A Valley Girl Kind of Day in Singapore

Before we met up with Nico and Claudi in Indonesia and after going back and forth through Singaporean immigration three times and receiving five passport stamps from them, we finally actually went into Singapore for a short and sweet visit. Well, "we" being relative in this case as it was once again only me who saw the city... As soon as we got there, I was instantly bummed that we hadn't stayed longer. It was so western! There were malls! And road rules! And English everywhere! 

Now, normally I wouldn't have been so frustrated with Asia by this point, but the stress (and perhaps loneliness) of Micha's dengue fever were getting the better of me, my travel-loving self is ashamed to admit. And since his symptoms weren't particularly improving yet, I once again left him at the hostel to explore all by my lonesome.

 I have zero Starbucks shame in Asia, where good coffee is a rarity

 All the lights, for pedestrians and cars, had countdown times. Genius!

I thought this was the worst street name ever until I came upon Raper Street in Sydney...

Side note: In case you weren't aware, Singapore, being so very tiny, has absolutely absurd hostel/hotel room prices, as all overly populated small (area-wise) cities do. So one of the main motivating factors prompting us not to have stayed longer was the fact that the price of any (itsy bitsy) double room severely broke our budget (that and the fact that Singapore is so teeny tiny, there's not terribly much to do). So we ended up staying in a dorm in a fun hostel our one night there and found it to be a blessing in disguise that we hadn't stayed longer since high fever + non-air conditioned (during the day), loud dorm room = least enjoyable thing ever. (Poor buddy)

As for my solo adventure, I figured that, when in Singapore, head to a mall! Which this Valley girl was more than happy to oblige. I headed straight to Orchard Road after getting Micha settled in the air conditioned lobby with water, a tonic water, the computer, and some emergency cash, and very likely could have stayed there for days. It is a magnificent street chock full of shopping malls, one more gigantic and high tech than the next.

My tween self had basically died and gone to heaven. The Ion mall was easily my favorite - yup, I have a favorite - as it had 1) two Crate & Barrels (I so miss that store when in Germany...), 2) gorgeous landscaping inside, particulary using my favorite German named geigen feige tree (I am crazy plant lady after all), and 3) the most genius mall directories ever, which were no ordinary mall directories: they were touchscreens that you used to pick the store you wanted to go to and it would then show you, step by step, how to get there from where you were currently standing! I definitely embarassed myself in front of a group of Singaporean teenagers by taking entirely too many dorky pictures of a mall directory.

Since we were staying in Little India, I'd been hoping that Micha would get better enough to at least head out to dinner with me so that we could enjoy a delicious, spicy Indian meal together, but that proved entirely too optimistic for the indefatigable dengue. I'm still somewhat kicking myself that I didn't have any Indian food while there (seriously, self, seriously??) but I had another mission in mind, entitled "drink a fancy cocktail on an even fancier rooftop bar."

So after checking in with sicky again, I eagerly subwayed it over to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which I'd been looking forward to for quite a while indeed.(though in my head, I wouldn't be drinking alone...). More specifically, I made my way to the Ku Dé Ta bar on top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. See, the hotel offers amazing views of the city from the very top - and it even has an infinity pool! which I was very disheartened to find out only guests can use - but the ride up costs $20 (Singapore dollars). However, if you're clever, you find out that you can go up for free to the next higher level where the bar/restaurant is on the condition that you buy a drink, which costs $25 on average. Few choices in life make it that easy for you, am I right?

I ended up having the most luxurious, slightly-exotic-but-slightly-comforting-and-familiar aperol cocktail while admiring the view, taking too many pictures while trying (and failing) not to look too touristy, and wishing I didn't have to drink at such an awesome place all alone (mostly for fear of looking like a total lush or old Miss Lonelyhearts).

The final ingredient in the Singapore Sawa was prosecco, but of course!

A water light show in front of the massive mall surrounding the hotel rounded out my night in Singapore, and this show put the (somewhat lame) Harbour Light Parade in Hong Kong to shame in just the first few minutes. There were laser lights from all directions, countless fountains synched to the music, and even video holograms projected onto the fountains (which were kind of creepy, to be honest). It was just Disneyland-esque enough to make me love it, and that without the pushy crowds. Win win!

Cool, yet rather creepy child hologram on the water

Next time I go to Singapore (and I'd like to simply for the shopping and infinity pool alone!), I would really like to do so with someone else by my side, though.

