What must they think of Americans?

It's nearly 1 a.m. here and I've blown past my 10 p.m. bedtime researching hotels and flights for our trip to Bali once Brian arrives. I got so carried away, I nearly forgot to blog. Tonight I'll leave you with two embarrassing displays of Americana t-shirts. Well, they were embarrassing to Ali and me (she lived in NY for some time and has a masters from NYU). We found both of these in Melaka.

I'm not even sure the words on "mine" make sense. So weird... And obviously, we didn't buy these!

Melaka Musings

Ali, Mindy and I had a great time in Melaka, a Malaysian shipping town with Portuguese, Dutch and British influences. Here's our story in photos.



Our trip began with a 3.5-4 hour bus ride. Mindy booked her tickets a few days after Ali and I did, so she was on a separate bus. The coach taking us to Malaysia was quite nice, but the one on the way back was a little more rundown and we were never quite sure if the return bus driver had accounted for everyone when making stops. We tried to hurry in the restroom and at the customs locations so we didn't get left behind!

If Ali hadn't been so good with the map, we might have hitched at ride with one of these trishaw drivers, which were everywhere. Most were blaring American music - everything from Michael Jackson to Metallica. We didn't ride on one...

...but we pretended we did!

When we got to the heritage area, one of the first things we saw was this clock tower built in the 1800's. I believe the clock was imported from England(?).

This area is called the Red Square, because all the buildings in the area are...you guessed it, red. This is Christ Church, the oldest Protestant church in Malaysia. Bricks were shipped from the Netherlands when it was built between 1741-1753. Next door is the Stadthuys, an old Dutch building that's now a museum (not pictured).

We were pretty hungry by the time we got there, so Ali and I tried chicken rice balls at this locally famous place appropriately named Famosa Chicken Rice Ball. The little balls are made of rice, and they were a nice change from regular white rice.

After lunch, we walked around Jonker Street which is lined with shops and street merchants. This one is showing Mindy how the slapper works. We were not impressed with the shopping. Lots of the same (junky) things over and over, but we enjoyed ourselves.

We also tried several local treats, such as pineapple cookies and the dessert pictured above with a name I do not remember. It had coconut milk, some kind of cakey substance, grass jelly (the green gelatinous stuff), red beans and whipped cream. It was interesting. Not my favorite but not gross.

Melaka seemed to have a church, temple or mosque on every corner. I liked the happy Buddha in this temple.

Big con: despite the claims of our bus tour guide, Melaka is not that walkable despite our best efforts. Sure, we walked around the Jonker Walk area fine but crossing the street was a bit of an art as was hailing a cab. Here's Ali as we tried unsuccessfully to get to the Portuguese Settlement. We finally gave up and waited (a while) for a cab.

Cab drivers here do not have meters. Mindy's tour book basically said if you're a tourist, expect to may more than a local but decide upon a price upfront. Ali was pretty good at negotiating with cabbies...

(Note to Mike and Jen Watts: the Malaysian flag is in the pic above in case you get it at Trivia Night sometime.)

We made it to the Portuguese Settlement and here we are out on the pier. The water looked kind of dirty.

Here's a look back at the Portuguese Square, where there are about 10 outdoor food stalls. Ali and I had chili crab and mixed veggies... Ironically, the mixed veggies came with fish cakes and shrimp in them, which was not helpful for Mindy, who's a vegetarian.

After dinner, we called for a cab via the nearby Hotel Lisbon, where we knew the security guard was getting a cut of the fare. After arguing with Ali about the fare for a few minutes (Ali lost), our driver Hendry (yes, with a D) ended up being quite nice and took us through McDonald's drive through for ice cream cones.

Then, we headed to Jonker Walk again for the night market, which runs from 6-12 on weekends. It was pretty much all the same stuff, just out in the street at night. Again, not that impressed.

There's not that much to do in Melaka to be honest. One day is plenty, and if we could have taken a bus back before 2:30, we would have. However, since we had the day we decided not to waste it and toured the Melaka Sutanate Palace. It's actually a replica because the original burned down.

We also climbed this hill to see St .Paul's Church. (Momma Neal, that's was the statue of St. Paul with no hand was.)

Here we are at the top of St. John's. On the left you can see the Holiday Inn where we stayed (nicer than U.S. with a bed that's more comfortable than what's in my Singapore apartment). In the far distance you can see Melaka's version of the London Eye and the Singapore Flyer, as well as an observatory that just takes you up and down. We chose not to do these.

