Author: missruslee

Amsterdam: a different kind of déjà vu.

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Every time I travel, I discover a new reason why I love travelling.

Everyone knows that I’m addicted to travelling, but no one, including myself, can really explain why. There are many reasons to it for sure, and I guess it is a continuous self discovery process. I started out thinking that perhaps it is because I love looking at new sights, the famous landmarks that I have only seen in movies or heard people talk about. And it could have very well started out that way when I first set my foot in a foreign land on my own as a wide-eyed girl discovering new places. However, my last trip to Amsterdam a couple of weeks back made me rethink of this notion – that there is definitely something else to travelling that makes it so dear to me, apart from simply seeing new famous places.

Before the said trip, my first visit to Amsterdam was six years ago. It was my first travel out of Denmark when I was studying abroad in Copenhagen. And back then I liked the place alright, but apart from the Mexican burger and the Samurai fries we had there, nothing made quite an impression on me to make me want to visit the city again.

So when the offer came to go for a road trip to Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the opportunity not because I was in love with the place and had been having the urge to visit again, but more because of the company and the spontaneity of the situation (we came up with the idea on a Wednesday night and left for the 10-hour drive on Friday morning).

However, something startled me when we reached Amsterdam. When our car entered the city centre, my breath was taken away immediately by the sights of the canals. And when we were walking on the lamp-lit streets by the water, I started to wonder how in the world I could have not fallen in love with the city the first time I went there.

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A walk in the park.

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I grew up in South East Asia where the sun is constantly shining, save for days where there are thunderstorms. There are no seasons – just sunny, rainy or cloudy days (with no chance of meatballs unfortunately), with the sun shining for 10 hours consistently throughout the year. People would complain about the heat and the glaring sunlight, and they would go by all means to avoid them. If you are lucky to live in a country like Singapore for example, you can go pretty far by walking through the network of underground concourses built throughout the country without having to be exposed to the sun at all.

So when I first arrived in Denmark, I came with this sense of entitlement for sunshine – that its presence is given and to be avoided. It was not until I have experienced several continuous gloomy days and had to cycle in the pouring rain on the day I needed to submit my paper that I started having the urge to do everything out in the open when the sun is shining. I start cursing the days when I have to stay in my room to read when the sun is shining. I may have also developed the habit of staring idly at the blue sky in public or stopping after every few metres to take pictures while I’m cycling.

In short, I have grown to love the sun, like a proper Nordic person does.

So it is perfectly understandable that last Sunday when the sky was clear and the sun was shining, I took a very long detour on my way home from badminton – what would have taken 30 minutes ended up to be a 1.5-hour journey. I cycled through the University Park of Aarhus University and decided to park my bike and just take in everything around me.

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Copenhagen on mobile.

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I am back after more than a month of silence. I haven’t forgotten about this blog, and I haven’t changed a single bit. I have probably been smiling a bit more and have played chess for what possibly is only the third time in my life.

I'm not really playing chess here though.
And WIZARD chess too!

But other than those, I am still the same. I still love to travel, write, chocolates and cakes. I am also still as forgetful as ever. Remember the time when I wrote about how I still don’t know how to pack properly even after having done extensive travelling over the past few years? Well I still don’t. And during my last weekend trip to Copenhagen, I managed to add to the impressive list of things that I have forgotten to pack: my camera.

It was not as if I could have forgotten it at a worse timing. The weather was great in Copenhagen, the sky was blue and it is not as if my mind kept drifting to my camera sitting comfortably in my school bag in Aarhus and wondering how great the pictures would turn out with a proper camera.

I guess the only thing I could do was to suck it up and make do with what I had at my disposal.

So here are my attempts to capture one of my favourite cities in the world with nothing but my phone camera.

To me, Copenhagen of course always starts with Nyhavn.

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Aarhus, first impressions.

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Well, where do I begin?

It has been a whirlwind of a time since my last post: I have moved myself more than 14,000 km north from Singapore to this city called Aarhus, a city of just over 300,000 inhabitants, of which 10% are students of Aarhus University. Bringing just two (oversized) suitcases and a (gigantic) backpack (well maybe with a big handbag), I have now pretty much comfortably settled into my dorm room, put up some fairy lights (I am very proud of them), bought my bike, got drenched in the rain a few times, started classes and attended more social functions than my introvert self could handle.

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My new home.

Oh and I have managed to lose my wallet too. In a bar. And I miraculously got it back.

So all in all, it has been extremely eventful first 10 days here in Aarhus, and tonight is the first night that I have had some time on my own to sit down and take in everything that I have experienced so far about this city and my new life here.

Here are some of the more coherent thoughts I came up with after sieving through my brain for a few hours and having taken a look at all the pictures that I have taken so far.

Danish (and non Danish) people are awesome.

From the moment I landed on this land, not a single person has treated me less than awesomely. The Danes may look reserved, but they are unbelievably friendly and helpful. I have had people offering to carry my luggage, walked me to my destination when I asked them for direction, and urm, return me my lost wallet with the content still intact. Not to mention Danish classmates and buddies who have been incredibly enthusiastic in helping us find our way around the city. Apart from that, I have been incredibly lucky to meet wonderful new friends who gave me moral support when I was in dire need of it and provided me with directions when I got lost. I still am amazed by how amazing people have been so far, and that’s one of the main reasons I have been coping well here.

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Kuala Lumpur, this time.

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Kuala Lumpur, we often rubbed each other the wrong way.

Five years ago, we met after a very long time and I was frustrated by the chaos of your traffic and the craziness of your city. Which was ironic because I came from the city with probably the worst traffic condition in the world. Needless to say, it was partly my fault – I was too pampered after living in the orderly Singapore for a year, where everything works the way it should.

