The Gillan Special Episode One

We thought we would attempt to keep a record of some of the delicious we’ve been feasting upon while here – while much of our Singaporean food went unrecorded we’ve had some pretty decent fare here in Malaysia, and with Penang hosting some of the most famous hawker centers in the country there shall be more to come!

Banana Leaf;

I was assured that everything eaten off a banana leaf tasted better – for no particular reason at all. The banana leaf meal is served in stages, first the leaf, then rice and then scoops of some… Stuff. And then we were given papadums and three bowls of… Stuff. We figured one out to be chicken, another to be lamb, but the third eluded us – it was delish, but I truly have no idea what it was. Ideas were shark or possibly faux-chicken?

Extremely tasty – does everything taste better off a banana leaf? Mmm, I’m not convinced

PHOP;

PHOP stands for Someone’s House of Pancakes. Paddingtons or something like it. This is something else we should totally get in Australia – those are some serious pancakes.

Pavlova

Nom nom nom

Gobi

Not all our food was exotic and eaten on the side of the road. There’s a dessert place called Gobi in Singapore, full of delicious things like this Black Forest Torte and White Sesame Panna Cotta with green tea on it (bleh)

Family Food.

While I don’t have any photos, last night we went to a… House warming? One of Audrey’s cousins just moved into an apartment and we went for Hindu prayers the name of which I couldn’t pronounce let alone spell. For two hours a room full of family and friends chanted to, from what I understood, this guy:

Asking him for everything. Literally everything. For this they offered milk and flowers. It was pretty fantastic to watch and the first I’ve ever seen of such a ceremony. After that was Nasi Lemak, (which means rice fat) a dish with rice, noodles, dhal and chicken. Except this was a Hindu religious ceremony, so it was faux chicken – soya chicken? But still delicious!

It’s always fun turning up at a religious ceremony as the only white person in a black shirt, where ever single other man in the room is wearing white.

Lake House - fin

Well thats that with the Lake House, yesterday we did a big tour around the Cameron Highlands, we say the butterfly park, bee farm and tea plantation. It was all pretty cool, if really cold. The tea plantation was huge, and we got a tour from an ex tea picker, some of the tea trees they pick from are on nearly 90 degree slopes - crazy stuff. The rest of the day we spent in our massive house watching Animal Planet. Aren't we great?

The Lake House

Today we shipped out! An incredibly smelly bus station led to a rather uncomfortable four hour bus trip. About half was pretty awesome, just a straight road in a comfy bus. Then we arrived at the road that climbed the highlands, it was fairly windy, and pretty fast and extremely unpleasant. Normal Malaysian roads are scary enough (and by 'enough' I mean they'd serve as a perfectly viable form of extreme torture to any normal person, but Malaysians on mountain roads? It was hard to resist falling to my knees and kissing the ground. But hey, we survived, and I reckon the view was worth it:

That’s from where we sat for lunch. These are pic’s from our first room:

We sat in the room for a bit, it was fantastic, cute little colonial british rooms, awesome help and there’s all these beautiful huge butterflies fluttering around. Then we saw this:

Wait not that, this:

Argh, no, this:

For 100RM extra a night, how could we resist? Our new rooms, in the honeymoon sweet…

That bathroom is truly huge. We’ve got the entire house to ourselves, but right now we’re chillin’ in the Highlander Lounge, waiting for dinner to be cooked – Rack of lamb with strawberry sauce?

Interesting place we’re at.

PS:

A quick note: Having enjoyed our dinner, we retire again to the lounge, and we've noticed that while the Lake House aspires to be British Colonial in all respects, there is a large and noisy intruder. A bug zapper outside our first rooms window has been ranting its displeasure throughout our otherwise picturesque dinner, causing fits of laughter with every unfortunate insect.

