BELGIUM

I have half an hour to post this because i am going to Paris soon, and tonight, to Amsterdam... Wheeeeeeeee! It's a big group and we are ALL EXCITED! :D



Brussels - the administrative capital of the EU.
and that's it. Haha.... There really isnt anything much happening in Brussels, other than the fact that there are a lot of bars and chocolate and Let Petit Julien - The Manneke Pis (the pissing boy)It is the national symbol of Belgium and is as small as the country is compared to its large neighbours of France and Germany. When I say small, trust me, it is REALLY SMALL. Basically we just spent the whole day bugging KinYew to bring us to the chocolate places and waffle places... :P

Voila! Our waffles! I tried the real Brussels waffle which was square and there's sugar on top (slightly fluffier) and the others tried the Liegois one which was round and had sugar baked into it. We tried the Strawberry jam (me), white chocolate (Rosh and it was damn jelat for her), chocolate (Shuz), whipped cream (Fang, ya... she's thin la, can afford to) and Kinyew just leeched on everyone's and got us all cackling with laughter when he keeps getting whipped cream on his chin and cheeks. hahaha. :D

Bruges, another city in belgium, on the other hand is SO GORGEOUS. it really looks like it just came out of a postcard. with canals (not singapore smelly kind), boats, swans and lots of flowers around... Yes, even horse carriages! As you can see from the photos, it is not my camera, but the scenery that is soooooo wonderful. If only it wasn't sooo freezingly windy, otherwise we would prolly just sit by the river and have a cup of coffee. We did, however, sit on a bench and just gossiped while eating chips and Fang's 1 day old cheeseburger. :D So the point is, if you wanna visit Belgium, DO NOT just stop over at Brussels and end there because there are other cities that are more gorgeous than that (i.e. Bruges and Antwerp)

Went into the Choco-Story museum in Bruges and learnt about the history of chocolate. As singaporeans, we even asked for an extra chocolate during the chocolate making presentation... hehehe.... oh well. :D but it really seemed damn easy man, just fill it with choco and freeze it. haha. i also can make. :P Pictures include the chocolate alcohol (which i guess prolly taste like Baileys), chocolate jam, chocolate everything... There was even an exhibition on myths of chocolate. I.e. WILL CHOCOLATE MAKE YOU FAT? Ans: If you are slim, you can, for example, eat a plain chocolate and you will be fine. If you are overweight, slim down first, then you can reintroduce chocolate into your diet. If you consume in moderation, you will not get fat. damn funny right!!! haha... Also i found out that my FAV chocolate - the white chocolate contains 0% cocoa and instead is just made purely out of cocoa BUTTER and powdered milk and SUGER. I am soooo dead. :( But still, i like. :D

Fries, Mussels and Beer! Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy.

Moving on to Antwerp, the city of Gays. In just one drinking session with 3 guys in a suuuuuuuuuuper nice hostel, i found out that they were ALL GAY. and not related at all. haha... one was a veteran gay who worked as an intern in a fashion house (Antwerp is just like Barce... soo many shops!), one was in denial (he said he was straight, but the other gay told me his radar told him he was gay) and the last one whom i got the closest to (shopped with him and heard all his stories...) was a newbie in the scene. :D sooo it was really fun to listen to their stories, learnt a new phrase (one-hour-fax... think one night stand, but shorter), and realised that men are just men, be it straight or gay. all they want is sex. oh well. nevertheless, he was a really nice person and hopefully we can keep in touch. haha... PS: Chimay beer is dammmmmmn nice! I love dark beer now... Namaste peeps, can we go drinking when Fang and I come back???

And lastly, friendships forged in belgium. This trip was SOOOOOOOOO MUCH fun because of the people... I am sooooo glad Shuwen found me on facebook and we got together after 5 years of no contact, and that she brought along Kinyew, our resident tourist guide who was soooooooooooooooooo much fun!!! (I'm still crossing my fingers you can come to Ams with us!) The jokes shared and the loads of laughter... The beer drinking and semi-highness from 9.2%... The counting of mussels and sharing of waffles... It's too good. We HAVE to meet up again! :D

All in all, Belgium was really fun and in fact it's one of our best trips yet. :D

i love bruges and antwerp!

Dear all

i am blogging this from this real nice hostel in antwerp and i love it! the bar is nice and cosy and the owner is juuuust TOO funny.... :D brussels was oooook but Bruges was soooooooooooo gorgeous! i took like 200 photos today and i just adore the place so much... if you are only going brussels, it is NOT ENOUGH because these 2 other cities just redefined belgium in my dictionary. more pictures later but for now... i am going to enjoy a nice cup of tea, write in my journal and listen to very nice belge music. exactly what an exchange should be, i think. Great city, great hostel, great friends to enjoy it with; Kinyew, shuwen, rosh and fang; YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST. ok going going gone.

PS; it just snowed and there was HAIL. hhahahahahahhaha ;D

Headache

I don't know who reads this blog. But if you have gone for an exchange before or if you have been to Europe before, i need some advice.

