Singapore

We had heard a lot about Singapore and had high expectations coming in. It's safe to say that it exceeded all of our expectations and nearly made us give up our American citizenship. For those of you that don't know, Singapore is an island country that borders right up next to Malaysia. It is one of the richest, cleanest, and technologically advanced countries in the world so when we departed the plane, it felt as if we were stepping into the future. We took the subway right to our hotel from the airport and were only five minutes away from our hostel.

The Merlion

The first place that we stayed was right in the middle of Chinatown. It was a called "Beary Nice Hostel". I had never stayed in a hostel before and was a little nervous/apprehensive to do so. But since Singapore is westernized, the prices are also westernized so a hostel made a lot of sense for us. To my surprise, the hostel was actually one of my favorite places that we stayed on our whole trip. The atmosphere was extremely friendly, the people we met were nice, and the location was prime (mostly because we were right across the street from the biggest hawker center in the city). It was a great experience and it definitely eased a lot of my concerns about hostels.

But now, back to the hawker centers. In Singapore they aren't really big on fast food chains. Instead they have centers all over the city where they house hundreds of food stalls in one place. This is really nice and actually makes a ton of sense when compared to the food carts scattered all over busy streets in Thailand. The food in Singapore was amazing as it was another melting pot of cultures. In the hawker center, the best way to find out what was good and what wasn't was to find the longest line and just jump in it. Sometimes there will be two stalls, one right next to the other, selling the exact same food but at one stall has one person in line and at the other stall has 20 people in line.

Inside one of the hawker centers

Mmmmmmm

This is probably a line you would want to jump in

One of the touristy things that we wanted to do while we were there was to go to the Singapore Zoo. It's known as one of the best zoos in the world and we could really see why. They didn't have any cages at all in the zoo and the animals were treated really well. The only thing separating the animals and us was a moat, or sometimes nothing at all. While monkeys climbing trees right above us was pretty awesome, the best part was definitely following the feeding tour. We got to see them feed lions, cheetahs, tigers, jaguars, etc and it was amazing to see the animals active and fighting over food.

We were being tourists

Roar

Getting his grub on

Another really nice thing about Singapore was the public space they had for relaxing and entertainment. They are right on the water and have a huge area called Marina bay where you can overlook the city skyline and see the big "Merlion" (Singapore's mascot). They had live music going on, light shows, and a nice food center there which was surprising since it was just a regular day and nothing special.

City skyline

This was the kind of feeling that we got the whole time we were in Singapore. It was almost as if they were putting on a huge production. Everywhere in the city, whether it was Little India, Chinatown, or the botanical gardens, it felt like we were in a huge theme park. Everything was so perfect and clean and up to certain regulations. But finally, in our last destination in Asia, we were able to see the future. Hopefully America will be able to get there someday, because in Singapore they already did it. They are definitely there.

Drinks at the marina

Disney theme park or Singapore?

Bali

Seeing as we would probably never be that close again, we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to Bali during our trip.  Overall it was really nice, but a lot more touristy than we were imagining. Bali is interesting because it's a Hindu island amidst the very Muslim country of Indonesia.

We statyed in the city of Ubud first, which is the cultural and artistic heart of Bali.  There are a lot of temples and artist villages. We knew we made the right choice when we got to our guesthouse....it overlooked a green rice paddy, had a canopy bed, outdoor bathroom and we got breakfast delivered to our balcony each morning (all for the whopping price of about $40).  From a friend's advice, we booked a guide/driver to take us around to some of the sites we wanted to see.  We stopped at a coffee plantation, rice terraces, a Hindu temple and went to the eastern side of the island to go snorkeling. At the coffee plantation I had the opportunity to taste some of the most expensive coffee in the world. It's made from beans that are passed through (aka pooped) a special type of animal that only eats the 'best beans'.  Cyrus never let me forget for the rest of the trip that I drank 'poop coffee'.

 

 

The highlight of the trip was a sunrise volcano hike. There are two main volcanoes in the area; one is a really easy hike that you can stroll at sunrise with plenty of other tourists, and the other requires you to leave at midnight and hike 5 hours to the top.  We decided we might as well go for the gold, and it was definitely worth it.  We found a great guide online that made the experience even better.  We got picked up at our hotel at midnight with two other people, then drove about an hour to the base of the volcano.  With only our headlamps to light the way, we started our trek.  It was pretty easy at the start, but as we got closer to the top the wind got stronger and the climbing more difficult; we were pretty much on all fours climbing over boulders. Joining us part of the way was a group of locals from a nearby temple who make the hike every so often as a sort of religious offering. I thought I was struggling, but they carried baskets on their heads and wore flip flops the whole way. Piece of cake. We reached the top right before sunrise, and it was a very rewarding sight.  Besides the fact that it was absolutely freezing, being at the top was pretty amazing. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't see red hot magma bubbling in the bottom of the crater (it just looked like a normal rock pit), but oh well. After about an hour, we headed back down.

It was actually way more difficult going down. It was really steep and we were treading on loose sand/dirt so even the most simple step became like the banana peel on the floor cartoon (except it wasn't funny and hurt really bad when you landed on a rock).  All in all it was one of the best things we did the whole year and we're so glad we did it.