So did we like it? That depends. Melaka itself was ok. It was nice to experience somewhere new and get away. As I mentioned, one day was plenty. And it was hot! But mostly, we just had a good time hanging out together, it didn't really matter where we were. At least I can now say that I've been to Malaysia (and I'll be going back to Kuala Lampur while Jen is here in October), and that's kind of cool in itself.

Traveling and Travel Planning

I've done a 180 since yesterday, thankfully. Today was great because I found very inexpensive tickets to Bangkok (Thailand) and Siem Riep (Cambodia) during Brian's visit. We are now confirmed on flights see some of these fabulous sites:

Bangkok cityscape at night

Royal Grand Palace, Bangkok

Angkor Wat, one of the Seven Wonders of the World


More Angkor Wat - unbelievable!

The reason for the big sale? There's a huge travel fair here tomorrow, which sounds like a nightmare to me - but I'm more than happy to reap the benefits online!

Can't wait for the trip to Melaka (aka Malacca) tomorrow. A friend of Ali's named Mindy is joining us, and it should be a lot of fun. Next blog post: Sunday night (Singapore time).

If this upside down photo is any indication...

...of how my day went, then this blog post doesn't need to be very long.

Actually, it was fine. I just woke up a little tired and then the afternoon just got away from me, so I just feel a bit out of sorts. I'm also getting a little stressed about planning our trip and awaiting word on Brian's visa to China, uber-planner that I am. And I also had to meet the cable guy for the third time because this time the cable box wouldn't come on, leaving me only with 2 English channels once again. (Luckily it's now taken care of.)

I had lunch with Jacob's roommate Cheryl, whom I met at the BBQ this weekend. Ironically, she and I work in the same building. She took me to a new food stall in a food court close to my apartment and work, and we had delicious stewed beef, homemade noodles and dumplings. I should have taken a photo of that. We also reserved our table with tissues, in case you were wondering.

Since my cable window was 6:30-8:30 p.m., I decided it would be a good time to give myself a pedicure and try some Singaporean pizza. I ordered from a place called Spizza (as opposed to Pizza Hut, which is also here). Not sure Brian would rave about it, but I thought that was pretty good. See the green salad? Mmm, greens.

Back off my tissue packs!

Can you guess what this means?


You know how I told you that a lot of restaurants - especially food stalls/hawker stands - don't give you napkins and instead you must be sure you always have mini tissue packs? Well, here they are the ultimate multi-taskers. In addition to being used as snot rags and napkins, they also serve as "this seat is reserved" signs. I wish I had taken a better photo where you can see loads of them on table after table, "choping" seats for people standing in line at the hawker stands, but you get the idea.

Both photos were taken in a food court relatively near our office. Chris and I went there today, where I had a delicious noodle soup with prawns. It really was really good, filling and educational. Educational because I will never again order prawns in soup. They almost always come with their heads on and they are nearly impossible to remove in a soup because you must use your fingers and it is so hot. Also educational because wet, flat noodles are particularly tricky with chopsticks. It was worth it, though, for about US$2.

Melaka Bound!

Ali and I just booked tickets for my first weekend trip - Melaka (aka Malacca), Malaysia. We head out this Saturday for a one-night stay in the city, which is known for its night market. We haven't done a ton of planning (shocker, I know), but it's not going to be that difficult. We booked our bus tickets - it's about a 3-4 hour bus ride from Singapore. Tonight she's going to book our hotel, most likely the Equatorial, which came recommended by a colleague of mine. It looks nice enough and is pretty centrally located, so we're looking forward to that.

Not too much else to report today. I was kind of tired all day so I think I'll head up to bed and catch some zzz's instead of boring you with mundane details. 'Night!

Singapore Slings and Honkey Tonk

I've mentioned on a couple of occasions how my social life in Singapore is better than my social life in San Francisco, and this continues to be the case. Not having many of my normal at-home responsibilities certainly plays a role, as does the generosity of new friends and coworkers who are eager to keep me entertained.

Tonight my colleague, Sam, took me for drinks at the Singapore Recreation Club. It's a members only club where Sam says she goes to get cheap drinks and bites. (I believe it's actual purpose is to promote sports, recreation and social activities among its members.)

Here we are with my first Singapore Sling! It was pretty good, though a bit sweet.

