Week 83: Kuala Lumpur & Singapore

So the next stop on the flight was a trip to Malaysia and Singapore before heading back to the US for some family fun.  We booked 3 days in Kuala Lumpur, and one day in Singapore.  We had one day planned, and decided to wing the rest.  Our travel day was actually normal, which is nice.  I had too much beer or spicy food or something, but my stomach finally caught up with me, so the ulcer was not so great.  We were hit with a bunch of exit fees when we left the Philippines, but at this point we were quite used to it, and were ready to go somewhere new.  Poor Pretch had to pay a vacation fee, which is only charged to people in country who are leaving on vacation, it's actually more expensive than the traveller's exit fee.  Kinda weird, I suppose if you're rich enough to go on vacation, you can probably pay a vacation fee.  She got secondary scruitiny upon exit, needing me to verify that she was going with me, and not going to bail the country forever.  I guess that's a thing over there.   We went to bed early.  

The next day, we walked around alot. Walked through the dataran merdeka area, went first to scammy chocolate museum.  There were 2 chocolate extraction machines, and over priced chocolates.  I bought some coconut 

chocolate, since I'm very easy to guilt into buying things.

We then checked out the city gallery, a free exhibit that showed the progression of the city, and the future expansions.  It had a very detailed scale model of the city, which was actually quite neat.

We then visited the oldest church in the city, St Mary church, then checked out a couple of temples, one Indian temple, and one Chinese temple.  Kinda cool, I wish I had more to say, but they all look kinda similar at some point.  I overheard a conversation about what not to wear, so you don't get mugged.  I could have just modeled for the guy, showing what not to wear.

We then headed out to Chinatown, which in its own right is quite fun.  If you like to haggle, and buy cheap knock off stuff, this is the place to be.  Anything you want, from shirts to handbags, to watches, jackets.  I bought a Ferrari shirt, and drank some bitter herbal tea.  The food court is cheap, and everyone is drinking Guiness. Pretty cool if you ask me.  Especially in the middle of the day.  

The highlight of the day, aside from the knockoff shirt was the KL bird park.  This is one of the open parks, and is absolutely gigantic.   Bird fly by you, the scavengers try to eat your food, it's a great time.  But it is open.  Which means if it rains, then there's no where to hide.  We braved it, got a little soggy, but got some good pictures, and had a great time.

The last stop around the area was the Islamic Historical Museum, which was pretty interesting.  There was an exhibit that showed to process of Hajj, and how the folks from Malaysia headed over back in the day and then now.  We went into one of the mosques as well, no shorts were allowed, so we all had to wear habayas.  The museum is pretty impressive, and shows true dedication, especially back in the day before airplanes.  Multiple month trips with little money to go.  

We were hungry again, so from the travel channel, we tried to go to little India.  The jerk taxi driver took us to a little india, and charged us extra.  We had the best of it, and I introduced the folks what really good Indian food is.  It was spicy, and delicious!  

So I misread our start time for our walking trek, by about an hour, but our guide was pretty cool, and we were the only group in the trek.  It was an easy trek to a pretty quiet waterfall that no one really visits.  The morning started off with a really good fusion of breakfast, including different roti's, fruit and egg.  The trek itself was nice, not too hot, and no rain, which was great.  We did some jumping into the water, and Hoang lost glasses, Pretch forgot that she doesn't do well with deep water, and the fish were hungry to nip at your feet, so we only spent half an hour or so there.

We had a good time.  The guy had a instant changing tent so that we could change out of our wet clothes.  Really good guy, and someone I'd recommend going with if you want to hike.  After the hike, he took us to a small town with really good Chinese food, we had some fresh Mongoose King Durian, apparently the premium type of durian. It wasn't as strong as a regular durian, and a little sweeter, but still very much an acquired taste.
Our guide then proceeded to drop us off at the Batu caves.  The batu caves is a giant cave and hindi temple.  It has the world largest depiction of Murugan, which is 140 feet tall, and fully painted in gold.  It's hard to describe, as the size is just incredible once you enter in.  The entrance takes 262 steps, which for us was a bit tiring, but we made it.  We got to see one of the ceremonies happening, and the acoustics were pretty epic.  The monkeys there are pretty aggressive.  It's pretty interesting, they know how to open twist off caps, but haven't figured out how to drink water directly from the bottle.  They'll open the cap, and spill it on the ground, which is kinda funny.  There were also some pretty cute baby monkeys too.

