Lunar New Year

My return from Dong Hoi marked the beginning of the holiday season. Stores started closing, school ended after two very lackadaisical days. People were PUMPED for Tet Holiday to begin! From February 1st to February 7th, preparations were in full-swing. People cleaned their houses, bought peach blossom trees, and stocked up on lucky money (little red envelopes with maybe a buck or 5 bucks in them). I asked people how they felt about Tet and I got one answer (in caps): EXCITED

I waited around- many stores were closed, there was no school, so I was pretty bored. I was invited to many people's houses for dinner and lunch, but my social life mostly consisted of eating Chung cake- a Tet special made from sticky rice and pork. It is OK, I guess, until everyone forces you to eat it because you are the foreigner, then you have Chung cake for every meal for a week!

Dinner with students (one of many)

I spent the actual New Year (midnight on Feb 7 going to 8) with a student's family. I was firmly told to leave my school by 11 pm or so. The first person to enter my school after New Year's had to be selected to ensure maximum luck for my school in the upcoming year (shockingly, they made the most junior teacher drive an hour back from his house to enter the school for 5 minutes just after midnight, then drive back).

At the student's house, we had dinner (not before offering it to the ghosts), burned paper money, then watched the New Year's Eve show (which translates into apple in English, I'm not totally sure what was happening). Around 2 or 3 am, we drove around to the family's friends and drank with them. After 3 or 4, we decided to go to bed!

11 Physics gave a hilarious (I gather) Tet performance

English Club (I'll update on this when we've met more than once)
I just wanted to let y'all know I started an English Club!

Fireworks are traditional on Tet- I'm not sure who gave this adorable
little girl 2 fireworks.

Praying to ancestors and offering them food

PM of VN giving a speech

Dinner! (We offered it to ghosts first of course!)

Singapore

After Lunar New Year, people typically go back to their home village to visit their husband or father's parents, then go to visit their wife/mother's parents. Then, they visit their friends. Since people rarely plan ahead when visiting, apparently there is a lot of missing each other in the night! However, this meant I was totally alone- literally every shop on my street was closed-even the guards were gone! I decided to go to Singapore to enjoy my break!

How can I put this...Singapore was AWESOME. It was like New York City crossed with Disney World. Singapore's motto should be: "because we can." And why not? Singapore does awesome stuff because they can! Should we get a giant 50 foot tall lion that shoots lights out of its eyes? YES. Should we build the largest single aquarium tank in the world? YES. Should we build an amazing clean, efficient, and fast metro system? YES. (sorry to end on a weirdly nerdy note).

Singapore is at the cross roads of Indonesia, China, Malaysia, India, and other countries besides. Therefore, it has an extremely strong culinary repetoire. Dani (my travelling companion and now girlfriend) ate Chinese food (greasy), Indonesian food (delicious, if new to me), seafood (BBQ Stingray- that Dani and I decided was probably not endangered), and even paella and spaghetti! (Fun Singapore fact: Singapore is one of the only countries to get its independence against its will. It was given from Britain to the Malaysian Confederation. Singapore fought to stay part of Malaysia, but the dominant Malay-countries kicked out primarily Chinese-ethnic Singapore, despite its protests).

Singapore is a big 1st world country in many ways. We saw Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. We did a locked room escape experience. But it is also in the East. We went to the Sun Yat Sen memorial park. We went to Little Malaysia and Chinatown.We went to a Lunar New Year celebration. 

Mostly, Dani and I walked around and observed. We went to the Botanical Gardens, the Fort the British used to control the island. We went to the National University of Singapore (accidently) and the National Museum of Singapore. We rode the cable car over the Universal Studios to the aquarium. It was a nice week!

Overall, Singapore was beautiful and awesome. If it were slightly cheaper it would surpass South Africa as my favorite country so far. If you can't tell, I'm a big fan of Singapore's vibe- the totalitarian aspect didn't come up much. Of course, we couldn't buy gum, and taxi drivers told us how great voting was, and complained about how the elite controlled the telecommunications industry. But hey, for a visit, Singapore was amazing!

Giant gardens with fake trees with restaurants at the top? OK!

80  foot tall Lunar New Year dude

Can I change my sign from the rooster to the Minotaur?

Mr. Dozier recommended I find Stamford Raffels. Of course I had to!

This is from Santa's Igloo. Its an "anti-cafe" with many board games,
wall to wall video games, and a giant movie theatre with only bean bags and the latest movies.
Also there is all you can eat candy and cereal (ice cream costs extra). It was pretty sweet

Architecture in Singapore is bananas

Mosque in Little Indonesia

View of Singapore from the giant Ferris wheel (imagine the London Eye)

Single biggest aquarium tank in the world (I think)

Giant lion THAT SHOOTS LASER LIGHTS OUT OF ITS EYES

Awesome food in Singapore!

Causally-a massive (world record) vertical garden shaped like the world

Marina Bay Sands Hotel (Singapore's landmark building)

BBQ Stingray. Delicious but spicy!

Dani, celebrating that Laos participated in the Youth Olympics in Singapore.

From the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. I'd say I'll be back here, but
that might take away some of the force of my sign of.

5 am at the airport. We were both very sad to be leaving

Onwards. Always Onwards.

Daniel