Singapore
Once I finally got my Japan entry up (which was also cut down from my original shining ideas for it), Singapore tripped me up. I wanted to explain how fascinating Singapore is. How they fine you more for chewing gum then they do for smoking. How they fumigated the entire country so there are no more mosquitos. I wanted to describe how beautiful, yet empty, it felt. I wanted to tell you about my first glimpse of Singapore. How there were hundreds of ships on the sea. How the sky was so blue that, if you focused on the horizon, the waves blurred into the sky and the ships appeared to soar away.
I wanted to tell you all that in some way that was less redundant and more articulate. But you get the idea.
Much to my surprise this year, the other schools loved our show. It was arguably the best show there. Singapore's show also rocked, which is funny because last year we were the worst of the worst and Singapore was right behind us. The workshops, however, were awful. We had to listen to the workshop leader sing every day. Then we would play clapping games. The one time he let us actually try and put toghether a scene, he talked so long about it none of us had a chance to do anything.
And poor Marian was sick as sick can be. She couldn't keep anything in her stomach and actually ended up passing out one morning. When they took her to the doctor, without any tests or anything, he told her she was pregnant. We all got a good laugh out of that.
Chaing Mai
Then I went to Chaing Mai with my siblings. I missed out on the beginning of the trip because of that stupid school thing, but the day I got there, we went to Muay Thai. It was brutal and boring at the same time. It was fun watching the guys behind us get drunker and drunker as the night went on. I kind of wanted to shoot the musicians by the end. There was a drum, a little symbol type thing, and some kind of instrument that reminded me of a clarinet, but a lot more painful. It made the most hideous noises with no melody through the entire night. The last guy to fight, though, was amazing. He was this white guy who had so much muscle! He beat the other guy all the way to Timbuctu. At one point he did this kick that I swear was only possible in movies. He jumped in a kind of circle and kicked the guy in the face, then his other foot followed and kicked the guy in the face again. It was amazing. I had no idea that would work in practice.
The next day we went on a zipline thing through the forest. It was rediculously fun. And scary. At the highest point we were 300 meters up from the ground. Yes. That's very high up. As we were getting hooked into harnesses, I hear this conversation between David (our guide. The guy who was supposed to keep us from dying) and Whitney.
Whitney: So, how long have you been doing this?
David: This is my second day!
All of us: 0_o
Anyway, it ended up being way fun. Though I did have some problems with my height. I'd get to the end of the rope and I couldn't reach the platform. The people would grab me and try and pull the rope down to unhook me, but a lot of times they thought it was funny to let me slide back toward someone else coming on the line.
Here are some pictures shamelessly stolen from Michelle's blog:
Also, apparently I look like Harry Potter. One of our guides on Flight of the Gibbons was attaching my glasses to a rope so if they fell of they wouldn't fall all the way and he gave them back and was like, "Here Harry Potter!" (But it's always pronounced Hall-EE Pott_EH). I was like, "Oh, cuz I have glasses. Clever". He kept calling me that through the entire thing. He'd be like. "Whitney go! Okay, Harry Potter!" But later we were getting a foot massage. The lady kept kind of smiling at me and finally turned to the lady next to her and said "Harry Potter". Then, a while later, we were in Phukett and some guy working at the breakfast place at the hotel was telling everyone 'Good morning'. When I walked in he was like, "Good morning Hally Potter!"
So, anyway, after all of this it was time to go back to Bangkok. Being the smart kids we are, we decided to take the train. We ended up getting there an hour early because we thought it was farther away than it was. Then, of course, the train was two hours late. Yes. We waited for three hours. We went and found a bench to hang out on. As we were sitting there, this creepy guy kept coming up to us and talking. At first we thought he was just trying to practice his english since we were the only Farangs there. But there was something about the way he stared at our bags the entire way he talked to us that was a bit unsettling. And he KEPT COMING BACK. To ask us stupid things. At one point he started asking about our Passports and Visas. We were like, "Uhh...*grab bags*"
Then at one point Michelle and Whitney went to the bathroom while Brian and I guarded our bags against creepy guy. Whitney came out to wash her hands while Michelle was still in the stall. She looked up and saw some creepy guy (a different creepy guy, mind you) staring at her in the mirror. She kind of ignored it and, when she looked up again, it kind of looked like he was flashing her multiple times. But she didn't have her glasses on so she tried to convince herself he was fanning himself. All the same, she asked Michelle to hurry. That's when creepy guy #2 started walking into the bathroom. She turned to the stall and was like, "Michelle, we are leaving NOW!" When he realized she was talking to someone in the stall and was, indeed, not alone he left.