(But! Micha quickly got better once we left Singapore and got to Bali, so no worries, there is an end to my whining about wandering around alone! :)

Going It Alone in Malaysia

So as I'd mentioned previously, pretty much the minute we left Sihanoukville on the bus heading north for Phnom Penh, Micha's unfortunate bout of dengue fever set in. Of course, we didn't know it was dengue fever at the time and I was hoping it was "merely" a 24-hour bug or the flu at the worst. But in the back of my mind, I was convinced it was malaria, hypochondriac that I am. Mainly because in Siem Reap, it was the literal only time that all the mosquitoes were attracted to him and not me. And so if someone would get a mosquito-born disease, it would be his luck to get it from one of the three mosquitoes that stung him on our trip so far (as opposed to the 600 that had already gotten me).

After the poor dude had suffered through a high fever and bad chills the whole bus ride to Phnom Penh, we waited out the rest of the day in the hostel we'd previously stayed at (88 Backpackers) - the plan having been to enjoy the pool and their good food but instead, Micha enjoyed a comfy beanbag chair for a nap and I enjoyed their free internet for webmd (always the worst idea ever). We talked through our options and agreed to continue with our flight to Singapore and head to the medical clinic located in the airport. Seriously folks, that airport has EVERYTHING. The doctor somewhat allayed our fears, saying it looked like a random virus infection (ahhh, my favorite, non-specific and completely unhelpful diagnosis), which is how we came to take a three-hour bus ride to Malaysia the next morning. After another night in the Singapore airport, but of course.

As you may imagine, this amount of travel and backpack-schlepping is not particularly the best remedy for someone with a fever, chills, and body ache and so once we arrived in Melaka, Micha basically holed up in our not-so-pleasant-but-it-didn't-bother-him-in-the-least-at-that-point hostel for the entire two days there and I spent the time exploring on my own in between trips back to him in the hostel ("are you ok?" "what do you need?" "are you feeling any better?") and the tiny shop nearby ("two large bottles of water and two cans of tonic water, please").

 Jonker waffle hot dog whaaaat?

Melaka was a cute little place. Well, at least the old town part of it that we stayed in and I meandered through, which also happens to be a World Heritage Site. It had precious old fashioned buildings with bright colors and vintage-looking store fronts. It had a lovely little river with an old Dutch windmill from colonial times and a big giant ship that I didn't bother to look up why it's so important. It had amazing flower-covered tricycles that lit up in neon Christmas lights at night!

It had a statue of the "man who brought bodybuilding to Malaysia" (who knews?!). It had a bustling night market in the middle of Chinatown (where we stayed - hey, we might miss the Chinese if we didn't!) where they sold everything from hot dogs wrapped in waffles, to durian pies, to stinky tofu on a stick. It had a pool, that just happened to be closed the days we were there (and it was one million degrees) due to the end of Ramadan holidays. And happily of all, it had a pharmacy with a super helpful pharmacist, who looked about 14 but nonetheless helped get me hydrocortisone for my new sort of mosquito welts (those Malaysian mosquitoes DESTROYED me) and myriad other goodies to ease Micha's various symptoms. I mean, just take a look at these bites:

The unfortunate part being that, after those evil mosquitoes got me, every single mosquito bite I got from then on was in multiples of 10, with those lovely welts then becoming the norm. Who does that happen to?!? I'm convinced it was some kind of Micha-has-dengue-so-you-have-to-suffer-too kind of punishment.

The Last Bits About Cambodia

In Siem Reap, the adorable (and so, so tiny) tuk tuk driver who picked us up from the bus stop when we arrived ended up being our driver for the next 2 days as well to take us through the temples. Although a very sweet South African dude - whom we spent our evenings chatting away with after dinner and listening to fascinating stories of his days as an electrician in the bush – recommended that we start the day with Angkor Wat, our driver, Rai, had other plans. He insisted we end the day with Angkor Wat and begin with Angkor Thom – a group of temples a few kilometers away. Apparently all drivers do this and my guess is, hey, they probably know their stuff.

To be honest, Angkor Wat was not our favorite... It almost feels like blashphemy to say it and it took us hours to admit as much to each other, but somehow, the other more rundown, taken-over-by-nature temples of Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm just won us over much more than the more well restored Angkor Wat (restored by the Germans, might I add. They are mighty good at whatever they do ;). But it's certainly a personal preference. Either that, or we've all been ruined by the movie Tomb Raider and can only be wowed by the kind of gorgeous, labyrinthine, wild temples it showed us (Ta Prohm featured heavily in that movie).

