Mind the Gap

It's now been two weeks since I've been in the "little red dot." But apparently the Singaporean armed forces has changed it to the "lethal red dot." Well that's what is says on the back of our student planners anyway.

Looking back, it seems a long time since I stepped off the plane. The first week was a bit rough dealing with all of the jet lag and getting accustomed to the culture and climate--and thus my last blog posting. Things have been a lot better since then. Walking through street markets laden with the smell of fish doesn't make my stomach turn anymore, nor does seeing chickens and ducks yet to be decapitated hanging in food court stalls. After living in yo:Ha ("your habitat") for a while it doesn't seem as bad as it once did but I'm still glad to be moving into a new apartment on Saturday. It is a 12th story HDB flat with 3 bedrooms a living room and kitchen. But the cool thing is... literally, is that it has 2 air conditioned bedrooms. I'm pretty pumped about that.

A lot of what topped it off for me about Singapore was my trip to Malaysia. Scott, Katie, Henrik (our Swedish friend), and I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn to take a bus across the Singaporean border and into Malaysia. I thought it quite weird that we had to go through customs to get out of Singapore and then customs to get into Malaysia... what happens if you get stuck in between? Nevertheless, we made it through and it was about a 3 hour ride to Mersing. It was crazy to see the Malaysian landscape. It was partly beautiful and partly sad. It seems the country came a to a halt somwhere in the 1960's. There were shacks everywhere. But I was also able to see miles and miles of trees and hills. I hadn't seen that since I had been back home. Once we reached Mersing we hopped onto a ferry to Tioman island. We didn't really know where we were going to stay for the night, but we were bound to find something.

We stepped off the dock and headed to the left. There were two or three "resorts" with cabanas to stay in but it almost seems like a ghost town. We were kind of confused. There would be open air restaurants with one person sitting at the counter and nobody else in sight. We finally got to a place that looked only barely decent and asked if they had room, but they said no (We were kinda confused since we didn't see anybody... anywhere) and that we had to hike a trail over a hillside (that was covered in thick jungle), but there was no guarantee that the next place would have space either. We could either hike the hill or go back to one of the shanty looking places at the pier... we decided to hike the hill. Lo and behold there was a perfect resort. It wasn't too nice, but just right. They had a "super deluxe" room for us that came with "aircon" and room for four, perfect. It was really nice to relax for 3 days. The whole island was like a mountain rising out of the water with crystal clear waters. There were also incredible coral reefs about 15 yards out from the shoreline. I rented snorkel gear for about 5 bucks for the day and saw some of the coolest things that I have ever seen. All in all, my time in Malaysia allowed me some R&R and gave me a chance to better appreciate Singapore.

I'll probably write more about this soon, but classes started this week. I also joined the swim team and am checking out campus crusade tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with the longer post. I'll try to write them more often to keep them shorter.

-Matt