We arrived back home in Toronto on one of the nicest days so far this winter -- it was 1C and clear skies. The days before and after it was -20C with a lot of flight cancellations so we were lucky.
It was an 8 hour flight from Singapore to Beijing. Even in winter, the air in Beijing was really polluted. We couldn't see the control tower from the airport, it was so bad. We had a 5 hour layover between the flights. We looked around at the lunch options. The wait staff were surprisingly active in their sales pitch, with menus thrust into our faces as we walked by. I've seen that in streetside restaurants, but never in an airport!
Then it was a 13 hour flight to Toronto. After the efficiency of Singapore's airport, Toronto's Pearson looked downright bad. In Singapore, it took us 20 minutes from landing to being in a taxi. In Toronto, it was a 20 minute walk from the plane to the arrivals terminal! Then a bottleneck going through immigration and customs. And then it took 90 minutes for the first bag to appear on the conveyor! (this was in good weather too). It might almost be faster to fly into Buffalo and drive to Toronto.
Overall our trip was great. We really enjoyed the adventure stuff in Borneo: trekking through the rainforest in Danum Valley, diving in Sipadan, and exploring the caves at Mulu Park. The wildlife was more difficult to spot in the rainforest (say compared to a safari in Africa), and while we did see proboscis monkeys and orangutans, it was from a distance. It was still really cool though. The food wasn't as great as the hype we had read - maybe because in Toronto it's pretty easy to get the same variety of food and so we weren't easily impressed. In the smaller towns (Ipoh, Penang) we had some really great food, using food bloggers for suggestions. In the big cities (KL, Singapore) it was more hit-and-miss.
The big cities also weren't as photogenic as I had thought. On the other hand, Penang was great for pictures - I have a separate album just with the street art in Penang.
Saturday, January 04, 2014
Friday, January 03, 2014
Singapore, Singapore
We flew from Ipoh to Singapore on Firefly. We had wanted to take the train but it's a 11 hour journey that arrived just before midnight, and that didn't sound like a good time to arrive on New Year's Eve. So we booked online for the flight.
The Ipoh airport was only a 15 minute drive from our hotel. The airport was new and very clean. On all the internal Malaysian flights we were able to take water through security but this was an international flight and so we had to toss our waters. They also gave more scrutiny to the wooden souvenirs that we had taken as carry-on on previous flights without problems.
The flight actually took off 5 minutes early! We arrived in Singapore 90 minutes later around 11am. The Singapore airport was very efficient - we were in a taxi about 20 minutes after landing, which included taxiing to the gate, disembarking, retrieving our luggage, going through immigration and customs, changing ringgit to dollars, and getting through the taxi queue.
We thought about taking the MRT, but it wasn't too much more ($18 for a taxi, $5 for MRT) and more convenient with a taxi.
We're staying at Wanderlust in Little India. The room was bigger than we expected - Singapore hotel rooms are generally on the smaller side. (They actually list the square footage on hotel websites when you browse for hotels).
The hotel had given us a little map with restaurant recommendations in the area. We tried one out for lunch. It was very busy. The food was okay.
We had an unexciting NYE dinner in Bugis Market just outside Little India. Went for beers at a small café near our hotel. They had 85 bottles on hand from around the world - including Moosehead. We just had Tiger, as we were in Singapore after all.
We made it to about 10pm and then called it a night, and year.
...
I had a bit of a slow start the next day. Breakfast at the hotel was excellent - pancakes with real bacon and real maple syrup! Most places in Malaysia had served beef bacon or other non-pork substitutes, and honey or jam. We also ordered the fruit salad (it was a choice, so we paid extra to have the fruit too) which was really good.
Started the day at the Singapore Art Museum. We really like the art exhibits. Then we walked over to Gardens by the Bay. Walking there was a bit off a challenge as they hadn't yet taken down the barricades to control the NYE crowds that came to watch the fireworks. We finally made it down there, stopping for lunch at one of the many malls along the way.
Gardens by the Bay is pretty cool. The highlights are the supertrees that you've likely seen pictures - they look like metal frames of trees. It was really hazy so I didn't bother taking pictures - night time is better for pics I think.