On the way back to the Batu caves, we went to the Low Yat Mall, which is 7 stories of electronic stores.  It had everything you could think of, which was cheap for the area, but pretty expensive compared to US prices.  I haggled a while with one of the guys for a flash drive and a power cable.  All of the items broke about a month after I got them back in country.  Live and learn.  Don't buy electronics from an unreputable seller.  Especially one that you can haggle so much.  We had dinner at an Arabic place, go figure, and found a trendy bar with live music.  The singers were not the best, and the drinks were a bit expensive.  But we saw some guy that looked like a drugged out version of Jackie Chan.  No pictures.  The body guards were big and angry.  We had some Courvoisier, and Pretch had a green drink of sorts.  Pretty mellow ending to a day full of walking.  The taxi guy drove pretty aggressively, and ran a few red lights.  No worries, he earned his tip, since we were still alive.

We were tired, and woke up late.  The Petronius towers only have a certain number of tickets available in the morning, and you have to be there around 7 or so to get the tickets.  We arrived at 11.  Not even close. We got some good pictures before the rain came in though.

 After jumping on Tripadvisor, a recommended food place was Lot 10, which is a bunch of smaller asian food stores, we had some quick bites, and stumbled upon an even bigger version of Chinatown's cheap knock off stores.  this time it was in a mall.  We spent the rest of the time there, trying to figure how to get out.  It was a huge huge stores.  Hoang bought eye glass frames and I bought a laser pointer, Pretch a bag, and some souveniers.  Hoang got a pedicure, and we headed out to the pavilion, which was the nicer mall.

 We had the famous ate din tai fung dumplings, with comfort food greens, and stumbled into a beer bar located on the other side of the city, called Taps.  We were the only people there, but it was nice to drink some good beer again.  We had a flight to Singapore the next day.

Singapore is one of my favorite cities.  We were only there for one day, but the feel of the city, the layout, the smell, everything about this city was great.  Well, it's a great place to visit, it'd be a super expensive place to live.

Man, this is coming from a person that's used to paying a fair amount of money for beer, as a high "sin" tax.  Food costs were probably around 3x what you'd be expecting in the states.  Since we only had a day over there, we decided to go all out, and stay at the Marina Bay Sands.  It's a famous casino/hotel that is known for having the largest elevated infinity pool in the world.  It's pretty epic, and with a view that cannot be described.  My favorite part is see soo many tourists going about taking pictures over the edge with cameras that do not well with water.  Anything for a great pic I suppose.

Our tour was fairly short, we went to the best Chili Crab in Singapore, which was pretty tasty.  It was a bit off the beaten path, which for me, means that it must be good.  They also had a white pepper crab, which was very spicy.  Both very delicious.

We took a tour around to the Clark Quay, which is a rennovated area that was built with the modern look in mind.  Pretty swanky, we went to a pasta place, and headed to the museum.

The museum gave us an appreciation of Singapore, as well as a better understanding of how religions and different country influences effect the melting pot that is Singapore.  Notice the Buddha sitting on a cross.

We didn't do any gambling, we got rained on pretty heavily, but it definitely did not damp our spirits.  It was a great ending to a great trip, and by far one of the most memorable.  

Week 82: Maganda Umaga Philippines!

Many many people I talk to hype up the Philippines.  They talk about the beauty, the simplicity, the affordability, and the overall great experience of being there.  There won't be any dispute from me in any of those regards.  I had a great time, it was an experience of a life time, but it was not without some ups and downs.

