Chili Crabs and Durian

My last day in Singapore was pretty uneventful. I went here and there and ate this and that. There wasn’t anything unique on my agenda so I won’t bother to write about it. Instead, I’ll write about the evening and the food, because that was the true highlight.

On my first night in Singapore, if you recall, I went out with some old friends and some new friends and we had discussed meeting on my last night for some Singaporean chili crabs. As it turned out, everybody had to cancel except for Angie, a new friend that I had met a few days before. She had found a place that was supposed to have great chili crabs and we decided to go to the place she had found.

The place she found was Melben Seafood. When we got there, which I think was around 6:00 pm, there already was a long line of people waiting to get in. Somebody came over to show us a menu and to take our order and then we proceeded to wait in line for about an hour, I believe. All we ordered was a chili crab, a vegetable that I don’t recall but it was green with chilis, and rice. After we got through the line and were seated at our table, it still took about 45 minutes to get our food. The wait wasn’t that bad because it still was relatively early for dinner and I learned a lot from Angie since she’s from Singapore.

The food came and it was worth the wait. The crab came with (I believe fried) bread to dip in the sauce. The crab itself was floating in a thick, sweet, savory sauce that was a little, though not very, spicy. The sauce was like a mixture of tomato sauce and chili sauce and was good with the crab, with the rice and with the bread. It was a little pricey at S$40 per crab but with the rice, the vegetables and the bread, it turned out that the one crab was plenty of food, so the total cost wasn’t horrible. Because I love food as much as I do, I have to say that the chili crab may have been the highlight of my trip to Singapore.

After dinner, we walked back to the subway/mall for dessert. And for dessert we had durian pancakes. If you don’t know durian, let me describe it a little bit for you. The first thing you notice is that it’s quite pungent. I’ve read that it smells like rotting flesh, but I think that’s an insult to zombies. It’s strong enough that it is banned on the Singapore subway system because of the aroma. Nevertheless, I was game. I got a durian pancake and took a bite. It was sweet but did have a strange taste, at least to my palate. It sort of reminded me of potatoes, onions and sour milk all glopped together and put onto a pancake. In order to get the pancake, we had to stand in line for about 15 minutes so it is very popular, but it is a taste that I have yet to acquire. It wasn’t horrible, though, just a little strange to me, so I continued to eat it. Before I finished, I had to go to the bathroom. I don’t think carrying food with you into a bathroom is a particularly good idea, so I scarfed down the last third of the durian pancake before I went in. For a split second, it almost came back up. That would have been bad, and thankfully it didn’t happen, though it would have been a suitable end to my durian adventure.

After dessert, I went back to my hotel. I had to get up early in the morning and head to the Singapore airport for my flight to Los Angeles via Manila so an early evening was in order. I’ll pick up there in the next post.

Eating at the Hawking Centers

On my second full day in Singapore, I was mostly concerned with something that I’m often mostly concerned with, food. In speaking with my friends the night before, I learned some stuff about the hawking stations in Singapore. I don’t know if what I learned was true, but I heard that there used to be stalls on the streets selling food all over town and the city wanted to get them off the street but not put them out of business. The solution was to build these centers and move the food stores into those.

There are a couple of huge hawking centers in Chinatown and I decided that I’d walk to Chinatown and get some food. The weather was overcast, with occasional sprinkles, but at least that kept the temperature down, so it wasn’t a bad walk, even though it was about 45 minutes each way. On the way, I passed some temples and, of course, malls, but the walk wasn’t particularly interesting.

Once I got to Chinatown, I started looking for the Maxwell Road Food Centre. At Maxwell Road, there are over 100 food stalls selling almost every type of Asian food imaginable. There were several sticky rice places, and some of them quite busy, but I wasn’t in the mood for sticky rice. Instead, I found another place that looked pretty busy (I heard that the busier the place, the better the food would be) and ordered spicy duck noodle soup. I love spicy Asian food and this was the spiciest that I had eaten since I was in southern China, so I was very happy about it. Overall, I definitely think that it was worth the walk.

After lunch, I walked around a little bit and walked to a market nearby my hotel to get some souvenirs. I also went to Bugis Street to use the free wifi. My only other goal of the day, however, was to head to the zoo to see the Night Safari.

The Night Safari in Singapore isn’t so much a safari as it is a combination floor show and tram ride around the zoo in the dark. I left from my hotel around 6:30 and it unexpectedly took me about two hours to get to the Night Safari, the entrance of which is next door to the Singapore Zoo. I had to transfer once I got onto the subway and then take a 45-minute bus ride from the final subway stop to the Night Safari. (Note: Since my iPhone doesn’t have a flash, I have no good pictures of the Night Safari so all of my pictures are from earlier in the day.)

Once I arrived at the Night Safari, I waited for about 20-minutes for a show featuring lots of the nocturnal animals. The highlight of the show was listening to the MC tell people in about a dozen different languages not to use flash photography during the show. Of course, some people still did.

