Lisa's walk to school

So we thought it would be interesting to document a typical morning commute to school. I know several people commute to school/work everyday so I thought it would make a good comparison. I know that it has been really cold in northern Vermont recently. (Low of -13 in a few days?) It has been not that cold here, but still misty, and cloudy and about 52 degrees. No central heat here, so it is pretty cold living in concrete buildings! So here are some pictures of Lisa going to school. The first two are out of order, but that is ok.

Every construction zone, and there are many, are surrounded by these green, metal walls. They are then used to pee on, burn garbage next to etc. This is one where we wait for the bus in the morning. Our bus wait time is anywhere between zero and 45 minutes. Totally random.

A section of typical sidewalk-broken and with litter- always.

View from our balcony, if you have been following our blog there are pictures of this same view in August. It is quite different now and changing every day. There are 5 cranes working on this huge building.

Lisa leaving our apartment. Regular door and our "jail" door.

Then we walk down our sidewalk, about 150 yards.

Typical scene in the morning.

Yes! Here comes the 49. Usual motorbike delivering something and excavator driving down the road in the background. This does not mean we get on the bus and go. The driver stops, because it is the end of the line, and he gets off, drinks tea and smokes cigarettes. So far as we can tell, 100% of bus drivers smoke.

This guy was surprisingly enthusiastic this morning. He is a xe om driver. You can sit on the back and he'll take you whereever you want for a few bucks. Notice where he left his flip-flop.

On the bus, normally it is very crowded, between 20 and 120 people. The floor here you can see has a fine layer of dust. The buses are never really cleaned or washed.

Easier to cross this side, people leaving Hanoi in the morning. At 5:00pm this side looks like a parking lot of motorbikes.

Lisa crossing the street of traffic that will not stop for pedestrians. The people that have lined up to her right are hiding behind her. People do this all the time. One person will take the hit, if hit, and the rest are protected.

Then we enter the Vietnam National University.

We walk about 5 minutes...

And then walk through this opening. There is no door to get into the building. Weird.

Fingerprint scanner to enter our SYA area.

We made it to the teachers' office. Some kids ride bikes and leave them here.

In the teachers' office. Notice the heater, we had to get one for each classroom because it has been so cold recently.

Bintan Island

Some pictures of our short 2 day trip from Singapore to Bintan Island, Indonesia.

The toilet in the ferry terminal in Singapore, interesting and accurate.

The sign on the ferry. It was a two hour ride, in the dark going to Indonesia and during the day coming back. We had some pretty big swells and waves on the way back. There is a short video at the end of this blog entry but I was surprised that the microphone on the camera didn't capture the loud bangs as the boat hit the waves. Lisa didn't think it was fun, I loved it...and I kept reading this sign.

The falcon 3. Our ferry back from the island.

Ferry terminal in Bintan Island.

The place we stayed at the resort on Bintan Island.

We watched lots of kite surfers from the shore. This guy was fun to watch.

Kite surfers in the background. Restaurant at the end out on the water.

So I didn't shave during our vacation from school. The beard was nice and warm in Hanoi but here, it was uncomfortable and I shaved it off about 2 hours after this photo.

Trip to Singapore

During our vacation between semesters we managed to make a quick trip to Singapore and from there a ferry ride to Bintan Island in Indonesia (separate blog post). We absolutely loved Singapore and really enjoyed just walking around and ovserving the differences between Hanoi and Singapore. It is the second most densely populated country on Earth with a density of 18,220 people per square mile. Strangely, it looked, smelled and felt much roomier and waaaaay cleaner than Hanoi. It is a country with very strict laws and this is one way to run a country to create such a considerate and pristine condition. People don't honk their horns, pedestrians have the right of way and there are people cleaning the streets and other public areas everywhere. It is an extremely safe and comfortable city. I thought with 100% of the people living in "urban" areas that the city would be filled with concrete etc. with no green space. We were wrong. The city is so well planned, there are plants, trees and grasses growing and intermixed with teh buildings. It is beautiful! Of course this is relatively easy to do at 1 degree north latitude. At some places it really felt like some sort of fictional, futuristic cityscape that you might see in the background of some Star Wars movie. The people you see walking around are from all over the world. There is a large ethnic Chinese population as well as Indian, Malay, Pakistan, English, etc. The city does not feel like an Asian city. There are signs in 4 languages on the subway etc. and people never stared at us like they do in Vietnam. Needless to say, Hanoi has a long, long way to go to ever be like Singapore. We would love to read your comments and impressions on the blog!

A little reminder on the immigration card when entering the country.

Singapore streets.

Clean streets? No motorbikes everywhere? People waiting to cross the street?

One of the coolest buildings we saw while walking around.

The people drive on the other side of the road, which is confusing when crossing the street, but still easier than crossing the street in Hanoi.

Digital sign to alert you how many spaces available in various parking lots. Smart.

Some examples of art from local elementary schools on a wall near the Marina.

One of my favorite drawings there. The title is: I want to scale the highest mountain in the world. It is by Joyce Seah Shin Han in 2006 when she was 11 years old. There is a scale on the left side showing this mountain is 4,000,000 meters high.

I guess the city planners thought Joyce's drawing was pretty cool. So they made a sculpture of it and put it in the park near her artwork.

The top of the sculpture!

This is at the waterfront overlooking some new construction. The building on the left was recently opened, the Marina Bay Sands hotel and shopping. It was impressive. We didn't get to go to the top, but there is a swimming pool and park and restaurant/bar on the top. I can imagine a future James Bond movie incorporating this building into the opening scene and somebody jumping off the top.

The Helix. The only double helix shaped pedestrian bridge in the world.

Inside the shopping area of the Marina Bay Sands. These are chandeliers in one of the many jewellery stores.

Ice skating rink.

Cleaning the already clean glass in the super fancy shopping center at the bottom of Marina Bay Sands.

Lisa next to one of several ceramic pots in the lobby of the MBS hotel. A cool fountain on left side of photo that spills over a granite edge and into a slit in the floor.

Super cool landscape design outside the lobby.

Inside the lobby with more pots.

Truck/business collecting waste oil from restaurants to make into biodiesel.

Along one of the sidewalks.

Museum of fine art.

The next two pictures are of street storm drains. One is in Hanoi, where we get off the bus everyday and the other is in Singapore. Guess which is which!!

This was fun to see in Singapore. In Hanoi, motorbikes are parked and DRIVEN on the sidewalk. Walking on the sidewalks in Singapore was so easy. We didn't have to watch out for motorbikes, puddles of pee, piles of vomit, 4 foot by 6 foot by 5 foot deep holes, piles of rubble, piles of dirt and sand, people cooking, people sneaking up to us and measuring how short they are compared to us, people sitting on stools smoking out of a public and shared bamboo pipe, men sleeping on motorbikes parked on the sidewalk. In short, we could just simply walk down the sidewalk.