Day Eleven

Wow. So much has happened since Wednesday! Let me try and remember everything…

Thursday. Class was structured around organizational behavior type topics and how as the world is becoming more condensed- therefore creating this new need to be a ‘global citizen’ if you will. As more people work abroad or their work at home simply required travel, it is becoming so important to understand other cultures and the proper way to do business, act socially, etc. The afternoon involved a visit to Temasek which was absolutely a once in a lifetime opportunity. Temasek is essentially a giant investment house with a portfolio of about $186 billion, one of the largest in the world. Usually a bit ‘closed doors’ they were surprisingly open to our visit and gave a nice presentation on what it means to work alongside the government and invest in so many different ventures.

Jenny, Julia, Me by the water

Thursday night Julia, Jenny, and I decided to go for a walk down Arab Street where we wandered in and out of shops. We had dinner on the water which was absolutely beautiful. Singapore is not cheap, as previously stated, and it’s funny how your bill adds up as we were charged for water, peanuts, and towelettes we didn’t even ask for. We also had our first ‘Singapore sling’ which was how the restaurant owner lured us into his space in the first place. Pretty sneaky.

Looking back at the new casino and the fullerton- an amazing hotel

Friday was our last day of official class where we looked at the battle between Sony and Samsung. Fun fact about Sony- apparently their last truly innovative product was the robo dog, Aibo, in 1999. Samsung is also about 5x the size of Sony which I did not know prior to this class. Friday afternoon we visited Ernst & Young Singapore where we were basically told over and over how they would love for us to come work with them. Wishful thinking E&Y, wishful thinking. It looked like a ‘high-tech sweatshop’ as one classmate lovingly put it. 

A smattering of food

Friday evening was pretty big – we ate dinner at Lau Pa Sat where it basically turned into an enormous family-style extravaganza with dishes appearing left and right. Knocked out several dishes I was told to try in one sitting including sting ray, chili crab, satay, and various other local favorites. After this, we went to an area known as St. James Power Station which is apparently a popular bar scene with the locals. We were pretty much the only white people there and continued to make a spectacle out of ourselves until about 3:30 in the morning when we decided we should gracefully bow out.

Pure chaos

Naturally everyone slept in on Saturday- our one free day this week. We all had big plans that slowly slipped away as it became clear how tired we were and how we needed to pack and be ready for our long Sunday. Julia and I went into town for a little while and browsed little India and some other shopping centers. We once again all had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and then headed to the Raffles Hotel to enjoy one last Singapore sling and some local music before heading back to the lodge to try and repack everything into our suitcases. Kermit is getting pretty full, hopefully he makes it until the end, might be buying another bag…

Lisa, Laura, me, and Amy drinking Singapore Slings at Raffles

So now we are up to today, Sunday. What an amazing, amazing day. After an early departure from the University, we boarded Air Asia for Jakarta. This is not an airline I ever care to fly again, except for the duration of this trip. I thought for a moment that a child was flying the aircraft and at one point in time steam was coming in through the overhead bins. Kind of alarming if you ask me. Once we got to Jakarta we herded 24 students and 3 professors through security and customs and we were off to our first stop- Sunda Kelapa. 

Ships waiting to either be loaded/unloaded

This place was really fascinating. It was originally a port circa 13^th century that was active particularly through the spice trade. A new port was built in the late 19^th century to deal with the increasing demand and size of ships while this one today is still used for sail ships. We wandered up and down the dock looking at boats for a while (side note- freakishly hot here) and a lot of students went aboard one of the ships. I did not partake in this event given my previously stated immense fear of drowning and the fact that you had to walk a gangplank over sewage filled water to get on the boat. Not for me.

I refused to board the boat this way

alarmingly tight squeeze

We then boarded some of the most rickety boats I think I have ever seen and paddled our way over to Kota. Somehow I had to be the first one to get in my boat which I was fairly certain was going to flip me into the water. Thankfully I survived after we played some serious bumper boats trying to get out. Once we crossed the water, we wandered through this village of people who live in fairly low levels of poverty. While most of these people do have some form of income, you can see from the pictures that the living conditions are left to be desired. The children were so happy to see us and loved to say hello back as we walked through the narrow, trash-filled alleyways. It is amazing to see places like this when you think about how we live back in the United States.

basically canoeing through sewage water

It's amazing how different some people's lives are

The kids are so happy to have their picture taken

We next went to a place called Batavia Square which is a central meeting area in Jakarta. This was a fairly lively space, located not too far away from the village we toured previously. By this point in time we were all covered in sweat and exhausted from the intense experiences we had already had that morning. We watched a few street performers and ducked in for an air conditioned lunch at a local café. It’s pretty tricky here because you cannot drink the water and we have been advised to be very careful of what food we choose to eat. Looks like nice restaurants and bottled water all week. Can't even drink the water at our hotel- or brush our teeth with it for that matter. Everything is crazy cheap though- to give you an idea, 1 US dollar is equal to about 9,000 rupiah. You can imagine how amused we were at the airport when we were all making withdraws of about $1.7 million rupiah (roughly 200 US dollars). Yikes.

Batavia Square

After all of this, we eventually checked into the Ritz Carlton (not complaining, but a bit strange after seeing the poor parts of town...) and all headed off to do our own things for the evening. A few girls and I decided to take full advantage of our access and hit the hot tub/steam room, took two showers to get clean from the day’s events, and had a fantastic dinner to top it all off inside our hotel. Starting tomorrow we will tour various companies throughout the week- no more class- and we will probably be spending most evenings here at the Ritz since it isn’t particularly safe to wander around Jakarta at night. 

I can safely say- I finally feel like I am in Asia. - Becca

Our welcome leis after a long day in the heat

Kathryn and I's home for the next week, doesn't even do it justice