travels – Page 2

buffets, biking, and bitter durian — singapore week 4

special shoutout to egg tarts, kaya jam, and the ice cream cart lady

It’s finally time for week 4 of Singapore!

I’ll admit, looking back at the photos from this week a year ago is making me really sad. All my weeks in Singapore were great, but this one was special. It encompassed one of my favorite weekends of the trip, starting off with the magical AMR workshop (which ended with one of the most unexpectedly lit nights of my life), a Saturday biking at the beautiful East Coast Park, and a Sunday solo-exploration of the city. Hopefully, the following photos manage to capture some of the excitement and wonder of the week. 🙂

The ice cream cart lady, hired by Jocelyn for one of our work “socials” at the Sky Garden of CREATE. These ice cream carts can be found all over the streets of Singapore, serving up unique ice cream sandwiches that are very much sandwiches in the literal sense. A large block of ice cream is sliced up and wrapped in a slice of (often multicolored) bread, almost like a hot dog. Pro tip: let the ice cream melt a little into the bread before consuming. Such a simple snack yet so satisfying.

Reliving our childhoods with the premiere of Toy Story 4! This was my first time visiting a theater in Singapore, and I can safely say that it is just as spotless and well-maintained as the rest of the city. The movie itself was just okay though. While I enjoyed the premise, I feel like they should have stopped at number three. Eh.

Just a fraction of the incredible buffet at J Hotel Tanglin, where we ate and ate and ate and ate (like, this was probably the most food I’ve ever consumed at once, and it was well worth it). This was post-AMR workshop, which is basically a day-long conference-like event where researchers from my group presented their latest findings, etc. Interns like us basically sat around for most of the day and ate the free food that they served every couple of hours, but these conferences always seemed to end with an expensive buffet of some sort. The evening was spent wining and dining, with a fair bit of networking with the various professors in attendance.

Blurry pic but this was taken after the buffet when one of the professors took us and a couple of other researchers out for karaoke! This was honestly such a fun (and quite surreal) experience, from wandering around Clarke Quay late at night to find a karaoke joint to watching your MIT professors and PI’s having a practical dance-off to everyone going crazy over old Eminem songs. An unexpected end to a great night 🙂

Biking at East Coast Park (where we got rained on for 20 minutes but that’s okay)! My stomach was very full from the night before, so I greatly appreciated the exercise. East Coast Park is a long strip of beaches and recreational areas along Singapore’s southeastern coast with some great bike trails and scenery. Definitely recommend if you love biking as much as I do!

The start of my Sunday solo-exploration of the city: a traditional Singapore breakfast of kaya French toast and soft boiled eggs from Ah Seng Hai Nam Coffee in the Amoy Street Food Center. (I miss kaya jam so much. I can never find it in the states, and the ones on Amazon are $20 a jar :/)

Some views from my morning stroll along Telok Ayer Road, featuring some cute traditional shophouses and more modern bars.

An installation from the FutureWorld exhibit at the ArtScience Museum

DonDonDonki at Orchard Central — a Japanese store featuring an extensive selection of Japanese groceries, snacks, pre-made meals, figurines, the most delicious baked sweet potato ever, and just about anything else you can think of. Shopping here is definitely a sensory overload, but quite an exhilarating experience for a former-weeb 😉

And finally, I ended my day with a trip to Holland Village, where my curiosity, at last, got the better of me and I decided to try durian for the first time. There was a stall that seemed legit (with a long line outside and some workers carefully packaging specially selected durians for delivery), so I asked for the smallest one they had and sat down next to a couple busily devouring their own, much larger, fruit. Well, my first impression was that it tasted like acetone (if acetone had a taste, I wouldn’t know). I didn’t dislike the texture, and I surprisingly didn’t dislike the smell, but the taste itself was just so… intense. A couple of bites in and I felt a little nauseous, but I had paid $20 for this durian and was not going to just throw it out, so I asked them to carefully pack it up, snuck it on the bus, and took it back with me to TreeTops. (More on this later)

summer solstice in cambodia (06/21/19 – 06/22/19)

Happy (late) summer solstice!

