneak me upstairs every night…..this didn’t go over too hot but it doesn’t come up till ... read more
October 7th 2009
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 lucky and at a hotel I found a card that had a lot of useful Thai phrases, and I committed about 4 to memory, and I used most of them to ward off tuc tucs ... read more
September 12th 2009
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 threat, but when I got off and took a second to relax I realized they were just cab drivers very AGGRESSIVE cab drivers! That was a little intense, but if you didn't make eye contact ... read more
August 28th 2009
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 hr to get there using the public transportation, the MRT (the train) and then a quick bus. When we got there we walked to the water and the first thing that you notice is the ... read more
August 16th 2009
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 very small nation, the celebration of their national day was no small matter. I imagine that the 4th of July is celebrated in a big way down in D.C. every year, but I have never gone so ... read more
August 10th 2009
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 for the first timewhile I was there. it was a Sapporo and it was great. The rest of the travel was relatively uneventful. I arrived in the airport and went through customs by literally walking ... read more
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