Winter Break Travels

With a whole month off for winter break, we decided to go explore Southeast Asia for two weeks. Because of how late the Chinese New Year falls this year due to the lunar calendar, the break is unusually long. Sadly, Fulbright only lets us be out of the country for two weeks of our grant period, so I am stationed back here in Taiwan until school resumes.










Seven of us (Carol, Charles, Fonda, John, Kaitlyn, Kristin and myself) visited Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia, occasionally meeting up with other friends for parts of the trip along the way. Overall impressions before I go into depth for each place:

1) Southeast Asia is SO HOT. Please, God, do not ever make me live there in summer - if I cannot handle their winter, I never want to experience their summer.

2) Thailand and especially Cambodia made me appreciate Taiwan in new ways. Like the fact that I can eat street food here and never worry about getting sick, or the way that I never have to fear being ripped off when I go shopping or get into a taxi, or the way I do not have to bargain for everything I purchase, or the way I am not approached by beggars and street children every 3 seconds (about the street children - I now understand why foreigners travel to third world countries, and suddenly feel the need to stay and establish orphanages).

3) It was very strange to not be able to use Chinese to get around. Charles and Kristin said when we landed in Thailand that it was so weird for them to be in a country for the first time where they did not know the language. The rest of us just stared at them and were like: um, that's our daily life in Taiwan lol. Even so, it was still a little odd for us too. You get to the point where Chinese becomes your default second language, so if you cannot use English, it just feels natural to go into Mandarin. Unfortunately, this was not the most helpful habit in Southeast Asia (though there were large amounts of Chinese tourists everywhere...).