4 Months on An Island
As a country occupied mostly by Chinese people, Singapore is NOTHING like PRC China. If you go on one of those streets in Singapore, probably you’ll see many Chinese faces, yet mostly they talk in a completely different language. If you go ahead and talk Mandrian to a random asian-looking person, probably they either respond in English or in a Mandrain that still far from fluent. Or just go back to English in the middle of the sentence.
Before I got there in Singapore, some of my friends who’ve been there kept telling me about that perculiar accent “Singlish” those people have. Later I found out it was the case, but only to a limited bunch of people. Basically, those elder people tend to have a stronger Singlish accent because that was what they say few decades ago. However, those words came from younger people are way more understandable or put it this way — “Standard”. It seems that they’ve been through some de-Singlish campaigns and they were actually working on it.
If you want a whole different vibe of city, Sinapore is definitely worth visiting. You can see plants on the building, palms trees everywhere and totally stunning skyscrappers. Singapore is more like a mixed and developed version of the entire south east asia with a huge amount of south east asian immigrants and workers. They have the most kind and cordial people who is always ready to help. Anyways, if you are seeking a short trip, Singapore is definitely worth a visit.
However, Singapore is a small country. Small enough to go around within the first week of your semester, which left us no choice but going around south east asia the rest of it. Fortunely, traveling to Malaysia is stunning easy especially if you happen to live in somewhere at the outskirts like NTU, which is actually closer to Malaysia than Singapore city. You get up early in the morning let’s say 8 am, take MRT+bus to the border and then boom, here you are. The entire process is gonna take you like 2 hours which is nothing for INTERNATIONAL travel. The good news is Malaysia is vast, it’s big enough to make sure you get what you want whether you are a beach person or a road trip one. The bad news is, however, the city close to Singapore, which is seemingly built for those Malaysians that work in Singapore, is kinda boring. You get a beach where you can’t swim, a few malls where the price is suprisingly high, and some car rentals that enable you to drive in a bike-dominated city. However, despite all those, I still had a wonderful time driving around with my friends.
If you have time and are looking for a long trip and happen to be a beach person. I’d recommend Krabi, Thailand if you go from Singapore. It’s beautiful enough to keep you out of the hotel room at the same time niche enough that you don’t have to scramble your way in crowds of people. We unfortunately arrived in the middle of rainy season but still had a great time on the beaches and islands. Also the price is quite reasonable. All the four of us are kinda broke but we still stayed in a decent hotel and went to nice resturants every day. But sometimes niche also means a lack of regulations. I felt it’s impossible to get a Grab (Uber in South East Asia) without messing around for like half an hour with those local drivers who desprately want to hijack your order. This happened every single time when we tried to get a car. But still, it didn’t cancel out the joy we had there.
