This is all of us at Paya. Photo courtesy of Hyok.
Not sure how much more updating in arriere you're going to get from us unfortunately...
I'll try putting some more pics up.

Well... we are back in Sydney and it is really really cold!
I feel a bit depressed having been back and having to go staight back to Uni. But what can you do. I just thank the gods that I'm not still doing the 6 hours a day the hell-frozen-over room that was my marketing and Chinese Room at NUS.

I feel that I have to add an explaination to this post about the two photos posted by Emi-lou. We had just finished all the assesable work for our trip and were in the need for a bit of a wind-down. Luckly we had some of the greatest TA's in the world and they were willing to show us some of the wild night life in Singapore.

The bar that we ended up at was called CU- as in Cyote Ugly... and yes we are dancing on the bar. I know that I tell everyone that I don't dance- but I thought to myself that it was the last night in Singapore and it was time to let my inhibitions fall to the floor. Little did I know that there was a camera in the hands of one of the dastardly Aussie students ready to pounce on us with a Kodak moment.

Well.. that is about it for me, the details will only be let out of the jar with much drinks and a lot of pursuading. All I can say is that I had fun and I wish I was back!

Last Night in Singapore

wow, it's been a while now

ok...
so, we're back from tioman. I apologise for the lack of updates, I guess so much has happened since I last wrote that it'll be a little funny.
This won't be in any kind of order I guess, just random things that we've been doing.

I'll try and pick up from Desaru.

Desaru is a tiny little village on the coast of Johor. We negotiated a room at the one hotel we could find after dicovering that the motel we initially had in mind was just a smidgen far away (read 40km) and the 5 of us spent most of the afternoon lazing on the beach, enjoying the warm waters and generally relaxing after the long journey.
We found the local food to be quite impressive, between us ordering squid and stingray as well as a few other culinary delights. We headed back to the beach to enjoy the cooler evening and in very cliched fashion found ourselves lying back looking at the stars and commenting on satellites we could see. Sadly the insects known as mosquitos and sandflies soon defeated us and we crawled into bed. Vowing to watch the sunrise over the ocean the next morning, I set my trusty phone alarm for 5.45 (a compromise made between my suggestion of 6am and those of others who were certain the sun rose before then)
The night passed and before we knew it, my alarm was rousing us from our sleep.
After pressing the snooze button only once, I dragged myself from the bed and found some clothes. The others protested, but soon all 5 of us were making our way through the dark and down the path to the beach. The lights of fishing boats dotted the ocean scape, but no rays of sunshine were yet to be seen.
We joked around and took photos as we waited for the sun to meet us. Finally some time around 6.30 the first rays started to stain the sky. The clouds were quite impressive, and if I get my act together properly, I may well get some photos up here someday!
Once the sun had found its way into the sky, we headed back up to the hotel for our complementary breakfast. It was interesting to see the buffet dotted with fruit, eggs, and fried noodles. Definitely a new experience for us, but one we would come to expect after our time in tioman.
Finally, after lazing on the beach and in the pool for most of the rest of the day, we opted to catch the ferry back to singapore, rather than attempt another 7 hour bus trip.
Oddly enough, it took us longer to get to a bustop from the ferry station at changi wharf than it did for us to get from malaysia back to singapore.
7 hours on buses, and 30 minutes on a boat... go figure.
But, as we all seemed to agree, the journey there was half the fun. (although the others can correct me if I'm wrong)

Chinese work

There has been a prolonged period of inactivity on this blog so I thought I'd tell you about some of the work we have been doing. Today the chinese class had an oral assessment. We had to speak on the topic "Wo zui xihuan de ren" which is the person I like the most. We had limited vocab to work with but ill share with you what I wrote. I wont put the english translation, someone who speaks mandarin can do it in the comments or make a new post.
My speech

Ge wei hao
Wo zui xihuan de ren shi wode gege. Ta jiao Adam. Ta bu tai gao ye bu tai ai. Ta hui shuo yi dianr fa wen.
Ta xihuan kan ying wen shu, ke shi bu xihuan kan fa wen shu.
Ta hen hao kan. Ta shi ge hen hao de xue shang. Ta ai he pi jiu ye ai he pu tao jiu. Ta bu hui chang ge. Ta hen ai chuan hao kan ye hao gui de yi fu.
Ren ren dou shuo ta shi ge hao ren. Ke shi wo jue de ta shi xiao wang. Wo zai shi da wang

After the speeches we did some chinese calligraphy where we learnt how to write our names. We are all going to Tioman island on Sunday morning and we need to pack all of our stuff up for 10.30 am tomorrow so I doubt there will be much activity on this website (not that there is anyway. 8 people listed but only 3 posters!!!) until we get back next friday.