Back in Singapore

A headline in the Sabah English-language newspaper: “M’sian held for smuggling fags into S’pore.” And so here we are.

I couldn’t post from Kota Kinabalu. Internet access was widely available and very cheap (I never paid more the RM1 even when the posted rate was RM2 per hour, and the way it works everywhere I’ve ever travelled, you pay for an hour regardless, so this RM1 pattern was pretty cool), but the service was so sloooow that I gave up even sending email. It’s weird feeling so disconnected. We had only 4 tv channels in our much-too-big-for-us condo (it was 3 bedrooms, only 2 of which we were actually permitted to use because we paid a very cheap rate for 2- even though it’s a 3-bedroom. Odd, I know), and only intemittent broadcasts were in English, so we couldn’t get much in the way of news of the world from tv, and the local paper was concerned with matters of caning, the prophet Mohammed and blogs about him, and of course the smuggling of fags. So it’s really been like being in another world, because it was, really.

I wish I could say that I had a life-changing adventure, and maybe I did, maybe that experience on Borneo was more affecting than I can realise now, but I really didn’t get up to much at all. KK is a nice small city with a frontier air about it, a point of immigration (legal and otherwise) for a lot of folks from Indonesia and especially the Philippines, and the island is of course beautiful beyond description. I couldn’t really describe it in any case because I saw so little of it- I spent all my time in the city proper, taking in what I could (and having some superb food, some not so much too), swimming more laps than I thought I’d be able to in the condo’s 25 metre pool (all to myself, basically, an absolute pleasure for me)… and getting sick. I got the Sabah version of mal de turista (depite the Dukoral) and was laid up for a day and change. This was disconcerting, of course, but I’m okay, it was nothing terribly serious and though I’m sad about not being to accompany Brian on his day trips (in a recurring refrain in this relationship, he continues to be more daring than I am– when we were in Kona two Christmases ago he went to Volcanoes National Park with a 102 degree fever while I convalesced under a blanket suffering from the same flu); he want to the islands outside the city for the beaches, to Mt Kinabalu NP and a drive to points south. I swam, ate, and dozed, but I’m happy with the experience and glad I can say I’ve seen that remote, wild part of the world, even if only a tiny part of a tiny part.

Anyway, we’re back in Singapore, in the comforting folds of a five-star hotel (Swissotel Stamford) and I’m more than charmed by this neighbourhood. I’m typing this up in an internet cafe (the room internet is simply too expensive) that’s in a beautiful old colonial storefront, my tummy full of an unagi burger (pics of that to come, I promise) from this Japanese chain called Mos Burger that also sells what may be the most perfect fries I’ve had in, well, in a while.

I’ll upload more pics in the next day or so. For now, I have received the good news that my cell phone, lost on the bus from here to KL on the 18th, has been found, and I can go pick it up at the bus company’s Singapore offices. This makes me happy.

If I don’t blog before the 1st, I wish all a happy new year!

Making peace with KL. And more pics are up.

The great thing about travelling as I prefer to–which entails, ideally, at least week in ONE PLACE to get to know it better than one would in, say, a package tour–is that I can stick around long enough to see if my initial impressions are accurate and to, of course, really get to know it. I fell a little bit out of love with Berlin after nine days there last year (see entry for around Oct 20, 2007 for those insights- but I still love Berlin), and in the case of KL, what seemed like complete, unpleasant disorder as discussed in my last long post? Well, my views are tempered a bit. Part of this is because we’ve been in a REALLY nice hotel for the last three nights (Parkroyal KL), which is near a completely opulent area called the Golden Triangle and the street known as Bukit Bintang in particular. I’ve also managed to walk a fair bit of late, and as was the case from day one, the food continues to charm. Part is that I kind of “understand” the disorder now. It’s all about getting the rhythm of a place. Nobody here runs or even walks fast, and everything seems to follow from that, somehow.

