Week 10 - We Back
T-51 days until I’m back in the US. I only plan on being in Singapore for 16 more full days 😳 (not including travel days where I enter or leave the country during the day).
I feel like I start every substack entry with the thought that I can’t believe this has gone by so fast. Is that basic and boring of me to say? I can 100% hear some sorority girl saying that about her “transformative” time in Europe.
From here on out I’m going to try to tone it down, slow it down, and enjoy the time I have left :)
This was the penultimate week before my basketball career rejoins my triathlon and marathon careers in retirement. We had a big game against our rival school, NTU and unfortunately took the L. That was the first game in Singapore where I felt like our competition was respectable.
To be fair, they had 7 guys who played on the Singapore National Team and were well coached. At one point we were down 18 points before climbing back to retake the lead by 1 with 3 minutes left.
Of course, they called time-out, came out and hit 3 3's in a row to go up 8. From there, it was too little, too late and we lost by 3.
So now, we need to win our last game by 18 for 2nd place in Singapore, and by 11 for 3rd place in Singapore.
Later in the week, I took my talents from the hardwood to Hanoi, for my 2nd trip to Vietnam since coming to Singapore. I was joined by a group of 7 people from NUS, only two of whom I had previously met.
I was definitely relieved to explore Hanoi in a group rather than solo, knowing how much solo travel I have coming up and how exhausting it is.
The first day in Vietnam, the other American in the group, Colman, and I, visited the Hoa Lo prison, which is probably more famously known in the US as the prison where John McCain was a POW for 5.5 (😳) years.
I was honestly super surpised to learn how well the US POWs were treated during the war. You can see below there are some photos of them playing basketball and volleyball, and other photos had them attending church services and recieving medical treatment within the prison.
All of this seemed nice until I looked it up, and it turns out that those POWs were brutally tortured and suffered horrible living conditions during their time there.
I guess the propaganda still exists today. They definitely fooled me until I did my research.
That whole experience gave me a really interesting picture into communism and how easily it is to censor and warp an entire population’s perspective. I got convinced that what I was reading was accurate based on 3 minutes of reading.
It definitely makes you think about how easily the media you consume shapes your opinions on everything.
Another super random thing that happened in Hanoi was that I met Drew Binsky, a YouTuber with 3.3 million subscribers who has done collabs with Yes Theory, and has been to every country in the world.
To speed-run some of the other fun stuff we did, we saw the famous Hanoi train tracks, drank beer that cost 6,000 Vietnamese Dong (26 US cents) on the street, and I personally ate 8 Banh Mi sandwhiches and 0 bowls of Pho.
Please don’t kill me. Vietnam is originally a French colony and it’s a sandwich with a French twist, so I guess you could say it’s in my blood.
And my stomach.
One night, 3 of us also crashed this Vietnamese high-roller club. We were the only non Vietnamese people in there and everyone was dressed to the nines. The club was completely booked out but we played the “traveled all the way from America” card and they let us in for drink.
Of course, that lead to an hour and a half of under-dressed white people dancing with the DJs while hardly any Vietnamese people could be bothered to join in. It was just one of those vibes. I had a great time though!
The highlight of our trip to northern Vietnam was without a doubt Halong Bay. A three-hour ride outside of Hanoi, spending all day there was completely worth it for its natural beauty. It’s honorary mention for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, so this place is renowned on the world stage. And it didn’t disappoint.
This whole day was super touristy, but it’s one of those experiences that you have to do while you’re in the area.
After exploring the inside of one of those big ass rocks, we kayaked into this clearing that had me feeling like I should be starring in The Little Mermaid or something. @Bryce, let me know if this is what it’s like when you kayak down the Chattahoochee.
After our kayak excusion, we hiked up this especially big rock to a top 5 view I’ve had in my entire life. In southeast Asia, the only thing that has compared would be the top of the Marina Bay Sands. But, in terms of natural beauty, this is it.
Overall, Halong Bay was made awesome by the great views, but more importantly, the awesome people I got to experience it with. You know what they say: it’s not about the journey OR the destination. It’s about the friends we make along the way :)
While you’re busy throwing up from my inspirational quotes, one thing I learned on this trip, but had extra reinforced this week, is how divisive our governments try to make our respective countries out to be.
If you pay attention to global politics and/or history, you know that at some point or another in the last 80 years, the US has had extremely tense rivalries and/or wars between countries such as Vietnam, Russia, and Germany.
What I’ve concluded is that these rivalries are purely politics, and meeting everyday people from these countries and more teaches me that at the end of the day, we are all human.
We all have the capacity to love.
We all desire to be understood.
And we all hope that our country of orgin does not change people’s perception of us.
From the Russian girls on this trip, I learned about how their exchange programs in Europe were canceled because of the war, and how they cannot refer to the war as anything other than a “special military operation” or else risk getting expelled from their universities and sent to jail.
From the Germans guys on this trip, I learned about how the country has had to move past the atrocities in World War 2, how brutally honest their teaching of the Holocaust is in schools, and how subdued patriotism in is Germany as a result.
From the Vietnamese people I met, I learned how proud they are of their country, how happy they are for the tourism and the economic boost it brings, and how little resentment they have towards America despite all the ways we wreaked havoc on their country.
And what I’ve learned from all of this is that these people didn’t start wars, murder millions, or anything of that sort. They’re just people. And I believe understanding the plight of the common people in any country can bring forth an understand of how to fight for peace and prosperity for everyone.
This brings forth an interesting question that I’ll leave all my dedicated readers with: is the concept of government net positive for society?
One on hand, they bring forth a lot of unity, and generally work to elevate the quality of life for their people. On the other, there would be a lot less people who died fighting for someone else’s cause.
Let me know what you think :)