 You do what you gotta do to get the gnomey shot

Tuk tuk drivers are the masters of power naps

It definitely at least helped a bit to see Angkor Wat again the next morning at sunrise – Rai breezily informed us we would meet at 4:30am to drive there that morning! – and despite having to harshly defend our first row (in front of a small pool of water) spaces against a ton of very pushy Chinese tourists (we can’t escape them!), the sunrise was oh so worth it. I can only imagine how even more incredible it would be without the irritating cloud cover.

 And that is at 5:30am...

 We finally found out that we're not the only ones who have to share an umbrella!

We took a much needed nap at the hotel after the morning's excitement - I'm sure Rai was grateful for that, too - and spent the rest of our afternoon revisiting our two favorite temples to take a further 8 million pictures of them... After dinner at the gueshouse and wine with our South African buddy (I loved how he called women chicks in his fabulous accent!), we boarded an "express" night bus to Sihanoukville, where we were hoping for a bit of beach relaxation.

The Cambodian version of a sleeper bus

The 9-hour night bus slowly turned into a 14-hour excursion. First with stops every hour during the four-hour ride to Phnom Penh (I'm convinced the driver picked up smuggled products along the way), then wtih a two-hour wait in Phnom Penh in a random corner bus company storefront for the next bus which would take us to the coast. Conveniently, this changeover was never mentioned when we booked... After it took us two hours to get out of the city in traffic, it was then another mere four hours (including two food stops) to reach our destination at Serendipity Beach, where we were greeted by blue skies and even bluer waters.

Unfortunately, that would prove to be our only day of sun. Afterwards, we found out just what rainy season really means. But we made the best of it and avoided theyoung partiers- and hawkers-filled beaches (I've been to prettier ones) and instead caught up on our reading, planning, and even got ourselves to a delicious Italian restaurant (mmm, pizaa and wine!) and a Khmer cooking class, where we were highly impressed by our very own selfmade spring rolls, among other things.

And then came the bus ride back to Phnom Penh followed by the flight to Singapore, night at the airport, and bus to Malaysia, which just so happened to coincide with the onset of Micha's dengue fever...

Let's Talk Some More About Cambodia

I know I said I wasn't going to post about the things Micha already posted about, but I didn't expect him to cover all of Cambodia in one post...

After Hong Kong, our RTW tickets took us over to Singapore, where we would have had a full two weeks time, but we quickly realized 1) that was entirely too much time in Singapore, a very tiny city/country, and 2) that amount of time would also completely destroy our budget if we stayed in said city/country that whole time. After humming and hawing about whether or not to return to Malaysia for part of those two weeks (we'd vacationed there a few years ago), we eventually came to the decision to spend some time exploring a brand new, and very different, country. Which is how we came to spend a night in the Singapore airport (a shockingly easy task; I could practically move in to that airport it's so well put together!) and end up in Phnom Penh before we ever even set foot in Singapore. This, however, all occurred after I managed to make us miss our flight from Hong Kong to Singapore. womp womp... I have never missed a flight in my life, so my blunder made me extra ridiculously emotional (read: sobby) when I realized that our flight was landing in Singapore as we arrived at the airport in Hong Kong. In my defense: the departure time on our original flight from our RTW tickets was 14:55. The flight time changed, without us receiving an update email (grrrr) and the new departure time just happened to be the exact same time as the previous arrival time. If that's not a recipe for disaster, then I don't know what is!

 Phnom Penh waterfront, which looks deceptively clean and orderly here...

But, the lovely Australian Qantas lady that I was connected to was helpful and all worked out in the end with only a bit of hassle and few more tears. A day later, we arrived in Phnom Penh and were immediately immersed in Southeast Asian culture, the good and the bad. The first sign of which was the "visa" process. I use the word visa lightly, as the whole process of applying for, paying for, and receiving the visa - a handwritten paper stuck into your passport - took about 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure $1 of the $20 we paid for the visa went to the actual bureaucractic process, the rest went right in to someone's pocket (including the extra $2 Micha paid because he had no picture. Speaking of which, what did they actually do with my picture...?).

