It's now the end of September which means the mid-semester break has come to an end and my exchange experience is officially half over :(. As you can tell, I'm quite sad about this because I know I will miss Singapore and all the friends I've made here, but at the same time, I'm really excited to go home and see my family and all my friends again. This past week, for the break, I went to Cambodia and Vietnam with a few friends. Last Thursday morning, flew into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. After checking into our guesthouse, we set out to see the Killing Fields. Before going to Cambodia, I had always thought the Holocaust was terrible, but I had no idea about the genocide that occurred in Cambodia only 30 years ago. It was really eerie to be at the fields and see all the skulls on display and the mass graves. Also, reading the stories of how Cambodian citizens were killed and the educated class was wiped out made me really wonder how humans can do things like that to other humans. After the fields, we went to the S-21 prison, which used to be a high school but was converted into a prison/torture building by the communists, the Khmer Rouge. Being there was even more scary because there were pictures of all the prisoners and you could still see blood stains on the floors and walls. Anyway, I think I'll stop there with the gory details. Apart from that, being in Cambodia was also depressing because it was such a beautiful place with such lush, green vegetation and such nice people, but so much poverty. Everywhere we went, there were little kids, sometimes, still babies, begging us for money. It was really impressive though because most of the kids speak really good English and some of them even speak French, Spanish, and/or Japanese as well. After 2 days in Phnom Penh, we took a 6 hour boat along the Mekong River to Siem Reap. The boat ride was beautiful because there were trees all around, growing in the water and villages of straw huts built on the water, and the villagers would all wave to us as we rode by. When we got to Siem Reap, we headed to Angkor Wat for sunset. Angkor Wat, one of the wonders of the world, is basically 25 mile area of 1000 year old temples and shrines that were originally built by Cambodian kings to glorify themselves and were later used as Hindu temples and then Buddhist temples. That is where we spent the next 2 days in Siem Reap, exploring all the different temples. They were truly amazing, so beautiful and intricately built - it's a wonder how they did it all by hand and no machinery. Some of the temples we were the only ones there and there was forest all around so it was really peacful and serene. And other temples, there were police officers sitting there pawning off their badges and hats to compensate for the mere $25 USD that they make a month, which was kind of weird, considering we were in temples (you'll see pictures of Jun buying a badge, which me and Heather also did later on). After Siem Reap, all of split up to different destinations. Irene and Carli went to Thailand, Jun went back to Phnom Penh (because he had joined us late and wanted to go back to see the killing fields), and me and Heather went to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Before going there I had been warned of the traffic but didn't think it would really be that bad. I was wrong though. The traffic seems endless there but what is really interesting is it's all motorbikes and scooters! There's hardly any cars and you'll see from the pictures, the streets are really just a sea of motorbikes - I've definitely never seen anything like it in my life and I doubt that I ever will again. Needless to say, crossing the street was quite interesting as was trying to get directions to places because not many people spoke any English at all. On top of that, we almost got robbed by our cyclo drivers when they totally lied to us about how much the trip would cost and one of the drivers took 300,000 Vietnamese dollars ($20 USD) right out of my wallet and put it in his pocket. It took a little yelling, but I did get my money back and we avoided cyclo drivers for the rest of the trip. All in all, it was a fun and interesting 8 days but it was very tiring and I'm glad to be back in Singapore and be able to relax for a bit before classes start again.