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

Day Four

Day Four: Gelatinous Greyhound

Oh my GAWD. Having returned from yet another successful shopping trip, I believe I am finished with shopping, as I have now bought two different coloured jeans far from the normal colouring of jeans.
We then went to what is apparently the single best Chinese\Cantonese restaurant in town, and I reckon they’re spot on. The food there was amazing. Like seriously delicious. I’ll let Audrey do all the descripting, but woah, I’m sold. Shangri La is my new fav restaurant.

Today we decided to be artsy fartsy and visit the Esplanade aka the performing arts centre aka the durian aka Mickey Mouse’s feet. Yes it looks like a very funny building, I could come up with a million things it looks like right now but will refrain. Well to be honest, it was quite pretty and extremely artsy but since we went in the afternoon nothing was showing and as a result, it got pretty boring. We did manage to find a large underground watertight door that looked like something out of Deep Blue Sea. Considering there are no sharks or Morgan Freeman anywhere nearby I’m not sure why it’s there (for those people who want to argue logic and the possibility of flooding I’m going to ignore you and simply say that your reasoning is not nearly as exciting as mine).

Since being cultural quickly became tedious we decided to hit the other half of Orchard Road previously unexplored for some hardcore shopping. I managed to be frugal this time (only buying delicious macaroons and a $23 dress). Christo on the other hand was spending up a storm while I sat patiently on the plush couches of Bally silently wondering why there were more men’s shoes in here than women’s. What a travesty!

A mad rush home ensued after we spent way too much time in the malls of Orchard because we had a reservation at the Shang Palace restaurant in Shangri La Hotel. It’s a Catonese restaurant that had its own Chinese tea menu and birds nest dishes that went up to $300. Since my memory of food is vast and cavernous I have remembered everything we ate. For starters we had Nanjing Salted Duck and Drunken Chicken (which is chicken boiled in a brandy and soy sauce style soup). Both dishes were cold and both were surprisingly delicious and made us even hungrier. For the mains we ordered live fish, which was a whole Coral Trout steamed Hong Kong Style. This style is simple with a sauce of simply fish and soy sauce with the fish’s own juices mingling with it so as to “not interfere with the sweet flavours of the fish” (so said the waiter). It was cooked so perfectly that the slivers of fish simply melted in your mouth when you ate it. We also had Braised Pork Belly in a golden mantou sauce which is thick and almost gelatinous that they gave us these yummy chewy breadsticks to dip into the sauce and Diced Silken Bean Curd done Sichuan Style which was also melty in your mouthy. The best part as you all know of course is the dessert (although the fish comes close second!) I had a bowl of warm almond crème and sago while Christo had gelatinous dumplings filled with strawberry, mango and cream. Even a day after having the meal, my mouth waters as I recall all the dishes. After a good 3 hours in the restaurant we stumbled home (or rather, to the taxi) with our bellies full of food and wine to sleep it all away.

Day three

Day Three: Jungle Exploration

Today we got up bright and early, for we had an important appointment. We boarded a very nice Mercedes “limocab” and drove most of the way across this little country. On our arrival we bought tickets, and ensured our seats were booked for our appointment. We enjoyed a decent buffet breakfast, and then the fun began. Audrey had booked us in for breakfast with the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo. This began with elephant showers, then a bald python joined by a gold handed tamarind. The stars arrived via a large log, 5 borneo and Sumatran orangutans, to squeals of delight by the collected tourists, and none squealed louder than our little Audrey.
For the rest of the day we checked out the zoo, which was really snazzy. Then we taxi’d to the Jurong Bird Park, so Audrey could continue her little heart attack and hyperventilation spree. The bird park was awesome, including a very spesh Owl exhibit, a huge ‘lory loft’ somewhat akin to standing in a tree with a huge swarm of our lorikeets demanding our sweet nectar. There were two more of these ‘lofts’, an African one with the largest man made waterfall (yay!) and a south east asian bird aviary, with some very sweet parrots.
Then we came home, and went shopping again! All up we were walking around from 8:30 till about 11, so our legs and feet are very very sore. Such is life? There are bakeries here that we need to get back in Perth. NEED.

First of all I have to say that the orangutans get better fruits than we do. Dragonfruit, sugar cane and other assorted tropical delights every morning? Yes please! I was tempted to steal some from their little bucket – I was definitely not content with the mere offering of pineapple in front of me. In addition to the shower we had that morning, we got splashed by bathing elephants and overzealous seals to accompany us with their own eau de toilette. The zoo is pretty spectacular and we were also greeted in the morning to the calls of extremely loud howler monkeys and gibbons attempting to steer us away from their turf.

After a solid 3 hours we made our way to the Bird Park. This place is definitely my favourite and the birds there are a delight to look at and feed. We sat through a great parrot show where all kinds of macaws and cockatoos solved some pretty mind boggling puzzles. Those guys are smart! Apparently they have the intelligence of a 4 year old. We managed to stay for another 3 hours until the final and most awesome show – The Birds of Prey. We were swooped by vultures and sea eagles while falconers catapulted meat into the air for kites to catch and dive at. They truly have magnificent wing spans and terrifyingly impressive beaks. There was one resident comic King Vulture who went by the name of Gonzo. This guy was a real character. He had been hatched and bred in the Singapore Zoo and as a result was very familiar with all the falconers, so much so that he preferred to run instead of fly. There is a photo of him running with one of the falconers that we’ll put up in a second.

After a long and tiresome day we made our way home in another limocab that Christo had spotted, this time a Chrysler 300C. You could feel the testosterone coming from that vehicle…and the woman who was driving it! Rest was in order and after a few hours we made our way back to the malls to grab some dinner and do a little shopping, as a result my legs do not want to get up this morning.

These photos run from bottom to top in chronological order.