Interlude mk II (day 10-11)

Interlude MKII

Today we went to the Batu Caves, which I thought were just nice caves, but turned out somewhat different:

That is a really large statue. Next to a really large piece of rock. Which also has a forest on it, which is pretty snazzy. Not quite so appealing was:

That’s a really large number of stairs. Audrey was unimpressed, even when told that the people who are serious devotees here carry huge loads up those stairs. We had to beg entry with:

The local deity’s, I’m not sure who they are but I’m pretty sure that’s more heads than is strictly necessary, and of course, further we had to pass beneath:

I am reminded of the triple breasted whore of eroticon 6 (Hitch Hikers Guide), peacock tail and wings are a bonus? We totally made it though:

Not the best view, but pretty cool none the less. At the top we walked through a very large, dripping and spectacularly badly photographed tunnel:

Through the tunnel, there was a circular cave with a huge hole in the roof, and a number of crazy awesome temple structures, really quite a beautiful place. A lot of dripping:

The cave was packed with tourists and devotees, with a smattering of pigeons and quite a few monkeys. The monkeys were having a ball, chasing each other, stealing each others’ empty chip packets and then running away and licking them, yummo. Of course there were some more ‘old school’ monkeys though:

Finished off with a tasty delicious Nescafe.

Sigh.

Dinner here is quite an affair, here we ate some nice roti and naan with my back quite literally to the road, quite a busy road too.

These tables are all from one shop, and they stretched the entire length of the street, and then spilled over to other streets. The servers had no notepads or machines, the guy took food and drink orders for 10 people by memory, and got it all right. Then another guy looked at our table and told us how much we had to pay – 55 RM. 10 people, 5.5 RM per person, that’s less than $2.

Lucky for us the rats stayed on the other side of the road!

Tomorrow we are off to the luxury of the Cameron Highlands – I’m especially looking forward to the HIGHLANDER LOUNGE, cause that sounds awesome. Back on Thursday, then next week we are going to Penang for two nights (another 5 star hotel, however shall we survive?) for 3 days and two nights straight of PENANG CHAR KEUY TEOW!!!

PS:

I'm loving the language here, the 'singlish' in Singapore was completely beyond me, but the family here speaks a queer version of english that has a large amount added. A simple call for "Audrey" is simple no longer, here its "Audrely-la", for what reason I could not tell you. Even more common is "Audrey-laaaaaaa", and even more common than that is "Audrey-LAAAAAAHH". I'm doing my best to figure this out, further updates when an appropriate Rosetta Stone is dicovered.

Days 5 -> 9!

Day Five: Little Big India.

Today was reserved mainly for Little India, a cute little Indian district a fair way off from our apartment. Its about now that our recent escapades have begun to catch up with us. I, in particular, spent the entire of day 3 at the zoo and bird park in thongs. I haven’t worn thongs for a long time. Being a delicate soul, I believe I have pulled my ‘flip-flop’ muscle to large amounts of pain with every step of my right foot (trust me, I’m an anatomist). None the less I put my brave face on, along with my shoes, for our troop to Little India.

We met with a family friend to show us around, and take us to a fantastic Indian vegetarian restaurant for some delicious foods, and ‘masala coffee’, which I discovered is just normal coffee, with garam masala spice in it, actually really nice. We then walked around little India, which was packed with little Indian shops, mainly jewellery shops, of the sort where you pay by the gram. Per the gram of pure 24 carat gold. We did not linger here for long, rather beat a hasty retreat to a local mall for some more delicious (and cheap) food court food.

Having stuffed ourselves yet again, we retreated at lunch time to our rooms, slept for we dearly needed the rest, then ventured out at night to make fun of local supermarket fare, and eat more food court food (I’m considering getting one air-lifted to Perth) as seen in the interlude.

Not our most exciting day, but we needed the rest.

<3

Day Six: Backstreets Back, Alright

Today we continued our trip around curious quarters\districts around Singapore, with the Arab Quarter. Thanks to the sage advice from Audrey’s travel book, we were advised to visit a “haji” (sp) lane, apparently filled with delightful little stores full of awesome things. Well we were pretty amazed at what we found, the Arab Quarter isn’t the most affluent appearing district, a lot of graffiti, old and dirty buildings and construction sites. Then, after Audrey stopped for a brief 30 minute foot massage while I massaged my own blistered feet, you come across this amazing street full of gorgeous little shops packed to the brim with fancy clothes\gifts\art\etc\etc\etc. Needless to say we did our up and down of this street once or twice, and ate at an awesome Egyptian restaurant.

