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Off to Cambodia

By jeni | August 27, 2008

We’re off bright and early tomorrow morning. John is mad because I’ve foiled his plan to only wear one outfit the entire time we’re there, but other than that packing is going swimmingly. We’ll have a full report when we get back. Hope all of you Americans have a great Labor Day Weekend.

Topics: Cambodia, packing, traveling | No Comments »

Little India

By jeni | August 25, 2008

Fun times in Little India this weekend, despite what seemed like a neverending amount of rain. We took the train down – it’s just a short jaunt from our current casa – and ended up wandering around most of the day. We started out just walking the streets. Saturday of course is a big shopping day so all of the fruit and veggie vendors were unpacking their things and everybody had their best stuff on sale.

Next on the agenda – visiting a Hindu temple. We easily found the biggest temple in the area, and sadly I do not know the name of it. Bad visitor. It was packed, mostly with worshipers, but with some tourists as well, and while we were waking around the temple grounds the first bit of rain came, and then of course it never stopped. Anyway, some pics of the temple. You can’t really use a flash inside because it’s not polite, and it was too dark to get any photos without it, but John did take a little video of the music (below.)

We asked some German tourist to take a picture of us, but it started to rain right as he was snapping and we weren’t really ready yet, so here’s the awkward picture we ended up with.

So rain rain rain it did and we decided it was time to duck inside and get some lunch. We went to a little hole in the wall vegetarian restaurant and it was delicious – we had some awesomely awesome spicy food and then went to see about a henna tattoo.

I just love henna tattoos. I don’t know why. No rhyme or reason for it. This one took the woman about 4 minutes to draw and it will probably last me about a week. Just fun and decorative.

After I got my tattoo, we stood around in the rain for 30 minutes trying to get a taxi, decided it was impossible, booked it back to the MRT station, and made our way down the escalators like drowned rats. Good times were had by all.

Topics: food, Little India, neighborhoods, rain, shopping, sightseeing | No Comments »

Friday Thoughts

By jeni | August 22, 2008

Okay people, bullet point style because I’m too lazy/annoyed to make a really coherent post. 

Topics: Cambodia, culture clash, food, food of the week, rain, traveling, tv | 4 Comments »

I’d hate to see the 11th craziest

By jeni | August 19, 2008

Topics: shopping, sightseeing | No Comments »

Fountain of Wealth

By jeni | August 18, 2008

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We did. We spent lots of time shopping for our upcoming trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Yayayay Cambodia! We are leaving on August 28 to stay for four days and explore the temples and try to avoid getting malaria. (Just kidding about the malaria mom and dad, don’t freak out). 

Anyway, I thought I had gotten close to seeing all of the shopping here in Singapore, but I guess I was mistaken. There is so much more. Much much more. It never ends. So today I went down to Suntec City Mall, which is enormous, and is also the home of the Singapore Convention Center and the Fountain of Wealth. What is the Fountain of Wealth you ask? Well, to start with, it’s the world’s largest fountain. I do think this is a tiny bit cooler than the world’s largest ball of twine, but probably not that much cooler.

It’s kind of a weird cloudy day today so the lighting is a bit off, but here are a couple of pictures of the fountain. It was turned off today, but as Wikipedia says, it’s often turned off so visitors can walk inside and touch the smaller fountain for luck. They say you stick your right hand in the fountain, silently make a wish, and then circle around three times. Well I wasn’t silent since I was narrating the stupid video which you can’t hear anyway since the water is so loud, but I still won’t tell you my wish because everyone knows if you tell someone a wish, it won’t come true.

So usually water would be spouting out of this big metal thing here:

But instead we just have this mini fountain going:

Here I am at the mini fountain. No I didn’t feel like asking some random family to take a picture of me so I did the best I could. 

So yeah that was my big trip to the Fountain of Wealth. Yay tourism! I’ll let you know if I see any balls of twine. 

 

 

Topics: shopping, sightseeing, traveling | 1 Comment »

Olympic Commentary

By jeni | August 14, 2008

Can I just tell you all how much I love the Olympics? I love them so much. Enough to spend my days sitting on the couch watching TV instead of getting outside and actually doing some activity. I’m sure you can see lots and lots of articles about how sad it is that so many people will sit on their butts and watch amazing athletic feats instead of getting outside and trying some of them. But I’m also sure you can find an equal number of articles on how many people are inspired by the Olympics to get out there and finally take that handball lesson (okay maybe not handball) and grab life by the horns. Wait isn’t that the Dodge tagline? 

