Cambodia

Trip to Cambodia with Thomas, Shelley and Ran was great. We had a good time in KL before leaving. First we did some climbing!!! and then headed to the airport. Taxi driver was either high or... very high. We made it though so s'all good.
First two days were spent in Phnom Penh. Long story short: got ripped off at massage parlor, not fun, but funny when I look back at it, then visited some places from the times of Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979... unbelievable nightmare that killed 4 million people. School turned into a prison was very depressing. Seeing hundreds of skulls at the killing fields was humbling. What bugs me the most is that all this happened a mere 30 years ago. How indifferent the world is to the disasters that occur in faraway places. Bringing it back to today: there are people being killed everyday in Africa but because it doesn't affect our immediate well-being its hard to pick your hands up and do something. 30 years later we'll be visiting the Darfur and writing on our blogs how depressing and senseless the history is. I guess that's what defines us 'humans'.

Angkor Wat with all the beautiful temples was amazing. We were not able to see the sunrise clearly because it was a bit cloudy and sunset was ruined by the rain. Nevertheless it was a good day of exploration and awe.

Siem Reap is a cozy little town. We only spent 2 days there so much left unexplored, but visiting the floating village was great. The sandy and bumpy ride on the motorbike was fun. Seeing many villagers look at us was kind of fun. There's not many of our kind passing by their lands... with traditional krama wrapped around their heads:)

...it has been a while

I haven't updated the page for a while and believe it would only be appropriate to update.
So first off it was the weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur. After realizing that I cannot go to Thailand on Wednesday and then be back in KL for Formula 1 race in Sepang on Sunday (23nd of march), I just settled for a more in depth experience in Kuala Lumpur.
So I joined Johannes, his brother and 3 of his friends. These fellas spent a few days in S'pore before they continued their journey to Bali, Indonesia where they will spend a semester "studying". ...those study abroad'ers... :)
So we explored Kuala Lumpur a bit on Friday. Stayed in a very sweeeeet location on Petaling St, aka Chinatown. On Friday we got into the club for free because I was obnoxious enough two ask these two girls if they would take us into the club for free (after they told me that they are "big deal" around here and get into the club for free).
So they got us in and saved us a few hundred ringgit for the 6 of us. Next day we again explored KL and went to Menara KL, a 4th largest TV tower in the world.
At night there was an F1 SpeedZone party at the foot of Menara KL. Dj Mauro Picotto was there! Amazing light and show festival!

Next day was the race. Watching a race in the comfort of your living rooms is easier to follow, but no sound systems or 56inch LCD will come near replacing the thrill of hearing these 1000hp engines roar. An experience is worthwhile but after 54 laps the "watching" becomes tiring.

At night we head back to S'pore. Nice weekend.

Jurong Island Visit

A week ago, on Wednesday I had an opportunity to visit Jurong Island. This place is off-limits to general audience so to visit the place was an honor in itself. The trip was arranged by Prof. Young of Geography Department here at NUS. I'm in his class titled Economy and Space.
So bus filled with 45 students from our class took us to this island Wednesday morning.
Jurong Island is 3rd largest oil refinery in the world, surpassed only by Netherlands and #1 ranked Houston, USA. Island hosts 95 companies of various types, which collectively employ about 8,000 workers. The island was a result of reclamation project directed to bring 4 or 5 separate island together. Everything is possible in Singapore, or so the saying goes. I mean isn't it mind-blowing that officials from Singapore took Exxon's CEO on a helicopter ride and said: "we'll fill these island to make workable space for you if you agree to come do business here". Creating this cluster was a major driving force in bringing various companies to the area in order to create synergies and efficiencies by having companies use each other's output at various stages of production. The huge pipe-line around the island links all the companies, thus decreasing the cost of transporting material that is used by one company on the island but is produced by another company.

The company running the island is called JTC (Jurong Town Corporation). It is a government-owned company, which allows it to cut through a lot of red tape. Jurong is a very successful project, especially taking into account that Singapore has zero drops of crude oil but is ranked as #3 refiner of oil on the world.
These pictures were taken secretly because no recording equipment is allowed. We also were lectured about stories where people tried taking pictures and then were swiftly reported to security and interrogated. Luckily I was able to take a picture without interrogation:)) Professor saw me take a picture and scolded me for doing so but then said, "that's how I was able to put a picture of Jurong in my textbook".

The message here is that when the government takes a very proactive role to attract businesses - great things happen, such as country with no oil resources becomes #3 oil refiner producing 1.33million barrels per day.
...Being blessed with S'pore's strategic location helps too.

