Singapore: Tue 8/19, Day 90 of 91

At 4am, a wake up call came knocking on the door of our Khao San guesthouse room. It had been two hours since I first climbed into bed, so this call was obviously not welcome, but I had an Air Asia flight to catch and little margin of error in which to do so. I stumbled around in the dark packing the final nick-knacks into my rucksack, put said rucksack on my back and the school bag on my belly. Jeff, light sleeper though he may be, somehow slept through all this. I tapped him on the shoulder to wish him faretheewell (his flight was leaving later that day from Bangkok, whereas mine was from Singapore) and a safe flight, and his head cocked up for a moment to grunt. I took this grunt as sleep-speak for "Thanks Charles, you too! It's been fun." And fun it was. Thus was ended the Jeff-segment of this adventure.

Shoulders loaded well over capacity, I scrambled out to catch the first airport express bus, actually a van at the early hour and crammed to the teeth with fellow backpackers and their backpacks. There was some funny audible frustration at this one girl who didn't know if she was on the right van:

(Israeli accent) "What the f%ck is she doing? F%ck."
(Brit accent) "I have a plan to catch!"
(another Israeli accent) "(unhappy Hebrew mumbles to fellow Israeli)"
(3rd Israeli accent) "(more Hebrew grumbles)"

As soon as she was aboard, the driver TOOK OFF at what must have been three times the "speed limit" or rather the speed everyone else on the highway seemed to be sticking to. I don't think I've been more terrified by a car ride since stepping into one with David Nepsky at the helm early Freshman year. The terror was worth it though, I had only an hour until my flight left and probably wouldn't have made it had the driver been less insane. This means of course that I made the flight and landed in Singapore safely, with a comfortable five hours to accomplish my mission of rescuing Dan's suitcase from storage in the hostel I'd stayed at here 6 weeks ago after first leaving Nepal. This city almost feels like a second home, having now done a third tour of duty providing relaxation, transitioning and rebooting to a battered Charlie.

I didn't bother with any sightseeing... after three months on the road, what difference would one more pagoda make anyhow. Instead I settled down at a Muslim food court near the hostel and "splurged" SGD$5 on a huge feast of deliciousness including Singapore's specialty fish-head curry, gross in appearance but heavenly in yer mouth. Yousif, the obese mustached cook of either Malay or Arab origin noticed my luggage and gave me a free dessert on the side: "You have a long journey ahead, please, it is my pleasure!" I'm gonna miss hospitality like that, it's hard to come by back home where all the fast food is owned by this and that evil corporation. No disrespect to the UV Subway's trusty sandwich artists but them all got nothing on the charms of Fat Mustached Arabian, Mr. "Would You Like To Twy Sum Pwrwawn?" from Vietnam or half the other charismatic if untrustworthy vendors of these Eastern lands.

With my tray now stacked full with the biggest feast in weeks, including one final boba drink, I took a seat and chowed down on the glory. The meal took almost an hour and a half of solo, steady measured nibbling to conquer and came close to detonating my stomach, but my was it worth it. I was in no rush. This was my last supper, the final meal of the trip (airplane food doesn't count)... it deserved to be savored. Only after it was deep into my stomach could coherent thinking start again. After sinking into my chair in a digestive coma for a few minutes, I thanked Yousif and began the same five block walk to the hostel I trotted six weeks prior.

It was a nice feeling to be back here, bringing the journey full circle and all. I remembered the thoughts that went through my head the first time around, fresh off the plane from two months in Nepal; the giddiness of being back in the "developed world," the mystery of what might lie ahead... and now it was all over. There would be no more haggling, no more chickenbus rides, no more worry if I'll find a room in the next city or even navigate my way out of the train station. The pressure was gone completely. The only thing left to do now was crack open a can of Tiger Lager with hostel owner Mr Lum and wash the bittersweet taste of the moment down. An important chapter of my life was about to end. Important in what way, I'm still not sure.

5pm rolled around, I cashed in my remaining MRT cards, got me passport stamped... the airplane engines kicked in, and I made my peace with Southeast Asia.

---Vital Signs---
Feet = In Heaven! Finally got my sneakers back.
DBA's Suitcase = Rescued
Wallet = Written off till Spring '09
ETA to Home = 20ish Hours
Flight Transfer in = Taipei

FOOD POISONING = NONE... Thank you Portland Street House!! Thank you thank you.

