Chinese New Year Trip Pt. 1

So the highlight of this blog is my First Chinese New Year here where Toni, Anthony, and I (along with a couple other friends for part of the trip) went to the Philippines, Malaysia, and then finally Singapore. Before you all begin to envy me haha (just kidding)all this traveling really takes a lot out of you and is not all fun and games meaning i spent about 50 or more hrs just traveling either in a plane, on a bus (even on top of one in Batad), taxi's, subways or MRT's, and more planes.

I dont want to hold out on this big trips story, but i will up date the last couple weeks of classes. Well the Ford competition my group and whole class was working on came to the finally day where we had to present in front of the Ford CEO Jeff Nemeth, the Ford CFO, HRM, and a few of our professors. Our group was able to put together a report over 100pgs in just under 3 weeks and create a presentation we literally worked on mins before walking up in front to present. It was extremely stressful feeling that all the work we had put into this project would not be complete, but with a little magic we came through, presented and one the competition including 20000NT. We each received 3000NT or $100 (which i had to turn over the next day for student fees) and had 2000NT left over and went out to a local bar to celebrate with the remaining cash. I was really proud of our group to put so much work into this project and even if we did not win it was a great learning experience (dont finish a project 3 mins before you walk up to present :).

So my other classes went well and even had a few similar instances where we finished a project during the class we had to present. For example, Clark and I believed we were presenting the next week and had not finished our project or prepared to present. Luckily we were the last group to go because we came together during class through email and instant messaging and finished our project while Clark put together a power point and we presented 30mins after class should had been let out, but the teacher insisted on us presenting.

