Dim sum in Singapore

After a pretty cruisy 4 hour flight I've landed back in Singapore. I've been here a few times but this is probably the first opportunity to have a decent look around. I've tended to look at Singapore as a place to connect from one flight to another, but it's not such a bad place to spend a couple of days.

I've met up with an old friend from Toronto - Jen - who I met in Vinales, Cuba, while travelling with a bunch of exchange teachers in sunny Cuba to escape the Canadian winter. She's a pretty dedicated traveller, and I'm a bit worried about keeping up! This is Jen's first trip to Singapore and she's keen to have a look around, so I'm along for the ride.

Raffles Plaza - Singapore

We headed on the MRT (I wish Adelaide had one of these - not likely...) to Raffles Plaza, before heading into Chinatown for a bit of a look around. Had dim sum for lunch and it was great to be eating good Asian food in the place where it's meant to be eaten.

Chinatown

Will be off to Marina Bay for the fireworks tonight to see in the New Year. I don't think I'll be firing up too much - bugger all sleep last night, considering it was spent in airports and planes.

My new travel toy

Well it's Christmas but my most engaging new toy to date is one I bought myself. It's an Archos 605 wifi. This little device plays video and music and can also surf the net on wireless hotspots. It also stores PDF files, so I've downloaded a whole heap of PDF travel guides off Travelfish (the best South East Asian travel website out there, bar none). So hopefully this will keep me entertained and informed on the road.

I put this here because I wanted to figure out how to add pictures...


The thing is a bugger to type on though, having to use a virtual keyboard. Hopefully my speed with typing will improve. The worse thing is that it takes two clicks to get commas and apostrophes, so if my grammar starts to slide it's because I've been lazy.

Am in Adelaide at the moment, and fly back to Darwin on 30 December and then onto Singapore for New Years Eve. Then onto Laos, Thailand and maybe a few days in Bali on the way back to Darwin. Haven't booked the return ticket as yet, since I thought I might keep going. But I resist the urge for a bit longer as a six month job on Groote Eylandt is on the cards, which could be a bit of an adventure!

Merry Christmas by the way.

Terror alert!

I had my toothpaste confiscated at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport on the flight up to Chiang Rai. The toothpaste contained 110mls, which was 10mls too many so I had to hand it over. Give me an effing break. Who does this rule inconvenience, really? The travellers who have to decant their liquids into 100ml containers before squeezing them into a zip-lock bag, that's who. Can't really see a terrorist saying, "Well holy shit, I was going to sneak on board this 500 mls of highly explosive liquid onto the plane, but now I have to separate it into five 100ml containters and it's all too hard. I guess a life as a blessed martyr isn't for me. Might go open a book shop instead..."

Cancellation central!

I haven't been blogging lately, because one of the downsides to living it up at a hotel that's far too expensive is that web access costs way too much - about $8 for 15 minutes. I'm only online now because a text message has informed me that my flight tomorrow has been cancelled and we've been rescheduled for a flight about ten hours later. Good to hear now rather than at the airport, because I've asked for a late checkout (which costs $US80...) and it's better to stay around here than in Chiang Rai airport. Back to Singapore tomorrow, then Darwin the day after that.

I've spent the last few days thinking far too much about not wanting to go back to work. Sadly, no bright ideas for earning a shiteload of money in a short amount of time has entered into my brain. So it's back to work for me on Thursday...

Will post a few more blog updates when I can get some cheaper internet. Will keep going until I'm out of cash!

Bangkok - Hazy one day, smoggy the next

I'm dealing with Blogger in Thai at the moment. Not sure how to convert it over to the English lagnuage, but I'll press on and hope that I click on the right button when I go to post this.

I've been in Bangkok for two nights now, and have one more tonight before flying up north to the Golden Triangle, renowned for it's opium trade. You know, I was planning to try to track down some heroin and import it back into Australia via Singapore, but such is the power of deterrence that the Bali 9 death sentences have had over me, I will no longer risk it: (Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty - sign the petition here)

My sister emailed me asking if I was used to the Bangkok smell yet, but I can't say that I am. It hasn't been too overpowering, though there are pockets where you walk a tad faster. But beyond the smell, you need to get used to the noise and the smog as well, and those things are harder to avoid. Despite being known as one of the most polluted cities in world (and looking out the hotel window today verifies that) it's not a bad city to spend a few days. The Thai people are very welcoming, and aren't overbearing when it comes to shopping or touting their services. The food, as always, is fantastic!

