Autumn's First Post in Nine Weeks!

Yay! Hooray! Golly gee, it's a miracle! I've missed her posts so much!

(Totally what you're thinking right? Just kidding)

The reason I haven't posted to the blog in so long is because of school. I've been extremely busy with it ever since I completed my first semester. I figured the least I could do is to post about all of my thoughts and findings on Southeast Asia. This includes Singapore (5 nights), Malaysia (4 nights), Thailand (22 nights), Cambodia (4 nights), and Vietnam (14 nights).

The link below is a photo album of my favorite photos from our SEA trip (my dad calls them the artsy pics). Beyond the link are some thoughts on where we visited with a couple of random shots from each spot.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TpDc3Q4qBGjGEZQ42

SINGAPORE
I'll start with Singapore. IT WAS AMAZING BECAUSE I GOT TO SEE ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. The 4 hours I got to spend with her are probably the best 4 hours of my life. After lots of back and forth, we decided to meet at Haji lane, a street with a bunch of graffiti that she had visited when she was there a few weeks before. (She had a layover there on the way to India and then a layover in her way back to California.) I remember finding it on Google maps and my family and I walking towards it, excitement pumping through my veins, seeing some graffiti, and then hearing my friend's voice, "Autumn! Over here!" I turned towards the voice and saw Kaitlyn and her family sitting beneath a sign that read, "Haji lane". I started sprinting to her and gave her a huge hug through overjoyed tears. Needless to say, I was more than happy. Those 4 hours flew by, and before I knew it we were hugging goodbye at the ION Orchard metro station.

We also spent New Year's in Singapore. As you saw on the blog, it was raining, and we were sitting in puddles in our seats. Great fireworks, but we were drenched.

Below I'm just gonna put some pics from Singapore. Feel free to scroll past.

Flowers outside the Artscience museum

The famous Marina Bay Sands

MALAYSIA
Penang-good food, good street art. I don't have much more to say about it than my dad's post about it says.

THAILAND
Koh Samui-the first time I've gotten truly sick on this trip. I was initially exhausted from waking up at 3am to get on our flight from Penang to Koh Samui, and I developed a fever and stomach and muscle aches on the car ride to the resort. I hadn't felt that sick in a long time. So, I spent the 2 hours it took for our room to get ready in the quirky sitting area above the restaurant. I was half sleeping half people watching while the staff stared at me most of the time. I spent my first few days in Koh Samui in bed reading or sleeping. Luckily, I was feeling well enough by the time the cooking class was. I love Thai food, and I'm so happy I can now make it all on my own!

Chiang Mai - nice weather. It was kind of like Northern CA in the springtime. The two weeks spent there was good because it let me de-stress and get some good long work done. I stayed home for about 4 days and worked on school nonstop from waking up to going to bed. I got caught up, and then spent the rest of the mornings getting ahead.

My mom and I found a temple women couldn't go in. We didn't appreciate it.

Zane's been trying out some bboy moves I showed him

Bangkok - A headache inducing machine. Between the pollution, smells, constant noise, and constant motion, one is bound to experience a headache there at least once. I found the city to be like most cities but with the bad parts of a city worse than normal (ex. bad smells, really loud, crowded, pollution).

Everything's always moving or backed up in Bangkok.

I got a henna tattoo there.

And Bryce found some bubbles

CAMBODIA
Siem Reap - The ancient temples were interesting, but the big ones were really crowded. The first day there was hot, humid, and crowded, three things I hate, but the second and third days at the Wats weren't as bad. It's hard to imagine how they built the massive Wats without the tower cranes we have these days.

We ate at a burger restaurant our first night there. I got this photo at the billiards table at the back.

Monkeys!

Just a bit of the intricate carvings around the temples.

VIETNAM
Hanoi - A bustling city similar to other SEA cities, but with a few differences. It was a lot colder than previous SEA cities as well.

Rural Vietnam - It was cold here as well. One morning our guide took us on a "small walk" to a cave. Our guide said it was only 100 steps up the hill...it turned out to be 1250 (I counted).

The view was nice though

Halong Bay - It was cold most of the time, and I have nothing much more to say than my dad's post says.


SEA OVERALL
-Full of mopeds
-95% of the time we were here it was cloudy. I'm not sure if part of it is haze from pollution or fog or what, but it is almost always cloudy. Maybe it's just because we're visiting in winter, but it's true, most of time it was cloudy.
-There is definitely a completely different culture here than what I'm used to.
-SEA saw our 7-8 months into the trip repeated homesick breakdowns. I knew they were bound to happen at some point, but tensions these days are tighter than ever.
-I would go back, but maybe not for as long, and maybe in a different place (Laos?). There's so much of the world I'd like to see that I haven't seen yet, and I wouldn't waste that time in SEA doing something I'd already done.