We then went out on the town with some more friends! Singapore’s nightlife is somewhat more interesting than Perths, we went to the ‘clinic’, where drinks are served in IV bags to customers sitting in wheelchairs or hospital beds, and then the three girls left myself and two boys for a trip to the most expensive club in the district, as it was ladies night they got free entry to the snazziest club around, while we sipped beers on the patio benches of a pub called the ‘crazy elephant’. After having some beers with the two Muslim guys (spot the oxymoron) I had a Flaming Lambourghini (FINALLY) with one of the girls and we stayed out till 5:30 AM to much hilarity!

Day Seven: Painting Chinatown Scarlet

Today we packed our bags early, said goodbye to our flatmate, and moved to the 5 star boutique hotel, The Scarlet. The hotel is incredibly gorgeous, all red satin, leather and high backed chairs. Really, really high backed. The room is very small, a large bed with a small but adequate bathroom and a desk and minibar, but the room is very pretty and incredibly comfortable. A proper hot shower, flushing toilet and nice pillows made quite a difference to our daily comfort. The hotel staff were nice and helpful on the whole, pointing us to a delicious Dim Sim restaurant in Chinatown.

Chinatown itself is both beautiful and annoying in that distinctly Chinatown way. The stalls are gorgeous, and there are lanterns and umbrellas and pretty things all over the place, its right next to a huge Buddhist temple (the Buddha’s Golden Tooth Temple or something) that is stunning. However its full of incredibly pushy stall owners vying for your attention to their !!!!!!! SPECTACULAR AMAZING GREAT DEAL SALE SPECIAL PRICE OFFER !!!!!! That night we ate a restaurant called “ember”, at which I had frogs legs for the first time ever (if I remember correctly) and they were pretty delicious! The rest of the meal was similarly stunning, and it was at this point we clapped each other over our backs at how incredible our choice of foods had been. We had some drinks at the bar and retired to a night of incredible sleep!

Day Eight: Black Friday

Today began awesomely, we dined like kings at a Hawker center next to the hotel (omg-so-nice) and went inside the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, it seriously contains a golden tooth thought to be from Buddha himself. And by ‘contains’ I mean on the fourth story of the five story temple, which also contains 2 museums, a lotus garden with the world’s biggest prayer wheel, an ancestral hall and all the regular Temple-y things, like a 100 dragons hall where they chant all the time. Oh, and the tooth is encased in a 2 meter tall solid gold ‘stupa’, that weigh’s 420kg. That’s not including all the rest of the solid gold decorations, including light fixtures, pillars, other sculptures and the entire floor of the Sacred Light Hall where the stupa is. Pretty awesome stuff, and the chanting was amazing. But then today fell flat on its face with the money troubles I had with the hotel.

Then we returned to a mediocre lunch at the hawker centre, somewhat discouraged we retreated to our hotel room to eat 7-11 chocolate and watch the Discovery Channel ( I now know a lot about Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) ) That night we went out to what our travel book claimed was the best Thai food in the region, and after we surmised that there must be no other thai food in the region so unimpressed with the food were we.

We arranged a wakeup call, packed our bags and went to bed, ready to leave Singapore after an 89% awesome, 11% frustrating stay.

Day Nine: Organised Chaos.

So after a 45 minute flight today we are in another country! Malaysia is similar to Singapore in some ways but polar opposites in many, many others. Singapore was overpoweringly organized, the roads always flowed, the trains were always on time, everything was clean. Malaysia is somewhat more chaotic. And by somewhat, I mean a lot. There are traffic jams that can last hours, some roads are fresh and new and clean, others are crumbling and dirty, Malaysia is a much more ‘typical’ Asian city, seriously bustling in its own strange ways. Luckily we have Audrey’s awesome family to walk us through it. Today we settled in, visited a mall, and had an incredible dinner (CHILLI CRABS =O ) and I’ve met over 10 family members already, my head is swimming with names and faces!

