Pedal Ubin, Army open house

Last weekend it was finally time for some travelling around the city! You always hear about exchange students that have been busy travelling so much around the other countries in the region that they tend to forget about Singapore itself! Not me!

Friday night I went to Greg's Hungarian party at his place where I met all the Hungarian people from the party at the Novotel again. It was quite fun but unfortunately I could not stay longer than 1 am because we (Adam, Ella and I) had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning the following day.

The reason was our trip to Pulau Ubin, a small island North East of Singapore. The trip was organized by some tour guides from the Raffles museum which was quite neat since they explained the history and the backgrounds of some historical places. For example, there is a shrine dedicated to a German girl that lost her life during the outbreak of the second world war when German settlers were captured and put into jail in the British colonies. She fell down a cliff on the island and a shrine was built for her. Of course I really enjoyed that one. Haha..

But the most exciting thing was still to come! The whole time we were all riding on mountain bikes. Adam and I stayed longer than the rest of the group and also Ella left quite early. Later on we eventually went to nearly every single spot on the entire island. In for a penny, in for a pound. The adventure took us 5 more hours and we accidentally got lost at some of the roads and ended up in the muddiest and tightes pathways ever. If that wasn't bad enough Adam had a flat tire. Murphy says hi. After all it was quite fun and it turned out to be one of the coolest things we did that day.. Today I have, however, 10 mosquito bites on my legs... so maybe long pants or mosquito repellant next time?


Sunday, Xiang the German speaking dude picked me up and together we rode to the Army open house here in singapore. I have been wondering why Singapore puts so much emphasis on having an army. All males have to do National Service for 2 years after they graduate high school. Now I was of the opinion that since Singapore is so small compared to Malaysia or Indonesia, it would hardly stand a chance in case of an attack anyway. And since the situation in other countries of South East Asia is not very stable it is quite reasonable to make use of all means of protection that are available and to prepare for the worst. So Singapore does not have another choice anyway.

At the open house the army "showcased" all its military equipment just like anywhere else I guess. I have never been to one so it was quite fun doing all those physical activities such as running a parcours and taking a phys. ed. assessment.
All in all a fun weekend and hopefully I will do experience some more like that!