SINGA: My 21st Birthday! woohoo!

It's January 24th and I am 21, in Singapore! That was super sweet. I was a bit sad at first to not be at home because all my birthdays have been awesome, and I wasn't sure how this one was going to work out. It was also Donna's birthday, and Wynn's was just around the corner so it was like a party x 3!

We kicked off the night eating Muslim food at a favorite hang out place for students here, The Cheese Prata Shop. Later, we had a scrumptious mango cake.



Prior to getting into the taxis, we had a little photoshoot. I was excited to see what this place looked like!

I'm feeling loved =) These girls are awesome!


The gorgeous girls!


Beauty on the outside, pain and blisters on the inside. So worth it though.


We arrived to the club and explored. I liked this club because similar to Zouk, there were differnet rooms playing different genres of music with the appropiate decor. We started in the 80s, but then went over to (what i think) was the gay scene, then found this all white room complete with white beds and chairs where people were lounging on, then found the hip hop room downstairs. We didn't make it to all actually, I think there were several more.

This was the gay scene room. I liked the dancefloor in this room





Check out these hanging chairs and my first cosmo =)


And with that, I am now officially 21!

SINGAPORE: clubbing fun-the discovery of ladies night

Due to the declining population, Singapore has instituted a procreation policy to increase their numbers. One aspect of this policy is the implementation of ladies night, meaning that all the ladies get in free to all clubs on Wednesday nights. At any other time, alcohol is incredibly expensive (we are talking about $6 for the most basic beer at the supermarket), but on Wednesday, there is free flow going on at a lot of the clubs as well.

As a result, Wednesday is the coveted day for going out. This works out pretty well, since Singapore has some spiffy clubs.

Pretty ladies ready for a fun night out!



Nights at Dbl-O! This is usually the place where people begin their nights, because the alcohol is free. Usually known for having more international people than locals, the nights where we went were very representative of that. I don't really like their music though, it's not becuase it isn't the top 40 or whatever, but it's a bit too techno for my liking. I found a picture of their bar online though, we had a lot of good times right there!


Zouk- is actually a complex of several rooms each playing a differnet genre of music. Upon walking in it looks like an ice cave because there's this whole antartic theme they put on it seems. We went during their "mambo night" which was super fun and had a great selection of stuff from the 80s. The reason why it is called mambo night is because there are guys dancing on raised blocks doing all hand motions to the songs, and the crowd is supposed to follow it.

Amy, Jenny, and me. Good times!


Butter Factory- we went here because it for a hall function. It was a great location though, located right next to the river. Hm...i don't really have much to say about this place, but it was fun clubbing with people who lived in my hall. I remember a lot of dancing on the stage. Why is it that everywhere we go we always dance on the stage? The club itself had really weird decorations....like cartoons and masks plastered all over the place, a bit like Chuck-e-cheese. I found it a bit tacky and an attempt to go back to childhood memories? Why would you want to think about being a kid while at a club? Maybe that was what they were going for.
Anyways, the theme was Fight Night...so check out our toughest fight pose! haha just kidding. Jenny seems to have chosen peace over war. Smart girl!




It is so much easier to go clubbing in Singapore because it's like 10 times less sketch than America. Instead of needing guy friends to block off other guys, mostly everyone is really just out to have a good time with their friends. And you taxi all over the place, no need to figure out the driving/parking situation.

The club I liked the most actually is the Ministry of Sound, but I will talk about that in the post about my 21st birthday!

MALAYSIA: Melaka town love!! Amazing place

So... if city experiences could be graded, this one would be off the charts.

But first, come to think of it, I seriously have the worst luck with hostels. This one I booked for the group, looks quaint and rustic outside right? Total DUMP inside. Looked like a place where dead bodies could have been stored underneath the rotting floorboards. We rejected it.



To look on the bright side however, it forced our now homeless selves to look for another hostel, which we eventually found in the heart of Chinatown. Thank God we found it there. Spending a night in Malacca Chinatown = a-w-e-s-o-m-e.

Chinatown. I love it! My mom said this was how life used to be like back in Asia for our family. This is quite awesome, because I honestly have no idea how life was like for my family back then and if this comes close, then major snaps to that.


When night falls, the night is nowhere near over. It actually is just beginning! We, like the rest of the locals, wandered out for the night market, an entire street closed off for cheap vendors and food stalls selling the most delicious and unhealthy chinese food imaginable.



The best part of the night market was at the very end, where a OUTDOOR KARAOKE stage was set up and where old Chinese people got up on and sang to their requested song to the others in the community sitting in red plastic chairs. We sat and chilled amongst them and listened to Chinese oldies being sang. One of the most chill, amazing cultural experiences ever to just soak in the small town, simple village life, Chinese culture around us.