After the show, I went to the tram for the 30-minute ride around the park to see all of the night animals. Of course, we saw all of the usual suspects – elephants, tigers, lions, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, etc. The whole trip is in the rain forest, so we probably were surrounded by unbelievable beauty, but of course it was night so it was difficult to make out much of the beauty. All-in-all, it wasn’t a bad trip, but in retrospect, I probably would have been better off if I had just gone in the daylight and see the Singapore Zoo that way.

It took another hour-and-a-half to get back to my hotel and by this time it was getting kind of late so I called it an evening. The next day was chili crab and durian day and we’ll get into that in the next post.

Going Up and Around in Singapore

Before I arrived in Singapore, friends who had recently been in Singapore told me about several things that I had to see and/or do while I was in town. The two things that I heard about most often were the Singapore Flyer and the Night Safari. On my first full day in Singapore, I decided to go to the Singapore Flyer.

For those who don’t know, the Singapore Flyer is a huge ferris wheel. Well, it’s a little more than that. According to plaques and signs all around the wheel, it proclaims itself to be the world’s largest observation wheel. I can’t say that I have any evidence to the contrary.

Looking at the map of Singapore that I had, it appeared that the Flyer was about two miles away from my hotel, so I decided to walk to the Flyer to get a better look around the city. Normally, it would only have taken about forty minutes, but Singapore is quite warm. In addition, it’s really humid. I think that each day that I was in Singapore, if it wasn’t raining, it was about 90 degrees with humidity hovering about 80 percent. It was fairly uncomfortable if you were out in it for a while. Fortunately, however, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Singapore is about 60% malls, so whenever you get too hot, you can drop in and get some ice coffee or just otherwise cool off. Also, for the first time since I hit town, it wasn’t raining. With this in mind, it took me around an hour to get to the Flyer in the heat.

When I arrived, I purchased a ticket for the wheel. I don’t recall how much it was, but I recall that it was kind of expensive, just like everything else in Singapore. Also, it wasn’t very busy. Each of the cages on the Flyer has a capacity of 28 people, but I didn’t see more than five or six in any of them. I got on and went around. The entire trip took about a half hour. It actually was pretty interesting. You are provided with great views of Singapore as well as being able to look into Malaysia and Indonesia, though those views from the Flyer weren’t nearly as impressive. There is some really interesting architecture in Singapore but I think the thing that caught my attention the most was the floating soccer field, a picture of which I believe I put in my last post. Another thing that jumps out at you is all of the cranes, signifying all of the construction that is still going on in Singapore, even in a time in which it has slowed in most other places.

After the Flyer, I went to a mall for some free wifi and then went back to my hotel to take a nap. The big event for the evening was to meet up with a friend that I used to work with and her husband. I hadn’t seen her since we both quit our jobs within a week or so of each other and was looking forward to catching up. I met up with her husband first and then we all met up in a restaurant/bar section of Orchard Street, where I had been the night before with other friends. In addition to catching up, we tried a lot of different foods at dinner and then went for a beer, during which I learned a lot about Singapore and reaffirmed my belief that quitting my job was the best thing that I had ever done for my own peace of mind. I had a great time and we discussed meeting up again before I left Singapore. That never happened, but it was great to see them nonetheless.

That was pretty much it for the first day. Next up was Chinatown and the Night Safari. We’ll get to those next time.

Singapore in Monsoon Season

I got to the bus stop early at Times Square in Kuala Lumpur and had time to stop off at Krispy Kreme while I waited. Have I mentioned recently how much I love Krispy Kreme? The donuts aren’t as good in Malaysia as they are in the States, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyway, I got on the bus to Singapore. The bus was actually pretty comfortable and spacey. I was able to write many of the posts for this site on the ride and the views were pretty good. The trip took about four hours into Singapore and then another hour-and-a-half to get through immigration and across town to the bus station. As we were approaching Singapore, it started to sprinkle. I should have seen this as the ominous omen that it was, but I thought nothing of it at the time. After a full-body cavity search (or something close to it) at immigration in Singapore, I made it to the bus station and took a short cab ride to my hotel in the now strengthening rain.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at my hotel because I was meeting a friend at my hotel to head out into town. I waited for about a half hour and by the time he arrived, the strengthening rain had turned into a Category 5 hurricane. The lightning was so close that I was afraid to sit near anything metallic, even indoors, and the rain was hitting the window in waves instead of drops. But my old friend arrived, along with a new friend – because a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met – and the three of us headed out. Immediately, I started wishing that I owned an umbrella.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to move around in Singapore without spending too much time outside because it is a city that is around 60% mall, much like Kuala Lumpur. I was hungry, so we went to an Asian food court in a nearby mall for dinner. I think I had teriyaki salmon and Tiger beer, but it could have been chicken now that I think about it. Not important. After dinner, we headed to the subway to go to another part of town, Orchard Street, to meet another old friend and another new friend and head to a bar.