Last year, I travelled far for you, for a festival that got cancelled the moment I arrived after a six-hour bus ride. Not to mention that my bus broke down for three hours in the middle of nowhere on my way back to Singapore. If not for my company at the time, it was probably my worst trip ever.

So I have to be honest. I was not looking forward to seeing you again last week.

But this time, you surprised me. This time, you were gorgeous.

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The best food we ate in Taiwan.

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I love to eat. A LOT.

So does my friend JY who went to Taiwan together with me (she is slightly taller than me but only half my width which goes to show that the world can be very unfair, but let’s ignore that fact for the purpose of this post).

We also don’t plan a lot when we travel. Hence it is no surprise that we did not have a list of tourist attractions to visit.

But still, we did have a list of food we needed to try. That is simply how much we love to eat.

After eating our way through Cingjing, Sun Moon Lake and Taipei, we had several hits and misses when looking for awesome must-try dishes. So in order to do the world a service and turn the wasted calories into something useful, I have decided to create the list of food we had there that was absolutely worth trying, with occasional notes of which food turned out to be disappointment.

Fried salty mini fish (Cingjing Farm, Cingjing)

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I honestly did not expect much out of the eatery at Cingjing Farm, but this mini fried fish was a nice surprise! It was served hot and crispy with just the right amount of salt, but be careful of lurking fish bones!

Vanilla Roast Chicken (Lao Ji Po, Cingjing)

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This fragrant roast chicken was recommended by our driver from Taichung to Cingjing. I was half surprised and half glad that the main dish of the mountain with the famous sheep farm is not, well, sheep meat. (I find it morally wrong to be eating any animals that I have pet previously. I may have deliberately not pet any pigs in my life because pork).

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perBED Hostel, Sun Moon Lake.

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Before we went for our trip to Taiwan, my friend and I made a pact. We would each pick a city in Taiwan that we were going to visit and book an accommodation there without consulting each other.

Naturally, we both got slightly nervous, mainly because we did not want to disappoint each other with our surprises. To be honest, I am generally pretty easy with where I spend the night while travelling, as long as there are no cockroaches, demons or poltergeist present. But I have to say, not only was I fine with the hostel my friend chose in the end, I was actually very pleased with our accommodation at Sun Moon Lake.

Once she had established that I did not mind staying in dorms, she decided to research into a few places and found this new undiscovered gem called perBED Hostel. It sounded very backpacker-ish, and it did live up to its name, only with an interesting twist. Instead of having the backpackers sleep on normal bunk beds in separate rooms, the hostel has decided to convert cargo boxes and other industrial things into beds and put them all in one big room. perbed1 Continue reading “perBED Hostel, Sun Moon Lake.” →

The unforgettable Sun Moon Lake.

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I just came back from a trip to Taiwan with a friend, and it was wonderful. Lots of interesting things happened, mainly because of our lack of planning. Most of them were great, and I will have a few accommodation places to recommend if you are looking for something affordable and interesting in different parts of Taiwan.

But before all that, I have to talk about Sun Moon Lake, the main highlight of our trip. Which is ironic because if you have asked me about Sun Moon Lake before this trip, I would have told you that there was nothing too memorable about the place, save for a giant lake and a few temples.

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My first visit to Sun Moon Lake in 2011.

But this time round, Sun Moon Lake was determined to make itself memorable. It has definitely surged up to become the highlight of my trip, although not necessarily in a very conventional way.

We arrived at the Shui She Pier, the main pier of Sun Moon Lake, from Puli some time in the late afternoon and realised that our hostel was at the other side of the lake, at a village called Ita Thao, which was away from all the main attractions and the walking trails.

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Lessons STILL not learned from the road.

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Travelling makes you realise a lot of things about yourself. It puts you in touch with who you are and over time you will realise some things that you are good at, some improvements you have made, and some things that you just stubbornly can’t master.

As I’m nearing my last travel in Asia (for a while at least), I reflect and realise that I’m hopeless at these few things – no matter how much practice I have got, I still behave like I’m a novice.

Booking accommodation early

Trust me, things like airbnb.com, hostelbookers, agoda, booking.com have made life easy for everyone. But it is just ingrained in me that I have to leave things to the last minute because I’m too lazy to check locations for accommodations, read every single review etc, so much so that all the good places are always snatched up by the time I decide to move my lazy fingers and type those websites in. Thank goodness that we are spoilt with choices, I still manage to end up with some decent places whenever I travel.

Sense of direction

I can get lost anywhere I almost think it’s a talent. I have been lost on countless streets of every country I’ve visited, in the malls or buildings in general, bathrooms (I kid you not), hotels, etc. I honestly don’t know I have survived this long living in general, let alone travelling.

And something closely related to this…

Reading maps

I tend to abuse all paper maps that I get hold of, turning and turning while I am stuck at crossroads until the criss-crossing lines start to make sense.

With the advent of Google Maps, one would think that things have improved for me. But no. I still turn my phone around and curse at it whenever the map rotates along with it.

Bringing a pen

Pens are almost always essential in every travel. You would need them to fill in those immigration forms, pen your thoughts down in a travel journal or just for taking general notes on the go. But despite telling myself sternly countless times to bring a pen for my next trip, I still don’t, and will only realise it when it’s too late, like when I’m already in the taxi on the way to the airport or worse, on the plane a few thousands feet up in the air when they start distributing the immigration forms.

Although if this pen is magical, I would have so much more motivation to carry it around with me.
Although if bringing this pen means that I can find my prince charming right away, I will have it with me ALL THE TIME.

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