The Gardens are representative of the various landscapes around Malaysia - the rainforest, caves with rock formations etc. It was well done, but we were fortunate enough to be able to see the real thing so didn't bother to pay to enter any of the ticketed attractions.
Walked all the way home, about 5km. Singapore has nice big wide walkways under building overhangs on all the major streets, so it's easy as a pedestrian. The only part I didn't like is that the pedestrian crossings aren't synchronized, so it can take two full light cycles to cross an intersection.
We wanted to have dinner at our hotel restaurant but it was closed, and so instead went to Mustard, a little Indian restaurant that Heather found on the web. They were full with reservations but took us in. Dinner was okay.
...
The next day we started at another museum, the National Museum of Singapore. It was well done and is a good historical account of Singapore. It tries to be more interactive (I suppose it's what the kids want) but we found it a bit too much.
The museum is close to the east end of Orchard Rd which was our next stop. Orchard Rd is the main shopping street in Singapore. It's lined with malls full of high-end stores. They're all interconnected with escalators running all over, inside and out. There's no doors at the entrances, just open space, so air conditioning is pouring out all the time. The whole street reminded me of those futuristic cities where you can't tell where "ground" level is, and in fact inside and outside lose all meaning. There was one intersection that pedestrians had to use an underpass. Normally these are straight forward. However this one routed through a mall and it took us about 10 minutes to figure out how to get out on the other side.
We had lunch at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison in Mandarin Gallery, based on the recommendation of our favourite Ipoh blogger. Fans of Japanese food will know the food - it's panko crusted pork served with shredded cabbage, miso soup and rice. The food was most excellent.
Continued walking down the length of Orchard Rd, to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. This was very well done, and the paths well-marked. However, again, as we'd just come back from the real rainforest it wasn't as exciting. It was nice for a walk, and a nice break from museums and malls.
Took the MRT back home. It was one of the cleanest subways I've been on.
We had made reservations for dinner at our hotel. The breakfasts were quite good and we thought French food would be a nice for a change. The food was pretty good (we shared the pork collar) but nothing I couldn't cook at home. But it was conveniently located, and after another big day of walking (about 12km today) we didn't feel like going too far.
...
Started off our last day in Singapore at yet another museum, the Asian Civilizations Museum. This museum gets our vote as the best in Singapore. It really does require a couple visits to do it justice.
Had lunch at an arts centre of some sort just near the museum. It was a $15 set lunch and it was really good, Vietnamese inspired.
We were travelled-out by this time and so just walked back to our hotel.
Grabbed our books (meaning, iPad and iPhone) and went to a nearby restaurant to read. We're sitting at a sidewalk table catching up with our reading and me with our blog.
The call to prayers just started. I forgot to mention in Ipoh, because the room wasn't too sound proof, and with the mosque very nearby, it was the loudest call to prayers we've heard. They also had a pretty decent sound system, with no clipping. Most sound like a high school PA speaker, but the one in Ipoh sounded really good.
We've been checking the weather forecast in Toronto and when we return, it will be -20C, and feel like -30C with the wind chill. The temperature today in Singapore was 31C and with humidity it felt like 40C. That's a 70C swing in temperatures for us. I just turned off vacation mode on our thermostat, which gives our house 36 hours to heat up. Hope that's enough time!
The Ipoh airport was only a 15 minute drive from our hotel. The airport was new and very clean. On all the internal Malaysian flights we were able to take water through security but this was an international flight and so we had to toss our waters. They also gave more scrutiny to the wooden souvenirs that we had taken as carry-on on previous flights without problems.
The flight actually took off 5 minutes early! We arrived in Singapore 90 minutes later around 11am. The Singapore airport was very efficient - we were in a taxi about 20 minutes after landing, which included taxiing to the gate, disembarking, retrieving our luggage, going through immigration and customs, changing ringgit to dollars, and getting through the taxi queue.
We thought about taking the MRT, but it wasn't too much more ($18 for a taxi, $5 for MRT) and more convenient with a taxi.
We're staying at Wanderlust in Little India. The room was bigger than we expected - Singapore hotel rooms are generally on the smaller side. (They actually list the square footage on hotel websites when you browse for hotels).
The hotel had given us a little map with restaurant recommendations in the area. We tried one out for lunch. It was very busy. The food was okay.