I arrived in the capital of the Philippines, Manilla on August 16th.  A little bit rainy, but great temperature, a little muggy of course, but a sight for sore eyes, after being in the desert for so long.  It's your stereotypical major city, lots of traffic, a slight hint of sewage, not too much to sight see.  I was hankering for some cheap knock off goods, and we went to the Divisoria area.  Not for the faint of heart, and only for the hardcore of shoppers who also speak Tagalo.  I'm glad Pretch was with me.  I stood out pretty bad, not sure if it was due to height, or skin color.  Either case, one of the guys did advise me that my gold chain should be tucked away, or be prepared to have it snatched.  Kinda a scary start.  We travelled by Jeepney which was like riding a bus.  Really cheap, but very slow.  Make sure to take a couple of motion sickness pills, and be prepared to rub up against everyone.  The payment system was surprisingly honest.  You just passed the money up, and everyone passed the money back.  I was a bit sweaty at the end of all this, but got a couple of shirts for 10 bucks.

Beep beep

We spent the day getting accustomed to the layout of the land, and headed out to one of the major attractions, the Mall of Asia.  It was a pretty good size mall, noted according to Wikipedia as the 12th largest mall in the world.  I've been to a few big malls, and they just turn into little towns at that point.  No way you're able to check out all of the stores, you just go to where you want to go, find which one of the locations (usually multiple of the same store in the mall) is most convenient and you go to it.  We took a taxi, so we didn't have to deal with any parking issues.  The lots seemed fairly under control though.  We ate at a Chinese restaurant, which apparently had some good filipino food, and beer in the mall!  Awesome!  Not something I can say i've done before.  The hotel we had also had a happy hour, I got my fix of the famous San Miguel beer, and we met up with the other two folks that would join us for the trip.  A buddy of mine from Denver took a trip down with us.  One of Pretch's friends came with us, so that there wouldn't be a third wheel situation.  I think it worked out well.

We went to the buffet for breakfast, more of a western style breakfast, Hoang's eggs were raw, the dahl was pretty good.  The others didn't get a chance to go to the Mall of Asia (MOA) so we went back, and it started to pour rain!  We had a flight that afternoon, but we were alerted by email that the airline had been shtutdown due to failure to comply with safety regulations.  Not a good start.  We had checked out of the hotel too, so we were kinda stuck in limbo.  We went to go get our refund for the airlines, if we were to rebook, it would have taken at least one week.  We weren't going to do that.  The next available flight was at 5:30AM the next morning.  What to do?  With the rain being so heavy, we decided to go to the Manila aquarium, and be indoors a little bit.  We charged up on coffee, saw the marathon event that was happening at the mall, and took a taxi over to the aquarium.  It was a pretty neat aquarium, a great deal of tropical fish of course, penguins, and they even had a "snow" exhibit.  Basically a huge freezer.  Kinda funny, lots of photo opportunities of course.

We could have gone to a fish spa, but apparently putting your feet in to a giant pool with hundres of other people, iwth fish eating dead skin sounds gross to some people.  We went back to the mall, again, this time we had lunch at the KKK club, it was not what you think it was, it was a different style of Filipino food.  We had a giant fried pork knuckle.  Excellent!  In reality there isn't much to do in a mall, even one that big unless you want to buy stuff.  So we walked around and around, until the latest movie played.  We watched Pacific Rim in high definition, and then slept at the airport for a while.  We didn't do much, but it was a very tiring day.  No further delays, and we were finally on our way to Bohol.

The name of the place that we stayed was Isla Hayaya, which was near Bohol.  We were still exhausted from the lagging day yesterday, and had lunch, and took a nap.  We arrived at around 8:30, and didn't get up until 4:00pm!  We walked around and saw the sun set, saw a boy fishing for eels, we had a beer, picked up some starfish, and had dinner.  The food at this place is absolutely amazing.

All home cooked meals, and it felt like we were the only ones there.  We had some squid, vegetables, and a soup which tasted just like Vietnamese sour soup.  A nice relaxing day.

The next day, was tourist day, we went all over the area, visiting sites such as the Tarsier Sanctuary.  We got to even hold one.  They mentioned that under high stress, they'll commit suicide, which made holding them kinda melancholy.  You can't tell if they're smiling I think.  They just look freaked out all the time.

