Since my last serious post a long time has passed and many things have happend. I'm sorry for not writing within in the last 4 weeks, but I just enjoyed my stay here a bit. From my time in Singapore not even one whole week now is left anymore and I'm getting sad of having to leave all this. But of course I'm also looking forward to seeing all of you again in Germany.

The weekend after the Bali weekend I tried wake boarding the first time in my life. We rent a boat at Ponggol Marina Country Club (which is in the Northern part of Singapore and very close to Malaysia's heavy industry:-)). It is so much fun and a really great alternative for snowboarding. (Especially as the water is softer and warmer then the snow!). After that I did it 2times more and am now a kind of pro. Yesterday I even started to jump a little bit.

Singapore - Wakeboarding

In the evening I went to little India where a Tamil festival called Thai Pusam took place the whole day. Men in all ages stick needles and meat hooks into their skin, where they either hang some lemons or milkpots or herbs on it or the carry heavy racks with pictures of Indian gods on it. The guys don't seem to suffer and it doesn't bleed at all, as they seem to be in trance. Every now and then they stop the whole procession (which leeds through Little India from one temple to another) and everyone starts dancing and singing. The cause why they do all this, is to bid the gods for something they want to achieve in future for themselves and their families. Despite it is really disgusting to see all the hooks and needles, it was a really happy festival.

Singapore - Thai Pusam Little India

On Sunday of that weekend I finally managed to go to Bukit Timah Nature Resereve, part of the green lung of Singapore. It's a left part of the rainforest that covered originally the whole island. And there are thousends of different plants, monkeys, monitor lizzards, squirrels and lots of other creatures.

During the next week the "MUSE"concert took place in Singapore Indoor Stadium. It was so amazing and worth every single cent I paid for it.

Singapore - Muse Concert

Next weekend: Wakeboarding again on Saturday and on Sunday I went with three guys from the German Television ARD to the Singapore Airshow, on of the largest Airshows in Asia (what ever that means). I saw lot's of nice airplanes, helicopters, and as it seemed to be more a militairy fare then a real airshow, also weapons, Leopard 2 tanks and all that stuff. As a grand final some pilots of the Singaporean and US Airforce showed really amazing feats in the air.

And on the next day Christian, Philipp and Patric arrived in Singapore. We did some sightseeing and also some (more) partying. It was a really exhausting week for me, but I also explored some new parts of Singapore with them. E.g. we went to Pulau Ubin, a small Island North of Singapore that looks like Singapore probably looked 50years ago. Small houses, wide forests... And we went again to the green lung of Singapore, but this time we walked all the way through, not only the Bukit Timah part :-) It was about 25km walk.

On friday 13th of Feb my parents finally arrived in Singapore with a delay of 1day and 4hours and without lugged, which all was caused by the snow chaos in Munich. Incredible for me to heare about something like that:-)

In the night from 13th to 14th of February the Lunar New Year startet with great fireworks at Marina Bay and Lion-Dances at the Chinese temples. It is really amazing to see all the traditional and old celebrations mixed up with modern elements (like plastic tigers infront of 200 year old temples).

Singapore - Chinese New Year and the Time arround

And on 15th of February I went to Malaysia with my parents. We first were one night in Kuala Lumpur, where we looked at KL Tower, on of the highest Television Towers in the world and also at Pertonas Towers. Despite that I have the impression, that KL is not really worth a travel. It seems more confused and less personal then Singapore.

The next day we went to Taman Negara, the oldest rainforest in the world and stood there for 4days in a hotel right at the entrance of the National Park. For getting there from KL we first had a 2.5hours Bus ride and after that 3 more hours on a boat that went up the river Tembling. We did a hike on the first day that included also a Canopy walk on the highest hill in the area of the hotel. On the second day we went to some cascades in the river where we had a bath in natural whirlpools. In the evening we visited a village from the original inhabitants of that area, called "Orang Asli". The dinner we always had on some floating restaurants on the river where they cooked the freshest fish out of the river. We did a night wlak through the jungle and saw some really scary and huge insects, spiders large like my hand, but also nice pigs, monkes, squirrels, ... (And some leaches tried to suck the blood out of me :-))

Malaysia - KL and Taman Negara

On Saturday then we went from Taman Negara via KL to Langkawi, an Island in the North-western part of Malaysia, right at the border to Thailand. It was more or less a beach holiday with lots of swimming. One day we went up to a mountain by cable car where we had a really great view over the Adaman Sea with all its island. We drove arround the Island and had visited the Aquarium (not worth it) there. Another day we did Kajaking on Mangrove rivers where we saw lots of very colourful birds. And the last day we went by 1hour of ferry-ride to another small island for snorkeling. It is so amazing to see that colourful underwater world with fishes in every sizes and also some small and so amazing sharks. The sharks just swam arround the legs of the people and didn't even care what happend there. They are so elegant and fascinating...

Malaysia - Langkawi

And that's it. In one week I'll be back to Munich. Have a great time until then:-)

I was really lazy with writing something to my blog in the last weeks. And now I am on my way to the airport for spending two great weeks in Malaysia with my parents. After one night in Kuala Lumpur we will go by boat to the world's oldest rain forrest "Tamah Negara" for 5 days and will conclude the trip with some days on the Island "Langkawi". I hope I can tell you more about my last time when I return. Have a great time until then!

Despite the Green Day concert, which in my opinion was quite lame during the last two weeks nothing really important happend in Singapore. I spent 14 hours with playing Chinese Poker, went to the Indian gambling in Little India one Sunday, but that's it.