Getting off of the subway at Orchard Street, at another mall, and looking around, the first thing to strike you is that Singapore is as decked out for Christmas as Kuala Lumpur. There were lights crisscrossing Orchard Street and on every storefront and ginormous Christmas trees everywhere. I made the comment that it looked like New York in December but felt like New York in July because it was still about 85 degrees and humid even though it was after 8 pm. Immediately outside of the mall/subway stop was a huge purple Christmas tree that was big enough to walk inside. We went in and I took some pictures and as you can see, purple seems to be the color of Christmas in Singapore. (Note: These were the only pictures that I took on my first night in Singapore, so the other photos for this entry are from the rest of my time in Singapore.)

We walked around for a while until we finally found a bar that would let us sit and drink without eating and I had a few beers. It was good to see old friends and meet new ones, but the night was without much excitement. We discussed meeting up a few nights later for some chili crabs and then I took a cab back to my hotel to plan the next day’s activities. More on those in the next post.

Getting Even Higher in KL

I reached my final full day in Kuala Lumpur, I only had a few of them, and I still hadn’t gotten as high as I wanted to get. Actually, I’m not sure I could have gotten any higher than the Petronas Towers, but because it is built on a hill, I’ve heard the view from the KL Tower is actually higher than those from the Petronas Towers. And since everybody had told me about the great views, I decided to check it out for myself.

Like my original trip to the Petronas Towers, I was able to walk from my hotel to the KL Tower. Also like the Petronas Towers, at times it completely disappeared from view. You’d thing that some of the largest structures in the world would be able to be seen from everywhere in the city, but like New York, Kuala Lumpur is an extremely tall city and giant buildings often get obscured by other large buildings.

Anyway, getting to the KL Tower was easy enough. I could tell you all of the statistics about the KL Tower, but I’ll just leave it by saying that it is one of the world’s largest observation towers. The KL Tower sits on top of a hill and upon arrival at the site, I took the free shuttle bus to the top of the hill and the entrance to the KL Tower. I forget how much the ticket cost, but it was fairly inexpensive. More importantly, unlike the Petronas Towers, there was no line required to purchase the ticket and the ticket didn’t require me to come back in order to go up to the observation deck; that privilege was bestowed immediately.

I took the elevator to the observation deck and immediately saw that what everybody had told me – that the views from the KL Tower completely trumped those from the Petronas Towers – was absolutely true. From the observation deck of the KL Tower, you get a complete 360-degree view of Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding area. The trip to the top also comes with a free audio guide that leads you to twelve observation posts and explains what you are looking at as you peer out the windows. If there is any problem, it is that the audio guide appears to get outdated quickly because of all of the construction that continues to take place in Kuala Lumpur. The views were truly breathtaking and this trip turned out to be my primary highlight in KL.

My final highlight in KL came later that night when I went to dinner. A few friends of mine had been to KL a few months earlier and told me about a tapas restaurant that was close to the hotel in which they stayed. I like tapas and I trusted my friends, so I went to the place for dinner on my final night in KL. I was not disappointed.

The place was called Pinchoa and even though it wasn’t the best tapas restaurant at which I had ever eaten, I did live in Madrid for a few months after all, it was the best I’ve ever had outside of Spain and better than some at which I had eaten in Spain. I don’t remember everything I tried, but I did order the usual suspects – Patatas Bravas and Tortilla Española, as well as some jamon y chorizo-infused items. All were tremendous. I also received a free sample of the jamon iberico from the owner, who is from Barcelona, and we sat for a few drinks and talked about Spain and the restaurant and Malaysia. It was a really good time and really good food and it left me with a great final impression of Kuala Lumpur. The next stop on the Sheldon train was Singapore and we’ll pick up there next time.

Getting High in KL

As I mentioned in my last post, I stood in line all morning trying to get a ticket to go to the sky bridge and observation deck of the Petronas Towers. I got the ticket, but I had about six hours to kill until I could go up, so I had to find other things to do in Kuala Lumpur.

One thing I figured I could do was to go to Times Square. No, not that Times Square, but this one is pretty impressive in its own right. I had to go there to find where I needed to pick up my ticket and catch the bus for Singapore in a few days. Also, I had read that it was one of the five largest buildings in the world, based on floor space, and so I thought it would be a good idea to find where I needed to go before the last minute because getting lost in the building was a possibility.

Turns out I was pretty wise because the building was not simple to navigate. It had at least six floors of mall as well as various entrances to the monorail. I walked around for a while, broke down and went to the information desk, and eventually found where I needed to go to pick up my bus ticket.

Afterwards, I walked around KL some more and also took the monorail to other parts of town. Let me tell you the primary observation that I made in my travels in KL. Nobody celebrates Christmas like the Muslims. Okay, it’s not quite that simple, but Kuala Lumpur is a city that is full of malls. I mean they are everywhere. On pretty much every corner is one of the largest buildings that I’ve ever seen and inside those buildings are six to eight floors of mall. And what do malls want you to do this time of year? Yup, buy Christmas presents. It doesn’t matter that Malaysia is a Muslim country; Malaysia’s malls want you to spend money on Christmas presents. I have never in my life seen a city so dedicated to Christmas decorations. (Though, to be fair, in a few days I learned that Singapore was pretty damn close.)