June is my favorite month. I love the long days and the sense of carefreeness that seems unique to this time of year — when the sun is out until 8 pm and you’re not far enough into the summer to be bothered by unproductivity. If June had a mantra, it would be guilt-free relaxation.

Last year, I spent summer solstice on a weekend trip to Cambodia — one of the most insightful experiences of my life. This year, I spent it at home, staring into a screen.

Let’s ignore this year for now (or forever).

For week #3 of my Singapore adventures, I will feature some beauties from a truly magical trip to Siem Reap. Spending only one full day in the city, it was the shortest trip of our summer, yet the amount of cultural enrichment that I experienced was remarkable. I left the country with a great appreciation for the Khmer people and a renewed perspective of the history of Southeast Asia.

We started off the day at 5 am with a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat. This was the only time of day when the heat was bearable, and the reflection of the temple against the surrounding canal was especially idyllic.

A closer view of the architecture. Most of the temple was made of sandstone, with many ogival towers shaped like lotus buds (such as the one in this photo). The inner walls were decorated with various bas-reliefs of Hindu epics

The south gate of Angkor Thom, along a bridge featuring statues of gods and demons.

Bayon Temple, which had many smiling stone faces on the upper terrace. The heat was really intense by this point of the tour, but our tour guide, Baley, somehow managed kept our attention captured by enthusiastically explaining the history of these temples and the various symbolism displayed. We definitely learned a lot about Buddhism that day!

Post-tour refreshments! After eight hours of walking in the heat, we visited the Fresh Fruit Factory, a cute little cafe serving up distinctive smoothie bowls and other fruity delicacies. I had possibly one of the best smoothie bowls of my life and shared an amazing mango ice mountain with friends. Afterwards, as per SMURF tradition, we signed our names on the wall, next to the signatures of MIT students from the past three years who had visited this place.

After an afternoon of getting massages at the spa, bargaining for elephant pants at the Old Market ($2 this time!), and shopping for souvenirs at the niche Made-in-Cambodia Market, we enjoyed a delicious meal at Spoons – an EGBOK restaurant serving traditional Khmer cuisine while providing underprivileged young adults with vocational training in hospitality.

We ended the evening with an incredible show at Phare: The Cambodian Circus, a social enterprise started by refugees from the Khmer Rouge regime, in which profits generated help pay for education and performing arts training for the 1200 pupils at
Phare Ponleu Selpak. The storyline of our show that night was very unique (and a little confusing at times), but the act was very well put-together and featured some impressive acrobatic moves.

A selection of vegetables at a local Cambodian market. After another massage at our hotel the next morning, we attended a cooking class taught at the home of a local. The hosts first took us to a farmer’s market to shop for ingredients, as most families in Cambodia did not own refrigerators and thus purchased their ingredients fresh every morning. The number of vegetables, both familiar and exotic, was eye-opening!

And finally, our meal! The dishes we made included: green mango salad, fish amok (with herbs from the host’s own garden), pineapple fried rice, cashew chicken, vegetable curry, vegetable stir-fry (with some interesting green eggplants), and a decadent dessert of sweet potatoes cooked in palm sugar. The ingredients seemed simple, yet everything tasted exceedingly satisfying. Such a great end to our trip!

singapore week 2: KL and more (06/10/19 – 06/16/19)

As I spend yet another uneventful week in Riverside, here are some more glorious photos from this week a year ago, featuring our first SMURF weekend trip — Kuala Lumpur!

This post will also feature more food than usual, since, according to my coworkers, “Malaysia is just like Singapore but with cheaper food.” (considering how cheap hawker food in Singapore already is, this is really saying something)

My coworkers surprised me with some cake for my 19th birthday. 🙂 (peep the valves and tubing on the desk behind me, in an area known as the “garage”) (Ignore my crossed-out face. I looked kinda gross in this photo)

Some pastries from the bakery inside the Kent Ridge MRT Station — probably the best smelling bakery in the entire world. Seriously, this place smells like pure heaven. Like, you can literally sense the aroma wayyy outside the station and it just gets better and better as you approach the entrance. We’ve speculated over the weeks that they must spray some sort of pastry perfume outside to attract customers. Whatever it is, it’s working damn well.

