CHINESE NEW YEAR IN SINGAPORE AND MALAYSIA

Day 2: February 1, 2014
In the early morning all the BELTEI Team Leaders had breakfast at Johr-Bahru restaurant before continuing to trip the other places. When I woke up around 6:15am, My Buth Dimang and I went down the ground-floor to wait for my colleagues in order to have breakfast together.

Normally, Mr. Buth Dimang and I got up early and we went down to the ground floor to wait for our colleagues.

We were sitting on the sofa around 15 minutes, I saw Mr. Morn Samear and his wife arrived the breakfast hall so that we walked around the long desks which was kept many kind of foods. We chose some of the favorite meals for us, then we moved to the place to sit together.

I was curious because I really wanted to know about Singapore; hence, I decided to ask one of a girls who are serving that restaurant. I use English to communicate with her. I spent 10 minutes to dialogue with her. One word that made me strange was he is a Korean girl. She is a graduated student with the fields of accounting. She said she come to Singapore to work for earning experiences because that country has a lot of tourists. She would like to meet many people that were coming from different countries. Therefore, she could get experiences from them.

The conversation finished, I moved to sit one of the tables that my friend were having breakfast. We discuss about the society in Singapore and we also compared to our country, Cambodia. Suddenly, there was a man looks like Indian. I started the questions again because I think that he is a tourist as well. When we started the conversation, he introduced himself. He is a Pakistan person.

He was working for that hotel, too. He added that most of the people working here aren't Singaporean because the Singapore citizen need high salary. Talking to this point, I was thinking about ASIAN Integration in the near future (the year 2015). I am worrying about the knowledge (skillful) that Cambodian students graduated every year, and most of them don't have enough experiences to enter the globalization. They will lost their jobs because some of them don't care about their learning, and they don't like reading to gain knowledge, too.

After breakfast, we moved to visit a Diamond Industry in Singapore. It is a big and famous in Singapore. Most of tourists will invite to visit it, and some of them could buy the jewellery for their souvenir. For me, I just looked around to see and took some photos in it. One of the security guards came to inform me that taking photo isn't allowed. So, I stopped do it, but I had some of photos that I had just taken on my iPhone. We spent 25 minutes to visit it.

Then we moved to the Merion Park to take some photos because all the passengers have never missed this place. It is a symbol of Singapore country. There are many folk tale about the Mer Lion.

Fist we climbed to the hill to see the good view of Singapore. All of us took photos there. I felt good when I arrived to top of the hill because I could smell the natural adored trees of the mountain. It made me remind my home in Sihanoukville because I have always climbed to the mountain to watch the view of the mountain and the sea. A main who was standing near is Mr. Som Muny, a Dean of BELTEI International Institute University. 

Then we moved to Mer-Lion where is the popular place for the tourists to take photos. A tour guide told us that the water that coming out of the mer-lion with the curve shape, it means the money come out and hook the other money to come back. It is belief of Singaporean people.

I asked my friend, Mr. Buth Dimang, to take photos for me. Then I took turn to take photo for him. The weather was hot at that time so that people couldn't stand there for long time. They just took some photos then they looked for the shadow place such as under the bridge or in the coffee shop where had the air-conditioners.


At 10:45am the tour-guide informed us to move to the supper market to have lunch. We had buffet there. I ate only a little bit food because I was worried about my illness during my trip.

I also didn't want to annoy people around me because my respectful parents always remind me how to adopt situation particularly I have to be ready such as Sleep, Walk, Stand, and Sit (The Buddhist Theory) which my daddy always uses it to educate me. I am easy to adopt the situation although it is in a hard condition because I have trained myself since I was 9. When I accompanied with my parents to somewhere, they always remind me to be ready such as go to the WC, check and control the things that I need to bring along with me. It become my habit so that I didn't make trouble with people around me when I travel to somewhere.

The lunch time took about 1 hour and the haft. I left with my friend Mr. Buth Dimang and the other friends to look for the wifi internet in order to contact my family and friends living in Cambodia. Hence, my family and friends have never missed the contact because they also use the smart phone, too.

Then we moved to the Chinese Town to pray to the god there. This is a church in the central of China Town. My boss, my colleagues, and I entered the church to light the incense sticks to pray to the god to help us with safe trip and lucky this year.