Food, Scandis, and Queen B

While the title of this blog means absolutely nothing to most people, I'll try to explain at least a few of the spontaneous and memorable occurrences that occurred in the past week, which lead to such an eclectic title.  After an overly busy January, I was able to kick back and relax for a week of sand, sun, and Singapore for Chinese New Year.  I now have have to unfortunately face the reality that I came to Asia to study and learn, but before I slip back into that mode, I'll linger over the trip a little longer by writing this blog.

My trip started over a week ago on New Years Eve.  Actually Chinese New Years Eve, so instead of the ball drop and parties, I spent my hours camped out on night buses, McDonald's, and the airport floor.  Due to my flight leaving at 6 o'clock in the morning, I couldn't reach the airport from the nearby bus stop, meaning I had to find an alternative route. This alternative route ended up as an hour long MTR ride (until it shut down at midnight), another hour wandering the city to find a different bus, and then a deserted 1 am shuttle to the airport.  In the end, we still reached the airport with four hours to spare, so I napped, ate at McDonald's in true American style, and continued my American streak by skyping home.  When the check-in gate finally opened, we received our tickets, waited some more, and then boarded the plane.

My first Malaysian meal

The plane ride was surprisingly comfortable for a discount airline, Scoot.  Briefly diverting to product placement, I really liked Scoot.  I ended up sitting in upgraded seats for both flights, with enough room to stretch out fully, while paying as much for a peak season Hong Kong-Singapore flight (4 hours) as I would for a round trip Detroit-Chicago flight (an hour).  After touching down, I met up with 3 others, and we ate a snack before taking a bus to Malaysia.  After crossing the border, we continued eating, this time at a local food court.  I managed to have a full Malay buffet for less than the equivalent of five US dollars.  This blog isn't intended as a food blog, so I'll avoid going into too much depth, but regardless, the rendang, sambal, roti, and other dishes were spicy and delicious.  We finished eating and took a long taxi through the unnatural oil palm filled Malaysian countryside.  A few hours later, we arrived at a somewhat sketchy sea-side town called Mersing, which serves as the ferry port for several islands, including our destination, Tioman Island.  Since we couldn't catch the ferry that day, we found a cheap hostel, ate a meal that was twice as expensive as the room, and then boarded the ferry the next morning.

A gorgeous hostel with
the nicest amenities

As we approached the island, the murky brown of Mersing's polluted waters faded out into the crystal blue of beach vacation advertisements.  We arrived at the jetty, surrounded by legitimate rainforest (unlike the millions of African oil palms that have replaced the forests of the mainland) , beaches, and the ocean.  We checked into our chalets, conveniently located five steps from the beach, before ditching our luggage and going for a swim.  A side-note on the luggage: one member of our group thought it would be a good idea to pack 11 pairs of shorts, a hair dryer, hair straightener, laptop, and textbooks for a week long vacation while the rest of us brought backpacks.  Needless to say, she then couldn't carry it, so lugging around this bag became a communal responsibility for everyone else on the trip.

The view from our actual hotel

The rest of the day was spent lounging around the beach, swimming, and forgetting the stresses of IB life. Somewhere along the way, one of my friends started blasting Beyonce music and I have no clue why, but somehow her music became the theme music of the trip.  Everyone who went on the trip can basically sing along to half of her new songs, albeit terribly.  My friend's love of Beyonce invaded the entire trip, and so whenever we saw watermelons or surfboards, which are unfortunately rather common on Tioman, she would start singing because Beyonce (or Queen B as she is also known) randomly sings about them in her equally random song "Drunk in Love".

Reenacting a Beyonce music video

When we were not eating, swimming, or failing at Beyonce karaoke, we were meeting random people.  The island attracts an diverse mix of Chinese tourists, Rastafarians, backpackers from Europe, and Malays.  Among this interesting lot, we especially enjoyed the company of some Swedes.  We were walking along the island one day when my Norwegian friend, Lucas, overheard some people speaking Swedish, and he started talking with the couple, named Eric and Frieda, since it seemed unlikely that he would meet other Scandinavians on such a remote island.  After having a nice chat (actually I have no clue what it was about since I didn't understand), they went with us to a restaurant on the beach.  There, they started talking about their life adventures and misadventures.  They were on their way to Australia for work, but they had also worked in Indonesia, Norway, and Sweden.  When we started talking about their jobs, they mentioned that they don't get jobs before moving to countries, they just get tourist visas.  Later, they asked us how old we were, and we all responded 17 or 18.  Frieda said, "Hmm, what was I doing when I was 17?  Oh yeah, I was kicked out of school!"  We asked her for what, and she excitedly shrieked "Drugs!".  After this, our conversation spiraled downhill as she gave an extended account of drugs in India, Oslo, and around the world.  By the time we finished our "enlightening" conversation, Frieda had had a few too many drinks, and we excused ourselves.