Douglass North visits NUS Law School

The other week I have visited Bukit Timah Campus of National University of Singapore, where Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy and School of Law is located. On this day (11th of March) Douglass C. North (a nobel laureate of economics in 1993) was giving a speech on what he called "a natural state". Overarching aim of his speech was to address the reasons why developing countries are "stuck" and why there is a huge dividing gap among the world's well-offs and "have nots". He coined the notion of natural state, which describes a Limited Access Society where elites with a lot of political power dominate country's policy, path and the well being of its citizens. In this society most of the access to you is given based on "who you know" not "what you know". Supposed opposite of this is Silicone Valley in California, where talent is able to achieve unimaginable levels of success based on pure merit. Entrepreneurship is thus a good example of state that is denoted as Open Access Society.

In addition to these in depth ideas, Prof. North talked about development as a more intrinsic process combining beliefs, time, culture, institutions and a sometimes imperfect functioning (or economically irrational) of these.

Overall it was a good lecture. Prof North is 87 years old but his mental skills and ability to engage the audience are still superb. The hall was packed tight and thus I am happy that I made my way to Bukit Timah that day.

On the final note, here are some pictures of the beautiful Bukit Timah campus. It was raining that day so in the midst rain I walked around the campus and took a few pics before my camera battery died.

Enjoy!

Pilipinas (Part II)

So off we go the the village called Panaman. After a long trek we get there and the village has a population of about a 100. I don't think they have electricity, not to mention other things we are so attached to nowadays. So we walked through the village and stop on the shore of the ocean. There we see a bunch of palm trees with coconuts so we decide to take one. Slowly the locals are beginning to pay more attention to us and give us strange looks.
One of the older men comes forward and helps us to open a coconut with his machete. We drink coconut milk and feast on ripe coconut. Then we walk further on the beach and decide where to put the tent. As we walk we pass a man who is helping to pull a boat onshore. They just came from fishing. Feast or what?:) So we ask if we can buy some fish and sure enough they take us to one of the huts and sort our some fish from their box. With emphasis on selling us the squid they finally sell us 2kg of fish and help to take the guts out. We then set up the tent and take a while to start fire. Cooking fish is fun and taaaasty. We eat, drink some more coconut juice and then it starts raining so we duck to our tent and fall asleep. Understandable... after a long day of walking from one village to another.
Next morning we wake up early and go back to village. There a local offers us coffee and some sweet bread - of course being hungry we accept it. The whole village, or so it seems, stand outside watching us eat. I am sure they don't see many tourists.
A local then takes us on his tricycle to the town. What a ride.... morning breeze is rushing through the air and finally its a sunny day:)) After all the rain sun really makes a day better.

We swim near the small port of the Caramoan and then catch the ferry to back to where the bus stops. Its about an hour ride. I took a video of the ride (its on facebook). Take a bus back to Naga city and get dropped off at CWC Resort (Camsur Watersports Complex). The owner of the complex is the government of Naga City. The guy is nuts (in a good way). He hangs out with wake-boarders and from time to time jumps on the board himself. I was wondering what is his agenda? Because it seems so pointless for this guy to hang out with this crowd when he is a governor of the town. Doesn't he have higher responsibilities to take care of? Well, just another paradox I guess.

So we meet the crowd we hung out with 2 days ago and they are professional wakeboarders from all over the world. Guy named Laurent is from France and he is the world champion of 2007. It is really fun wakeboarding in this park. Water is quite clear and cable is in a good shape.

In the evening we say bye to our new friends and leave for Naga city where we catch a bus back to Manilla. This concludes the journey to Philippines.

A week in Philippines (Part I)

I will try to make this short and sweet. Arrived in Manila, Philippines on Saturday (Feb 23rd). After figuring out our bus route to Pasay, south part of Manila, and taking the ride there, we got our ticket to Legaspi (13hrs bus ride away) and left with a couple of hours on our hands we took a metro (LRT) train to Intramuros. 1km or so area surrounded by the old stone walls where Spanish invaders lived while locals inhabited the surrounding area. 

On our night bus to Legaspi the bus broke down so instead of arriving at 7am we arrive at 10am in Legaspi and go meet our local tour guide (which I contacted before going to Philippines). His name is Richard and he arranges a tour guide for us to climb Mt. Mayon. I believe I covered our attempt at Mt. Mayon in the previous entry so to make this brief: we come back to Legaspi. The weather sucks, rainy, foggy, nothing to do. I and Loic leave Rahel in the tent in front of Richard's office (on the 2nd floor balcony facing the city) and go walk around town on Monday night at 11pm. Everything is closed. We stumble upon a bar and hear the music coming through the open door. We enter. Karaoke bar. We sit down, there are couple of "waitresses" entertaining the "customers" so we just ask for an album list and sing some Bon Jovi and Oasis. Go back to our tent and try to sleep a couple hours in order to get up at 6am when the other stores on the second floor open and we need to take down our tent and the "spiderweb" of clothe lines that we used to hang our wet EVERYTHING we brought from the Mt. Mayon. 