Finally, it was time to head to the Petronas Towers. I spent about an hour strolling through its . . . wait for it . . . mall. Then I went to the tourist section and we went up to the sky bridge. The sky bridge of the Petronas Towers connects the two towers at the 41^st floor. It’s a pretty cool perspective of the buildings and of the city, but to be perfectly honest, the views were a little underwhelming. They are limited in that they allow you only to look out in the directions that the sky bridge faces. Much of what you can see is obscured by the towers themselves. It was a worthwhile trip, but not tremendous.

Following the trip to the sky bridge, we went to the observation deck on the 86^th floor. The views from this height were much more impressive. Still, because of the metal railings and the way the windows were set up, there still were many obstructions keeping me from getting a great view of the city. Before I made the trip, several people told me that if I had a choice between visiting the Petronas Towers and the KL Tower, I should choose the KL Tower. It turns out that those people were correct, though it didn’t really matter because I didn’t need a choice. I had the opportunity to do both and I’ll talk about the KL Tower in the next entry.

Business Class to Kuala Lumpur

On Monday, it was time for me to finally get out of town. My flight wasn’t until 4:20 pm, so I had time to enjoy another wonderful buffet breakfast in my hotel in Bangkok and to walk around the city for some last minute Thai food and atmosphere.

Around noon, I checked out of my hotel and hopped in a cab to the airport. This was the first time that I had flown from one foreign airport to another, not counting connection flights, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. I was flying Lufthansa Airlines, which also was new to me. I got to the airport early and the Lufthansa station wasn’t set up yet, so I sat around in the back and waited. When it did get set up, it was completely chaotic, not exactly what I was expecting from a German airline, and I got in line at the back of something that appeared to be a line to one of the agents. After about two minutes of standing there, I was pulled out of line by an airline employee who told me that I could move to a different line, which only had two people in it. Beautiful. And it turned out that it was the business class line and when I got to the counter, I was upgraded to business class. Beautiful. It was only a two-hour flight, but I still enjoyed it. It was kind of odd being an American on a flight from Thailand to Malaysia and being spoken to by the flight attendants in German, but, you know, whatever.

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at around nine and hopped on the train that leads from the airport to the main train station in the city. That took a little under a half hour and from there I took a cab to my hotel. I walked around the area a bit and got some dinner at an Italian restaurant next to the hotel and called it a night.

I only had two full days in Kuala Lumpur and the only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to go up the Petronas Towers and the KL Tower. I was told that the trip up the KL Tower was better, but I’ve been a fan of the Petronas Towers for a decade and really wanted to do that trip, so that was what took up most of my first day.

To go up the Petronas Towers, you need to get in line early in the morning to get tickets. They start selling tickets at around 9:00 am and I arrived at the towers at 8:20 am. It was good that I arrived when I did because by 8:40 am, they had stopped letting people in line because they had already reached capacity. I didn’t get my ticket until around 10:30 am, so it was a long time in line, and when I did I had a choice for the 3RM ticket to the sky bridge or the 30RM (about US$10) for the trip to the sky bridge on the 41^st floor and the observation deck on the 86^th floor. (I also had an option of paying about 300RM for a trip to the sky bridge, the observation deck, and dinner on the 87^th floor, but I wasn’t paying an extra US$90 for dinner, especially in a town as cheap as Kuala Lumpur.) My ticket didn’t allow me entry until 5:00 pm, so I still had some time to kill in KL We’ll get to that and the trip to the top of the world in the next entry.

Conclusion in Bangkok

I still had a few days left in Bangkok. After the Royal Palace and the ping pong shows, I wasn’t sure exactly what there was left for me to do. Like I do in most cities when I visit, I could walk around a lot, and I did, and stop in little restaurants for local food and beer, and I did, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything else that I wanted to see.

A friend from the tour wanted to go see some Thai boxing, which is always a draw for tourists in Bangkok. It didn’t work out, though, because the only day we could end up doing it was Saturday night and by the time we touched base, the show had already started. That and the cost involved with getting a ticket prevented me from going.

On Friday, I did go to the Victory Monument. It sounded like a cool thing to see in Bangkok, and I guess it was, but there wasn’t much to it. I took some pictures and strolled around the neighborhood for a while, but I wasn’t really enthralled by this particular area. Later, I jumped back on the sky train – the Bangkok Sky Train is quick and easy to use, by the way – and went to some other neighborhoods. Ultimately, I found a little restaurant and had some chicken with dried chilis and cashew nuts and called it a night.

On Saturday, I went to the only other Bangkok sight of which I was aware that didn’t require me to go down the muddy river. (There are many temples and Buddhas and stuff on down the river to see if you like, but I was a little templed out at this point and didn’t feel the inclination to take a day trip to see more temples.) That sight was the Chatuchak Weekend Market. With over 15,000 stalls, this market is touted as the world’s largest market of its kind. I’ve seen a lot of markets in southeast Asia and I’m inclined to believe it. They say that no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it at Chatuchak, including endangered species of animals, but it turned out that finding a shot glass for my sister was damn near impossible. I did buy some knickknacks and some t-shirts and stuff at the market. It was a little more expensive than the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, but still more than reasonable. I also got some food from one of the hawker stations at the market. It’s hard to beat fresh, authentic Thai food.