Singapore & Indonesia: W-Thu 7/9-10, Days 49-50

In the interests of time, I'm gonna kind of gloss through Wednesday, my only full day in Singapore, cause it wasn't quite up to interestingness-par. After waking up and dropping off my laundry, I set out and traversed basically every main ethnic district on foot in hopes of people watching or finding something interesting. The "hustle & bustle" (Lonely Planet) of Chinatown was nowhere to be found, though I did find some neat Buddhist pagodas and an alleyway of air conditioners. Whole sides of buildings literally covered in AC, funniness. Maybe it was just the time of day, but the only people on the streets were tourists and the buildings were improbably perfect. Strike 1 against the Singapore section of the LP book. Movin right along... the Colonial District, "were you can find remnants of British rule" ...all three unremarkable buildings of it. There was an apparently excellent museum here, but I was in more of an outdoorsy walking mood and opted out. Half a strike against LP, we'll give them props for the museum I prolly mistakenly missed. Next up, Orchard Road, the biggest of the highlighted areas on the map. Unfortunately it was just one modern shopping mall after the other.

I popped into one, and the reverse counter shock reasserted itself. It was consumerism overload, and I had a much harder time navigating around it than I usually do in malls. The "More Shops that way!" directions posted on every bathroom etc arrow didn't help, I could hear that three note Psycho violin playing every time a "More Shops! :-D" sign appeared. Enough with the malls, what else was there to do here that didn't require a $40 zoo admission ticket... Little India! "Disorganized and pungent, could be another country unto itself." (LP) To get here, I had to transfer MRT lines... there was a full scale mall built into the junction-station, with the entrance to each line built at either end. One was forced to traverse a section of the mall to transfer lines. It was disgusting. The MRT station for Little India emptied out into a budget outlet mall. "You've got to be kidding me...." After a 5min walk, I found myself in the beating heart of Little India itself. Having just come from what might as well have been India just a day prior, this fake India naturally failed to amuse. "Disorganized & pungent" it was not, and describing anything in Singapore with that adjective would be akin to calling Switzerland's creepily efficient train system "a baffling maze where it's about the journey, not the destination! :-D" Strike 2.5 . By now it was 6pm, and one of the worst headaches in recent memory was taking effect. It felt like a particularly bad hangover (not that I'd know what one feels like, of course...), though I had not consumed any alcohol and had in fact been drinking an excessive amount of juice. Couldn't be dehydration. On the MRT ride back to the hostel, I began to feel faint and a bit queasy as well. Fearing the worst, I opened up the guidebook that I was gong through a rough patch with and searched the health section. "HEAT" bingo. It wasn't recommended to engage in strenuous physical activity (like walking across a city on foot) during your first few days in SE Asia, to give your body time to adapt to the unreal humidity. Since I failed to heed this advice, I'd come down with a case of clinical heat exhaustion. The headache took another day to go away, but following LP's recommended treatment (stay in the AC, put cold cloth on head, elevate feet) made me well enough to do battle again. 2.5 strikes removed. I was forced to spend the rest of the night confined the hostel bed recovering, however. It was all good, Anna (Congolese-Australian girl) was there getting an early night's sleep as well, and we kept each other good conversation company.

In my haste to write this entry, I forgot to talk about Singapore's best single attraction, the food. I'll jsut go over my food intake, intake by intake. Firstly, at the hostel MRT station was "Mr Bean", a Jamba Juice/Starbucks type chain of exlusively Soya Milk based drinks. The most expensive drink cost 1.50 Singapore dollars. The exchange rate is 1.4 $SGD = 1 $USD. It was awesome. I got a simple almond-soya drink, but there was other cool stuff on the menu. Don't remember what. Goshdarnit I've been in this internet cafe for an hour and a half now, thanks for stalling me, Ryan! Friggin Facebook Chat. It's the devil's work I tell you. Anyways... For lunch I stopped in a Chinatown Hawker Center (hawker centers are the working class food courts, if you remember from the last entry), and passed one Chinese food eatery after the other looking for something appetizing. This was REAL Chinese food, fyi... "Pig Testicle Fry + Soup/Dry Noodle" and the like, not "Orange Chicken" (though to my utter shock, I did in fact see that at some places.) I settled for a 3$SGD giant bowl of "Laksa." Dunno what was in it, but it tasted and looked much like Thai coconut soup which has an unmistakably distinct look and taste. For my beverage, I selected a long lost toddler-hood favorite that had been MIA in my life since Odwalla stopped making it... WATERMELON JUICE. It was heavenly. So yeah lunch was lovely... umm

yeah its 11pm now, if I keep writing more I might get mugged on the walk back, umm... Oh, dinner on Tuesday night, a hostel-area hawker stall. Ordered some "Kaew Teow" or something like that, out came what I nicknamed "Devil Noodles." Chow mein, but bright red and spicy as hell, with random fried egg on top. Dinner Wed night was noodle + unknown Mandarin word, turned out to be stir fried squid. Oh well, first time for everything... Not surpisingly, it tasted like chicken. Beverage wise, I had starfruit juice, sugarcane juice, water chestnut + sugar juice, some random gineng tea concoction, and other fun. All of this failed to cure the dehydration half of the heat exhaustion, because I'd just sweated that much. The headache was terribly epic. An oral rehydration salt/electrolyte packet from my finally coming in handy travel 1st aid kit was necessary, and successfully cured said dehydration. I'll be more careful from now on. This entire blog entry hasn't been one giant paragraph, has it? If yes, oops... I'm really in quite the rush here.

