Bali

For the first of my recess week trips, we went to Indonesia. Specifically, the beautiful island of Bali.

A quick hop from Singapore

We arrived just in time for the sunset.

this dude’s still surfing

I can sleep when I’m dead.

First and foremost, sorry I’ve kinda dropped off the face of the earth with this blog. In short, life’s been crazy lately. We’ve had recess week (spring break) which I’ve “extended” by skipping a week of class on either end.

My master spreadshet. Light blue: class I can Skip, dark blue: class i can’t skip (exams, etc).

To summarize, In the past 3 weeks I haven’t spent more than 2 nights in a row sleeping in the same place. I’ve more or less been living out of my backpack. I’ve been through 2 phones. I’ve stayed in a huts, a few hotels, and so many hostels, all with varying degrees of “running water”. I’ve traveled from place to place in planes, trains, taxis, cars, motorbikes, these carts in Bangkok called “Tuk-Tuks”, the floor of a bus, giant ferries, small rickety boats, and more.

Kuala Lumpur

A short plane ride away, Kuala Lumpur was a great choice for our first trip. KL is the Capitol of malaysia and pretty close to Singapore. The flight was only $70SGD and we found a nice place on airbnb that would fit all 10 of us.

Admiring the view

Making Friends

Not surprisingly, it’s really easy to make friends with other exchange students.

I think chinatown looks the same in every city

Alex (left) introduced me to this group, and I was quickly welcomed in.

Campus Impressions

Campus is beautiful. Everything in this city is set unobtrusivly within the jungle, and NTU is no exception.

A walkway through Crescent Hall

After a few days I felt familiar with campus. It’s much more compressed than Purdue’s campus. The majoriy of lecture rooms branch off either the “North Spine” or the “South Spine”.

Arrival

One of the things they don’t tell you about traveling is the weird times you’ll be up in airports. “Morning” and “night” are relative terms that have kinda lost their meaning ever since I left Chicago. My biological clock has been thrown for loops, and sleep is just a thing that happens whenever I can get it.

I’ve been in Singapore’s Changi airport since 2 am. It’s a beautiful airport, voted the best in the world several times. I hear there’s a movie theatre, a swimming pool, several bars, and a billion different stores, but none of that’s open right now. I think it’s most of the stuff is geared towards departures.

Tokyo

This is a long post because there was SO MUCH that I experienced in Tokyo.

Here’s an album of all my photos of the day: https://goo.gl/photos/zUkZRxtbY6Qr2DaJ6

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After a good night sleep, I started the day early. Woke up at 5am, which sounds bad, but I was so jet lagged so it didnt really matter. My flight was at 6pm so I had a pretty fully day in Tokyo.

Pod is love. Pod is life.

I arrived in tokyo at around 8pm local time. I hadn’t really slept on the plane ( I had spent most of the time watching movies) so at this point I had been up for 30-some hours and was dead tired. The fact that most of the signs were in Japanese added to my confused stupor.

My mission: to get some local currency and find a place to sleep. This took way longer than it should have, but I finally found an ATM that took my card. My friend and guide had informed me of a place to stay in the airport, but it was in terminal 2 and I was in terminal 1.

I connected to the wifi, clicked through some illegible japanese terms and conditions, pulled up google maps, and sought out in the direction I needed to go.

After aimlessly walking around for about 30 minutes I realized there was a free shuttle bus I could use to take me to terminal 2. Figures.

The place I was staying for the night was a Tokyo Capsule hotel called 9h. It seemed fairly new, everything was sleek. It was only 3000 yen ($25) for a night, and I was to sleep in a pod. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

The many modes of transportation that take me to my destination.

 

A 5 hour drive to south Chicago, train through the city for my final American meal and to the airport for a 12 hour flight. I’m laying over in Tokyo for a day and my fraternity brother Keith is showing me around. Should be fun After that, another 6 hour flight to Changi Airport in Singapore, then an hour bus ride an I’m on NTU’s campus, my new home. That’s what I’ve got ahead of me.

O’Hare Departure Terminal