Singapore - Green Day

But the last weekend was really amazing. I went with Nadine on thursday evening to Bali. The first night we slept quite next to the airport in Sanua in a nice hotel with straw tiled cottages. As we didn't want to have an Indonisian driver arround all the time we finally decided to rent a car and drive it by ourselves. First they wanted us to give a very old and crapy Suzuki Jeep with nearly no tires anymore. But as we thought, some tires would be nice at least, they offered us a really huge car called "Toyota Kijang Innova". We took it.
I told the renter that I didn't have a International Licence, but he told us, in case we should just offer the police 50US and we will be fine. (Fortunately we didn't get into any situation where we were forced to grease someones hand).

So we went along the south-east coast towards Amlapura, stopped at some temples and black beaches to turn after that into the heartland to finally reach after hours on narrow winding streets, passing by some rice terraces, really poor villages and a great landscape, a village called Kedisan at Lake Batur. We spent our night there in a really basic hotel with not very clean towels and linen. But we didn't stay that long in bed anyhow because the next morning we startet at 3.30am to climb Mount Batur in order to enjoy the sunrise from there.

It was a really great tour of in summary 3hours walking. We stopped at a mountain shelter to enjoy the sunrise from there and the guide - that cost ten times the price they wrote in Lonely Planet - cooked some eggs and banana toast for us. After the sunrise, we went further to the mountain top to have a great view of the whole caldera with Laka Batur in the middle.

After we came back and enjoyed a second breakfast at the hotel we drove back towards southern Bali to spend our rest of the day and the night in Ubud, the major city for arts and handycraft in Bali. There we had a look at all the tiny shops and in the evening saw one of the typical Bali dance performances, called "Legong". The dance was really nice but the music after a while kind of annoying :-) The hotel there was great, situatet at the slopes of a rainforest covered canyon in "original" Bali-style.

The last day we went to the southern peninsula to spend our time at a small and nearly empty beach and enjoyed the sand, the waves and the surfer's feats.

In summary it was again a really great weekend. Though the people are sometimes kind of annoying. They are trying all the time to sell you there stuff, there service, there skooter, ... But I think it is really worth a travel!

Singapore - Weekend in Bali

The first week back in Singapore is over and after I overcame my jet lag, it was really awesome.

At my project I managed to write my first script that worked immediately in my entire life. (I love to have success!!)
On friday then there was - because the semester starts today - a information event for exchange students at NTU. I got to know lots of "caucasian" people from all over the world and had a interesting guided tour through the Chinese Heritage Center there.
- Caucasian actually is how Asian's call non-asian white people like Europeans, Americans etc.

In the evening I had again the best dumplings in the world and after that went to "Zouk", a quite famous club in Singapore, that also organized that festival in december. The DJane "Sister Bliss" was formerly one half of the group "Faithless" and it was quite amazing to listen to songs like "Insomnia" performed live.


After 1.5 hours of sleep I went for two days to "Bintan" together with Nadine. The journey by ferry that took one hour was a bit hard as to little sleep, no breakfast, very heavy sea, puking people all arround and a ferry company that showed the most disgusting Mr. Bean videos to us. (I don't know, whether they maybe want people to puke...) But I servived quite good.

Luckily we arrived at our really nice resort. As there it was a really strong wind it was not possible to go to the sea for swimming. But as we where in our room I first saw a really huge Iguana (about 50cm long) crawling on the street right infront of the room. We fell a little asleep then and I woke up by a really loud noise. As I looked to the window about 20 monkeys jumped one after another from the roof of our hotel to the tree infront of the room. Two of them seemed to be scared of jumping and therefor climbed down on our window bar, not without having a curious look inside the room.
In the evening we went to a nice Pub with live band and I did a huge mistake when I sang along the songs too ardent. Finally I head a microphone infront of my face and was forced to sing together with the band. REMEMBER: Don't sing along with a live band!!

On sunday we joined a organized full day tour around the island. We where in four - two japanese guys, Nadine and me - and an Indonesian driver who told as really a lot about the island. Outside of the resort area the island suddenly looke very different. Not clean at all, very small and poor houses in the middle of the forest, but it was really nice. We first went through the inner part of the island, passed by at Durian trees and pine-apple fields towards the island's eastcoast. Nearly the whole eastcoast is seamed by a beach wich is 65km long. There are small wooden houses built on stilts everywhere. And I went finally to the sea which was legendary. It was so nice to see a real landscape and not all the artificial Singaporean stuff. And guess how many people fit on a motor cicle? - At least five! The whole family and additionally some goods are packed on one cicle. Amazing.


For lunch we then went Bintan's main city called Tanjong Pinang. The restaurant where we ate had it's best time long ago and the plates where not clean at all. But I survived :-) The city itself is really, really dirty, you see waste everywhere you look arround and it's also kind of smelly. From the city's harbor we went further with a small wooden boat to a small island in front of the city visiting a mosque and some original houses there. There where loads of really huge butterflies. And on the way back to the city we saw - instead of seagulls - about 20 bold eagles ("Weißkopfseeadler") circling over the water and looking for some fish to eat.

The way back then from the island to Singapore was quite calm and for a nice ending we took a wheat beer at Singapore river together with Philip and Oli, two guys working for ARD in Singapore. In summery it was a really nice and worthwile weekend trip.

Singapore - Bintan

After 10 really great days in Germany, I finally returned to Singapore. I enjoyed my time at home really much and am kind of sad that it was only so short. But life goes on and in 9 weeks I will be back for another great party with you :-)
In the meanwhile I'll go twice to Indonesia, once to Malaysia, celebrate the Chinese New Year - and of course work a little bit. I think it will be a great time, too.
I wish all of you a happy New Year! Thanks again for the nice evening with you at "Nage und Sauge" and sorry for all of you that couldn't come.
Till my next report from here, have a great time!