Tired from walking, we ended the night chilling at a live music bar, where out of drunken fun we wrote on the walls (don't worry it was encouraged there) and danced/sang obnoxiously loudly to the Beatles that the band was playing for us. We met two locals there and this old man is passing 60 and still parties hard every night. Right on.




The next day, we visited the ruins of the first church in Melaka. It was on top of a big hill and what seemed a thousand steps (k maybe hauling a heavy backpack and killer heat added to the steps). The space and atmosphere amongst these ruins was so serene and wonderful, one of those places where the past and present meet and I was right there experiencing it. There was a man playing guitar, who played a song just for me. He first sang an incredibly moving song in Tagalog, and then the next one in Chinese for me. I didn't want to leave!


And this has been great times in Malaysia, so far. I hope to go back at least one more time before leaving Southeast Asia!

MALAYSIA: Chaotic Kuala Lumpur capitol

Singapore was fun, but come mid- Janurary, it was time to get out and start exploring the other countries. Malaysia was by far the easiest, as it require no plane, but just a 6 hour bus ride to reach its capitol, Kuala Lumpur. Unlike Singapore where most people speak either English or Chinese, the majority in Malaysia is Malay.

"Selemat datang!" (thank you...or was it welcome? i can't remember)

Although Singapore and Malaysia are neighbors, they are completely different from each other. Right after crossing the border, we were surrounded by miles of rainforest, and just as many miles of rubber plantations. The ride was long and the movie that was playing was in Malay and basically had a crying baby through the entire thing, horrible! Thankfully, Emily was there and we stayed entertained.


- Oh, and a lot of toilets in asia are SQUATTER toilets, meaning there are no seats, just a hole in the ground (but flushes)! I was like this isn't possible. But it is.

Finally we reached the Kuala Lumpur!

Three differences that are immediately noticed are the following;
1. dirtier- but any country is dirty after living in Singapore, no joke.
2. chaotic- it was bustling with people, taxi drivers yelling at you, jam packed streets- it got me very stressed out!
3. way more laid back

My experience in Kuala Lumpur could be summed up to the following: crazy taxi drivers, risking my life jay-walking across highways, eating CHEAP and DELICIOUS food, visiting inside a mosque, and the Petronas Towers (now, the tallest twin towers in the world).

It was time to explore!

haha yeah right, we were so going to eat first. See this street? It was lined with the restuarants serving mainly Chinese and Malay food, and also typical of what many of the streets look like in Kuala Lumpur. During both of our trips to Kuala Lumpur, we ate there. La-la, a favorite, are stirfried shells/mussels. Delicious! Don't forget chicken/beef satay either.


Okay, now we will go exploring.



In order to enter the mosque, it was required that we wear a robe to cover our bodies and a bonnet to cover our hair. However, as the picture reveals, my hair was not being very cooperative. Nevertheless, we entered the marble floored mosque and it was awesome. In sacred spaces such as these, there is a feeling that engulfes people. Sociologist Emile Durkheim might say it is sense of the separation between the sacred and profane that I felt. There were definitely physical markers between the sacred and the profane. wow. The muslin star symbol was everywhere, we had to enter barefoot to protect the cleanliness of the area, and even then we were not allowed onto the actual worshipping grounds. How fab that sociology theory is entering into my travels!


The Petronas Towers is known throughout the engineering world as one of the greatest structural building feats ever to be done. It really pays to have engineering friends, definitely made the trip of going up a tower much more interesting than just...taking an elevator up and taking some pictures. Jenny explained that it was the bridge connecting the two towers that was super hard to complete. Something else about the shape too I think (it's built bottom to top in a Muslim star shape). Whatever, I felt enlightened during the moment when it mattered.


Since we were nearly getting run over by cars and dealing with crazy taxi drivers, we needed time to chill back at the hostel. Thank God for times like these! This is my favorite pic taken in Kuala Lumpur.


Overall (and since I am writing this at a much later time after doing traveling to other places), Kuala Lumpur is not a favorite. It was still cool nonetheless. Onto Malacca now...which part of my heart might have been left at.

SINGAPORE: New years foam partay!!

New Years soon came up and we were like hm...what to do, what to do...

I was sad that I would be missing spending New Years

We didn't have to think long before arriving to the conclusion that we should go to Singapore's Sentosa Island's Foam Party on the beach!

I almost killed my camera because everythng was soaked and foam was flying everywhere, you couldn't even see, I fell at least 10 times. But it was so much fun dancing the night away with newfound friends and then doing the countdown to 2007 on the sandy shores of a resort island!


(This was taken during the countdown! yay to celebrating the new year halfway around the world!!!)


(foam flying all over the place!)


(can you find me?)


(new friends Samantha, Jenny, Cassy, and Kyle!)

And with that, we were ready to kick off the new year