We had an unexciting NYE dinner in Bugis Market just outside Little India. Went for beers at a small café near our hotel. They had 85 bottles on hand from around the world - including Moosehead. We just had Tiger, as we were in Singapore after all.
We made it to about 10pm and then called it a night, and year.
...
I had a bit of a slow start the next day. Breakfast at the hotel was excellent - pancakes with real bacon and real maple syrup! Most places in Malaysia had served beef bacon or other non-pork substitutes, and honey or jam. We also ordered the fruit salad (it was a choice, so we paid extra to have the fruit too) which was really good.
Started the day at the Singapore Art Museum. We really like the art exhibits. Then we walked over to Gardens by the Bay. Walking there was a bit off a challenge as they hadn't yet taken down the barricades to control the NYE crowds that came to watch the fireworks. We finally made it down there, stopping for lunch at one of the many malls along the way.
Gardens by the Bay is pretty cool. The highlights are the supertrees that you've likely seen pictures - they look like metal frames of trees. It was really hazy so I didn't bother taking pictures - night time is better for pics I think.
The Gardens are representative of the various landscapes around Malaysia - the rainforest, caves with rock formations etc. It was well done, but we were fortunate enough to be able to see the real thing so didn't bother to pay to enter any of the ticketed attractions.
Walked all the way home, about 5km. Singapore has nice big wide walkways under building overhangs on all the major streets, so it's easy as a pedestrian. The only part I didn't like is that the pedestrian crossings aren't synchronized, so it can take two full light cycles to cross an intersection.
We wanted to have dinner at our hotel restaurant but it was closed, and so instead went to Mustard, a little Indian restaurant that Heather found on the web. They were full with reservations but took us in. Dinner was okay.
...
The next day we started at another museum, the National Museum of Singapore. It was well done and is a good historical account of Singapore. It tries to be more interactive (I suppose it's what the kids want) but we found it a bit too much.
The museum is close to the east end of Orchard Rd which was our next stop. Orchard Rd is the main shopping street in Singapore. It's lined with malls full of high-end stores. They're all interconnected with escalators running all over, inside and out. There's no doors at the entrances, just open space, so air conditioning is pouring out all the time. The whole street reminded me of those futuristic cities where you can't tell where "ground" level is, and in fact inside and outside lose all meaning. There was one intersection that pedestrians had to use an underpass. Normally these are straight forward. However this one routed through a mall and it took us about 10 minutes to figure out how to get out on the other side.
We had lunch at Tonkatsu by Ma Maison in Mandarin Gallery, based on the recommendation of our favourite Ipoh blogger. Fans of Japanese food will know the food - it's panko crusted pork served with shredded cabbage, miso soup and rice. The food was most excellent.
Continued walking down the length of Orchard Rd, to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. This was very well done, and the paths well-marked. However, again, as we'd just come back from the real rainforest it wasn't as exciting. It was nice for a walk, and a nice break from museums and malls.
Took the MRT back home. It was one of the cleanest subways I've been on.
We had made reservations for dinner at our hotel. The breakfasts were quite good and we thought French food would be a nice for a change. The food was pretty good (we shared the pork collar) but nothing I couldn't cook at home. But it was conveniently located, and after another big day of walking (about 12km today) we didn't feel like going too far.
...
Started off our last day in Singapore at yet another museum, the Asian Civilizations Museum. This museum gets our vote as the best in Singapore. It really does require a couple visits to do it justice.
Had lunch at an arts centre of some sort just near the museum. It was a $15 set lunch and it was really good, Vietnamese inspired.
We were travelled-out by this time and so just walked back to our hotel.
Grabbed our books (meaning, iPad and iPhone) and went to a nearby restaurant to read. We're sitting at a sidewalk table catching up with our reading and me with our blog.
The call to prayers just started. I forgot to mention in Ipoh, because the room wasn't too sound proof, and with the mosque very nearby, it was the loudest call to prayers we've heard. They also had a pretty decent sound system, with no clipping. Most sound like a high school PA speaker, but the one in Ipoh sounded really good.
We've been checking the weather forecast in Toronto and when we return, it will be -20C, and feel like -30C with the wind chill. The temperature today in Singapore was 31C and with humidity it felt like 40C. That's a 70C swing in temperatures for us. I just turned off vacation mode on our thermostat, which gives our house 36 hours to heat up. Hope that's enough time!