So about the trip, we took a train to Kaosiung (40mins south of Tainan) airport where we left for Manila, Philippines. Manila was very dirty and pretty scary walking around at night while we looked for a hotel for the night and to relax with a beer. Manila was pretty poverty stricken with kids holding babies running up to you begging for money and even the older people as well. If you give money to one of them, the rest run and follow you holding their hands in your face wanting money. Clark Philippines (a city, not a person) was the same way with the kids begging and never saying thank you after you gave them money. Well we walked around Manila the next day carrying all of our bags since we checked out of the hotel and we did not feel safe leaving our luggage there while we toured the city. Anthony had a tour planned out where we visited an old fort (Santiago) and some old churches (one where a wedding just took place). While in Manila Toni was talking on the phone with 2 Swedish friends of his Olaf and Christof, but never really planned on meeting up with them until strangely we happened to bump into them at the Fort Santiago and have them join our group on the rest of our tour in Manila. At the church where the couple just married there were about 100 kids and they all wanted us to take pictures of them and always asked in the high pitched kid voices (one more picture). It became very old very quickly and they seem to never stop coming and coming and the smarts always asked to see the picture after you took one (they were getting smarter). Im not sure why they wanted to see them as if i would be emailing them with all the pictures haha. i had to delete a lot of them towards the end of the trip to be able to take pictures in Singapore.
So we planned to take a bus to Banaue overnight (8hrs) to the rice terraces that are over 2000yrs old. That bus ride sucked. The driver had the A/C on high, and I only had a t-shirt and shorts so 1 hr into it i was shaking uncontrollably and only had about 30mins of actual sleep. We finally arrived at 6:30am with it raining and everyone sniffling with a small cold. We checked into a hostel and went straight to sleep till 12 and then went on a tour driven around on a motorcycle with the side carrier thing. Toni and i was crammed in the side part while our friend Charles (malaysian) was on the back seat of the bike with the guy. Anthony and the other girls (2 Filipino girls and 1 malaysian) were sitting the same on another bike. The views were amazing and I even met an old villager guy where just 20ft away were human skulls on a shelf (I have pics of both). So we finished that tour and planned the next day to wake up at 6:30am for our all day trip to Batad where there are more rice terraces and the originals considered the 8th wonder of the world aka "the stairway to heaven". Well it felt like we hiked the stairway to heaven b/c we were all extremely sore the next few days. The bus ride to Batad was 2hrs each way and i sat on top of the bus for the ride back with about 6 other people and it was just metal racks. The safety standards do not seem to be at par with ours back home (US) or anywhere else in the world. It was really beautiful and hard to imagine how people could carve these mountains into steps for rice terraces. I'm not sure the exact distance we hiked, but it was from the top of a mountain to the bottom (where there was a beautiful waterfall) and all the way back up to the top and by looking at the pictures you will see the mountains are not that small.
So after the huge hike, we caught a bus that night for another 8hr ride back to Manila where we caught another 2hr bus to Clark (the city) and stayed a day and night (most of it spent in the hotel) and left for Kuala Lumpur aka KL, Malaysia the next day. Oh i almost forgot to mention we had to change currency's in each country from the Philippino Peso (1 US = about 47peso), the Malaysian Ringit (1US = about 3.5ringit), and then the Singapore dollar (1US = 1.4sing dollars). We arrived in KL where charles had his parents waiting to pick up Toni, Anthony, and I so us 4 went back to his parents place to stay one night. We went to meet with Charles brother and some friends for dinner near his university where Toni and I had our first Malaysian meal. They ordered a bunch of different dishes and everyone was delicious. The stingray was my favorite and the other dishes i can not explain or know the correct names were also good and all the malaysian food has a little spice to it and some much hotter than others.
The next day, Charles drove us downtown where we visited the Petronas Twin Towers and walked around the mall for awhile to waste time until Toni and I left for Langkawi (another 8hr bus ride) which is an island off the west coast of Malaysia. It was an overnight bus where i was prepared with long pants, a jacket and towel to cover up with. We made it there to the port to catch a ferry to the island (1 1/2hr). They crammed us like sardines in a boat and took us to the island where we figured out our phones (sim cards) that anthony gave us were not working because they had not been activated. Since it was chinese new year all the hotels were being filled left in right and caused us to be left with a pretty crappy one but it was cheap. The worst thing about the hotel is it was 30mins cab ride from the beaches so the price added up well over the cost of our hotel for the 3 nights we stayed there. The first night there happened to be the most exciting one. We spent the day at a bar on the beach we found called "Raffi's" (not drinking till later in the evening) but had brought our clothes for the night with us to save a hr worth of back and forth cab rides. We had dinner and started drinking and after a few hours 3 girls sat down to have dinner and a few drinks. I told Toni i was his wingman and it was up to him to go talk to them (since i have a g/f) and i would just chat here and there. Well he kept saying he didnt have enough drinks in him to just walk up and say hello so after about 10mins of standing there talking about it, i walked up and introduced myself and then Toni followed. They asked us to pull up a chair and have a drink. One girl was from Australia and the other 2 were from Botswana. One of the Botswana girls (Rachel) father was American from Ohio and the girls both grew up attending an english school in Botswana since it was colonized by the British. The 3 girls went to graduate school together and met up once a year for a girls trip to some country. They are all physiotherapist and seemed to be very intelligent.
So they wanted to go dancing (i wasn't breaking any rules by dancing guys) so we went to a hotel where they had a club and hung out for a couple hours when Toni wasn't having much fun and wanted to leave. I told him to wait while i said bye to the girls and i would be there in a second but he insisted i stay as he left and i remained outside looking for him and a ride home. So a taxi van was leaving with 4 Iranian guys and one of them asked if i would like a ride where i agreed and told them my hotel. No one, not even the cab driver knew of my hotel or how i was pronouncing it so it was an 1 hr 1/2 ride in a van full of Iranians. I thought to myself what am i doing, but then knew i could not judge them from the country they come from just as they should not judge me from being from the States. I dont remember the whole conversation but they enjoyed my company, were very nice, and we said our goodbyes as the cab driver kept searching for my hotel. We finally found it after he stopped for directions and i looked forward to sleeping on a bed and not a bus. Well i had not heard from Toni and knocked on the door with no answer. After awhile the knocks turned into bangs and yelling for him to open the door. I walked back outside and wondered if he had even made it home and was worried about him. I tried again to bang on the door but still no answer so i slept in the nasty lobby on a couch where i was awoken at 7am by the manager asking me what was i doing sleeping there. Well he opened the door for me and Toni was curled up on his bed. I said thank you to the manager and just about punched Toni, but decided i would just talk to him after we both woke up.
Well long story short he did not hear a sound and i found out he had also locked 2 other friends out b/c he passed out and had the room key. So i took over the key, laughed a little about it, but still mad and we continued our trip there......... (I'll continue the second part of the trip on the next blog)