One of the best parts? The live country western music! Who knew? Apparently this band, Matthew and the Mandarins, was one of the most popular country western bands in Singapore. In a way it's kind of sad that they're now playing gigs at the local lounge but they seemed to be having fun. I think they may have played a few of their own songs but if they did, I didn't know them. Mostly they stuck to covers like Pretty Woman, Chattahoochie and Teddy Bear.

Check them out 30 years ago or so!

Chili Crab and Chilling by the Pool

At the end of yesterday's post, I was headed out for drinks and dinner. I'll pick up where I left off...

For dinner, we made it back to where I started the day near Merlion Park. We ate a seafood restaurant called Palm Beach at One Fullerton, and though you can't see it in this photo, we can see the Merlion and the Singapore Flyer from here. It was very scenic, and nice company, too!

These were called porkies and bessies. They're little stewed pieces of pork and you stick them in these steamed buns - de.lic.ious with the cilantro. YUM!

This is chili crab, a traditional Singaporean dish. It's pretty good but honestly not my favorite thing I've eaten here. Don't get me wrong, it's good but I think it might be a little overrated. The best part - not pictured here - were the little buns you dip into the sauce.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it out for Singapore Slings at the Raffles Hotel. It was almost 11:30 when dinner was over and we were all pretty tired, so we called it a night.

Today I was pretty relaxed. I spent much of the day sitting by the pool, reading Luxe travel guides (and Eclipse). Brian and I talked a lot about our travel plans today also. As of right now, we're planning to visit Beijing (China), Siem Riep (Cambodia), Bangkok (Thailand) and Bali (Indonesia). Actually right now we're not quite sure we'll be able to go China because of Brian's job. We are NOT lying to the Chinese government, so he's going to go over to the consulate Monday and get this sorted out before we buy tickets! We've all but ruled out Tokyo for both cost and travel time reasons. We figured we can probably head over there easier than some other places if and when we choose to come back to Asia.

Tonight I went over to Jacob's apartment for BBQ. He did a bang-up job on the grill. We had yummy satay, BBQ ribs, wings and American potato salad. As you can see, he and his roomies have mannequins on the balcony. Apparently a lot of people notice them as they drive near Orchard Road. I feel honored having taken my photo with them.

I saw monkeys!

It's only 7 p.m. and so far it's been a busy and a great day! Instead of hitting the gym, I kicked the day off with a brisk morning walk and this time I decided to take my camera so I could do a little sightseeing along the way.

A few weeks ago I posted a professional photo of the Merlion Statue (Singapore is the Lion City). Today I walked along the marina again and got my photo beside it this time.


The Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay are two prickly, hedgehog-like structures Singapore wishes would be as distinctive as the Sydney Opera House. Though apparently there has been controversy about the design (it opened in 2002), I think they're beautiful. There are actually two of them though you can only see one in this photo. Someone told me they are shaped like the native and notorious Singaporean smelly fruit, the durian. It doesn't say that in my guide book, so I don't know. I think they're magnificent and can't wait to go inside.

After the Esplanade, I just kept walking around, going a different way than I had come. I don't know what monument this is, actually, but it seemed worthy of a photo!

This is the Parliament building. I also passed the Supreme Court building. After my walk and my shower, I met up with Kevin and Ed for lunch in Chinatown.

For lunch we went to a dim sum place. For those who may not know what dim sum is, it's a Chinese restaurant where the servers bring carts of food around and you just take what you want off the carts. So one cart might have rice dishes. Another one might have dumplings. Some have desserts. This cart brought us some kind of rice porridge, flavored with pork and century egg. It was pretty good, actually, even though the thought of century egg is kind of gross. According to Wikipedia, it's a Chinese ingredient you apply to various types of eggs by using "a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing."

Here are some of the other foods we had (we had a lot!). On the top left are little yam/potato cakes (fried, of course). In the lower middle are little pork filled pastries (yep, they're fried, too). And on the top right is Peking duck. The Peking duck and some of our other dishes actually weren't fried. It was delicious! My favorite was a dumpling filled with pork and prawns. I didn't take a photo of that, unfortunately.

After dim sum, we took Kevin through Chinatown. Here he is looking at silk goods with Ed. I also showed him my favorite bracelet store while I was there. I cannot disclose whether any goods were purchased there by any parties...

