singapore seems more congested and crowded than when i visited a few years back. it's still the same and so…nice. the city is so modern, clean, civilized, and organized - it just doesn't feel like we're still in asia. all the same crazy laws still exist: no eating or smoking in public, no chewing gum, jaywalking, or littering…there are fines for everything. there's even a fine for transporting durian on the mrt. i don't think we'll have a problem abiding with that one. the food and shopping are still amazing as well, and david and i are enjoying our last few days of south east asian cuisine. although we've been traveling for over five months now, we feel as if our time in north and south east asia is "quickly" coming to an end. we are sad, yet happy to end this chapter and begin a new one as we make the final preparations to enter india. we can certainly say that south east asia has treated us well. for the first time, we had the flexibility we've always dreamed of having while traveling and were able to tack on about five additional weeks of travel time to our original itinerary. for the first couple of months we certainly dealt with a fair amount of challenges in terms of living out of our "comfort zone". we have learned to be more accepting, more tolerant, and more patient - not only with each other, but with everything in our day to day lives. it's taken five months of being on the road for us to finally be comfortable with being "uncomfortable". in the beginning, a lot of every day situations seemed foreign to us. now…it's just life.
some things we've become rather accustomed to after traveling in asia for five months:
walking…a lot
watching where you walk so you don't step in a big hole…
watching where you walk so you don't step in poop
watching each other's back
hording small bills and change
navigating and reading maps
language barriers…
negotiating menus that are not in english
playing charades
constantly buying water
being gigantic in lands of mini people
getting stared at…
asian men staring at your boobs…
asian girls staring at your boobs
bath slippers that don't fit
cold showers
hard beds
mini towels
using public transportation systems
beggars
jaded locals…
jaded travelers
doing currency conversions
packing and unpacking
wearing a money belt
the heat
asking, "how much?"
bargaining for almost everything
hand-washing our clothes
"going with the flow"
telling our story
eating fish sauce and chiles in almost everything..
eating unidentifiable meats…
eating soup for breakfast…
eating rice at every meal…
eating the ice…and not worrying about it
eating with the locals
squatters…
spitters…
litter
death-defying bus travel
paying to pee…
paying to wipe
our dollar losing value
blogging…
everything being the same-same…but a little bit different
as we prepare to enter india and the middle east we are expecting a new set of foreign experiences and challenges that we presume will take a few months of getting used to. just in time…we were starting to get a little bit too comfortable.
alina
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