Night 10 - Day 13 Malaysia to Singapore

Night 10 was great!

we decided to go to babylon for a sundowner and ended up seeing niamh (somehow pronounced neeve). she's the irish woman who works at zackry's guesthouse where we stayed on langkawi. when i met her the first day i knew i liked her but we never got to chat until our last night. but boy did we make up for it lol we talked to her for 4 hours on the beach...so long that we almost missed out on dinner lol most places stop serving at 10pm lol

i won't go into all the details here because i have a lot to update on but i'll give you the jist. she told us some really interesting stories about when she traveled around the world in her twenties (including 30 states in the u.s.!) and about how she came to live on langkawi. she said she was volunteering in vietnam with her brother-in-law 7 years ago, came to langkawi for a vacation afterwards, went back to ireland and turned right around and came back to langkawi because she loved it so much! lol she's been there ever since and is engaged to a malay man. they think they'll settle in ireland or spain.

anyway she was SUPER friendly and fun to talk to. i feel like i've known her my whole life now and i hope to see her again. who knows- maybe we'll visit her in ireland or spain or she might come to texas because her sister married a texan! :o)

after hanging out with her it was too late to go to the malay place we were gonna go to for dinner so we just went to the irish pub and had a cheeseburger and fish and chips lol

it was a great night and made me not wanna leave langkawi- i'll miss it!

Day 11 - flew to singapore

I LOVED SINGAPORE!!!! it was sooo nice! the weather was perfect (and barely changes year-round since it's so close to the equator), it's really diverse which makes things interesting, it's got great urban planning and it's SO CLEAN! people were even sweeping LEAVES off the sidewalk! in the rest of southeast asia you're lucky if they sweep anything...ever lol

we stayed in little india which was AWESOME! i've never been to india but i felt like it was like going there without the danger of getting sick lol it was great! we stayed at "the inncrowd". the main building is a hostel with a kitchen, lounge and internet area but our private room was in a different building down the street and around the corner. the room was nice enough. it had a bunk bed with a double on bottom and a twin on top, cute sheets, cute paint job on the walls, a lamp and a really nice tv that only plays dvds. there were shared bathrooms upstairs. the things i didn't like about this place were as follows: the guy who checked us in gave us no towels, no top sheet and didn't tell us the tv only worked with dvds (or even how to turn on the tv which we could't figure out). we had to ask about all of these things over the course of the 4 days. the worst thing was the top sheet because the room had aircon which was too cold to sleep with without a top sheet but there was no fan or window so we burned up if we didn't use the aircon. we assumed that they would have told us if top sheets were available so we didn't ask about them til the last day and they did in fact have them for free! lol i was so frustrated because we had 3 bad night's sleep because of that. the things i didn't like about the bathrooms were: they built the toilets so close to the stall door that you could fit your legs in between lol and they didn't tell us how to work the hot water so the first time we took a shower it was freezing! lol

other than all that though it was ok lol the bed was pretty comfy, everything was clean, we got free internet for 30 mins. per day, there was free breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, toast, tea and coffee and the place was very stylish. they also helped us with info about buses, etc. and they let you watch a selection of dvds for free. overall not horrible :o)

little india was really cool though as i said. there was a market along one street with fresh veggies, fruits, clothes, etc. for sale. people everywhere and WONDERFUL smells throughout- curry, incense, flowers, etc. it was really fun walking through there! there was a tamil festival going on during our entire stay called pongal. it's their harvest festival. they had concerts everynight, food specials at the restaurants and cows people could pray to and take pictures with. one day i got the pongal special set at one of the restaurants and it was really good! pongal is also a type of rice dish- it's like mashed rice with lentils and spices, sometimes milk. it's really good!

