Singapore to Cambodia

Dear Internet,

Yesterday is exceedingly difficult to remember, considering all of today happened. But this underscores how fickle my memory is, so I will persevere with this blog.

Let's see, let's see. What happened yesterday...

I woke up, yes. I threw all my sheets into Surabhi's washer, which was unfortunate since I left before I could take them out, so much for being thoughtful and saving her trouble.

Then what?

Oh. The cab to the airport. My cabbie was a chatty fellow. He had many thoughts on the state of Singapore and society. Too many to tell here. But he also had thoughts that appealed to me in my current state. He said, 'Oh you have the travel bug! When you are on fire, you gotta burn! Don't get married and have kids before you're done burning!'

Which kind of makes me think of Salem witch hunts of unmarried women, but I'm pretty sure he was trying to be encouraging. Not that I'd told him my marital status, but I suppose I can't knock him for a correct assumption.

Koi pond in the Singapore airport.

Then I flew to Cambodia. Made friends with a nice but dumb-as-brick middle-aged couple from New Zealand who sat next to me on the plane. They kept wanting to chat while I wanted to read LOTR. They also did not know how to fill out customs forms and kept asking me. And I kept giving them my seasoned-traveler advice, "Fill in the blanks."

They were weird.

My tuktuk driver for my time in Cambodia is a man who goes by Keath. He is nice, a bit too chatty for my taste, but then I am innately rude. He drove me to my hotel, the Siddharta Hotel, by way of 'downtown' Siem Reap. It's a tiny place, and the downtown area is basically a 3block hub of shops for tourists. I plan to spend some time wandering there tomorrow night. Last night though, I got settled in the hotel, which is absolutely charming, and appears to be carved straight out of the jungle. It's two wings surround a jewel blue pool, and the entire edifice is nearly overrun by the jungle. The hotel is decorated in cheerful oranges and reds. Overall, it leaves one with the sensation of living inside a very ripe papaya.

Two beds. In case I get lucky, and then need my space.

After getting settled, I headed off to dinner and a show with traditional Cambodian dancing. The restaurant, Koulen, featured a mega-buffet, complete with noodle soup, fried noodle, and grilling stations, rice pancakes and dumplings stations, desserts, fruit, salads, soups, traditional Cambodian food, some Thai options, and some Chinese options. 

And an array of fresh-squeezed juices was available to order. So I ordered a carrot juice, fast becoming a new favorite even though it makes my stomach hurt. Here is a glimpse of said meal.

The show was wonderful, and I highly recommend it as a great way to get your feet wet with the stories and legends you'll see portrayed in the temples' wall carvings. I tried to get a few shots in, but the lighiing was awful for iPhone photography, though it was gorgeous in person, and I didn't figure out the feature on the iPhone that helps correct for this until this afternoon.

After dinner, I came back to the hotel to unwind, write yesterday's blog, and get ready for the next day's adventure, starting at 4am to chase the sunrise at Angkor Wat. There are several hundreds of photos involved with that endeavor, so I'm not hopeful as to how timely my blogging is going to be.

I'm definitely forgetting something that belongs in this entry. But what? 

Xo,

S

Singapore - The First Last Stretch

Dear Internet,

Sunday was my last full day in Singapore until I return a few more times on other legs of my trip. Hence the title of this post. After the hectic pace of Friday and Saturday, we took it easier on Sunday. Surabhi's parents picked us up for brunch at the American Club, a beautiful country club in which she spent much of her childhood. Brunch was lovely. I tried the Singapore Laksa, a noodle soup dish with chicken, seafood, and a spicy coconut broth. Insanely heavy, but delicious. Surabhi's mom also peppered me with samplings from the buffet, which I was not shy to inhale. This included dessert items. Because again, food is life.

Partial view of the buffet situation.

From there we headed to the Botanic Gardens. The city was built around the gardens, with a naturally occurring rainforest embedded within (as in, the forest preexisted the park, and the park was built to include it). It's really quite gorgeous in there.

The national flower is the orchid, so naturally, there's an orchid garden. And naturally, because I'm with Surabhi, it's not just any orchid garden that we grace with our presence.

I'm not even kidding.

And none of us understood what this orange Bentley was about. 

So we saw flowers. Lots and lots of beautiful flowers. I tried not to take hyper-filtered, cheesy photos. And then I realized, wtf. Now or never baby. So here we go.

Pink!

Purple!!

Red!

Lavender!!

Gah! So prettyyy!!!

So tropical!!!

Like feathers of the sun!!

I'm gonna put my face in it even though I know perfectly well that none of these flowers has a smell!! 

Because those flowers were super pretty. No shame in my game. Also there were some animals, though I cared less about them than the flowers.

lil turtle.

