How time flies! This is the last day of 2014 and I still recall spending the first day of this year crowding with people at the Vatican City trying to get a glimpse of the Pope. It was an arduous journey for the first half of the year because I had to cope with post-exchange blues and long distance. I did not have much motivation to study and really felt like quitting school. After mins came back, we supported each other and the second half of the year was so much better. Although we could not travel, we were busy hosting couchsurfers and meeting new exchange student friends from all over the world that it felt like we were traveling too. Hope to keep up with this next semester.

Here’s a roundup of the countries that I’ve visited this year:

January
Italy – starting off the new year with a bang in Rome, visited the sinking city of Venice, tried stopping the leaning tower of Pisa from falling, and hiking in gloomy weather in Cinque Terre.

Sweden – where mins spent her semester abroad, hung out mainly in Stockholm and eating meatballs. I like the cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan, but everything was generally quite expensive for me.

Estonia – took an overnight cruise to Tallinn and saw the beautiful old town, it was snowing heavily so we went cafe hopping.

Finland – met up with Mikael in Helsinki, bright sunshine greeted us and we had fun exploring the orthodox cathedral and the former fortress island of Suomenlinna.

Denmark – cold Copenhagen, met up with min’s friend Stine who showed us interesting parts of the city, of which Cristianhavn (the ghetto area -> “you are leaving the european zone now”) left me with deep impressions. also met up with Shihui where we cooked dinner in her apartment cos she was busy studying for final exams.

Macedonia – start of my former Yugoslavian journey and had trouble reading street signs cos everything was written in Cyrillic. Skopje was a city of useless statues along the Vardar river and I felt that the money could have been better used for the locals.

Serbia – Belgrade has a pulsating night life and the views of the city from Kalemegdan fortress were awesome. It still feels very Sovietic with crumbling buildings and the train wasn’t exactly modern and comfortable.

Bulgaria – it was on the night train from Belgrade to Sofia that my camera and shoes got stolen 🙁 just when I was going to complete my trip incident-free. I had to walk in the cold in slippers to the shoe shop to get replacement shoes with people staring at me. This city has a backdrop of the Vitosha mountains and locals would go to a thermal tap in the city park with their big containers to collect warm waters supposedly with healing properties.

Romania – Bucharest reminds me of Paris because it copied the architecture. My host Silviu is awesome and made my stay here wonderful. I also visited Dracula’s castle in Bran, Brasov and Cluj Napoca.

May – June
Thailand – field studies where I suddenly made many new friends from geography whom I didn’t know that they existed before. We stayed with villagers, learning about raw fish eating habits in Ilsan province and the histories of the Kuomingtang soldiers and Burmese refugees in northern Thailand. not forgetting our awesome Thai buddies of course!

July
Romania (revisited) – it’s so much more beautiful in summer! went on a road trip with Silviu and Cristi to the Transfagarasan and Transalpina mountain roads, visited the old German-influenced town of Sibiu. clubbed to trance music in the forest off Bucharest before taking a taxi to the airport.

France (revisited) – didn’t expect to be able to go back to France so soon to parler en français. Thanks to the French Institute, I was the chosen one to represent Singapore at the youth conference on human rights and discrimination in Paris. I met many like-minded youth and we were united by our passion for French and human rights. one day I’m gona visit all of you in your respective countries!

September
Cambodia – field investigation course and I made new geography friends again! It’s such a country of contrast when you have modern Phnom Penh juxtaposed against isolated mangrove communities in Koh Sralao. my favourite part of the trip was staying in the Tonle Sap lake and learning to be a boatman. totally took for granted our mobility for land and on this trip I learnt to enjoy human interaction and stay away from technology.

No travels from October to December because of thesis :/ Thus it has been three months of abstinence and I’m itching to travel again. I hope the hard work put in for my thesis will pay off. Next semester will be my last semester in NUS and I will lead the life of an exchange student (I hope).

Plans for 2015:
Myanmar, Japan, China, Mongolia, Russia, Latvia, Norway.

stay tuned to #donstravels for more updates!
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my friends! 🙂