From there we took the 214 steps up to the top of the chocolate hills, which looked surreal, almost silly.  We finished the afternoon with boat cruise, where there was a floating restaurant on the Loboc River.  There was plenty of good food, the highlight being mango with stinky shrimp paste.  Not one of my favorites.

There was traditional Filipino dancing called tinikling.  We followed that up with some ziplining, a fresh mango smoothie, and visit the Baclayon Church.  This visit to the church was a little more significant, knowing now that a typhoon has destroyed the church.  The church was opened in 1727.  We went to a exotic animal zoo, Hoang laid on top of a python, we we headed back.

We did inpromtu swimming, and had some delicious crab for dinner.  Unfortunately one of the girls couldn't eat crab, but we made sure that it didn't go to waste.  We showed the girls some card games, BS, go fish. and then headed to bed.  The bathrooms were surprisingly nice, hot water was provided by an inline instant heater, so that was quite nice.  The mosquitos were out, but as long as we kept the natural bug spray on (I got it in Sri Lanka, and it works so much better than Off with deet) it wasn't bad at all.

August 20th was a rough day.  Stormy season in the Philippines, means high waves, and flight delays, and probable cancellations.  We got all of those.  In order to head out from Bohol to our airport, we had to take a boat over.  About 2 hours in a churning boat was not terrible.  I took a motion sickness pill, so I was ok. The television was funny, it was a variety hour type of show, full of people in drag, children, contests, and a bunch of stuff that I have no idea about.

When we got to the airport, the flight was delayed from 5 to 7pm, and then from 7pm to 9pm.  The flight then proceeded to get cancelled due to the weather.  The funny thing about all this was that we were trying to get to Boracay.  I had originally booked a direct flight over from Cebu to Boracay.  However, we were rebooked to a flight with a stop in Manilla again.  However, Manilla was where all the bad weather was happening.  Eventually we were able to convince a travel agent that we would be willing to take a direct flight to Boracay instead of going to Manilla first . The problem was the flight was in the morning again.  There was no way I was going to do another night in the airport.  The airline didn't pay for the hotel room, since it was no fault of the airline.  It was a nice hotel, near the airport called the Bellavista Hotel.  We all shared a room, had some drinks, and called it a night.  The girls ordered pizza, and we watched a cheesy horror flick.  Really cheesy.  A much better ending than the beginning.  We were lucky that we didn't have to worry like all the other folks who were unsure about the status of their family, or houses in Manilla due to the weather.

The next day was much better in terms of transportation.  No delays except for a 10 minute hover before we could land.  A bit rainy of a day, but a very pretty place.  The one thing people don't mention about the Philippines is that there is a fee for EVERYTHING.  I'm guessing this is the way the government gets paid.  I believe we paid a tourist fee, environmental protection fee, and an airport fee once we arrived.  The airport is a bit away from the island, it took about half an hour to get to our hotel.  We had to take a boat, and then a tricycle to get there.  

It was a very nice resort hotel.  Clean, perfectly situated, and inexpensive.  

We walked around in the rain getting our bearings again, and find a sigsig restaurant.  This is a restaurant that serves skillet food.  Nice and hot, and spicy.  We got cleaned up, showered, and then went to the beach, since it stopped raining.  We walked from one side of the island to the other, and found the watersport side of the island.  I needed cash, so we walked around the outside shopping center, called the "D-mall."  We changed into swimming clothes, and went swimming.  It rained while we were there, but the temperature was great.  The sand there is like powdered sugar.  You stand still for longer than 5 minutes and you'll be be halfway up your calf. It's kinda like quick sand, only more more relaxing.  

We had some more Lechon Kawali, and margaritas.  Apparently happy hour margaritas are not the best for Pretch, so we went home early.  

The next day was activity day, and we got to do a bunch of your stereotypical items, ATV's, helmet diving, ziplining, snorkeling and island hopping.  Everything was nice, Pretch apparently hadn't driving a car before, so she ran directly into a banana tree, her friend rear ended Hoang.  Insert poor Asian driver joke here.  The helment diving was pretty neat for those who hadn't dived before.  The helmet's heavy, approximately 35 kg's, so you want to get in the water as soon as possible.  Pretty much a photo shoot once you're down there, with some fish feeding.  