The big event for me on Sunday was meeting up with an old friend of mine and his wife who were arriving on my last full day in Bangkok. They arrived pretty late and were surprisingly difficult to find after arrival considering they were staying in the hotel next door to mine, but eventually we were able to get together. We walked around the neighborhood for a little while and then stopped off at a little outdoor street bar for a few local beers. They had come from India and, as it turned out, the talk in India was about ping pong shows just as it had been for me in Vietnam. Since we were close by to Soi Cowboy, and even though I was pretty sure I had had my fill of the ping pong show entertainment, we went back to the bar I had visited a few days earlier so they could get the full Bangkok experience. I had a great time and it was fantastic to meet up with friends in a far-off, exotic location. I had an afternoon flight to Malaysia the next day, so it wasn’t too late a night and that pretty much concluded my visit to Bangkok. We’ll be back with more Asia in the next entry.

Putting the Bang in Bangkok

Ever since we were in China, there was talk of the ping pong shows in Thailand. Once we got to Vietnam, and the new group started with us in Hanoi, the talk of the shows started to escalate; and when we discovered that the end of the tour occurred on Thanksgiving Day in the United States, we determined to celebrate the holiday in traditional Thai fashion – by going to a ping pong show. Okay, technically, that’s not how American Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated in Thailand yet, but we decided to start a new tradition.

I noticed on the internet that Soi Cowboy was close to my new hotel. Soi Cowboy is a red-light district in Bangkok known for its bars and strip clubs. Since it was close by, I was meeting my friends at my hotel for the Thanksgiving festivities. While I waited, I went by and scouted out Soi Cowboy. When I returned to my hotel, my friends had just arrived. They asked what Soi Cowboy looked like. Two words – Slut Vegas.

Soi Cowboy was just a few blocks away. When you walk down a large side street from the main road, you continue about two blocks when, to the right of Soi 21, you see a festival of neon lights belonging to strip clubs and bars all up and down Soi Cowboy. Soi Cowboy isn’t very long, maybe half a kilometer, but there isn’t a centimeter on either side of the street that isn’t used for quality Thai entertainment.

Our group began by walking down the street and absorbing the atmosphere. As we walked by, we were solicited by scantily clad, let’s call them dancers, at virtually every club extolling the virtues of their respective clubs. We soaked in the culture until we reached the very end of Soi Cowboy. At that end, there was an Irish pub and we decided to stop for a few beers before continuing on to the performances.

After a few drinks, we returned to Soi Cowboy where we went looking for a ping pong show. Now, Soi Cowboy isn’t really the home of ping pong shows in Bangkok – that would probably be Patpong – but we figured we’d be able to find one.

We stopped in a few places after asking if there would be ping pong shows inside. After being assured that we could find one, we entered into these places only to find that there was no place for the five of us to sit once we entered because they were all pretty full. Finally, we reached a place – I forget its name but it’s something like Long Gun – that had seats at the dance floor for all five of us. After some basic strip club preliminaries, we were privileged to witness the main attraction. I won’t go into great detail, this is a family blog after all, but we witnessed smoking, the playing of a recorder, the blowing up of balloons with a dart gun, and yes, the moving of ping pong balls into a beer glass all performed by a very talented woman who was able to perform these feats in a non-traditional manner – at least a non-traditional manner outside of Bangkok. I’m not sure if the show quite lived up to expectations, but I think that we were all glad we went because it would have been a shame to visit Bangkok and not see one of its main claims to fame.

At the end of the show, we went back to my hotel and all said our goodbyes. As it turned out, this was the last time that I saw anybody from the group and it turned out to be the last unofficial group event. I have to say that it was fun while it lasted. From here on out, I was running solo, though there would be plenty of opportunities to see old friends.

Leaving the Group in Bangkok

We had to check out of our hotel by noon and this would officially close out my fifty-six days of group travel, which started out unfavorably but eventually turned out to be the most fun I’ve ever had traveling with a group. I still had another four days in Bangkok and I was switching to another hotel. Many others were also staying around for a few days, so the group adventure wasn’t quite over yet.

A few in our group were remaining in the same hotel, so when I checked out, I just left my bags in another person’s room and, since I had a couple of hours to kill until I could check into my new hotel, I went sightseeing with a few others.

We hopped into a tuk-tuk and took the 20-minute drive over to the Royal Palace and Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha. The complex was beautiful, with many of the buildings painted in gold (I assume it was gold paint) and included several murals conveying stories of Thai legend. The most impressive part had to be the Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha, although I think the Buddha actually was made of jade. I assume that a lot of the gold within this particular building actually was gold, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside so you’ll have to go on your own time and judge for yourself. Or read a book; I guess one of those could tell you too.

