Java.
Sumatra.
Bangkok.
Let’s just say we weren’t exactly fans of Bangkok. It took us 3hrs just to get across the boarder from Cambodia to Thailand. Granted, it was a land crossing but still…waiting in line for 3 HOURS!? Seriously people. Then we crammed into a little tiny mini bus with a bunch of loud Polish people..that was fun! Then when we finally made it to Bangkok we learned the our hotel, once again, was in the middle of nowhere! Thanks Groupon! Oh, did I mention the only reason we stayed at this stupid hotel was because we had a cheap Groupon for it? Yeah… Oh well. At least we got to see Bangkok and all it’s *uh hum* glory. I don’t really know what all the hype is about Bangkok. I mean unless you’re into partying and the “night life” all this place has to offer is shopping. And even still the shopping is just loads and loads of junk. But, like I said, at least we got to go to Bangkok…I suppose. So we spent most of the time walking around malls and in our hotel (which by the way had separate hot tubs for males and females…and they were cold!) Our highlight of the trip was watching the Hobbit though, so it’s all good!
Cambodia.
We had such a hard time getting from Vietnam to Cambodia. You see, to fly it was going to cost us $300 each one-way. To take a bus (a supposed 8hr journey) was going to cost us $12 each. So of course we took the bus route. Big mistake. Our bus broke down twice. Yes, you read that right, twice. The funny thing is they were different buses. One of the way to the border and one in Cambodia. Don’t we have the best luck in the world? Not really, the second time it broke down it was in the middle of nowhere and the sun was going down. We waited in darkness for 2 hours with no knowledge (because no one spoke English) of what was going on or when our new bus was going to come. But we made it eventually after an 18hr ordeal. We were pleasantly surprised by our wonderful hotel and all the great things we got to see in Siem Reap. This place by far is now one of our favorite places to travel and we definitely want to come back! But next time we’ll probably fly…
Vietnam.
We were so excited to head out on this adventure! 35 days of traveling, who wouldn’t be excited!? We’ve been planning this trip for a little less than a year, ever since Kyle and I entertained the thought of moving out here, and it was finally here! First stop: Vietnam! We were a bit nervous when we landed in Ho Chi Minh City. We weren’t exactly sure how our visas would work out. We attempted applying for them through the Vietnam embassy but we had a bad feeling about it and decided to do some research. We found out there you could apply for a visa online through a certain website and it’d be cheaper. So we decided to go with that option because the embassy was so expensive. We hoped it worked and we hopped on the plane, of course after getting to Changi airport here in Singapore a bit early to see all the cool things they have there. Anyways we arrived in Vietnam, showed them our visa application and what do ya know…it worked! We were in. Ho Chi Minh City was CRAZY! We didn’t realize that it was so crowded until we got in our taxi. Apparently there are 9 million people in the city and 6 million of them own motorbikes, so traffic is insane! The people are super friendly though, even though they couldn’t speak any English. Our taxi driver was so nice, but laughed when we showed him the address to our hotel. So we booked our hotels in advance and just chose ones off agoda.com. Well we probably should have google mapped them because this hotel was out in the industrial part of town where all the working class lives. We had no idea! If we wanted to go to any of the tourist parts of town it was going to cost us 45 mins in a taxi, with traffic, on a good day. But the hotel was $11/night so I guess we couldn’t complain too much. Here are some pictures and videos from our trip. We went on two tours, one to the Chu Chi Tunnels; which are the tunnels they used in the Vietnam War. The other was on the Mekong Delta; which was the better of the two and so much fun!
Singapore Zoo.
Night Safari.
Last night Kyle and I embarked on a grand adventure. We went to the Night Safari to celebrate his birthday week! This place is an amazing experience and apparently it’s the only night safari in the world, and by experience I mean experience! I can’t even begin to describe it. We didn’t take any pictures while we were there because 1. it was at night and 2. they don’t allow you to use the flash. So we decided to just take it all in and enjoy the experience. By far this is the best thing we’ve done in Singapore so far! We saw so many cool animals that we’d never even heard before plus it was really cool to watch them at night! It took us about an hour and a half to get there, then we started off the night with the Creatures of the Night Show which was great! Then instead of fighting the crowds to view the animals on the tram ride we decided to start with the walking trails to see the animals first hand. They had just put out fresh food so the animals were very active. After we finished all the trails we went back and rode the tram around to see the rest of the animals. It was so amazing to see these animals at night in the jungle! When the tram ride stopped we had just enough time to go back and see our favorite animals, the clouded leopard, the pelicans, the flying foxes and fruit bats, and the binturoung.
You should go to their website or Youtube to see the pictures and videos they have there.
Updates.
I know, I know, I’m a horrible blogger. I haven’t updated since before Halloween and I’m way behind! It’s almost December for crying out loud!! I need to get with the program. Many of you probably think we’ve died or something….well WE ARE ALIVE! I promise. I’m sorry! Anyways, I’m going to update everything up until now and back date them so they are in order of timing. Mmmmkay, I better get on it. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover!
Cheers,
Katie
Thanksgiving.
The past few years Kyle and I have been married we’ve had some interesting Thanksgivings. This year, we had it with a few families from Church at the Petersen’s apartment. It was so much fun because it was nice to sit down and have a good meal with good conversations and be around families. Kyle and I really miss our families and the traditions each of them have so it was nice to get to see how families overseas deal with big holidays. Of course, we had turkey with all the fixings; gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls etc. We even had pie! Kyle and I concocted a vanilla Oreo cheesecake to bring, which despite our ghetto college student ways, turned out delish!
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