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Ipoh, Malaysia
We had the day to tour around Ipoh. There's a couple walking tours of historical buildings published by the tourist board, and we figured that would take up most of the day.
Tour 1 starts off pretty nicely, with the train station, city hall and post office, all built around the early 1900's. Then we went off-tour to visit the museum, but it was closed for renovations. Back to the tour.
The buildings became less impressive (although historically cool) and it was very hot and humid, and so we gave up on Tour 1 about 75% of the way through. Looked quickly at the map for Tour 2 and it continued the downwards trend in importance of buildings. We were very close to our hotel, and so that was the end of our touring of Ipoh.
The food blogger we followed in Ipoh recommended Thean Chun which is right beside our hotel, so we went there for lunch. We got help from how to order from the couple that were seated at the same table. I walked to the stall up front to order the chicken kuey teow soup, ordered the caramel egg custard from the lady who took drink orders, and the satays were placed on the table and you eat what you want, and then they count your skewers at the end to see what you owe. These were the three items that locals come here for, according to the couple. They actually pulled up the same blogger to refer us to a coffee place. At least we were reading the right blogs! They asked us where else we had eaten in Ipoh and they gave nods of approval for each, in particular for yesterday's dim sum place.
All the food was excellent. The satays were really moist and tender. The soup broth was amazing, and the noodles perfectly silky. The bean sprouts fat and tasty. And the custard was really yummy, one of the best I've had.
Fortunately the hotel was next door because the most we could do after all the food was roll into the room and crash. Got up enough energy to walk down the street for the best white coffee in Ipoh, at Sin Yoon Loong. The couple from lunch had told us we had to order it with toast, so we did, not sure what we'd get. Turns out it is toast. Two pieces of wonderbread equivalent, toasted, with margarine and something sweet and jam-like. We were still stuffed from lunch so just nibbled it to try it out. The coffee was very smooth and slightly muddy, with no bitterness. I'm a tea drinker but could drink coffee like this.
Later in the afternoon went to Burps and Giggles (around the block from our hotel) to read and have a beer. We were still full from lunch and so just stayed there for dinner and split a fish burger - it was pretty good.
Tour 1 starts off pretty nicely, with the train station, city hall and post office, all built around the early 1900's. Then we went off-tour to visit the museum, but it was closed for renovations. Back to the tour.
The buildings became less impressive (although historically cool) and it was very hot and humid, and so we gave up on Tour 1 about 75% of the way through. Looked quickly at the map for Tour 2 and it continued the downwards trend in importance of buildings. We were very close to our hotel, and so that was the end of our touring of Ipoh.
The food blogger we followed in Ipoh recommended Thean Chun which is right beside our hotel, so we went there for lunch. We got help from how to order from the couple that were seated at the same table. I walked to the stall up front to order the chicken kuey teow soup, ordered the caramel egg custard from the lady who took drink orders, and the satays were placed on the table and you eat what you want, and then they count your skewers at the end to see what you owe. These were the three items that locals come here for, according to the couple. They actually pulled up the same blogger to refer us to a coffee place. At least we were reading the right blogs! They asked us where else we had eaten in Ipoh and they gave nods of approval for each, in particular for yesterday's dim sum place.
All the food was excellent. The satays were really moist and tender. The soup broth was amazing, and the noodles perfectly silky. The bean sprouts fat and tasty. And the custard was really yummy, one of the best I've had.
Fortunately the hotel was next door because the most we could do after all the food was roll into the room and crash. Got up enough energy to walk down the street for the best white coffee in Ipoh, at Sin Yoon Loong. The couple from lunch had told us we had to order it with toast, so we did, not sure what we'd get. Turns out it is toast. Two pieces of wonderbread equivalent, toasted, with margarine and something sweet and jam-like. We were still stuffed from lunch so just nibbled it to try it out. The coffee was very smooth and slightly muddy, with no bitterness. I'm a tea drinker but could drink coffee like this.
Later in the afternoon went to Burps and Giggles (around the block from our hotel) to read and have a beer. We were still full from lunch and so just stayed there for dinner and split a fish burger - it was pretty good.
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