After the gardens, we headed back to get ready for the evening's plan of watching an outdoor movie in another park area in the city. The movie playing? Point friggin Break. It was so good. And by good I mean so awful it came back around to good again. We met up with a few friends, some of whom I'd already met on a previous night, so it was nice to see a mix of new and familiar faces. OH on the way there, yes we stopped at a mall yada yada BUT ALSO. We had to take an escalator up a hill by a government building. It looked from afar as though it was broken. BUT NO. It was just motion sensitive. So when we approached, IT TURNED ON AND MOVED. I literally squealed with delight. Like a peasant. Because it was so fancy. I didn't take a photo of it though, because even I realized that a still photo of a motion sensitive escalator is still a photo of stairs.

Here are photos of the movie time.

Then we went home and chilled til bed. Another dull blog.

I'm in Cambodia now. Updates to come.

Xo,
S

Singapore Day 2

Dear Internet,

Leave it to Surabhi to always do things to the full out extent. Day 2 proved wonderful. We started off with a delicious brunch at one of her favorite neighborhood spots. I don't normally take pictures of food, but then I normally don't blog, either. So below is a photo of my food. French toast stuffed with spiced chicken and spinach, topped with fried bananas, kiwi perhaps?, other fruit I cannot identify, other fruit I can identify, and syrup made possibly from peaches or who knows, mangoes. Hardly the point. The point was it was delicious and magical. And pictured below.

From there, we headed off for a two-hour bike ride along the coast. I'll take this moment to note that the signage here amuses me to no end. Grass in public areas will be sectioned off with signs stating "Nurturing the grass, so do not walk on it," and street signs will say "Watch for hidden street 20km ahead on left." Very to the point. Very informative. No code to decipher, government or privately provided. Such was the sign below for paying for our bike rentals.

The morning/early afternoon was hot and humid, but beautifully complimented by the coastal breeze filtered through all the lush greenery. It doesn't hurt that, again, Singapore is the cleanest place in the world. So nothing smells ever.

After finishing our bike ride, we stopped off at a popular Belgian restaurant on the coast for a juice. Surabhi had an iced latte (close enough to juice), and I had some pink situation involving strawberry puree and coconut milk. It was so unbelievably vacay of us, I was delighted to no end.

Also there was herring on the menu. Just putting that out there.

From there we headed back to get ready for the evening. It was Singapore's 49th birthday, and the city was buzzing with excitement for the parade and festivities...very much like DC during the 4th of July. After getting ready, we rushed off to get more food. Because food is the most important part of everything. We went to Lau Pa Sat, which is a popular public food court in the business district. Interesting tidbit. At some point in the development of Singapore, the powers that be realized people were leaving work early to get dinner at home. So They set up these food courts all over Singapore so that people could get cheap, home-cooked food conveniently without having to leave work for too long. And the food is delicious. 

I had the chicken and rice, which is a really standard dish here. It's.... chicken. and rice. You throw some chili garlic sauce on it if you must (I def did must), and that is all. And it is surprisingly good. Probably because the chicken is fresh and actually tastes like something.

OK. From there, shit got exciting. We went up a skyscraper to this swanky restaurant/lounge as guests of someone who can give such hospitality. The skyscraper is the UOA building here, and belongs to an influential family trust here. I'm not entirely sure what all that means, but it sounds interesting, so I thought I'd note it in case it means something to me later. From a table along the edge of the outside deck, we had a spectacular view of the marina, where the 49th birthday celebrations were taking place. 

I took photos from this location. So many photos. Too many. Here are a few. Unedited. Since I got overwhelmed with how many fucking photos I took.

The parade was way down below, and tons of people showed up throughout the city to watch the parade directly or on huge screens set up.

All of The People - pre-sunset

All of The People - post-sunset. I think they were given glowsticks or something.

The whole affair was very involved and wonderful. Thousands of people, as noted above, plus fighter jets flying in formation above, the navy's speedboats jetting around below,

brightly colored fogs splashing the skyscape,

and of course, fireworks. 15min of stunning fireworks, followed by a 15min break, and another 10min of fireworks (we think someone must have forgotten to pull a lever somewhere, allowing for the 15min delay). 

After the fireworks, we lounged and enjoyed the view for another bit before heading off to a nearby rooftop bar on the water called Kinki's. It was one of the very few places that plays hip-hop, and so we spent late into the night/early morning dancing up a sweat in the open air and enjoying ourselves.

This is not Kinki's, but the lounge from which we watched the celebration. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, if I ever knew in the first place. 

And somehow, I am done logging this fucking day. I'm going to need to figure out blogging properly. This is so annoying. I'm sure I'll be glad I did it once I'm back home, but ugh. I'm not enjoying the writing at all. And I'm exhausted from actually doing the things about which I'm supposed to be blogging. Also blog is such a stupid word. I don't like it anymore.

I'll blog tomorrow about today. And then I'll fly to Cambodia and find peace or something.

Xo,

S