Not bad.  We partied for the night, had some "fresh" prawns, drank beer, and song Hoang sing Karaoke.  It was a nice day.  

The next day, we did para-sailing in the morning, and windsurfing in the afternoon.  Apparently you need to be fairly athletic.  I failed horribly, and ran out of gas about 1/2 a mile away from shore.  Got tired.  Not a good time.  The girls got tan, and we decided to be gluttonous for dinner.  We found a fresh fish market called talipapa, and ordered a great deal of fish, clams, lobsters, and tuna for dinner.  We ate way too much, but it was great way to end our time in the Philippines.  

Week 69: Costa Rica

I was hoping that my sister took better notes about what we did in Costa Rica, so that when I decided to write it up, it would be all blanks.  Maybe its a good thing that we didn't.  Probably means that the blog entry will be shorter.  I'm one vacation behind, so I'll write down what I remember, from the photos we took.

So we arrived in Costa Rica, San Jose Airport, which is a little ways away from our actual hotel.  We were travelling to La Fortuna, a town with a big volcano near it.  The drive was a pretty brutal 2 hours, but we had good company.  We just so happened to be on the same bus ride up as our flight crew that brought us over on the plane.  They were definitely a rowdy bunch, and were there for only a few days, so we had some fun chatting, and trying not to get too carsick.  The ride itself was bumpy, but the fog and the blind curves definitely made it scary.

We stopped at the grocery store first, and bought the necessities, junk food, chips beer and rum.  Once we got to the hotel, the room wasn't ready, so we went for a little hike, and got our bearings of where we were.

 We saw some leaf cutter ants, and it started raining, so we went back to the lobby, but the rooms still wasn't ready.  We then we to the hot springs for the one of many times to relax.  

So eventually we got a room, we changed, and then headed out again to get dinner.  The pilot folks gave us the name of a cool restaurant, we had some good food, quesadillas, amazing ceviche, and then headed out to the local shady bar.  We had just arrived, and all we saw was a bleeding guy, and all the pilot folk around.  We were five minutes late to a guy getting sucker punched.  Well, weird, didn't think too much of it.  We had some more drinks, I guess margaritas aren't common there, or the bartender didn't know how to make one.  My sister said it was gross.  She got a pina colada instead.

We saw the cute bartender get hit on sequential by all the people at the bar.  She was 25 with 3 kids or something like that.  Normal.

 Next day was white water rafting.  Breakfast was included in all meals, and it was rice and beans with all meals, fresh fruits, omelettes and something pork.  I was quite happy. I was also glad because of the special sauce that people poured on everything, "Salsa Lizano."  It was a slightly sweet, and spicy.  Strong flavor of cumin.  An did not like it one bit.  I absolutely had to have it on my rice and beans.

White water rafting was just a completely fun experience.  It was a bit of a drive still, but at this point, we all recognized to take a dramamine wherever you go, just in case.  The rapids were almost all from easy to medium, but still provided just enough challenge to make sure that you were paying attention.  The hardest part was when you're riding the front, just to make sure you have a fair pace that people behind you can follow, as well as not being frantic about falling out of the raft.  I did not do that very well.  I fell out.  The guide said that he got bored, and got me out on purpose, but I'm not so certain.  In either case it was fun, and the water wasn't too cold.  We should have gotten the photos though, a shame now that I think about it. 

Something like that.  But not that.  

We were supposed to do some rappelling down a waterfall at the halfway point, but it just so happens that the guy who got sucker punched the other day was the rappel guy, and of course he called in sick that day.  Small world!  It's ok, the pineapple was delicious.  Fresh of course.  Plus no real trash, you just threw the leftover into the woods, and mother nature would take care of it.  Probably within the same day.  It's a very fertile environment.  Lunch was served at an organic farm, cooked by the folks who ran it.  Fresh, and tasty.  No doubt about it, everything came from there, including the fish, and of course the vegetables, and even the coffee.  We then went through a tour of the farm, they went over how manure and a biodigester works, and the methane that is created from it, which powers certain things on the farm.  Pretty neat.  We also learned about how pineapples grow.  Only one per pod.  Then you dig it out, and plant another.  That's just nuts, think about that next time you eat a pineapple.  That took years to produce.  Especially if its organic.  The tour ended on a how to make moonshine out of cane sugar.  they use a manual press to get all the juices out, the women got the first pass, and the men had to press the second and third pass.  Kinda hard.  Pretty funny.  And spicy.  And barely cut.  Maybe 100 proof?  It was funny watching all the people make terrible faces.  I of course didn't :-).  

