The end of the chapter...

I am writing this blog from my room in a volunteer dorm in Hanoi, Vietnam. I never expected myself being in Hanoi doing a volunteer job in January when I first heard I was going to Singapore. Singapore just comes with many more benefits than only an amazing city to study in. Last two months I travelled around South-East Asia and that was a perfect way to make the exchange an even better, more self-developing and fun experience. My journey started in Vientiane, Laos and the first 2,5 week I was travelling by myself. From strange local buses, eating frog, watching amazing sunsets from my own balcony on the Mekong river for 2 euro’s and wonderful waterfalls to super friendly people, Laos was so so good! I met many nice other backpackers, but I was also impressed by the traditional way the locals live. Laos is very laid-back, so make sure you are not in a rush there. After 10 days I crossed the Cambodian border and went to Siem Reap to see the temples of Angkor Wat. In one word: impressive. There are so many temples and they are all so breath-taking that it is impossible to describe it. After Siem Reap I went to the capital, Pnom Penh. I dropped some tears in the S-21 museum and the killing fields, where I got an impression about the Cambodian war. It’s hard to imagine what the people in Cambodia have been through and this day was very tough for me, I was so touched by the stories and it made my love for Cambodia grow even bigger.

An overview of money spent during my exchange to Korea

I’ve been keeping track of all my expenses in Korea to get a clear view of how much money was spent on what kind of things. In total, I’ve spent roughly 3.510.000 KRW in Korea,  which is about 2350 euro. Click the link below for a further analysis of my expenses. Tomorrow I will leave Korea (sadly), so the following is complete view of all my costs during my time here. 

Goodbye Singapore

At this moment the end is so close that I don’t want to think about it anymore. It feels surreal to leave the city I have loved to live in for the last four months. Leaving home is one thing, but it is even harder to leave now and say goodbye to everything. The main difference is that when you leave home, you know you will come back and see everybody again and do the same things. I will never have this experience in Singapore again with this people. It has been an amazing experience, I’ve learned so so many, about myself, about different cultures, about people from other countries, I improved my English, my knowledge on business has increased and I also learned from the hard times. I’m going to miss so many things; the food, the freshly squeezed juices, the free drinks on Wednesday, the sun, the views from the rooftop bars, the drunk Asian people, even the days in the library, all the motivated locals, the subwaydays on Wednesday, the possibility to buy everything you want within only a few mrt-stops, the beach, the tropical rain showers, the diversity of people in the street, the temples, speaking English all the time, eating drunken dim sum, booking trips, going on trips in the weekend, don’t cook at all, spending useless hours on Facebook, the annoying class participation, the beach so close.. but the thing I’m definitely going to miss the most are my exchange friends, we created one big happy family in which everybody is welcome. I made some true friends, which I will definitely visit as soon as possible. This people made this experience amazing for me, it was so nice to share all the experiences, to party with them, to have girl-talk with them, to live with the best flatmates ever, who were always there to have dinner, to keep an eye on me, to download movies for me. to go on trips with or to get drunk. All the people come with the same open-minded attitude, motivated and of course willing to have loads of fun. It will be hard to say goodbye to them and I’m definitely gonna miss them a lot! I’m really thankful for being able to have had this experience and share it with all this amazing people.

Luckily for me it is not the end! Wednesday my two months of travelling will start. I’m going to Laos (with 4 friends), Cambodia (on my own), Thailand (with many friends), NYE in Singapore and then I will start a two-weeks volunteer job in Vietnam, which I’m very excited about!! For now, see you another time Singapore!!!!

Singapore food

As I promised some blogs ago I would tell you more about the food and drinks in Singapore. Food is next to study or work the most important thing in the life of a Singaporean. You see and smell food everywhere and you can buy food on every single corner of the street. In Tilburg I prepare my food always by myself or with my roommates, here I did that only once. This has two reasons, it is more expensive to do groceries and prepare dinner yourself than to buy it somewhere and the food here is so amazingly good!!! The most common place to eat is in a food court, which is a collection of food stalls from different countries. You can choose Thai, Indian, Korean, seafood, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese or Western food. I have to admit I love almost all the food, but in my opinion Korean is the best. Although, seafood is also very very good.