I have 15 days. Should I
1) Travel to Italy only and extensively.
2) Travel to Italy for 10 days and Greece for 5 days. Is that too little and too rushed?

5 days to Athens and Santorini only seems sooooo little. Maybe i should keep Greece and Turkey for another day. But im greedy and i wanna go everywhere!!!

h.e.a.d.a.c.h.e.

My favourite Rouen girls...

People: Fang. Alvi. Wanling. Rosh. Cherysa. Shujun. Me +
Food: Pineapple rice. Sushi. Cauliflower curry. Ginseng chicken soup. Salad. Chicken Porridge +
Drink: Apple cidre. Sparking wine +
Fruit: Mango +
Drunk Bimbo: Fang
= LOTS OF FUN!

Wah liew, the party was damn fun la! Wanling, please send us the food pictures! My gosh, it was suuuuuuch a slumber PJ party at 8pm la!!! Where we bitched about celebrities, thought that Prince William's fiancee is not very pretty, painted nail polish, sang boy bands songs (not me, bleah), laughed over bed bugs and all sorts of bugs, moaned about graduation in one year, said all sorts of nonsense and laughed at Fang for her true-blue bimbsness. Hail the Queen! :D AND the walk to Le Plaide to send Wanling back was soooo good! Ahhhh, cold but cosy. it's such a great feeling! Love you girls... :P

PARIS - the city of lights and romance

This is REALLY outdated, since my Paris trip happened twice - 27 Jan with the usual gang and 17 Feb with Rosh, Viktoria and Ann-Mari (From Sweden and Finland)

We were actually planning to go to Spain that weekend, but because of flight cancellation due to heavy fogging (it was still winter then), we changed our plans to Paris instead!

From here you can see the Paris metro tickets which cost 1.40 euros each, Rue Hermel which INSTANTLY reminded me and Rosh of HERMIEEEEEEE, on our way to Sacre Coeur (which means Sacred Heart, refers to Jesus i think...a beauuuutiful place where we can see a panoramic view of Paris, as we sat down on the stairs listening to people jam, it was a real bonding session that evening...), how artsy Paris is with the numerous art galleries and paintings and most significantly, that Parisians or rather French in general have DAMN SMALL cars and they park super damn close to each other. Fang and Alvi were lamenting about how pro the french's parallel parking skills are, although we did notice that MOST of the cars had bumps either at the front or back or both. :D

Lourve: Where we spent more than 7 hours walking around and listening to the audio-guide. it was a really good 5 euro investment cos it allowed us to understand more about the artworks, instead of just walking around aimlessly. Art isnt really art unless you know its history. :D And this brings back alot of memories because the last time i stepped in here when i was 12, my Da-jie brought me around and SHE was my audio-guide (she graduated with a fine arts degree) and i guess to a large extent, she was the reason why i had to come to France for an exchange. to experience it all again. i love you Da-jie! ok, emo aside, we managed to walk around quite abit and might i say, i think i finished everything i wanted to see. :D special mention to the french large paintings and the egyptian sculptures which rosh and i abbbbsolutely adored. :D

Dinner at the foots of the hill of Sacre coeur. loved the dinner and the company. :D

Monster Ivy decided that we should walk! haha, so i made my poor friends waaaaaaaaalk all the way from Sacre Couer to Champs Elysee... heyyy, and with that, we made our discovery: Paris Red Light District and Moulin Rouge!!! I think we're not attractive enough because no one tried to hit on us.. hahaha. Went into a Sex Shop called Sexodrome where the first level was merchandise (think lots of porn dvd, sex toys, blow up doll with blond pubic hair, and 12 channels of porn. haha), 2nd was strip tease, 3rd was spa, and 4th was PRIVATE. hahahahha. :D

Notre-Dame of Paris. Contrary to belief, there isnt only ONE notredame in france. in fact, there are MANY. one in each city (I saw one in Lyon, in Paris and in Rouen).

And to end off this entry, Lourve at night. Beautiful isnt it? Rosh and I decided to come here a 2nd time to do the Da Vinci Tour. It was AWESOME! the music and the pace of the recording was exactly what we would have done, so when the recording said "turn left and you will see a window", we turned and we SAW! haha... i love roshni, i think if i were an indian (or even a chinese man) ill like her. :D too bad i have isaac, hahahahaha. :D and the last bit of the tour brought us to the Holy Grail. where we took ALOT of pictures. :D it felt so good to relive the book which was awesome and the company made it even better. :)

I doubt this will be the only time i'll go to Paris, but the next times will not be with these best buddies. :D So this pic is for them. :D to remember the good times we had in Paris, talking to ducks and eating cheap biscuits and clementines. and thanks for sharing the Fanta. :P

THE FLEA MARKET @ ROUEN

I declare today one of my best days in Rouen. The sun was purrrrfect, the company was fantastic, and it felt just soooo good to walk around, laze around and just enjoy simple pleasures of going to the market to choose the best chicken, photo-whoring with beeeeautiful spring flowers, walking with my best buddy Rosh and neeeearly got lost (which was perfectly fine by us, we were imagining all sorts of CSI images, dead bodies etc), having a great dinner conversation with my darling roomie Ying (who thought the risotti she bought were wantons, oh well, pity. but they tasted real good in chinese soup!) and to top it off, EIGHT episodes of Ugly Betty. Exactly how i imagined my exchange would be like! Who cares about clubbing and getting drunk? :D

