4 Months on An Island
As a country occupied mostly by Chinese people, Singapore is NOTHING like PRC China. They have more green space, less people on the street… Even a British traffic system where people and vehicles move on the left side is adopted there, which caused me some troubles during my first few weeks there. If you are lucky enough to get into Nanyang Tech University, you get the chance to live in a jungle on the suburb mountains and also get a huge variety of tropical animals waiting for you.
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. Unfortunately, that was the case, but only to a limited bunch of people. Basically, those elder people tend to have a stronger Singlish accent. However, the English of 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. Actually, I just feel that Singlish is created by a bunch of Chinese people trying to speaking English. It has all the grammers and vocabulary of the language but the tone is clearly Chinese.
If you want a whole different vibe, 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 should be on your list.
However, Singapore is a small country. Small enough to fully explore within the first week of our semester, which left us no choice but to go around other parts of south east asia in the rest of it. Fortunately, traveling to Malaysia is stunningly easy especially when you happen to live in somewhere in the outskirts like NTU, which is actually closer to Malaysia than to Singapore city. You get up early in the morning like 8 am, take MRT+bus to the border and then boom, here you are at Malaysia. The entire process will take you like 2 hours which is nothing for an INTERNATIONAL trip. 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 person. However, there’s some bad news as well. If you take a short trip to Malaysia, probably you are going to Johor Bahru, the border city next to Singapore. I don’t know if it’s me, but I think it really takes some imagination and creativity to have fun in that city. You have a beach where you can’t swim, a few malls where the price is suprisingly high, and some car rentals that let you to drive in city where the roads are dominated by bikers. However, despite all those, I still had a wonderful time going around with my friends.
If you are looking for a multiple-day 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 the 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 somehow broke but we still stayed in a decent hotel and had food at 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 orders. This happened every single time when we tried to get a car. But still, it didn’t cancel out the joy we had there.