Some BBQ pork buns from Tim Ho Wan for my birthday dinner. This was more of a high-end dim sum restaurant, so no carts of anything, but it was still an enjoyable experience with great friends!

And we’re finally in Malaysia! This is the KL Chinatown market area, where vendors sold a variety of cheap commodities, from giant mangos to the infamous elephant pants. Markets like these are great for practicing your bargaining skills. Guess who got elephant pants for $4?

A more modern area near the city center, with several churches, temples, and more western-style buildings nearby.

A view of the Petronas Towers – twin skyscrapers that were once ranked the tallest buildings in the world. While we were not able to visit the top, we explored KLCC, a giant retail center at the feet of the towers with many luxury brands.

Nasi Lemak – Malaysia’s national dish. This is basically coconut rice with a variety of condiments such as sambal anchovies, dried shrimp floss, chicken curry, and hard-boiled egg. This particular plate was from Madam Kwan’s, deemed the best Nasi Lemak in the nation by the Ministry of Tourism. It *was* pretty good, though I’m not sure if it’s the best in the nation — an excuse to try more and decide!

Thean Hou Temple – a six-tiered Buddhist temple adorned with hundreds of lanterns. The design of the temple was definitely very unique and provided for a great spot for photoshoots.

The ceiling of the Masjid Wilayah, a beautiful and tranquil place of worship. We went on a guided tour, learning about both the mosque’s history and the types of worship that patrons engaged in. We also got to examine the architecture and intricate geometric designs that covered every surface of prayer halls and courtyards.

Outside the Batu Caves, a Hindu shrine dedicated to Lord Murugan. According to our tour guide, each of the 365 steps that lead up to the cave symbolizes a day of the year, and you are cleansed of your sins for the past year by embarking on the journey up into the cave.

one year later: singapore adventures week 1

On this day a year ago, I was exploring the Gardens by the Bay, about to begin the best summer of my life. Comfortably housed at the Treetops Executive Residences (featuring the best breakfast bar ever — I still miss the kaya buns), I Grabbed to work at NUS CREATE every morning, visited a different hawker stall every evening, and traveled to a new country practically every weekend. To call the contrast to my life right now starking is an understatement.

Being stuck in quarantine has given me plenty of time to bathe in nostalgia as I scrolled through the dozens of photos of smiling faces, delicious food, and sunsets by the beach that I still haven’t transferred out of my camera roll. Last summer feels unreal — so perfect that I sometimes think this summer is the universe’s punishment in order to “balance things out.” Singapore captured my heart forever, and all I can do now is read and watch (for the third time) Crazy Rich Asians, experiencing a rush of simultaneous excitement and sorrow every time a familiar landmark is brought up (which is all the time, as Singapore is a small country. Did you know Nick’s grandmother’s house is within walking distance of Treetops??).

I’ve been meaning to blog about my travels last summer for a while now, but I would get a little sad every time I tried to, so procrastination ensued. Since I am sad regardless right now, I guess it’s finally the appropriate moment! I won’t describe things too extensively, but I hope to post a couple of photos each week featuring some of the highlights of that week from a year ago. So voila, here are some photos from my first week in Singapore! (6/2/2019 – 6/9/2019)

Orchard Road (aka Singapore’s shopping mall)! Where I lived for two months and walked down almost every day. This was from the first morning after we landed, during which we explored the 8 malls that were within a 0.5-mile radius of Treetops, awed by the dozens of luxury stores and the most creatively-designed skyscrapers (seriously, it seemed like each architect was trying to outdo one another).

Our first meal in Singapore at the Newton Food Centre, where Crazy Rich Asians was filmed! (we later found out from a Grab driver that this was a tourist trap, but our excitement on the first day was very real). The hawker was no more than a 20min walk from Orchard Road, yet our program coordinator Jocelyn was horrified that we had made the trek in the sweltering heat (“Singaporeans don’t walk!”). Granted this was before we discovered the ever-so-convenient MRT, but I honestly find walking through Singapore’s spotless streets quite enjoyable.

