Sentosa Island

On Tuesday (wow already a week ago) we made a short trip to Sentosa Island, which is an island in the south of Singapore. The island evolved from a fisher's island to a artillery base in world war two. Today it is as major tourist attraction point and a popular recreation area for Singaporeans. All the defense stuff has been demolished, but you can still see some traces here and there. Everything on the island is well laid out, including artificial beaches, all kinds of attractions and a forest.

We (the three Germans and Nina from Norway) passed a nice and lazy day on the island. We lay on the beach, swam in the sea and walked a bit around on the island. The others even took a picture with Toni (a white constrictor snake) on their shoulders (unfortunately I don't have the pictures yet). That was really an exciting show because some of us (I don't want to give names) were really scared of Toni... ;-)

My overall impression of the island is a bit split. On the one hand it is all really nice and clean. The sand one the beaches is very fine and nearly white. There are as well some nice paths through the forest, which are not as crowded as the beach or the other attractions.
On the other hand the whole island was a bit too artificial for me. It is probably a nice tourist attraction but don't expect anything natural on the island. I believe even the trees in the forest are all numbered and registered. Another bad thing is, that the island is next to one of the biggest container harbours in the world. I think you can imagine that the water was not exactly crystal clear and crowded with colourful fish...

Arriving on campus

After the two days in the hotel I took a cab together with Alexa to get to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) campus. The university is a little bit outside the city, so it takes about 25 min to get there. The good thing is, that the campus is really big (about 2 km²) and it is nicely laid out. There are many trees, palms and lawns, so there is a lot of green on the campus. The first impression when arriving at NTU was definitely a good one.

But at first there was some administrative stuff to be done. We went to International Students Centre where we were welcomed very friendly by the staff and some local students. The showed and explained as everything we had to do, so it was not a big problem to get all the paperwork done.

After that we were brought to our halls where we could check into our accommodations. I was very lucky because I got a room in one of the rare halls with air condition. The room is not very big and it is a twin share room (I did know this before), but its clean and tidy. I think the whole building is very new, probably three or four years old. All in all I think that it is absolutely okay to stay in this room for 10 month. You can see in the pictures how my room looks like and my view out of the window. Unfortunately my room mate hasn't arrived yet, so I still wonder how he will be like. It will probably be a bit strange in the beginning to share the room with a foreigner, but I presume that we will get to know each other very quickly.

Apart from that we all had to undergo a medical examination. It was like the whole programme, eg. eye test, physical examination, blood test, urine test, x-raying,... Even if there were a lot of students who had to do this it all went fairly quick. It took about 2 hours in whole. But it was quite nice that you could get to know many other exchange students during this time. Today I got the results... I'm healthy and I am allowed to stay in S'pore. ;-)

The first impressions

On my first day in Singapore I wanted to walk down along Singapore River to get to Alexa, who is another exchange student from TU Darmstadt. As I didn't had a proper map I got lost a little bit at fist. I came in to a district with huge housing blocks and only local people. Even if they looked at me a little bit irritated I never felt endangered or unwell. I think the city is really as save as all people are telling. But after that I found the river and Alexa's Hotel. But I probably wasn't that eager to take pictures at that day, because there is only one... There were some guys in a park who flew illuminated remote controlled model aircrafts. I was really fascinated of them.

The next day Alexa, Roman an me (the three exchange students from TU Darmstadt) met at the Merlion, the landmark of Singapore. It is therefore a major tourist attraction point, as you can see on the pictures. In fact Roman brought his neighbour, Lingling, with him, so we were four. That day we did a little sightseeing tour through the city and visited quite a lot of nice place. The flair of the city changes very much depending on the quarter you are. E.g. Chinatown and Little India are very crowed and lively whereas the business district is naturally rather cold and sterile. But even in the crowdiest places the pavement is very clean, probably due to the 1000S$ fine for littering...

Getting there and getting started...

As you can guess form the headline I decided to write my Blog in English. At first I live now in an English speeking country an it is therefore a nice practice and secondly I will probably meet here some people who are interested in my blog as well. So to all of you in Germany: I hope you don't mind and will read my blog anyway. Your are allowed to write German comments indeed. ;-)

So I'll start with my flight. It went all very nice, although there were, as usual, some delays. I got the first shock when I left the plane at Doha (Qatar) for stopover and it had 38°C air temperature at midnight (local time)!!! It was just like stepping in to an oven. But at least the air conditioned bus was just 10 meters away... On my plane to Singapore I was sitting next to a woman from England. So we chatted about what we are going to do in Singapore and I could practice my language skills. The entry into Singapore went quite well and quickly. The airport itself is actually a sight. The architecture is really interesting and there all kinds of plants and trees inside the building. The first breeze of Singaporean air wasn't that shocking as in Doha. But it is really quite hot and humid.



The taxi ride to the hotel went really well. The taxi driver was very kind and interested (as all of them). Most of them are entertainers, talkmasters and taxi drivers at the same time... The hotel where i stayed the first two days was very nice. All very neat and clean and the personnel was very friendly. The view from the room was rather impressive (inside an outside) as was the breakfast in the next morning.


View from the level of my room down to the lobby.

In den Startlöchern

So langsam wird es ernst... :-)
Die letzten Stunden in Deutschland sind angebrochen, morgen um diese Zeit werde ich schon im Flugzeug nach Doha sitzen. Nach den ganzen Vorbereitungen der letzten Tag habe ich nun nochmal etwas Zeit um mich mental auf den Auslandsaufenthalt einzustimmen.

Das Packen war eine größere Herausforderung... Mit 20kg Check-In Gepäck und 7kg Handgepäck für 10 Monate auszukommen ist nicht einfach (Qatar Airways ist da wirklich nicht gerade kooperativ). Somit hoffe ich jetzt, dass ich das Wichtigste eingepackt habe und ich nicht all zu viele Sachen dort kaufen muss. Aber zumindest für die erste Zeit sollte alles dabei sein.

Nun denn.... morgen wird es bequem mit dem ICE nach Frankfurt gehen und die Reise kann beginnen. Bis dahin werde mit einer Mischung aus Bangen und Vorfreude ausharren und mir überlegen, ob ich nicht doch noch was Wichtiges vergessen habe. ;-) Auf jeden Fall überwiegt die Freude auf tolle neue Erfahrungen in einem Land fast auf der anderen Seite der Erde.

Dann bleibt mir noch die Aufforderung an alle in "Good ol' Germany" (oder wo immer es euch hinverschlagen hat): Gehabt euch wohl und vermisst mich nicht zu sehr! ;-)