Before the dive 

Another day on the trip, we went diving.  Lucy and I were already PADI certified, while Lucas and Annemaayke were able to go on introductory dives as well.  The amount of live coral surpassed anything I had seen in prior dives, despite the beginning of some coral bleaching.  Swimming over a seemingly endless reef with three sea turtles and an assortment of fish was quite an experience. I'm really hoping that I will find some time in the next year and a half to dive through other parts of Southeast Asia, since the diving really is some of the best in the world.

Under the waterfall

The day after, we went for a jungle trek.  At the narrowest point, the island is 7 km wide, so we followed this trail over a mountain and through the woods to a beach on the other side.  The forest was filled with monitor lizards, innocent looking monkeys (more like demonic actually, since they ransacked the snacks on our porch one day) , snakes, flowers, and giant trees.  Along the way, we took a detour to a waterfall and swam next to it for a while.  After drying off, we continued the hike and arrived at the beach.  We spent a few hours swimming and relaxing before we caught an open-air taxi back to our hotel.

Juara Beach

After all our great experiences on the island, we were very reluctant to leave Tioman, but we boarded the ferry and returned to the brown waters of Mersing.  Along the way, our ferry stopped for a few minutes, emitted black smoke that covered the starboard windows completely, and let out a miniature oil spill.  Luckily, the crew solved the issue, and I didn't need to reenact the Titanic.

Just kidding, we did reenact the Titanic, but in a kiddie pool

After arriving on the mainland, we immediately boarded the bus back to Singapore, meaning we skipped breakfast to board the early ferry and lunch to board the early bus.  When we arrived in Singapore, we met up with our friend Mariyah before eating "breakfast" at 5pm.  This breakfast ended up as more of a feast, with endless satay, coconuts, samosas, and curries.  We might have reached our daily nutritional needs in that meal alone, meaning we were all very full.

Eating from banana leaves

The next three days in Singapore flew by.  With all the ethnic diversity of Singapore, there is a wide range of cultural sights and food, meaning we were busy and full most of the time. On the first day we visited a mosque on Arab street, then we ate from a very good Halal restaurant.  On the next day, we went to business center and ate seafood at a waterfront restaurant.  Another day, we visited little India, before going to an Indian restaurant and eating with our hands off of banana leaves.  In addition, we visited a restaurant at Raffles Hotel, one of the several British colonial buildings in the city, and had snacks and drinks.  Somewhere along the way, we ate Vietnamese food, Mexican food, and I found my first Asian Wendy's, but I hardly remember in what order.  I'm glad I don't live in Singapore, because I'm pretty sure I would be morbidly obese and broke if I ate as well as I did during those three days.

Marina Bay Sands

Our stay in Singapore didn't revolve entirely around food though.  We walked around the botanic gardens, the Supertrees (where we met more Scandis, but they weren't as interesting as Frieda), took the elevator to the cruise ship like building, Marina Bay Sands, and visited one of the UWC campuses in Singapore.  It was really nice to meet other UWC students who had a variety of interesting backgrounds and experiences.  I met my American co-year, Naila from North Carolina, and we talked about our schools and lives.  Lucas met up with his Norwegian co-years, Annemaayke met her Dutch co-years, and poor Hannah had no British friends, due to her national committee.   We took the obligatory UWC pictures, said goodbye, and probably went out for food again.  Later, we went swimming at the apartment pool, but then we were locked out when our friend forgot both her keycard and the apartment number which would have let her call the room.  After running around the pool in a bathing suit, she found out that the key was in her pocket. Anyways, we had an awesome four day tour of Singapore, but ultimately, had to return to the airport.  After a relaxing sit in the complimentary massage chairs, we boarded the flight, slept, and returned to Hong Kong at 5 am.

United United World Colleges

All in all, my trip through Malaysia and Singapore was simultaneously busy and relaxing, and I arrived in Hong Kong ready to face the upcoming months of school.  At least that's what I said yesterday, because today I realized I was lacking the motivation to even organize my notes.  Anyways, I finished 90% of the work before break, so luckily that lack of motivation wasn't detrimental to my grades. I really hope that I'll be able to visit those countries again in the future, but if not, I'll remember those experiences with friends, Frieda, and lots of food.