Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia - Week 2

Back in Manila, We spent until Wednesday getting things suituated, I had to do a visa run to the Vietnam and Cambodia Embassies. Vietnam was a quick no problem Visa, Cambodia on the other hand would take three days. I'm still without that visa, but no worries, as i can still get a visa at any of the border crossings that I'm going into Cambodia from. I just need to recheck for those along the Vietnam border.

On Tuesday, Andrew, Brenda and I wanted to do a little sight seeing, in lieu of traveling to Bali (cheap tickets, ridiculous taxes and fuel charges 30 for the ticket and up to 300 for the taxes and fuel charges) we decided to go to Singapore, partly because Brenda used to work here and mostly because neither Andrew nor I had been here. We landed without issue in Singapore, although we were a little worried that Brenda might get denied access, something about Southeast Asian countries picking on the Pinoys. We of course planned accordingly and did not have hotel reservations so immediately took a cab, which drove on the wrong side of the street like the british to China town where we were under the assumption that Hotels were the cheapest. We were mistaken, the cheapest place we could find was in fact that...cheap, were pretty sure they rented rooms by the hour. So we caught ourselves into the nearest internet cafe to look for hotels, I found cheap rooms in the area of Geylung, this of course as we were to find out after a dinner of McDonalds (Andrew's Idea) is the heart of the Red Light District. There are prostitutes from all over southeast asia that have migrated here to work the streets, and i am serious when is say that they are lining the streets.

Spend the first day in singapore on Sentosa Island this is the southern most point in continental Asia, more of a tourist trap than anything else, but the weather is HOT and the sunny all day long, as well as the skys are blue and the place was cleaner than Hoover Dam.

Back to the hotel where the entire day i took a ribbing on picking of steet walkers, when whom should get caught taking flash photography from their room...Andrew and Brenda, they had a pimp and three girls trying to break down their door, they gave up after a couple minutes but it was still funny all the same to give them crap about having girls in their room!

Singapore is exceptionally clean, the food prices are still less than 3 USD for a good meal (i prefer the chicken and rice, which is the national dish) The people are nice, its very business like here, not a lot to do for tourist, or sight seeing, i don't mind this cause travelling with andrew is like travelling with a group of japanese tourists all rolled into one, he wants to see everything and take three pictures of everything, it has made for some exhausting days.

Day two in Singapore we decieded to take the ferry to Batam Indonesia. This is a nice quant little part of Indonesia, nothing like Sumatra, or Borneo, and absolutely nothing like Bali. The city is gearing up to be a tourist haven by 2010, although no one we asked was able to tell us what the billboards meant, least of all the taxi driver. Landing and clearin immigration in Indonesia is quite easy, its 10 USD for a 7 day visa, the bad thing for andrew at least, is that he doesn't have that many passport pages left, and most places require two empty pages for entry, he's right about at that limit.

Once we cleared immigration and customers it was into the arrival hall of the ferry terminal, some knock off items being sold, but the decision to be made was breakfast and touring. The ferry ride only took an hour, so we were ready to get the day under way. We had breakfast of rice, dried anchovies and cucumber, and of course coffee, it was tasty, but i'm coming to the realization that the portions are nearly big enough for all the touring that we have been doing.

We enjoyed breakfast quickly and then outside of the ferry terminal we were faced with the question of how to see the sites. The taxi stand let us know that we could rent a taxi for 8 hours for 70 SGD (1:1.48). We jumped at that opprotunity, and had our taxi driver, unfortunately we had the one with the best english and his english was far from understanding everything we were talking about, he did however understand the japanese tourist we were with and that pulling over every 5 minutes for andrew to take a picture was a wise choice!

We travelled through three Islands in Indonesia, they were nice, all the way to a southern island where the Japanese had an interment camp for the Vietnemese. One similarity i have found travelling through asia is that the Japanese have been just about everywhere and terrorized the populations, and then the Brittish, or Americans come in and shoo them off, it has happened in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines as well as Indonesia. Just a quick observation. The area for the tourists regarding the interment camp was very poorly detailed, and we were befuddled on finding an accurate map of the islands/cities. We spent about 3 hours touring around the southern island through the vietnam internment memorial, as well as the monument to the boat people and continued back to the main parts of Batam. Their was a monument wall to the Vietnamese prisoners, this was exactly what it was titled, a wall (completely blank) in the back of a cemetary.

We finished with Batam by 3, and asked the taxi driver Sam to take us some where for a seafood lunch, he took us to this fantastic seafood place where we actually got to see lunch before it was made. Their were pools and pools of fish, prawns, clams, crabs, sharks, turtles, mussels, and just about anything that could be pulled out of the ocean. We settled in for a lunch of bbq prawns, chili prawns and pineapple fish, all was fantastic, and Andrew ate the entire fish by himself. For those that are interested, the fish, prawns, and crabs come whole, none of this peeled, deveined and butterflyed stuff over here. and its customary to suck the brains out of the prawns (for those that are asking what is a prawn, its a shrimp, americans are the only ones that seem to call them shrimp). and the best part of the fish is the head, its not a difficult as it seems to eat the fish while heels looking at you!!!

The return trip from Batam was very easy and we were back in Singapore by 6, we spent the evening in the hotel, as we were all extremely tired. The Next day we got packed and headed off to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

We headed off to the main tour bus area in Singapore near the harbor front. We booked a luxury coach for 30 SGD a piece and would be in KL by 6 hours. The bus ride was nice and very comfortable, the driver made three stops, and immigration was a breeze both leaving Singapore and entering Malaysia. We had to stop at one side of a bridge for Singapore, and the other side for Malaysia. The bus dropped us off right at the Pudo bus station, directly across the street from our hotel (Citin). I booked the "budget" accomodations, and we were right in the heart of everything, near the Petrona's towers, the KL Minera (space needle), China town, and the central market where andrew could by all his cheap souveniers. I've become to really dislike China Towns, they are very congested, and i always feel like someone is going to pick my pocket.

We got checked in just fine into the hotel and grabbed some flyers for this tour service called the hop on hop off bus. This was our ticket for Sunday, we headed off to China town to catch the bus, the cost was 38 MYR (Ringgits 1:3.38). the tour was very simple, the bus made a circuit about every 1/2 hour, the ticket that you buy was good for 24 hours, you could get off the bus at any of the 22 designated stops, and get back on at anytime the bus was running during your 24 hour window of your valid ticket. We saw the entire city of KL this way. We started about 10 Am and ended about 6 PM.

We saw the central market, china town, petrona's towers, the national monument and gardens, and more muslims than you could shake a stick at, they came in all shapes and sizes, from those wearing simple shawls over their heads to the full black gowns that only showed their eyes, and even the rare few that had the mesh over their eyes so you couldn't see them. Malaysia is a muslim country, and from what i gathered from the newspapers not exactly conservative, they goverment is recieving increased pressure in the upcoming election to take on a more conservative Islamic agenda.

Once we were back at the hotel, we opted for dinner at the hotel, none of us had any energy to go out again, i think we were all asleep by 10....