our first meal was in an outdoor food court type place which are all over singapore. it's just a bunch of food stalls all in a row which they call food hawkers. there was ALL kinds of food- indian, chinese, malay, korean, indonesian, etc. we got indian chicken biriyani with an iced milk tea. it was SO GOOD! we got a huge plate of rice with a piece of chicken and some curry, plus the drink for like $4 u.s. that's when singapore totally won me over! lol

after lunch we walked down orchard street which is like a huge rodeo drive with giant designer stores all up and down it- chanel, louis vuitton, gucci, etc. it was pretty crazy! there were also like 10 starbucks on this one street lol we stopped in singapore's biggest bookstore and spent a couple hours in there looking around. it was awesome to go in an english bookstore again! that's another thing- everyone speaks english in singapore really well...i don't know if it's their national language but it's at least the second language which made things really easy and relaxing. it took us a while to get used to it though lol we still spoke in "korea english" for a while lol

for dinner we went to a really nice food court on orchard road and got chinese that was pretty good- it didn't compare to that indian though! lol

after dinner we just hung out in an outdoor starbuck's and read til we got tired and went back to the hostel.

Day 12 - the zoo!

singapore has the most amazing zoo i have ever been too! it has open concept habitats for the animals so many of them are in completely open habitat where they could jump out at you but they don't. somehow they train them to stay in their habitats. the good thing about it is you can get really close to them and get great pics! they of course keep the really dangerous animals in the type of habitats we use in the states. for example the lions on in a big open, natural looking habitat high up but there's a big fence and ditch between you and them.

they had most of the usual animals you see but my favorite was the primates- especially the proboscis monkeys! i had never seen them before and the singapore zoo has the most of any zoo in the world. they're really funny looking because they have really big noses- some of them look almost human!

another cool part was the rainforest section where they had these pretty blue chicken-like birds that roamed around, flying foxes, mouse deer, lemurs, butterflies, etc. we got really close to most of these creatures because it was feeding time and the put the food out where you can see them eat. i was surprised how the animals weren't scared of us. in all other asian zoos i've been in the animals are terrified and down right aggressive towards people because the people they've had contact with have been aggressive toward them. it seems people who live in or go to singapore are a little more aware of how animals should be treated though.

this zoo also had the best zoo food i've ever eaten! we got an indian set meal with rice and curries and a papdam! delicious! they also had TWO ben and jerry's ice cream shops! we definitely got in on that! ;o)

after the zoo i got that pongal special for dinner and jens got a masala dosai which we didn't know would be so huge! lol it's like a giant crepe but thinner and crispier. it came with curried mashed potatoes inside. we were stuffed after that! we went to the prince of whales bar for happy hour and to see the live music but the guy didn't start playing til we were almost done with our drinks so we didn't listen long. but it was a good night!

Day 13 - walking everywhere!

breakfast- indian! the indian food was so good in singapore i wanted to eat it as much as possible! lol i got chapati with curry and jens got dosai with curry- yum!

then we walked to the famous raffles hotel! it's huge and white and in the colonial style of architecture. very big and beautiful. there are shops and restaurants all around. we peeked in at the long bar where they sell the famous sinagpore sling and vowed to get one later that night.

then we wanted to walk around the colonial district but we got lost in this HUGE "shopping city" called suntec. jens read it's bigger than little indian and arab town put together! i believe it! we liked to have never gotten out of there! singapore's consumer culture started to really get to us at that point lol

we finally found the colonial district and but it was lunch time and we wanted to get into the art museum during the free time (12-2p) so we had to hurry. we got pad thai in a food court and rushed over to the museum but the guy said they stopped having free admission during those hours this year lol but it was free from 6-9p so we decided to go back later.

we roamed around some more and found came across a firefighter museum- it was free so we looked around and took pics for our dads :o)

then we hung out at a coffee shop til it was time for free admission at the museum. the museum was really nice. it's built in the colonial style too. most of the exhibits were philippino modern art but i kinda wanted to see more art from the s.e. asian peninsula since that's where we're traveling. the art we saw was awesome though. i got some pics!

after that we went to the long bar and had the famous singapore sling for $28.50 singaporean dollars!!! that's about $20 u.s.! pretty insane but it's something you just gotta do! lol the bar was super nice and the drink was good...just not $20 good lol

we made up for it by having a cheap indian dinner at a food court- it was delicious again!

ah! i have to stop now! we gotta eat dinner in time to catch the night train to thailand! hopefully i can finish updating about singapore in the next couple days! bye!