After the Royal Palace, we stopped off at an Au Bon Pain across the street for a chocolaty-icy drink and then we hopped in another tuk-tuk to the hotel. I had the tuk-tuk wait for me while I got my stuff, because the first hotel was nearly five kilometers from either the subway or the sky-train, and I took the tuk-tuk to my new hotel. Thanks to ungodly traffic, the trip took nearly an hour.

My new hotel was the Kingston Suites Hotel. Let me digress and say a few words about this hotel. I loved it. I really loved it. The room was huge, with a king-size bed. The television was a 32-inch plasma deal. The bathroom was ginormous and had the best shower ever, with a shower head the size of the full moon raining down hot water with the water pressure of Niagara Falls. Breakfast was free and it was one of the best hotel breakfast buffets I’ve ever experienced, complete with an omelet bar and, yes, real bacon. The location was fantastic, less than a five-minute walk to both the subway and sky train, near a ton of restaurants and close to a few famous Thai red-light districts; you know, interesting from a cultural perspective. Okay, that’s enough about my hotel.

I was supposed to meet people from my group for dinner and some traditional Thai entertainment. Wires were crossed, though, and dinner ended up being close to my original hotel, so I ended up eating at McDonald’s while the others ate and waited for those who were interested in the entertainment portion of the evening to come to my neighborhood. For the record, I had a Samurai Pork Burger at McDonald’s because I didn’t think I’d ever have another chance to have a Samurai Pork Burger at McDonald’s. I think I made the right choice.

My friends showed up and we went looking for Thai entertainment. We found it. I guess that will be the tease until the next entry.

One Night in Bangkok

The next day was our final full day as a group. It started with us getting up early and jumping on a bus out of Siem Reap to the border town in which we were crossing from Cambodia into Thailand. I don’t recall the name of the border town, but it looked like pretty much every other border town as far as I could tell, with some casinos on the Cambodia side, just like when we entered Cambodia from Vietnam.

The crossing seemed to be a little more hectic than usual, especially on the Cambodian side, but after all this time, I’ve seen worse so it didn’t bother me too much. After getting through, we hopped onto a different private bus for the four-or-so hour drive to Bangkok. At least in this second bus, we had a DVD player and a television. To celebrate, I whipped out the Big Bang Theory DVDs that I had purchased in Phnom Penh and we were treated to a Sheldon Marathon for the entire length of the trip. I was even able to learn about Thai culture while watching one of the episodes. Is there any problem that a sitcom can’t solve?

By the time we arrived in Bangkok, it was starting to get late, or at least dark. We threw our things down and went out to get some dinner. On the menu at our restaurant, there was fried ostrich on the menu. I hadn’t had ostrich since my local Fuddruckers stopped selling it, so I indulged. It was good, but nothing special. (By the way, I have no more relevant pictures of the evening, so I'm just starting to post random photos from my first day in Thailand.)

After dinner, everybody went out for drinks since it was our final night together. Unfortunately, somebody decided that we should go to an Irish pub. I don’t particularly like Irish pubs. I stayed around for a beer, but then went Darkman and escaped back to the hotel.

I was able to go to sleep pretty quickly but not long as I woke up for some reason around 1:00 am. Shortly afterwards, my roommate showed up rather intoxicated. Okay, he was very fucking drunk. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten back to the hotel. A few minutes after he arrived, he said he had to spew and walked to the closet. Fortunately for everyone, once he opened the closet door, he realized it wasn’t the bathroom and asked for directions to the proper spewing room. I pointed him in the right direction and about five minutes later he was back in bed, passed out and snoring like the proverbial rusty chain saw. Good times, good times.

The next morning, I was feeling pretty good. Obviously, that wasn’t the case with all of the revelers, so I got up early and started walking around the part of Bangkok in which our hotel was located. It was near the river and wasn’t the most interesting part of town, but there was a little restaurant that was a few doors down from the hotel that served an American breakfast. (Breakfast being the one meal of the day in which I usually go western. Usually.)

The high point of the breakfast was the bacon. Now, everywhere in the world that I’ve travelled generally has something that they call “bacon.” Almost always, it’s some form or cut of ham that no self-respecting American would ever call bacon. The bacon in this restaurant, however, was the real deal. I decided, as soon as I took my first bite, that I was going to enjoy Bangkok.

Cooking in Cambodia

We still had another full day in Siem Reap, which was really our last free day together as a group. Most of us had been travelling together since Hanoi, three weeks earlier, and the end was near.

I got up around nine o’clock and my roommate told me that the cooking class had been moved up from eleven to ten o’clock. This left me time to either shower or get some breakfast. I went with the breakfast option because coffee sounded like it would cause me more good than the smells emanating from me would cause harm. I think I made the right decision.

All of us who were taking the cooking class, seven in all, gradually found each other in a restaurant across the street from where the cooking class was taking place. The meal was okay and the coffee was sufficient. We wandered across the street to the restaurant in which the class was taking place and we were handed menus. We were instructed to pick an appetizer and a main course in which to cook. Going along with what had been working for me in Cambodia thus far, I went with fresh shrimp spring rolls and fish amok.