This is the flea market at Rouen. It only operates at full capacity on Sundays till 1pm. So early birds catch the worms! They have furniture, old postcards, porn dvds, fresh veges, bags from China, cooked rabbits (alvi said so) and very pretty flower stalls. This is like a family hangout where the old people congregate to buy groceries and the younger people chill out at cafes lined around it. Pictures include the freshest strawberries that we've ever seen (and bought! yummmm, the biggest cheese, and the man who sold me my delicious dinner of potato and chicken and tomato for 4.5 euros!

Then we decided to photo-whore at a look out point near our hostel. Cos we stay on Mont Saint Aignan (mont = hill) sooooo the view was soooo good! And cos it's spring and we luuuurve the weed flowers that can be found EVERYWHERE, we decided to pose with them! haha... pardon us, 3 girls looking preeeeetty in our sunglasses and flowers. :D


This was yesterday where the girls had suuuuuch a great time doing all sorts of girly things. :D Sharing galettes, crepes and apple cidre in Le Tarte Tatin, a reeeeeeeally yummy restaurant. Smart of us to share the lunch menu for which we only paid 5.4 euros for a very very full lunch! The Tarte Tatin (apple tart) was sooo good! -drool- Later on we also had ice cream! Mine was strawberry and banana, which tasted sooo gelate... Fang's Caramel and Shujun's Hazelnut were sooo good too! :P ohhh i definitely want to have it again! Then we went to Saint sever (rouen's shopping centre) and shopped! Like the girly girls we are, we spent so much time in the cosmetics and beauty shop which was 50% discount storewide! (Tout le magazin!)I bought hand cream for 1.75 euros! cheeeap! We then went to the shops where Ivy decided to give up her shopping queen crown to Fang who had a shit load of stamina. but of cos, i only had 3 hours of sleep the night before, can't help it. bahhh.

The best place where we had super lots of fun was in... the toy store! posed with soft toys, lamented about our age and how lame we must look to the frenchies and their kids for trying out hula hoops, looked at kids' make up box, played with the toys, and decided that dinosaur toys are lame. (PS: the spiderman costume had ABS. seriously. padded ones. hahahaha. and there's actually a ninja turtle costume. who would dress their son as a turtle??!)

Mummy, it's Cherry Blossoms!

I love Spring and Rouen...

and all my friends here. love you all!

ROUEN - My home

Well, many of you may wonder where exactly is Rouen? Pronounced as "Who-on", with a slight Frenchie accent. :) And when you say, "shall i visit you?", sometimes i don't know if i should be nice and say ok! or be honest and say, er, there's really nothing much here actually ( i welcome you! just that there really isnt much here la). buuuuut if you ask me, it's a really nice home, because i love my room, i love my roommates and i love the fact that everytime im tired after travelling, i have a HOME to come back to. and truthfully, we never fail to miss Rouen whenever we travel, even if it's only to Paris.

As you walk through the historical centre, past half timbered houses, discover architectural treasures for example Gothic monuments like the Notre Dame Cathedral, St Ouen Abbey, Saint Maclou Church and the Palais de Justice or Renaissance style monuments like the Gros Horloge, Saint Maclou Ossuary and the Bourgtheroulde Mansion.

As you can see from the pictures, Rouen is largely focused on its half timbered houses and its very own heroine Joanne D'Arc where she was tortured here and then burnt at the stake. Rouen Cathedral - A very large cathedral that i told myself i would go every week to admire its architecture, but i've only been there 3 times. :) The universities here are generally not coordinated like Duke and hence, buildings are all over the place with different designs. but places like Carrefour, Mexicoop and Place Corbert are definitely ones that i will miss (they are all supermarkets) haha. :D


My room is a hell of a mess. it WAS neat, but somehow, it just became messy. or rather, it just became ME again. haha. :D i love it! although i think isaac will shake his head in resignation if he ever sees it. oh well. :P my clementines are a must have, on my table, as my fruit of these 6 months. ultra juicy and cheap and my precious source of vits. 2 bottles of wine sitting lonely on my table, wondering WHY their owner only drank so little here. strange eh? haha... apple cidre is the drink Normandians prefer, and we actually really think it's nicer than wine. My coco-pops, milk (breakfast), my nail polishes brought from Singapore, my bag of accessories, my stash of food and precious pastes and i think that pretty much makes up my room. ohhh, and the most important 2 items: my colourful basket and my greenish blue floormat. rosh and i bought these when we went on a shopping spree to decorate our rooms. never regretted buying them cos they make my room look less hostelish and more like MY room. :D

Chris Zhuo says I write too much in my blog, so i shall end here. but Barce photos are definitely on its way. i just need to transfer them from Fang, Alvi and Rosh.