Tuesday is spend aimlessly wandering around town. Watching a terrible movie called "in the name of the king"

Wednesday we take a shuttle to Donsol. We meet 5 other guys from NUS, one of them is my floor-mate Don. We arrive in Donsol excited to go on the boat and snorkel with whalesharks! Friendly creatures in sizes of up to 18meters! 

On the boat it is raining and windy. No sharks around and aprox 12-15 boats chasing the brave ones who decided to come near the surface in such bad weather. 

We head back to Legaspi, pick up our clean and dry laundry from a laundry shop and catch the first van going to Naga city, 2hrs north of Legaspi.  In Naga we take decide to stay in a Golden Leaf hotel and its a clean place. Our first place with a bed since arriving in Philippines. Quite nice to sleep in the bed. After dinner in the restaurant with FINALLY some great food we head back to the room while the other guys decide to take a walk and check out some bars. 

On Thursday we take a Jeepney to the hot spring north of Naga and chill in a 39c water for a few hours. Nice way to relax. Afterwards we had back to Naga and settle for a good dinner in the restaurant Jellato. Owner DomiNikko met the guys the night before and had a lot of drinks complemented with some great food. Nikko is a chef and makes great food. Although we did not see him make the food per se, he has graduated from a culinary school in Manila. 

At night the boys take a bus to Manila and we (Loic, Rahel, Gabi and I) join Nikko to check out CWC - we didn't know that, but its a world famous place for wake boarding. We arrive in the restaurant and see a "surfer" type crowd partying it up with booze and music. We meet them and they are here from all over the world, France, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Serbia, etc. Most of them are staying here for a couple of months while they practice their wake boarding tricks... which are amazing as we found out on Saturday. After partying up with the crowd we join them for a trip to a local club and spend couple hours there, then head to Nikkos house and spend an hours on the couch. At 3am we head to bus terminal to catch a bus going to Caramoan.  Arriving in Sabang I am awaken by aprox 10 eager men opening the door and one of them saying "this is the end of your trip"... would serve as a good culmination to a nightmare but I realize that we did indeed arrive to Sabang where we will catch a boat going to Caramoan. Its raining, nasty, streets are dirty, there is no restaurant where we can get a decent meal so we just sit down in one of the places that reminds of a restaurant and chill for an hours while we wait for a boat. Take a boat and it is still raining... Reach Caramoan and take a Jeepney to Centro Caramoan. Here we find a decent place to eat and sit down to have some breakfast. After breakfast the sun comes out and we are unusually cheerful as we are excited about the weather. We take a tricycle to a nearby village where we need to hike for another 3km to reach Gota beach. It is known for its white sand and beautiful coves surrounding the area. There we find a bunch of white people talking on walkie-talkies. They are personnel for a french Survivor TV series. We are not allowed to take any pictures or stay on the beach. After conversing with one guy for a few minutes we are told many details about the show and he answers the questions we have. Then he was nice enough to offer us a ride from one of the locals who is working for them and drives a rented Honda SUV. After unsuccessful attempt to convince the guy that he should hire us as doubles for the Survivor series:) we thank him, jump in the car and slowly traverse across the muddy road full of huge puddles. Then we attempt to convince the local guy who is driving the rented car to give us a ride to the next village only a couple of kilometers away but he refuses. We thank and continue our trek to the next village. 

...to be continued in PART II.  Stay tuned:)

Spring break (recess week)

I am on spring-break now at the National University of Singapore, so I, Gabi, Loic and Rahel took a flight to Philippines for a week and now we are in Legaspi. The end of monsoon season is not very travel-friendly so instead of the expected sun we are flooded with ton of rain. Last Saturday we took a 14-hour bus ride to Legaspi from the capital Manila.
Next morning, after hiring a mountain guide from our new friend Richard (from Royal Quest Tours) attempted to climb Mt. Mayon (still active, most perfectly-shaped volcano), but heavy rains prevented us from reaching the top (or as close as dept. of tourism allows).
It was a very dangerous climb and at one point we were standing on the edge of a long waterfall, that rattles down the mountain like a big snake with a wet & shinny volcanic rock "skin", and waited for the rain to subside because the amount of water falling has probably quadrupled in a matter of 10 minutes. Shivering and holding on to branches of trees and grass we waited out the rain and humbly began our descend. Including a couple of bruises and grass-cuts we made it down safely, but Mt. Mayon showed that HE, not US... mere mortals, decides who goes up and who doesn't.

2400m high, Mayon stands tall and unconquered by the 4 students from NUS.
The weather sucks that's why I am not chilling on the beautiful beach but sit here writing my blog in the Internet cafe (15 pesos/hour = 30c US).

Out.