Moving on. The Olympics are teh awesome. And if you dispute that then you are lame. 

So in Singapore, I don’t get to see the fun NBC commentary that all of you Americans are enjoying, with lots of back stories and interesting facts about all of the Olympians. But luckily I have this thing called the Internet so it’s okay, if I want to see those stories I can find them. 

The Olympic coverage here in Singapore is pulled from an Australian feed from what I can surmise, as all of the commentators I’ve heard up to this point have been Australian or Kiwis (New Zealanders for those who haven’t heard that term). I love the Australian commentators. They are so ridiculously entertaining, partly just because they use lots of fun terms that I don’t know, and partly because they are just so candid and excited about their respective sports. As in the US, it’s usually veterans of the sports that are commenting. So, just to give you an idea of the fun I’ve enjoyed watching these Olympics so far, here are some of the things I’ve the commentators say. 

During women’s synchronized diving: 

“The Americans are suffering from a disease called tanorexia.”

(In the commentators defense, this was completely true. It was just funny to hear this formal Australian announcer use the word tanorexia.)

During men’s swimming: 

“Well as we’ve mentioned, Michael Phelps is truly from another plant.” 

Ummm, I think you meant planet right? Yeah, I think everyone pretty much thinks this. That man is a machine. 

While the camera zooms in on the US gymnast’s picking glitter off of each other’s faces:

“They’re so keen on fashion aren’t they in the USA?”

I pretty much died laughing when I heard that. Why yes we are. I know glitter was big when I was 17. 

 “She’s got a lot of power doesn’t she, for a wo……. (stammers to a stop) for having such a slight body.”

This guy realized he was about to make a negative comment about a French female swimmer and probably get his arse kicked by his fellow female commentator, so he switched it right away. Good on ya buddy! 

 “Yang Wei looks as if he’s about to take a nap before his last apparatus.” 

Well, I would too if I knew I had the gold in the bag for the men’s all around competition. Nice work Yang Wei. 

“Lift! Lift! Come on you can do it! 

I just love how much they want anyone to win, regardless of where they’re from. This was said about Korean gymnast. 

Now maybe I’ve pulled out some of the bad things they’ve said, but truly I love the Australian commentators. I think they are great and I’m just glad I get to see the Olympics from a different, non US-centric perspective. Of course I’m bummed that I don’t always get to see all of the US athletes perform, especially in gymnastics, which I just love, but I do get to see some of it so that’s okay. 

P.S. Regarding men’s gymnastics, how can you not love a man in stirrup pants? 

Topics: australia, olympics, tv | 1 Comment »

Going Postal

By jeni | August 11, 2008

Umm really Singapore post office? I have to bring my own tape? Really?

Luckily a Singaporean teenager was nice enough to loan me her tape. Otherwise, I guess I would have had to staple my package together. And maybe someone’s face. 

It’s moments like these that make me terrified of doing those mundane tasks here in Singapore. Sending a package = a total nightmare. Oh wait, not that different from the U.S. I guess. Just a nightmare in a different way. 

 

Topics: culture clash, packing | No Comments »

Happy Birthday Singapore!

By jeni | August 10, 2008

Well yesterday, 9 August, was Singapore’s 43rd birthday. Kind of like July 4th is a big deal back home, National Day is huge here in Singapore. I mean huge. There is a parade that is nationally televised and the fireworks show is allegedly one of the best in Asia. Of course we didn’t see it because the parade is virtually impossible to get tickets for, especially if you are not a permanent resident, so we decided not to venture down to Marina Bay and brave the crowds. Instead, we went to Holland Village with friends and ate Mexican food! Happy National Day Singapore!

One of the funniest//most endearing parts of National Day is that every year to accompany National Day, there is a national song. This song and it’s video are played on TV from about the end of July through mid-September. It’s meant to engender pride in Singapore. It also reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from the ever-so-fabulous Grease 2. 

Don’t ya just love it? Now, after watching that, check out “Shine for Singapore,” which John and I sing to each other all day long. It’s kind of awesome that Singapore puts this much effort into a national song that most of its citizens will like (there is a Chinese version as well), and it really does try to encourage it’s citizens to be good people. It’s also, ummmm, quite catchy. Just listen and see if you can keep yourself from singing along. 