 Tuk-tuking our way around

The next sign that we weren't in a developed country anymore was the immediate rush of about 50 taxi and tuk tuk drivers directly at us as we exited the airport, each shouting at us to take their vehicle to wherever it is we needed to go. Or, as they'd prefer, to a hotel of their choosing, should we not already have one. (We did, thank goodness.) We opted out of taxis and went straight for a local tuk tuk, whose strength our massive backpacks most definitely put to the test that afternoon.

The Cambodian equivalent of a farmers' market

 Bony chicken and green tomatoes, what a delicacy!

We found a friendly tuk tuk driver and negotiated the reasonable price, ($7, as we were informed by good ol' Lonely Planet) and, after some brief back-and-forth of words and laminated sightseeing tour pamphlets at red lights, even ended up agreeing to let him drive us around the next day to the Killing Fields and another location of our choosing. The hostel we stayed at was highly impressive (tuk tuk driver when we told him we were headed there: oooh, 88 Backpackers? Very nice...) and we may or may not have picked it solely based on its having a pool, which we took full advantage of during our two short days there. It also helped that their food was the best we had in the city and also extremely well priced. All of which happily made up for the fact that we felt like grandparents in the gap-year, party hostel atmosphere that surrounded us as the night went on.

Oh but that pool and that food were so good...

After extensive haggling with our newfound tour guide/tuk tuk driver the next morning - we saw no reason to pay him 50% more than the price a hostel-organized tour would have cost us - we headed off to S-21, the prison that Khmer Rouge sent enemies of the state to, and the Killing Fields, where said prisoners were subsequently, well, killed. Though our driver took us the sights in the opposite order. We thought at first that this would be an illogical way to view things but as it turns out, the Killing Fields site and museum are extremely well put together - including a free audio tour with survivor and worker stories - and the S-21 prison sight is still quite lacking in information. As you can imagine, spending a half day listening to stories of city inhabitants recall how they were suddenly and forcibly relocated to the countryside to work on the land when Pol Pot came to power (in 1976), and how most of them were unable to perform such work, let alone survive doing so with almost no food or sleep, or how they were imprisoned on suspicion of being enemies of the state (simply because they did not fit the radical Communist ideal of a farmer), tortured, and then, most often, brutally murdered and shoved into mass graves (obviously, such stories were told by a 3rd party), does not make for the most uplifting day one can have in a new city... We spent the rest of the evening in shock and wonder thinking about just how fresh the brutal history of this country still is.

 The Killing Fields

The requisite, post-Killing Fields beer consumption

A small bus that was actually a glorified minivan took us to our primary Cambodian destination the next day: Siem Reap, the launching point for visiting the temples of Angkor (including the most famous, Angkor Wat). Fun fact about traveling via small bus (which had been recommended to us by a well-meaning Australian guy over beers the day before): they are not roomier, contrary to his claims, and the bus companies don't take luggage into account when booking the seats. Which is how we ended up with 12 people in an extended minivan, two of whom had bags and boxes on their laps for the entire 5-hour journey, while the rest of pondered our chances of surviving a fiery crash should it come to one, seeing as my and one other giant backpack were shoved into the "aisle" of the bus once the laughably small trunk space was overloaded. But the star of the trip was the highway, which was so full of bumps and deep potholes that approximately every five minutes when we reached one, the four British kids in the back row were launched into midair among nervous laughs as they each tried desperately to shield the tops of their heads from colliding with the top of the "bus" before they were slammed back to down into their seats, or each others' laps, for the next round.

The highway

A totally appropriate location for luggage storage

Also, a totally appropriate way to transport a motorcycle and its driver

Siem Reap is a very cute little city, much more accustomed to tourists than Phnom Penh. We visited the central market - where I promptly overpaid for a scarf and a pair of pants, but gosh darnit, I am supremely gullible - and walked through and shuddered at the sight of the bar street, aptly named Pub Street, on our first night in town. We once again got lucky with accommodations, as the guesthouse we booked here was a cute little diamond in the rough. We took a chance on it and booked when we read that it was Khmer owned and had quite positive reviews (on hostelworld.com, where we've been booking most things ever since Sam recommended it for China) and we then immediately fell in love with the entire staff. It’s called Bou Savy Guesthouse, should you be interested (don't let the bad website scare you off!).

 Pub Street

Market delicacies

We spent the rest of our at the temples of Angkor - our main destination - but that will have to wait for another post! Enjoy those last two pictures in the meantime. :)