I am thoroughly exhausted, and I think it’s time to sleep for a week or two, I should drop a summary of Singapore, photo’s and some more blog-age when I have time, hopefully soon!

<3

Bit of a downer

First off, let me say sorry for the lack of updates from day 5-7, there was much resting, with a travel to an ultra swanky back street in the Arab quarter, accompanied by a trip to some Singaporean clubs which only ended at 5:30 in the morning, and we booked into The Scarlet.

I started this blog entry yesterday, and it began quite differently. Something along the lines of scarlet is amazing, comfortable, beautiful etc etc. Then I discovered a $377 transaction from my credit card, in a fit of calm, mom and I cancelled my account and I was content to think I had lost $377 and no more, it could have been worse right? Audrey and I continued exploring Chinatown and its surrounds, wonderful, and enjoyed a magnificent dinner at Ember, where I ate frogs legs – delish!

Then we discovered the transaction was from The Scarlet.

This irked me somewhat, as when checking in there was no mention of any block on the designated card, and when I discovered the transaction I did ask the front desk whether they had placed any transactions etc on my card, which they denied. I went again, and the attendant recalled that they make a ‘block’ on $480 SGD on the credit card, why on earth they would do this is beyond me, as the receptionist continued to tell me that they had no actual control on the money, and could only release the block. I calmly asked that that is a somewhat redundant thing to do, as my account has been cancelled, so where will the money go? The attendant talked a significant quantity of bank jargon at me, until I managed to twist his arm into actually phoning the bank to ask what we could do, a long story short: The bank will attempt to release my money, knowing full well it will probably just disappear, but wait! In their wisdom they shall write, on the fax they send NAB to release their funds (which has confused NAB to no end, they don’t do blocks) a note saying that they realize they are trying to unblock funds to a cancelled account.

This thoroughly reassured the receptionist.

I have tried a few times after this to talk with the receptionist, things like “what is the point of blocking funds from your customers if you can’t reach them?” and “can’t we talk to the bank about getting the funds directly from them?”, but alas it appears that my money is well and truly in limbo somewhere. Somewhere that no bank, hotel or mortal man can touch it.

All I can do now is wait to see if this fax the ‘local bank’ can magically return the money to my account.

In a little while we’ll try write a decent blog about the remainders of our trip. Bit of a sour tint to everything at the moment.

Interlude

Interlude.

Now that I’ve been here for a few days I think its time to make some sweeping comments on the whole of Singapore, on matters close to my heart:

While Singapore’s food is incredible, for example this ‘paper dosai’ in Little India was fantastic:

The country’s coffee could improve. This is a typical coffee, or ‘kopi’ as its known here:

Kopi is made either with instant coffee and cold milk, or with American style filter coffee and condensed milk. Neither is a taste sensation. The best coffee I’ve had while here was from Starbucks (isn’t that a delightful oxymoron).

Again, fantastic food, this Japanese was amazing, on the right that’s silken tofu coated in something crunchy with seaweed and fish eggs, I like neither tofu, seaweed nor fish eggs but completely devoured that dish. The rice and sizzling beef were something transcendent:

But mediocre coffee. While mediocre, a country of this humidity and temperature does do a mean and appropriately sized iced coffee:

Other exciting discoveries were found in the scattered Korean supermarkets in the malls included interesting cosmetic devices:

A show of Singapore’s delightful wine selection:

And another selection of delicious canned beverages, on the right some grape juice, in the middle is some kind of tea and on the left:

I have no idea what a pocari is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to drink its sweat.

While the countries public transport system is nothing short of incredible, trains every 5 minutes, buses usually less than that, everything is airconditioned and wonderful, the passengers are very well behaved:

But there is a little left wanting with leg room:

I'd like to sign off with thanks to the 'yournetworknamehere' free WiFi service. Servicing the 498E building quickly and efficiently, 'cause who needs to password protect their WiFi anyway?

Day Four