Like the other cooking classes that I took in Asia, there was a lot of chopping. I’m starting to get the hang of it, though I can’t cut a tomato into a rose to save my life. We rolled up the spring rolls, made the sauce, and then it was time for the main courses. As I mentioned, mine was the fish amok. Unlike the class in Vietnam, we actually got to cook our meals in this class. The hot plates came out and we went to work.

When I took the cooking class in China, the meal I had was one of the better meals that I had the entire time I was in China. I’m sure that was due in large part to the ingredients and my instructor. I can’t say that this was the case in Cambodia. I’ll put all of the blame on myself, but I can easily say that I had had much better fish amok during my time in Cambodia. The spring rolls were good, though. And the dessert – sticky rice with coconut and mango – kicked some serious butt. I still don’t have the recipes for what I cooked, but they are supposed to be e-mailed to me. At this point, I’m doubting if that will happen.

After class, I returned to my hotel room and this time I think I actually got to take a little nap. Afterwards, I went walking around the small, touristy town for a final look. I went to the local market, but I had bought pretty much all of the Cambodian souvenirs that I wanted at the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, so I didn’t get anything.

At night, we had time for one final meal in Cambodia. Coming to the realization that if I chose Cambodian food for my final meal, I likely was going to get something that I had already tried at this point, I joined some friends at a Mexican restaurant for some chimichangas and margaritas. It wasn’t the best Mexican food I had ever had, but it was the first I had eaten in quite a while, and it was good enough for me.

It turned out to be an early night because some of us were still a little hungover and we had an early-morning bus – our last one for the trip – to Bangkok in the morning. We’ll turn to the commute in the next entry.

Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

Well, we returned to Siem Reap after a long day at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and the other temples and it was still only around four in the afternoon. The next day was fairly open until a cooking class at around ten o’clock, so the plan was to take a little nap and then go out and have a night on the town.

Unfortunately, the nap part didn’t work out. I tried and tried but sleep didn’t come. For the most part I just laid in the semi-dark and/or watched television while my roommate was on the computer. Obviously, this was going to make the night out on the town a little more difficult, but it couldn’t be avoided.

At dinnertime, we met to go to a restaurant/bar called the Temple Club. One of the draws of the place was a local dance show that would be performed while we ate. The other draw is that if you drank a bucket of some mixed drink, you were awarded a t-shirt. As it turned out, the show wasn’t particularly entertaining and the t-shirt was a little bit too small, but the bucket of vodka and red bull was just what the doctor ordered. (Coincidentally, it also was just what I ordered.)

After dinner, and feeling pretty good at this point, we went across the street to another bar. This other bar was called Angkor What? and also gave away t-shirts with buckets of drinks. Unwilling to drink another bucket, I opted to purchase of t-shirt from this establishment for $5, but at least this one fit. Even though I wasn’t prepared to drink another bucket of liquor, I wasn’t quite finished drinking yet. I ordered a beer and then another beer and then it seemed like a good idea to do a shot of absinthe. I had never had the legendary liquor before and now, with friends and already drunk, it seemed like a good time to experiment with the Green Fairy. It didn’t taste all that good, but it wasn’t too bad either. It warmed me up a little bit and made the beer taste better. Now that we were getting good and, let’s say comfortable, my friends wanted to do a shot of Jager. I wasn’t in the mood for Jager, I’ve never been a big fan, so I opted for another shot of absinthe. I distinctly remember this shot of absinthe because I also distinctly remember being in the bathroom about 45-seconds later vomiting it into a urinal. Good times, good times.

Having recognized that I had been beaten, I decided to walk back to the hotel. It was only a few blocks across the river and I figured I was in decent enough shape to get back on my own. I was right. Thanks to all of the Red Bull, though, sleep didn’t come immediately. That might have been good because I got a text from my roommate that he was lost. He followed that up with a message saying that he didn’t know idea where he was – okay, that was pretty close to the first one. I tried to give directions, but since he didn’t know where he was, they weren’t very helpful. I then received a text message saying, and I quote, “I’m near the river and the prostitutes are after me.” I received no other texts from him, but he was back in the room within ten minutes, so I am pretty certain that he escaped the prostitutes unscathed.

After he returned, others also returned to the hotel and I suppose we were a little loud because there were a few half-hearted complaints in the morning, but nothing too big and it was all good fun. The next day was the aforementioned cooking class and I’ll get to that in the next post.

Angkor What?

After a night in Kompong Cham, it was time for yet another long bus ride to another city in Cambodia. I didn’t mind this one, though, because at least we were going to stay at our next destination, Siem Reap, for three days.

After arriving in Siem Reap, we took some time to clean up and went for an orientation walk. I had eaten breakfast in Kompong Cham, but it was getting pretty close to three o’clock and I was getting hungry. I cut out early on the orientation walk and grabbed some grub. Then I went and checked out the local market, but that’s not what I want to talk about. It ended up being an early night because we had to get up early the next morning for the fun stuff, so I’ll just skip forward to that.