So I’m not feeling as crusty as I was a couple of days ago, which is good. More pics up at my picasa page (not many because having to use the old-fashioned five-at-a-time uploader is glacially slow on this hotel machine, so I only uploaded about 16).

Tomorrow we leave, early, for Kota Kinabalu, a city in the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. I don’t know how much internet access I’ll have but will hope to update from there.

Merry Christmas! Or in Malay, Hari Krismas!

Pics up on Picasa!

Okay, I’ve managed to upload my first set of photos. It’s the album called “Singapore and Malaysia…” obviously. I’ll be updating of course but for anybody who’d like to check it out, here is the link to all of my Picasa web albums:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jfmanzo

Malaysia, part 1

So after a very brief day and a half in Singapore we’ve now been in Kuala Lumpur for four. It’s been–and before I get into the details, forgive my in advance for sounding like a spoiled princess–it’s been challenging. The challenges started with the bus ride here on Aeroline. The ride was fine, comfy even, with a surprising little on-board repast of thin rice noodles and some sort of chicken, and very good, garlicky greens on the side. We were a little late arriving because of the shattering rush-hour traffic here, and on de-boarding we found a cab right away and were advised that he’d take us to our hotel for 30Ringgit. We negotiated 25 which is still highway robbery, but therein we learned our second frustrating lesson about this city (first was how horrific the traffic is): Taxis are required by law to use their meters, but NONE do it, and the city leaves it up to customers to police the taxis. You see signs all over saying that you should refuse to ride if drivers refuse to use meters, but as to how you can get from point A to B without deferring to this charming custom? No help there. It is maddening.

Also maddening: Transit. KL has three municipal LRT lines run by KL Transit, two commuter trains run by the national railway, a monorail run by a private company, and a train to the airport run by the airport authority. ALL SIX require separate payment. So after I bought a pre-paid RM 20 card for one KL line, I disovered that it did not work for ANOTHER KL line (despite both being run by the same municipal agency). This would be like having to change STATIONS to get from the City Centre to Dalhousie LRT in Calgary AND to have to pay to board Dalhousie. It is fucking insane and drove me to the brink of insanity yesterday to try to get to Suria KLCC/Petronas Towers.

So cabs here are crooked and transit is a despicable cash grab. The situation for pedestrians is as bad as I had heard it to be, with too many nonexistent or in horrible repair sidewalks and too few safe ways to cross streets. This is just a very frustrating place, because as a traveller your primary agenda is to get from one place to another, and it’s a challenge every time.

But there are positives. Though the weather has been oppressively hot, it’s at least been dry for the most part, and the greenery is of course a delight. Our first hotel–”first” because we decided to cut the stay short, mostly because our room, nice though it was, faced non-stop traffic noise, the horn-blowing city kind and not the nice drone of the highway kind–was staffed by some of the nicest people I’ve ever met anywhere, and the breakfast in this place was gob-smacking fantastic, with outstanding Malay offerings like roti canai (all you can eat!) and ayam rendang (all you can eat!) and this feast was included in our bill. We’re  now at the Parkroyal KL (having had such a great experience at the one in Singapore, the Kitchener Road one) and again esconced in luxury, and in a much nicer part of town than we were in Hotel 1 (it was colourful but just too chaotic).

The food has been better than good. Amazing food. I’ve now had roti canai and roti parata, including a DESERT parata stuffed with bananas and chocolate, like a chewy crepe. I’ve had both steamed Hainanese chicken rice (twice in one day in Singapore) and now roasted, Malaysia-style Hainanese chicken rice. I’ve had tons of nasi lemak with fried egg and those tiny dried fishes, ayam and beef rendang , weird sweets with ice and jellys and fruits in syrup, warm fresh tofu with lychee and syrup, juices of mango and honeydew, fresh green and sweet mango and fresh dragonfruit. If this trip were only about the food I’d call it an unqualified success, but the fact is, as in Trinidad, I am not sure I could ever get used to the particular disorganized bustle of this city. But let me think about it some more.

