On The Road To Mexico City

It’s been a few months, but I guess it’s about time to get this going again. I’m on the road, so I might as well get back into the swing. (By the way this first entry is about the flight to Mexico City and there are no accompanying photos. I’ll put up some random Mexico City photos to make up for it.)

This trip started just like all of the others – by getting on a plane. I was flying from Raleigh to Orlando to Mexico City. While I was waiting for my flight in Raleigh, we had a little bit of excitement – or I guess it was silence, the opposite of excitement. There was a ceremony outside in which the body of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was presented to the soldier’s brother for the funeral. It drew quite a crowd over to the windows and the entire terminal was silent in his honor. Otherwise, the trip to Orlando was rather routine.

In Orlando, I couldn’t find my flight on the Delta screens even though my flight had a Delta flight number. I looked for a while and then went to get some help. Delta Dude acknowledged that my flight did indeed have a Delta flight number, but he told me that it wasn’t a Delta flight. He told me that it likely was an Aero Mexico flight and that I should check out the Aero Mexico gates. Since Aero Mexico just has the one gate, it shouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out. I got to the Aero Mexico gate and my flight was posted on the board. At least, I assumed it was my flight since it had the same departure time, same departure airport and same destination as my own flight. All I had to do was ask the person at the counter, right? Well, nobody was at the counter, but my flight wasn’t for three hours, so I waited. A few hours later, there still was nobody at the counter. Now, I was starting to get a little concerned. Forty-five minutes before my plane was supposed to depart, the sign at the gate said that the plane was boarding. Nevertheless, I held on to my faith that I was in the right place. About five minutes later, somebody finally came to the counter. I went to make sure I was at the right place, and I was. Whew!!! I checked in and the lady behind the counter told me that I may or may not have luggage when I get off the plane in Mexico City because I checked in so late. In my mind, I cursed her because the only reason I checked in so late is because the stupid airline had left the gate counter unattended until just before the flight. From my mouth, though, came the word “gracias.”

Aero Mexico isn’t the frilliest of airlines, but it got me to Mexico City more or less on time. I went to baggage claim to see if my bag was there. The one thing I had going in my favor is that I knew that if my luggage was there, it would be out quickly because it would have been one of the last bags on the plane. Unbelievably, because my luck with luggage almost never runs this way, my bag came right off and I was able to leave the airport without trying to come up with enough Spanish to file a baggage claim (though I was able to do it when my luggage was lost in Madrid).

Immigration and customs were easy. I went to the taxi counter and purchased a ticket for a cab to my hotel. I got in the cab and the cab driver and I spoke with each other in Spanglish (about 80% Spanish) throughout the 30-minute trip. It was my first time in a Spanish-speaking country since July and I was pretty happy that still I was able to communicate. My teachers in Argentina and Spain would have been proud.

That’s it for now. In the next entry, I’ll write about Mexico City, itself.

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.