A view of the CREATE Tower, where we worked. (I actually worked in the building to the left, but CREATE has a much nicer aesthetic). I still miss eating lunch at the tenth-floor sky garden, where a breathtaking view of practically the entire island can be observed. Also peep the U-Town cantine on the bottom right, a cafeteria that puts all the dining halls at MIT to shame (and it’s not even the best one in NUS apparently. All my coworkers claim that it’s overpriced, but I’ll take a $3 bowl of Pad Thai over $14 MaseehD any day)

Exploring the Geylang Serai Ramadan Bazaar after our first day of work! It’s basically a seemingly-endless night market open during the month of Ramadan, with huge crowds and tons of interesting food and vendors. I remember sampling some satay and a concerningly-green durian pancake as we pushed our way through the sea of people. (this market was the opposite of social distancing, and my post-COVID brain is already trying to gauge how quickly diseases will spread in such a setting nowadays)

Chinatown, one of my favorite places to visit after work, whether to grab a quick meal at Maxwell’s (with their award-winning Hainanese chicken rice, which I will feature in a later post) or score some cheap souvenirs to bring home. It’s so interesting to see such traditional houses and vendors amongst the glass jungle of the surrounding areas, but the perfect blend of modernity and tradition is one of my favorite aspects of the island. (On this day, for example, I went from eating duck noodles and chendol on the street to dancing on the top floor of a skyscraper within a span of 20 minutes.)

An interesting shirt from a stall in Chinatown. True, rules were very strict in Singapore (“no drinking water on the MRT” was one of the first things that Jocelyn had drilled in us during orientation), but perhaps it’s worth it in exchange for the clean streets and almost non-existent crime rates.

Ah, Bugis… (later affectionately known as “our favorite place”) We went out of curiosity but would spend one of our best evenings that Friday night. After a delicious meal at the Albert Food Centre, we sampled a concoction of desserts (culminating with the unforgettable mango sago from Ah Chew’s on Bugis Dessert Street <yes, there’s a dessert street>), purchased many pairs of earrings, discovered the best boba in the world, and strolled through the maze of interconnected shopping centers surrounding Bugis junction. Bugis became one of the places we would frequent during our stay.

A view of the Singapore Flyer, the Supertree Grove, and the Flower Dome on the pedestrian bridge that connected the Marina Bay Sands to the Gardens by the Bay. When they say that Singapore is a garden, they were not kidding. Everything in this area of the city was worthy of an Instagram photo shoot.

A waterfall inside Cloud Forest. It’s amazing how many waterfalls they manage to fit indoors in this city.

And of course, the Supertree Grove, the iconic identifier of the gardens. This was taken before the nightly light show (retro-themed that day).

The suspension bridge of TreeTop Walk (sadly could not get a better photo of the view, but, believe me, it was breathtaking), a trail located in Singapore’s largest reservoir. Our shoes got destroyed by the mud and our clothes were drenched with sweat and rain, but the views (and the three monkeys we saw) were worth it.

five photos in Beijing

(originally posted in July 2018 on raincoral)

just some interesting places I’ve been this summer.

Shelf of a bakery in ZhongGuanCun

bakery

This is one of the oldest bakeries in the Haidian area, situated in an alley only a few streets away from my mom’s childhood home. Despite its dated furnishing and cash-only policy, this place still attracts a crowd (of mostly old women) daily due to its nostalgic reminder of the past.

2. View of the Olympic Stadium

olym

Snapped this in the middle of a bike ride around Olympic Green. Featuring the Bird’s Nest, the Olympic radio tower, and the Pangu Seven Star Hotel. A symbol of modernity in a transitioning world.

3. A sea of lotuses in Kunming Lake

lotus

A standard view in the Summer Palace, an imperial garden of the Qing dynasty. Flute music can be heard resonating from the island across.

4. View of Haidian District from Longevity Hill

osp

Smoggy day and vague outline, but I can probably recognize most of the buildings pictured. The tall one is owned by the ZhongGang corporation, and when I was little I thought it was the tallest building in the world.

5. Mural of Godzilla at the 798 Art District

godzilla

An art district that took over the ruins of a former factory, 798 has a unique aesthetic. Cool murals and cute, artsy cafes can be found in every corner (along with its fair share of tourists).