As is par for the course for me on just about any trip, I’ve had some bad luck. I lost my much-loved Moto v195 cell phone, the unlocked quad-band that I bought with this specific trip in mind. I had already replaced my Fido SIM card with a Singapore one, thank God, and it only had S$18 of cresdit on it, but damn it, I loved that phone. I either left it on the Aeroline bus or else on the RM30 taxi, and as there is no way to contact Mr Teksi, I contacted but have heard nothing from Aeroline. So I settled on a used v3 Razr, which is okay, and a Malaysian plan. Also on the bad luck tip is just that I got a not-unexpected head cold but am not too bad, but I just wish I could ever have a trip go smoothly.

As noted earlier, if you’re a Facebook friend of Brian’s, he has already uploaded dozens of his pics to his facebook page. I’m going to try to upload some by and by to my Picasa page just because everybody, not just FB users, can access them.

Off for a siesta!

Trip Report 1: SQ11 and some nice early impressions

I’m bloggging this on Brian’s laptop (I have his eee PC but we only get one IP per room for the internet, so I’m having to type this speedily so he can get back to watching a cricket webcast in the same time zone where the game is happening, i.e., not in the middle of the night). I will be uploading pics later, maybe after our return on January 6, but if you’re one of Brian’s facebook friends he’s posting his pics already, so look for threads at his fb page.

All flights were admirably on time- AC568 to LA was smooth as butter, and SQ11 left right on time from LAX and was only a few minutes late departing from Narita for its final leg. The experience was more than posh- the service is almost embarrassingly gracious- but man this was a long trip. 26 hours door to door (and that’s not including the 2+ hours we had to arrive early to YYC), and even on those glorious lie-flat beds on Singapore, I could not sleep until the last part. Now,why this was the case I don’t fully understand, but I fell right asleep listening the Gotan Project Live on Krisworld, so I am going to get that album and use it to fall asleep whenever I want. The thing about sleeping is that we both managed a few hours on that last Narita-Singapore leg, and so we had a sort of half night’s sleep banked on arrival here, so we were in bed at the hotel (NICE HOTEL by the way), and amazingly up at around 7:30. I was shocked and so was Brian but there’s no arguing with success.

Few things of note:  The food on SQ was good, some of it very good, but not as good as I was imagining. I also opted out of the last major meal so I could sleep from Narita (my body was insisting). More to come on that mark when I post my photo thread.

Also of note: Stephen Ames, the Calgary-based pro golfer, was on AC and since he and Brian are both from Trinidad they chatted a bit. Nice, candid guy. But cool as that meeting was, he got upstaged when we shared our first class SQ11 cabin with Keanu Reeves. Yes, the movie star. He actually was pretty cool, posed for pics with the flight attendants, and I even shared a few words with him (this was in the galley where he came for a coffee when I was chatting with some of the crew, and I told him how much I like A Scanner Darkly, and he said he did too). Neat story.

We’ve been here almost a full day now and love what we’ve experienced so far-hotel (Parkroyal Kitchener Road) is a brilliant surprise, nice room, nice free breakfast spread, beautiful pool. We walked through Little India to Orchard Road and sampled one of many Hainanese Chicken Rice combos (a little sort of hawker centre off Orchard Road, man that has some deep flavours) and also went to a south Indian fast-food veggie place and had this thing- it’s a deep-fried puri that puffs HUGELY and is consumed with a chickpea sambar that is lovely, spicy and crispy and beautiful. Edited to add that it’s a “bhattura” and ours was from a place called Komala’s.

We both got Singapore SIM cards for our phones, a first for me. I am going to just use this in Malaysia as well- S$1 roaming per minute is pricey but way less than the C$3 it would cost with my Canadian card. Plus I really doubt I’ll need my phone for more than few minutes.

It’s really, really hot and humid here but green and shady and with lots and lots of air-conditioned spaces of course.

Much much much more to come.