Haven't really been to too many sites. Went to Jim Thompson's House yesterday as it's just down the road from where I'm staying. Jim Thompson is famous (apparently)for re-introducing the Thai silk trade into the western market. His house has been converted into a museum which contains a lot of South East Asian artefacts, and it was worth a look. Other than that, have been entertaining myself with some of the malls around Siam Square as well as a few trips on the Sky Train. It's always good getting out and about up and down alleyways and visiting the local markets.

The hotel I'm staying at has an infinity pool on the thirteenth floor looking out over the city. Might go off for a swim!

Lightning over Indonesia

I'm bleary-eyed in Singapore at the moment, after a 3am flight on Tiger Airways from Darwin to Singapore. With no sleep before the flight and next to no sleep during the flight, I'm now pretty tired and keen to get on to Bangkok so I can have an early night and a decent sleep.

Tiger Airways can be mighty cheap. Fortunately, after the Royal Brunei fiasco (which incidentally isn't resolved, since I called them this morning to arrange a refund and they said they'd check and email me about it. Not promising!) Tiger was on sale and I got return flights for just over $350. Most of the time I'd say that I'd happily stand up for four hours if it meant bargain fares, but once you're in there cramped into the tightest seats it's impossible to get comfortable. I tried four or five different positions without success, eventually giving up to watch the world go by out the window. This isn't normally a productive thing to do at 4 in the morning, but mother nature was fortunate enough to put on a lightning spectacular pretty much the whole way.

I'm currently hanging out with Desley from the Canadian exchage brigade for a few hours to have a shower and crash on the couch for a few hours. Back to the airport shortly for the leg up to Bangkok. Flying Cathay Pacific for this leg, which is good. Not often a five-star airline is cheaper than the budgets!

Congratulations for reading this far! Posts about red-eye flights must rate very highly in the entertainment stakes. But what can I say - typing is keeping me awake for a little bit longer...

Not the greatest of starts...

Well, I made it to the airport in good time to find a bit of commotion at the Royal Brunei check in counter. Apparently the plane's windscreen cracked en route to Darwin, and had to turn back. The flight was cancelled, and we were rescheduled for flights on Tuesday.

Well that didn't suit so I asked them if I could cancel it and get a refund, and was told that I could. I headed home and managed to book seats on Tiger Airways to Singapore for early Monday morning. The good news with that is that Tiger was on sale, so I've managed to save a couple of hundred bucks. This, of course, assumes that Royal Brunei does what they say they will do, and refund my flight.

So, once I had all that sorted out and started psyching myself up for a 3:15 am flight on Monday morning, Royal Brunei calls and tells me that the flight will be going ahead at 10:30pm tonight. Unfortunately, Tiger doesn't allow cancellations, so I asked if I could still cancel my flights and they said yes.

Packing

Off to Bangkok on Saturday, via Brunei.

I'm flying over on Royal Brunei Airlines. They had a sale so it wasn't much more expensive than Tiger Airlines, and it leaves in the afternoon instead of too-early-o'clock.

No one wants to hear packing stories. Will post more when I'm on my way.

Chort

As tempting as it was to continue in the decadence of a 4.5 star resort, I pulled myself away for a trip to a local elephant park, with an opportunity to ride an elephant. Not particularly a goal of mine, but my travel buddy was keen to go, so I tagged along.

The elephant's name was Chort and he didn't seem to mind me sitting on his back (though the wooden 'seat' tied on with rope was a bit of a worry!) He was a bit of a disobedient elephant, but I didn't care. If he wanted to stop for a drink, I wasn't in a position to stop him!

So I've ridden an elephant. Not something I'm all that keen to do again. Just doesn't seem right to me...

Similan Islands

Well I've got my morning tasks out of the way, and figured I'd add the last couple of posts about Thailand. Not that anyone is probably reading them now that I'm back in the mundane world of work.

I spent a day out in the Similan Islands, which are known as one of the best places in the world for diving. There are nine islands out there, and they're about 60 ks from the mainland, which ends up being about 90 minutes on a speedboat. Better than risking it, I ended up taking a sea-sick tablet prior to leaving, which were given out by the tour company. Considering these were some no-brand Thai tablets I probably could've ended up worse for wear from the tablet, but all was okay.