You can imagine how creeped out we were by the end of these three hours. We wanted to be first in line to get on the train so we could have our bags directly above us. So, when the train pulled up we RAN to the end. We were in cart three. So, we ran to the cart farthest away from us that had a big 3 on it. Just as we got there, some worker came and flipped the card around so it said 1. We were like, "GAH!" and turned around and ran back to the one that used to say one and now said three. Proud of ourselves for getting the front of line, we waited while they cleaned out the train. We stood there...and stood there...and stood there. Finally, about half an hour later the people finished cleaning the train. And then, of course, the train drove away.
We were like, 'Uhhh...maybe they're just turning it around on a different track?' So, we didn't want to go sit down and give up our first place status. So we stood there...and stood there...and stood there. At one point every single Farang (who were not all in the same group) got up and left simultaniously. We were like, 'What are we missing here?". A full hour later, the train comes back and lets us on. Yes. We waited at the train station for four and a half hours so we could get on the stupid train. Finally, we all found our seats and sat down, relieved. Of course, Brian's food tray didn't work, Whitney's food tray kept falling open on her, and Michelle's seat leaning was broken. Like, she could lean it back if she pushed, but if she took any pressure off of it, it would SLAM forward with a loud CHUNK! Any time she'd start falling asleep, it would CHUNK and wake all of us up. So she tried for a while to sleep on Whitney's lap, but the food tray kept falling on her head. Hah.
Anyway, I was worried about the heat since, apparently, the ride there by the three of them was very hot. But, let me tell you, heat was the last thing I needed to worry about. They had a very nice air conditioner. A VERY NICE air conditioner. That was CRANKED to full. And it was night so there was no sun peeping through the windows. It was FREEZING. I have never been in temperatures that cold without some clothes made for playing in the snow. Seriously. I honestly don't think it ever hit higher than 40 degrees farenheit. I have literally never been that cold before. They gave us 'blankets' that were really just towels. I've never been so glad to have a jacket. I pulled the strings on my hood so that the minimum amount of skin would be revealed. And I kept trying to huddle in a little ball on the seat to try and trap some body heat, but the seat was so tiny I didn't fit. So, I kept sitting on my feet and rocking forward onto the back of Whitney's chair. After about five hours of this my legs and feet were in a lot of pain. So I'd try and put them down, but the cold air would bite my toes. The entire train looked like some refugee movie. Everyone was huddled together under their meager blankets shivering like crazy. It was too cold to sleep, so we just had to sit there and suffer. Finally, as the sun started coming up and the train started at least being BEARABLE, though not comfortable, some worker came down the aisle and took away all of our blankets! She would not let us keep them. We were like, D:
Also, the food. When the lady came down the aisle with food, Brian handed her his little "Nuts will kill me. Are there any?" paper. She turned to the people sitting across from us and asked them if they tasted any nuts. Yeah. That's comforting. Not to mention it was so hot I couldn't even try to eat it. The very smell made me nausous. So, between the four of us, we had six dewberry cookies, half a pack of mentos, and a sprite. Let me emphasize this was not a short trip. It was about thirteen hours.
Phuket/Krabbi
Okay, I'm getting sick of typing and I'm sure you're getting sick of reading, so I'm just going to tell you the biggest thing that happened to me in Phuket.
I got lost Scuba Diving.
Yeah, that's not scary at all. Visibility was horrible. We could barely see one meter. I was having a bit of trouble equalizing, and nobody saw me motioning to slow down since, you know, visibility was so bad. So, I just contented to follow a bit above everyone else and decend slowly. After a while, I lost all sight of people and was just following the bubbles. After a while of that, I lost track of the bubbles. I looked around for a bit and saw a flash of yellow. Great! Brian was wearing yellow flippers! So, I started following the yellow. About five minutes later I realized I was following a fish. You can imagine the sudden panick. I was in the middle of an ocean. Alone. I floated there for about ten minutes listening and watching. But, no matter how hard I listened or how hard I watched, the only bubbles and breathing I could see or hear were my own. Finally, I decided to surface and look around. I was next to this huge rock. And by rock I mean island. The kind you can't get onto because it's just a cliff shooting out of the water. At the other side of the island there were all these fishing boats that looked exactly like the one I had been on. I didn't have my glasses on so all I could see was that they were brown. Yeah, that was going to help me find my boat. I swam and swam and swam against the current until I finally got to the three fishing boats I had been swimming toward. None of them were mine and no one spoke english. So, I turned around and swam and swam and swam toward this huge snorkling group. I figured some of them must speak english. But they all looked like they were heading to their boat so I had to go FAST. I was wiped by the time I got over there. As I was trying to work up the courage to talk to them, I heard a voice behind me that was like, "You okay?" I turned around and, glory! It was my boat! "I got lost" I explained climbing on. About half a minute later I spotted the rest of the group swimming toward the boat.