We were all exhausted for the night, we met up with our white water rafting guide from the morning for dinner, he was the trainer for the Women's Olympic team, which is pretty impressive, really nice guy.  

The next day was zip-lining Costa Rica style.  The standard friction blocks that do all the work for you weren't all there.  You had to brake yourself using a leather glove that was provided.  But it's tricky.  Too much braking too early and you're stuck in the middle of the line, and you have to crawl back to the other side by yourself.  Brake too late, and well, you'll hit a tree.  No pressure . It was fast.  Very fast.  Faster than any other zipline I did, and I was glad we did it.  

We each had our own person behind us to help us "superman."  That's not me behind my sister, I assure you.  

The zipline area was right next to a hot spring that we would visit afterwards.  Within the hot spring was a really neat flower garden, with a butterfly pavillion.  We only had a couple hours before we went on the "short tour" of the volcano.  

The short tour was a bit later in the afternoon, so we were afraid of possible rain, or something that would eat us.  Not really though, the weather held, it was cool enough that the hike was quite easy, and we got to see a few animals, and some amazing views of the volcano.  The problem that we kept on running into with the volcano was that the clouds in the sky would constantly cover the top, so you wouldn't see the steam coming out of the volcano.  We were lucky enough to see that.  Oh, and an ant eater too.  Pretty neat!

Our feet of course were sore after all the walking, and our guide wasn't allowed in the "fancy hot spring," so he showed us the hot spring river that the hotels collect from.  It was a big tunnel that you can just play around it.  Water is very fast though, so we had to be careful.  Otherwise, it was pretty neat.  

It was nice that we got to go to the actual nice hot springs to relax and heat away anything that was sore.  It was more of a pool than a spring, with a hot water source.  Also, and slide.  Very fun.  There were also hot springs if you wanted to lounge around, some cold water spots, so you could get shock your system if you were so bold.   A very busy day.  

The next day was another hiking day to "Rio Celeste," which is known for it's striking baby blue water.  Sulfur + limestone = Baby blue water.  We saw one of the oldest / largest trees, and I got to see a poison dart frog!  

 It was a 3 hour hike, and it rained a little bit, and oh boy was it muddy.  I really should have brought the right shoes, and swim trunks.  In reality I just packed very poorly for this hike.  But it was gorgeous.  You could totally smell the sulfur, but beautiful. 

On the way back, our guide knew of a not so poisonous hot spring/river spot that you could actually hang out in.  He then proceeded to give us all mud facials.  Yup.  My face did feel softer I suppose. 

So we then forgot that all the booze that we had purchase had not been drank.  Thus, the critical point of the night was to get more time in the hot tub, and to ensure that all the drinks that needed to be drunk, were drunken?  Mission complete.  We almost solved world peace too, but not quite.  

The next morning was not pretty

This was the last day of the trip, before we had to leave, and we had a trip to one of the many caves in Costa Rica for some introduction to spelunking.  It was wet, wild, slimy, and terrible if you're even remotely claustrophobic.  There were a couple of climbs and holes that I didn't think we'd be able to make, but surely enough, with a little bit of hope, some grip, and prayer, we were able to get through the whole cave.  Oh, and bats, and gross bugs.  Not for the squeamish, but awesome anyway.    

Aww crap. 

We came back, bought souvenirs, had more ceviche, my sister got a very expensive fish, and hit the hot springs one more time.  Our drive was pretty late, and we really didn't sleep during the night.  My sister got a little carsick, and I left my sunglasses in the van.  Anti-climactic for sure.  But overall, a great country, unbelievably kind people, very eco-conscious, and a great place to go see.