A temple at the base (you can see the volcano crater at the top)

Mount Agung (the volcano we hiked)

Our awesome guide

We got back from the hike at around noon, and proceeded to pass out for a few hours.  The rest of our time in Ubud we walked around and looked at all the craft shops and temples. It was nice to see souveniers different from what we saw in Thailand everyday, even if they were still dumb and touristy.

Good vegetarian food

After Ubud, we spent the day at the beach. Compared to the Thai islands we've been to, the beach was nothing to write home about (or mention in this blog).  But Bali is a big surf spot, so we got to watch all the surfers and hang out at the "cool surf shacks".  After Bali, we boarded an early flight to Singapore.

Malaysia

It's time to finally recap the end of our big Southeast Asian adventure.  The first stop on our 3 country tour was Malaysia.  We didn't really know anything about it before leaving for Thailand, but the more people spoke about the country, the more we knew we had to visit.  Malaysia is really unique because of its crazy mix of cultures.  It was in the center of the spice trade and along the major shipping route of the East India Trading company. Because of this historical influence, Malaysian history is a mix of Dutch, Portuguese, English, Indian and Chinese.  The different settlers make for really interesting architecture and awesome cuisine. We visited Melaka, Penang, Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur during our 10 day stay in Malaysia.

Melaka

Our first stop was Melaka, a city that felt trapped in time. It's the namesake of the Straits of Melaka, a major trade route during the spice trade and still one of the busiest shipping waterways in the world. Settled by both the Dutch and Portuguese, the colonial era churches blended into old Chinese shop houses that looked straight out of a black and white post card. We spent most of the time just walking around and eating.The cuisine is a mix of Chinese, Thai, and Indian....aka so good.

 

Penang 

Next up on the trip was Penang, in Northern Malaysia. If anyone watches No Reservations, with Anthony Bourdain, the Penang episode is pretty good.  Penang is an island, but is attached to the mainland by a long bridge.  It's the epitome of the mix of cultures. You could find a Mosque, Church, Chinese clan house, and a Hindu temple, all within a mile radius.

Walking around little India literally felt like you were in India...with Bollywood music blaring, sari shops everywhere, and banana leaf curry restaurants on every block.  But you also had the Chinese and Muslim populations as well. But again, with a colonial twist with an old Fort and some Catholic churches too.

Penang has been voted the best easting destination in the world, so without fail, we ate and ate and ate. We also went on a walking tour, did a little hike from the lonely planet (which turned into more of a super long trek), walked through the jungle, toured a spice garden, and hiked to turtle beach where sea turtles supposedly nest...but of course we didn't see any.

Langkawi
After Penang, we headed to the island of Langkawi for some sunshine and relaxation.  As expected, it was cloudy or rainy the whole time, but we still enjoyed it.  The highlight was renting a car to drive around the island.  Cyrus was a little shaky at first getting used to driving on the left, but he mastered it soon enough. The whole island is duty-free, so the alochol was cheap and flowing (alcohol everywhere else in Malaysia is really expensive because they import everything, due to the high population of Muslims who don't drink).

KL
Our last stop in Malaysia was the capital city, Kuala Lumpur.  I had really mixed feelings about it.  It was much more conservative than the other cities we visited.  Just walking around in short sleeves got me a lot of uncomfortable stares from men.  But we ate good food, and had a really fun night looking out over the Petrones Towers, which were the highest in the world for a little while.

We stayed in KL for a few days then caught a flight to Bali, Indonesia!

End of School

Our year of teaching has come to end.  It's had it's ups and downs but overall it was a great, if not brief, experience. The last week of school brought out a lot of emotions...we were happy to do be done, sad to leave our students, excited to see our families, and nervous to get back into "the real world".  Our students were so cute, a lot of classes made posters, or sang songs, or gave us little parting gifts.  I may have shed a tear once or twice, ha.  And of course we took hundreds and hundreds of pictures (if you hadn't already noticed on my facebook page), once one student asked to take a picture with them, then they all got into a line to wait their turn.

We had to hurry up and finish our grading on Friday afternoon.  It was emotional for me to walk out of school, just knowing that I'll probably never be back there again.  But fortunately, we had things to look forward to so I could think about those instead.

We finished school on September 20, and then hung around Suphan for a few days to say goodbye to all of our friends.  Now it's time for our final hurrah/SE Asian adventure. Our plan is to visit northern Thailand again, then tour Malaysia, Bali and Singapore before heading back to the states.

We stayed in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) for a few days before leaving Thailand, because we really like the city, and we used it as a sort of post-teaching congratulation/relaxation/celebration time. We always wanted to take a cooking class, so we finally signed up for one, we also went to some our favorite restaurants, and did some shopping and temple touring.

The cooking class was on a farm, so Cyrus got to wear a farmers hat

Grounding up the spices

Curry and stir-fry: Cyrus' was actually pretty good

We even got to watch the Packers-Seahawks game....and we all know how that turned out

View from a temple

Temple on a mountain

After Chiang Mai we boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we'll hang out and explore for 10 days. Hope everyone is happy and healthy at home!

Paige and Cyrus