The boat was chock full of Swedes and Germans, with a couple from the US who weren't very friendly, so I'll just assume that they're Bush-loving Republican fundamentalists and not worth talking to. Entertainment was provided by our guide, who I'll call Shane because it sounded like that, but was more likely Chang or Chai or something. This lad was very exuberant, if you get my drift, and didn't want to get his hair wet because it had just been straightened. We figured he was probably in training to become a katoy. To each there own. He was very entertaining on the long ride over.

On a side note, asthmatics need not worry if you want to do a boat trip to the Similans. No smorking is allowed at all the boat. Being full of Europeans, plenty lit up their smorks once they got on land, so if smorking bothers you, jump into the water where people can't smork because their smorks would go out. (Love the 2nd grade translating!)

I saw a few flying fish on the way over, which was pretty neat. I kept seeing all these things that looked like birds flying low over the water, until I got to see one fairly close up and it was definitely a fish. So that was pretty neat. Gave me something to look at in addition to the very unseaworthy looking Thai fishing boats.

The Similan islands were spectacular. Beautiful white beaches, clear blue water and great snorkling (not smorking - though one sign I saw advertised smocking tours. Also towling trips, which was one I couldn't figure out...) I'd definitely recommend a trip out to the Similans. They can get busy, so try to stay out at the National Park if you can.

If you head over there, take the time to climb up to Sail Rock, which offers superb views. The trek up in treacherous, with ropes to climb up rocks and shaky looking wooden planks. Though for me the top provided the greatest threat - finding out that you're sharing the view with a bunch of speedo-wearing Russians was a real concern, and I'm lucky I didn't jump off the cliff to escape them.

This is, I'm sure, further proof that the speedo is a communist plot...

A quick Singapore update

The last few times I've been able to get on the internet, I haven't been able to log onto Blogger, so no updates for awhile. I'm back in Singapore Budget Terminal, and will be flying back to Darwin in an hour-and-a-half. Not much time to update now, so I will do a few more when I'm back at work because I'm sure I'll have time to get a few things down I'll stay back late and add a few. Have a few more posts on Khao Lak, Ko Similan and riding an elephant through the rainforest.

Too bad I have to go back to work tomorrow after getting in at 2 am... Might need to be a tad late!

Addendum to my letter to the UN

PS - I think we could also whack in an amendment relating to old women who go around sans bikini top. They take the fun out of fun bags.

Cheers.

Poo on the beach

There's a hell of a lot of poo on the beach here in Khao Lak, as there was on the beaches in Phuket. You can also eat poo as well - it's on most menus. But since I've eaten poo before and didn't really like it, I have avoided it. Poo is Thai for crabs, by the way. And not the kind you probably pick up in Patong...

Khao Lak

The plan to head over to Phi Phi stalled due to a lack of accommodation. Could've risked a trip over there and probably would've found something, but all the tour touts and a few phone calls indicated that it would be pretty tight, and the thought of spending time on a small island cram filled with other tourists wasn't the best. Will save Phi Phi for next time.

I'm up at Khao Lak, which is about an hour's drive north of Phuket. This place was pretty badly wrecked by the tsunami, and the remnants of the destruction are still very apparent. There are many places half destroyed or half repaired, with more than a few resorts still closed. But because a few are re-opening, there are bargains to be had, and I was able to get a room at the Ramada resort for 2500 Baht a night (about $80) when they normally go for 10,000 Baht. So it's good to experience a pretty plush resort at a fifth of the price. The downside is that there's still a bit of construction going on, but nothing too bad. The pool is great, the room is pretty swishy and the service is more than I'm used to.

Khao Lak is a pretty average beach. In fact all the beaches have been pretty average. I think Phi Phi and places around Krabi are better. The water is very warm, though, and no doubt due to the after effects of the tsunami, it's pretty quiet. Will head out to a few excursions to nearby sights, starting with the Similan Islands which are about 60km off shore, but they look spectacular. There's also a national park nearby where you can ride an elephant, so I might give that a try as well.

At least I'm not in Patong anymore. I feel like I need to go to confession on behalf of all the sleazy and disgusting caucasian men...

My open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations

Dear Korean guy who took over from Kofi Annan,

First, let me apologise for not knowing your name. I'm sure it's a fine Korean name. But I have more pressing matters to attend to rather than google your name to find it out.