Here are Ed, Kevin, and I are posing with a lady in Chinatown where Kevin and I bought a few gifts. Rest assured, she gave us a "very good deal." Don't they all?! After this I left Ed and Kevin to some manly sightseeing and I headed out to MacRitchie Reservoir with Ali.

MacRitchie Reservoir is in the central part of the island and is where all the water is collected and purified for Singapore's tap water. It's a pretty long walk all the way around the reservoir (about 12K/ 7.5 miles) and we didn't do the entire loop. It's popular with joggers and walkers - there were a lot of people - though I can't imagine running 7.5 miles in the Singaporean heat in a jungle setting! We probably walked between 5-6 miles in the jungle, and though it was cool, it was not cool. This little pagoda is near the entrance, just before we entered the jungle trails.

So before I get to the monkey photos, let me just tell you that no sooner had Ali and I hit the trails than we saw two monkeys - a mommy and a pretty young child. I wasn't ready with my camera, so as I was looking for it in my bag, the little baby monkey started running towards us, which freaked me out. Like an idiot I screamed a bit (not bad, but definitely made a distinctive noise) and then the mommy monkey started walking towards us. Ali was like, "don't scream at them!" and then I got kind of rattled and we walked on by them without taking photos. Even though they're kind of cute, neither of us wanted to get too close to them and they were curious about us and not scared, so we kept going. I carried my camera with me the entire rest of the way so that when we saw the next monkeys I would be prepared.

But after walking another two hours, the monkeys never came. We saw this huge snail (close to the size of an iPhone), and some lizards, too. Even though we were having a great time and it felt awesome to be getting in a good hike, by this time I was really disappointed with how I had reacted to the first monkeys. What if we didn't get a second chance?!

We were almost at our exit when we heard a familiar rattling in the trees. There they were, at least 15 of them! They were slinking around the trees and getting closer to us. Though we weren't able to get clear pictures (it was really hard the way the light was coming in through the trees), we saw mommy monkeys with tiny baby monkeys clutching to their chests. Adorable! They kept getting closer to us so we backed away a bit (it's a little freakier than I had anticipated, all the monkeys coming up to you). I'll upload all the photos and send them around soon. Then I saw the monkey I had been waiting for...

Ok, so it looks like we're a lot closer than we really were, but I'm convinced this is the grandaddy monkey and the ruler of this little lot. Isn't he awesome? Kind of looks like that monkey from the Lion King. This totally made my day.

I'd better hop in the shower now because tonight I'm finally going to meet Ali's fiance, Zach, when we meet up for a quick drink in a little while. Then, Ed, Kevin and I are having dinner, and then hopefully a Singapore Sling at the place where they originated, the Raffles Hotel. I'll let you know tomorrow. :)

My clothes smell like clay pot!

Today has been a good day in food, and a smelly one as well.


It all started out with lunch. Before we went my coworkers warned that we might come back smelling like "toilet bowl" but I shouldn't worry because "the food is really good." Ummmm....not that appetizing but I went. We had chicken clay pot - it's Cantonese. They wrap the chickens in cabbage and then cook them all day. Apparently they cook and sell 200-300 a day! My colleague, Trupti, said it's Singaporean comfort food. It was delicious actually, and we ate it with (guess what...wait for it...) rice. And bean sprouts.

Unfortunately after lunch it started raining, and guess who left her umbrella in the office. That's right. You know how wet dogs and wet wool sweaters don't smell good? Neither do wet clay pot clothes. In an elevator. Ew.


Kevin from our SF office was visiting this week for meetings with our client. We went out with Ed and a few others after work. This stray cat befriended him and hung out with him all night. This doesn't have much to do with food now that I write about it. But we went to this nice place called Speakeasy. It's in a shop house - very cool atmosphere. I'd like to go back.

Remember watermelon juice? Well, try a watermelon mint julep. That's what I called my drink at Speakeasy anyway, though on the menu it was called the Rockefeller. It was bourbon, mint, watermelon and lime. It tasted like watermelon juice. Yum!

We had some "bites" (aka appetizers or tapas) at Speakeasy, but we were still hungry and went to this place next door where I tried murkabat (sp?). It's basically a thin pastry shell/dough filled with chicken, egg, and maybe a few veggies. I can't remember the name of the sauce/gravy you can see here but it's omnipresent. The murkabat was good, but I could definitely smell myself again in the cab.