At 4:30 am the next morning, we awoke in order to hop on a bus to head to Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the national symbol of Cambodia, it’s on their flag for Pete’s sake, and was built by a Cambodian king (or rather, his subjects) in the first half of the 12^th century. It is featured heavily in the Lara Croft, Tomb Raider film, or so I’m told – I haven’t seen it – but was a treasured site well before that.

Getting back to getting on a bus at 4:30 am, we headed to Angkor Wat to catch the sunrise coming up over the temples. It was quite impressive, even if my iPhone couldn’t completely capture it thanks to the position of the sun. The mirrored images in the reflecting pools added to the splendor. Or at least one of the reflecting pools. The other was pretty much full of algae, though even that cast a little bit of a reflection.

After the sunrise, we stopped at a little restaurant across from the temples for breakfast and then re-entered the site to actually enter the temples. We toured with a guide for about an hour and then had some free time to explore. The complex is surrounded by a moat and it would have been great to get a bird’s eye view of the complex but for some reason they are no longer doing balloon rides in the area. At the far end of the complex, we ran into some wild monkeys that were getting fed by the tourists. Even though it looks just like it does on television, it is still very impressive in person.

After Angkor Wat, we went to Angkor Thom, an ancient fortified city built at the end of the twelfth century. Specifically, we headed to the Bayon, which has 54 gothic towers, each with four smiling faces of Avalokiteshvara that, according to legend, look amazingly like King Jayavarman VII, the king who built (or rather, whose subjects built) the city. There are other carvings in the complex that depict Cambodian life at the time that the temple was built.

Finally, we headed to Ta Prohm. People were calling this the Tomb Raider temple, but I really don’t know anything about that. To me, the temple was a brilliant example of how nature ultimately triumphs over man. There is plenty of the temple still remaining, but much of it has been crumbled by the surrounding jungle. Interestingly, there are several sections that are now part rock and part wood because trees have grown through several buildings within the complex and it is not always easy to tell where the buildings end and the jungles begin.

I took lots of pictures of all of these places, but there’s not nearly enough room to post them here. If I ever get caught up on posting travel photos on Facebook, though, you can be sure to find them there.

Crickets and Spiders - Breakfast of Champions

On the nineteenth of November, we completed our beach trip in Sihanoukville and headed back to Phnom Penh. At this time of year, Phnom Penh is packed because it is the weekend of the annual water festival, and since we were staying near the river, tourists were in town in hordes.

Once again, we arrived in Phnom Penh in the afternoon and didn’t have a lot of time to do things that we wanted to do. As soon as we arrived, a few of us left for lunch and then headed to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. With the exception of S-21 and the Killing Fields, which I wrote about a few days ago, these are the most famous landmarks in Phnom Penh.

The palace and pagoda complex contain numerous buildings, some dating back to 1866, and have housed the royal family for the most part since that time. I’m still not sure what happened to the palace during the period of rule of the Khmer Rouge, when Phnom Penh was evacuated, but it seems to be in as good shape now as it was before that period.

We didn’t spend a lot of time at the palace complex because the day was waning and we still wanted to go to the Russian market. The Russian market is called what it is because Russians were the primary tourists who shopped at the market back in the 1970s (if I remember correctly) even though almost all of the stores in the market are run by Cambodians.

I think I can say that the Russian Market in Phnom Penh has been my favorite of all of the markets that I visited in Southeast Asia, and every city seems to have at least one, so that’s saying something. I bought some t-shirts and other souvenirs as well as some DVDs. I bought 44 Woody Allen movies for $8. He’s probably not going to be happy to hear that, but I was pretty pleased with it.

I seem to recall that we had dinner and a relatively early night on our second night in Phnom Penh because, once again, we had to get up early the next morning for another bus to another Cambodian town. This time, that Cambodian town was Kompong Cham.

The bus ride to Kompong Cham was one of the most eventful bus rides we’ve had on this trip, primarily because of the cuisine. About halfway between Phnom Penh and Kompong Cham, we stopped for a happy house break at a place that our guide called “Spider Town.” At the place we stopped, there were many delicacies for sale, including pineapple and mango. Oh, and there were also crickets and spiders, deep fried, for purchase. I tried a cricket and it was pretty good except that I got a leg stuck between my teeth. I also held some spiders; I think tarantulas, but I’m not really sure. In any event, they were large-ass spiders. I ate the leg of a dead one. Once again, the thing was deep fried and crunchy and tasted mostly like the sauce in which it was cooked.

Unfortunately, the bus ride was the high point of the trip to Kompong Cham. We only stayed there one night and that was primarily to break up the trip between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. There was a market, but there wasn’t much to it. We had dinner at a man’s house in the outskirts of the town. It was very good, especially because much of it was fried (pork, eggplant), but that was short. After dinner, some of us congregated at a makeshift bar that a woman ran on the sidewalk across the street from the hotel. Once again, though, an early night was necessary because of an early-morning bus. After that, it was on to Siem Reap.