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.

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!!!!

Singa after three months!

All the group projects are due the coming weeks, we have only one week of lectures left and the finals finish in 20 days….. AAAAH the Singapore experience is coming to an end!!!! How crazy is this, as I can remember arriving as the day of yesterday. Everything about Singapore seemed exciting and perfect, well now we know better ;). My parents and brother visited me last week and they pointed out the cultural differences to me again, while for me this all got normal and I’m used to it. We spend 5 days in Bali and 6 days in Singapore and it was good to show them all the places I’m spending my time here.

It’s hard to get a real impression of Singaporean people as they have very different personalities, but especially act differently in different contexts. In school I found out that there is a huge difference between the students in my marketing/business classes and my sociology class. In marketing and business they are not that keen on working with exchange students, they are competitive and go for their own success. In sociology class I made some true friends, we have lunch together, we talk about various topics and I get the feeling they actually do fun things next to their study and CV boosting activities. This is quite rare here in SMU!

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. 

My birthday, Yogyakarta and Bali

Long time ago, so enough to tell!! This story is going to be a long one, so be prepared! The semester in Singapore is already halfway gone!!! How crazy, my last final is in one and a half month! In the middle of the semester we had a recess week, one week without lectures. This doesn't mean holiday for Singaporeans, because of course, busy busy busy and looooots of work. For exchange students..... YES it does mean holiday!!!! The week before recess week already felt like holiday as it was the week of my birthday. I've been looking forward to my birthday every year again for a long time, nowadays I can get a normal sleep, but when I was young it was even hard to fall a sleep ;). Well, how to celebrate your birthday 13 000 km away from home? 

Philippines: what an experience!

Last weekend I went to the Philippines with my two Belgium roommates and another friend of us from Canada. We left friday early in the morning and after a 4 hour flight we arrived in Cebu-city, this is the fourth city of the Philippines, but also the oldest city. We stayed at an island close to the city, in a village called Lapu-Lapu city. When we arrived in this village, we immediately noticed the poverty of this country. Little houses, people everywhere on the street wearing old clothes and only flip-flops.. The streets were filled with crazy vehicles, motorbikes with sidecars, trucks and little open vans. And there the first Philippine wish came up, I definitely wanted to go with both the motorbike and the van. After a nice seafood lunch we walked around in the little city. There we were like attractions, everybody was looking at us, staring at my friends Tyler and Sebastiaan because they are so tall. 

Singapore study pressure

Everybody told me this and prepared me for the study pressure in Singapore, but until last week I didn't really noticed it.... but yes in the fourth week of my exchange in Singapore I got exposed to the stress which comes with studying here. I have four courses here and 2 courses in the Netherlands, for all the six courses I currently have group projects. Well, in the Netherlands we are used to dividing most of the theoretical part of the project. Here they first have a meeting to brainstorm about which sources we are going to use, then another meeting to set up a framework and then finally we start with creating the report. Those meetings last for around 2 or 3 hours each, they don't mind meeting up after 8 pm (while they do mind meeting up before 12).

Exploring Singapore

Last weekend was literally the first weekend I had some spare time to explore Singapore. Saturday I went to Orchard road with a friend, this road is filled with shops of every brand you can imagine. There are shopping malls everywhere, with shops from very expensive (Dior, Gucci, Prada) to shops which are less expensive (Zara, Bershka, Mango), still the less expensive stores are more expensive then in the Netherlands. Probably this will have something to do with the fact that these shops are all European and everything is imported. Another thing you immediately notice is the amount of cloths for the winter they sell, which makes me wondering why??? Because till now, I have wore a long trousers only once and all my tops with long sleeves, I brought them for nothing! After a day of seeing a huge part of Orchard road, we were in for some sushi. In a mall close to a mrt station I knew a place where we can have sushi from an assembly line. Most of you will know this concept from some places in the Netherlands, but the main difference here is that it is really cheap. Everything is freshly prepared and you can have green tea for free. In the end we had to pay 8 dollars (which is around 5 euro's) and we had lots of amazing sushi!

First month in Singapore

Hello everybody,

Let me first introduce myself to you. I am Anouk de Jong, a third year IBA student at Tilburg University.... but not really in Tilburg at this moment. Currently I'm in Singapore for my exchange. Why did I chose for Singapore? Well for various reasons, for students interested in business, Asia is at this moment ofcourse the place to be. They are really upcoming in the world market and I hoped the courses in university here will give me some ideas which I would never be able to learn in an European country. Another reason is the culture of Asia, I expected it to be different from European culture and that I would learn a lot here also for my personality. Then ofcourse there is the weather, which is perfect over here! Last, but not least, the location of Singapore, in the middle of South-East Asia offers perfect travel opportunities. Well, in my opinion enough reasons to go to Singapore.