I think we need to have some sort of global campaign against speedos, budgie-smugglers, dick bathers, meat-hangers, whatever it is you want to call them. Having spent quite a bit of time at the beach lately, I can't help but notice the number of fat, ugly men who feel the need to wear the skimpiest bathers they can. One man was actually wearing a g-string style of swimwear which was not only unflattering, but it put me off my food. And the food is good in Thailand.

I fail to see why we can't establish some form of Coalition of the Willing to eradicate this visual terror from our shores. And our swimming pools. After all, boardies are far more flattering, and they also reduce the amount of skin exposed to dangerous UV rays, which is also a good thing.

I'm sure you would find, unlike previous global campaigns (Iraq etc.) that there would be considerable support for this campaign. After all, nobody (except an unfortunate number of corpulent European men) think that speedos are a good thing. This could be a great way for the world to re-unite - Arab and Jew, Australian and New Zealander, American and everybody else - around a common goal for the common good.

And what a crowning glory for your new term it would be!

I trust you will consider my proposal.

Patong Beach

Blogger has been p!ssing me off lately... I've struggled to log on.

Well, what to say of Patong? It's probably not as bad as I was expecting, but it's still a shit hole designed for tourists. And sleazy tourists at that. I would've avoided the place altogether (Nai Thon was much nicer) but it was a necessary trip to sort out future accommodation for the rest of the trip. And it's not a bad place to do a bit of souvenir shopping. The hotel I'm staying at is a bit out of the way and the markets nearby are much cheaper than in the main tourist strip.

The worst thing about this place is the number of sleazy men with their prostitute companions. They are everywhere and it's bloody disgusting. And it's not just fat old men either, but younger guys who you expect to know better. It's horrible. I'm glad I'm travelling around with a work mate because if I wasn't I'd be out of here so fast, lest something think I was here for the same sick reasons as these pigs.

If you're gonna rent yourself some sex, then at least do it at home where the women have some semblance of choice between prostitution or some other way of making money. Here it's women with no options, no choices, no way of getting out of it.

It's fucking disgusting.

Nai Thon Beach

Day two in Thailand. Haven't done all that much except laze on the beach, swim, eat good Thai food and drink Singha beer. So all is good. Except for the fact that they decided to fumigate during breakfast at the open air restaurant. At least I know that if any mozzies were residing inside my lungs, they are all dead now.

One more night hear then down to Patong (the overbuilt touristy nightmare by the sound of it) but just for one night to sort out a trip to Ko Phi Phi.

Will write more soon.

Budgeting in Singapore

I don't think it's possible to write a thrilling and entertaining post from the budget terminal in Singapore. Not much to report. No troubles with customs... I figured I could try to do a 15 minutes of fame dig like Schapelle, but decided that extending the 15 minutes into 20 years in prison probably isn't worth it.

It cost me $9 for an orange juice at the hotel. I think if I was a citrus grower in Waikerie I'd be looking to exploit the OJ market in Singapore. I'd hate to think what it would've cost to add a bit of vodka to the glass...

About 2.5 hours until the next leg of the trip from Singapore to Phuket. Only 1 hour and 40 minutes, which is better than the four and a half hour leg from Darwin. Tiger Airways whacks in about 4 extra rows of seats that most airlines don't, so there is no leg room at all. And the plane was chocka-block. Dammit, I know god put me on this earth to be able to afford business class (or, Lord, possibly a private jet? Amen).

Off again - destination Thailand

I had the best of intentions of re-hashing some old travel stories between trips (not that anyone would care, but you never know... maybe the right person will stumble upon this and give me a job as a full time travel writer... ha ha). But my procrastination got the better of me and it didn't happen.

But I am off to Singapore then Thailand in a few hours, using my prize from Tiger Airways for the ticket (though the prize didn't cover the tax, which was about half the cost of the entire fare!) The flight leaves at 3:05am, which is the worst time you could get because you can't go to sleep before hand (unless you're an early sleeper, which I'm not) and I can't sleep on planes. I got some sleeping aids from the chemist so I'll see how that works. Luckily I have 16 hours in Singapore to catch up on some sleep (and maybe go to the zoo since I won tickets to that as part of my prize.) Will see how it goes.

The other thing that sucks aboug Tiger (apart from the god awful times) is that there's open seating, so when you're at the airport you need to stand in the queue to get your ticket, then get in another queue to get on the plane (unless you want to get on last and risk being stuck between two corpulent strangers.) I don't get open seating. How is it cheaper for airlines to do this? I don't know.

Anyway, it's 11:45pm and I have about three hours until boarding...