Hello! Yes, I am alive! I’ve been traveling like a crazy person. But it’s been wonderful. I don’t have time to write tooooo much, but I’ll give you a quick run down of everywhere I’ve been lately.

I would put some pictures, but the internet is quite slow where I am, so this will have to do.

1. Malaysia
From Singapore, Yessy and I took a public bus to cross the border into Malaysia. It was the most crowded bus I’ve ever been on. (And that says a lot). After we ended up in Johor, Malaysia, we took a bus to Kuala Lumpur, the capital. It took only 4.5 hours. Which was a bit of a problem because the time we were traveling was midnight, so we arrived at 4:30am. Ha. Long shady story short, we slept in the bus as it sat in the bus station until 7am. We explored Kuala Lumpur. It definitely wasn’t my favorite place. For one, big cities all start looking the same after a while. And two, it was just… overwhelming. A lot of traffic. A lot of shopping. And that’s about it. Though, we did make several friends from India and Sri Lanka on our bus to the hindu temple in Batu Caves. That was really cool. We bonded over the absurd amount of traffic. 😛 Afterwards, they bought a bunch of Indian foods and shared them with us. DELICIOUS! I love Indian food… most of the time. That night, Yessy’s friend and co-worker offered to let us stay the night with her there in the city. That was so nice.

The next morning, we took a bus to Melaka… It’s south of Kuala Lumpur, but it’s an old, well-preserved, historical town that was settled by I think the Portuguese (though it could have been the Dutch – I seem to mix up the 2). Much smaller. More tourists. But still really neat to see. We had some delicious Malaysian food, and took a boat tour, where we saw the old town and some HUGE lizards – like 3 or 4 feet long! After a nice day in Melaka, we took the bus back to Singapore – another 4 hours.

And actually… our bus left us!.. You see, the bus is supposed to bring you to the border. Allow you to go through both sides of customs (leaving Malaysia, entering Singapore) and then take you to a bus station 30 minutes further into Singapore. Well, customs took an extraordinarily long time for whatever reason, and our bus left us! Also, our new friend, Klara, from Czech Republic that we met on the bus, got taken away to some ‘secret’ place because she hadn’t booked a place to stay yet, and therefore seemed suspicious. Oh man. Thankfully, we managed to get on another bus after we told them our sad story. (Apparently it’s common to get left).

I wasn’t really in Malaysia long enough to even start to form an opinion about it. I will say, however, that it seemed quite unique to me… Such an interesting blend of cultures. You have the wide-spread Islamic religion. The Chinese. Some Indians. And the indigenous Malaysians. To me, it felt like this. Egypt meets China. They fall in love and move to the rainforest where they meet many different indigenous peoples. Sounds ridiculous, but that’s totally what it felt like.

2. Indonesia
The next day after getting back from Malaysia, Frisca and I took a ferry to Bintan, Indonesia. Bintan is an Indonesian island REALLY close to Singapore. That’s probably why it’s probably the single most expensive place in Indonesia. Because it’s filled with Singaporian tourists. None-the-less, it was still wonderful. We stayed away from all the tourists in a bungalow along a beautiful, white sand, clear water beach. Amazing. We spent some time walking through the nearby village. I am fascinated by village life. Sure, there’s a lot of inconveniences, but there’s something so peaceful about it all. There’s something so refreshing about having everything you need right there. Dinner? Chicken you say? Sure I’ll go kill one out back. A drink? Here’s some coconuts I plucked from teh tree today. Shoes? Here… I just fashioned a new pair out of bamboo. So incredible. And the people were wonderful. If I spoke Indonesian, i would have tried to strike up some sort of deal with some village family. Teach me how to live like you do. Let me help you in your daily ‘chores’. I’ll teach you english in return. And also do whatever you want me to in order to help. Just give me food and a place to stay. Like, it was really tempting. I considered it for a moment.

We also got a full body massage at a peaceful place sitting on stilts over the river. We had to take a tiny boat to get there. Incredible. The rest of the day we relaxed on our hammock by the beach while we read. Occassionally we went for a wade in the shallow water. Tons of starfish! Small, colorful, unthreatening jellyfish! I saw a sting ray! Crabs! All kinds of shells and coral! So awesome!

3. Thailand
After saying goodbye to all my Singapore friends, Alex and I flew to Bangkok, Thailand. There, we met up with my German friend Chris, who I met in Russia, and his brother Tim. To be honest, I hated Bangkok. There’s WAY too many tourists. And where we stayed was kind of tourist central. The only Thais you saw were the ones that make their living from the tourists. Also, there’s a LOT of scams. A LOT. One evening, our Thai friend Vichy, who studied in Russia, was able to meet up with us. She gave us a personal tour of the city and took us to have authentic, delicious Thai food.

Oh, it was also really cool, because it was the Queen’s birthday when we were there. So we got to see the parade for her honor, and also the fireworks that night! It was really neat!

So, we decided to head to Cambodia a day earlier than planned. There were a lot of ‘tourist services’ near our hotel with buses all the way to Siem Reap, so we thought that might be easier than trying to book a bus ourselves. Wrong again. We had all heard that there’s a lot of scams in Bangkok, but we of course didn’t think these near our hotel would be so shady. It’s a long story, I’ll write about it later. But basically even from the moment the bus arrived, we were all a bit worried. There were 4 of us, me, Alex, and my German friends, and 4 good brains are better than one, but still… So basically, we got scammed into paying way more for our Cambodian visa than necessary. We quickly realized it was a scam, so we weren’t going to trust the driver person/company any more and he got REALLY mad. The whole thing was pretty ridiculous.

4. Cambodia
So, after all the scams, we made it to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Cambodia has captured my heart. Such a beautiful place with beautiful people. A land torn by war, but still it holds a certain peace. I hate the masses of tourists in Siem Reap, but the Cambodian people are wonderful. We spent a day at the temples of Angkor Wat. Incredible. I felt like I was in the jungle book.