Being an exchange student means doing the same things you do at home at a different place. Just like home, you arrange your household, prepare your lectures, visit classes, meet with friends and so on; you just do it in another environment, with other people and other conventions. All of this can make everyday things, normal to Singaporean students, to a challenge.
What Singaporean students don’t do, though, is travelling. This also goes for exchange students in Maastricht: when there’s a one-week holiday, they go to see Paris, Barcelona and northern Italy, while indigenous students clean their room, catch up on some study and pay a visit to their parents.
My first exchange-student trip brought me to Bintan, an Indonesian island that is a rough 45 minute boat ride from Singapore. With rough I mean that there weren’t many seats in the catamaran looking as if they’d never been touched by stomach acids. I went there in a group of seven German and Finnish exchange students, me being the only Dutchman. Now since Singaporeans live on a busy island, some of them like to spend some time at quieter places abroad. The island has a special resort area for this purpose, isolated from the rest of the island to be a quieter copy of Singapore. We spent one night and a day at a hotel in the company of another big group of (Canadian and US) exchange students, playing volleyball and swimming in the sea.
Next day we chartered a four wheel drive to bring us out of the protected area. Straight after we drove through the heavily guarded gate, the scene reminded me of Ghana (note: those who know me well will wonder what would not remind me of Ghana). The place was somewhat chaotic, with little shops along the streets and busses crammed with people. The scenery was beautiful, green and hilly. We saw a huge pineapple farm and were allowed to bring some fresh pineapples … delicious! The Dutch, Finnish, German and Indonesian word for pineapple is ‘ananas’, so we decided this should be used in English as well from now on. I hope you will join the movement!
That night we ended up in a rather basic, self-built accommodation, consisting of little huts on the beach. The self-built aspect became obvious by the electrical wiring, which was not entirely according to the latest ISO standards, to say the least. We slept on a literal five-metre-distance to the sea. The owner was a very friendly man who also took good care of us meal wise.
The next day we went for a visit to Tanjungpinang, the main city of the island … with nothing to see really. But if you’ve never been to Indonesia, even a city with ‘nothing to see’ can be really interesting. It was interesting that we were the first visitors of the newly opened tourist office. I’m sure we made the officer very happy by signing his guestbook! Interesting furthermore were the movie cd’s for 1.5 euro, including very recent movies like ‘Terminator 3’. And also the ‘hotel’ which we entered when Antti had to go to the toilet and I wanted to eat something was quite interesting … we only realised when we had already sat down for a drink and some food that most of the female employees were there to serve the guests in many more ways than bringing them food and drinks…
That was Saturday. Sunday we climbed the highest mountain of the island before returning to our home island Singapore. I was delighted to notice that my student visa qualifies me to check in at the ‘citizens and permanent residents’ immigration counter, saving time and making me feel very welcome.