Shine for Singapore indeed!

Topics: culture clash, Holland V, neighborhoods | No Comments »

Food of the Week – Dragonfruit

By jeni | August 7, 2008

Raaaaaaawwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Dragon style. Dragonfruit style that is. Dragonfruit is also known as pitaya. And I tried it this afternoon at my German friend’s apartment. Yes, I have a German friend!

Anyway, dragonfruit looks like this. I have no clue how to tell if it’s ripe or a good one or not, but it seemed good to me. To give you an idea, this one fruit costs about $1.20 in SIN dollars. That’s about .80-.85 or so in U.S. money. 

This one here is probably about the size of a large orange. The skin is sort of similar I guess but definitely not as thick as an orange. You can just peel it right off with a knife, which is what we did, exposing the flesh: white, with little black seeds. This is only one of the varieties; they also come with red or pinkish flesh as well.  

So this is a lot of fruit yeah? I was a little nervous about committing to eating a whole half of this thing, but I went for it. 

And it was good. Good enough that I’d buy another one, but probably not good enough to eat every day. I prefer an apple a day. The texture is a bit like watermelon – sort of watery and I could see how it could get pretty mushy if it wasn’t a good piece. It’s not quite as sweet as watermelon, or maybe it’s just sweet in a different way. 

Anyway, that was my dragonfruit experience. Not that exciting I know, but luckily I don’t have to taste hot garbage every time I try a new fruit. 

 

Topics: food, food of the week, friends | No Comments »

Bintan

By jeni | August 5, 2008

Bintan is for lovers. Non-American lovers. Heheh. No really, there were a ton of honeymooners in Bintan. German ones and Japanese ones and Korean ones. Not many Americans, I don’t know why. I mean I guess the obvious answer is that it’s about one million miles to Bintan from the U.S., and if you’re going to come all the way out here, you’ll probably spring for Bali (also part of Indonesia you know right?) or something. And we’re hoping to go to Bali too, but Bintan is so easy and great because it’s just such a short ferry ride away. No airports, no planes, none of that pain.

Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. So let’s see, our ferry left at 5:00 on Friday afternoon, so John came straight from work and we met at the Tanah Merah ferry terminal. Checking is basically the same as checking at the airport, just with far less people. And of course security is much easier. We got these cool little boarding passes that were basically like a credit card with all of our info scanned in, so then when we boarded all we had to do was scan our card and then give it back to the guy helping us board the boat (and we needed help because the boat was rocking so hard in the water it was difficult to get your feet placed correctly). 

Anyway, once on the ferry, we settled in for our ride and watched some TV. I’d say there were about 300 people or so on the ferry in total. Here’s a shot of what it looks like from the inside. 

And of course the requisite holding the arm out to take a picture of the two of us sitting in the ferry shot. This is the only pic we got of the two of us together the whole time, so you’ll have to make due. My bad. 

When we got to Bintan, we expected to be “whisked away” to our hotel, as the email confirmation I’d received said we’d be. Well we ended up sitting in the van for a while waiting on some French people, but we were finally on the road and at the hotel in no time. It was beautiful. Palm trees, nice big pool, beach, all of that good stuff. Pics below. 

We spent the weekend lounging about by the pool and spent a little time on the beach, but you can’t spend too much time at the beach because they have a major problem with sandflies. They fumigate every day and provide this lotion that’s supposed to keep them away, and it’s not like there are bugs swarming everywhere or anything, but I think we both have a few bites. We also spent a nice three hour chunk getting spa treatments, which were inexpensive, but not as cheap as we hear Thailand can be. 

So, overall, my Bintan rating? I give it a 7 out of 10. The good: it’s so close, the room was fairly cheap, and it’s an awesome tropical location. The bad: you get charged for everything in American dollars, the drinks are expensive, the bed was hard, and the sandflies are annoying. For the most part though, how can I complain about spending three days with my awesome husband on the South China Sea? I can’t. It was great. Up next? Thailand. 

 

 

Oh yeah and here’s a not great video of a huge lizard that was just walking around the resort the whole time we were there. 

 

Topics: Indonesia, sightseeing, traveling | 1 Comment »

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