Thursday... sick of sterile Singapore, which had turned out to be this trip's West Berlin (the spotless & characterless start of '06's Eurotrip, possibly the 7 best weeks of my life), I began a search for greener pastures. Everyone seemed to want me to go to Vietnam, but Indonesia sounded more adventurous and was $15 a day vs $25 a day, so... Indonesia it was. I put the extra suitcase into triple-padlocked storage in the hostel saferoom, made triple sure they knew I wouldn't pick it up for another 6 weeks, and hired a taxi to the ferry station. Public transit would require a 15min walk not counting the heavy rucksack, and still feelin wobbly from the dehydration I felt it was worth the splurge. At Harbourfront Station I boarded Batam Fast Ferry "Sea Raider II," which would take me on an hour journey to the nearby Indonesian industrial island of Palau Batam. From here, I'd take a budget AirAsia flight to Jakarta (Indonesia's capital.) Flying within Indonesia was much cheaper than flying to Jakarta directly from Singapore, fyi. On the Batamfast Ferry was a TV screen playing the randomest selection of entertainment I've seen from a transit company. An episode of "Ducktails" was the main feature. That's how random it was. The flight was at 1:30, it was 11:50 when the ferry left and 12:50 when it arrived. Things seemed grim.

Once docked at Palau Batam, I rushed & hired another taxi (only method of transit here) to the airport. I looked at the taxi's clock... it was a full hour behind! Of course! Indonesia is in a different time zone! I was saved! Oh wait, no I wasn't. For a such-a-bonehead-stupid-mistake-I'm-not-gonna-mention-it* reason, I had to go back to the ferry terminal, do something, and then go back to the airport. By the time the chaos was over, it was 1:20. 10min before takeoff. All was lost. Or not... Indonesian flights, even AirAsia ones, regularly run an hour or more late! I actually was saved, and successfully arrived in Jakarta with enough time to catch an overnight train to my real destination, Yogyakarta. Though I had two hours to kill once the train tcket ws bought, I did not exit the garish and strange central station to explore the city. Jakarta is a very large - larger than NYC - very POOR city, with little in the way of tourist attractions. The train station was enough for me. While passing time, I met a Spanish mother and her 18yr son. The "another white person! yay!" bond is a strong one, and we chatted quite a bit. Every so often I'd be started by the blow of a train horn, which on Indonesian trains sounds less like a honk and more like a Mordor battle-horn from LOTR. It added to the strangeness. g2g but the overnight train was fine, nicer than some American trains, and I arrived without incident in Yogyakarta at the wonderful hour of 3 oclock in the morning. The nearest vacant LP recommended guesthouse was 20min on foot away. To be continued ASAP, though nothing that bad happened.

*I was in such a rush to hire the taxi that I forgot to pickup my rucksack from the ferry baggage claim. I did not realize this mistake until we pulled into the airport. A 5,000 rupiah (50 cents) bribe was required to rescue the rucksack from the ferry baggage claim Nazis.

PS: I'm now entering Indonesia day 3, and it's quickly rising to the title of "favorite country I've travelled to." More thoughts on this next time, but google any picture of Borobudur, Bromo, Bali, or Sumatra, and you'll get a taste of why.

---Vital Signs---
Hygiene = Acceptable
Stomach = Won the battle with the squid
Food Poisonings = 0
Orangutan Sightings = 0
Balinese Tribes Joined = 0
Paradise = Found

Singapore: Tues 7/8, Day 48

For a more after-the-fact-proofread version of this and following tales, plz go to: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/sirrocko711/1/tpod.html

Double-reverse culture shock is fun. It started on the airplane... an Indian style meal of dal, chicken curry, and rice was SilkAir's dish of choice. Totally not expecting that rare gem of thing called silverware to be included, I impulsively started eating the meal with my hands. The mistake was caught and corrected rapidly. Then came the arrival. The second I stepped into the terminal, I swear life revved up into a mild fast-forward. Everyone just seemed to be walking... faster? Odd it was. Then I saw it... a brown and white temple to the cocoa gods... a Coffee Bean. I had more important matters to attend to however, needing to make sure my baggage made it to the correct place in one piece. The check-in agent at Kathmandu Airport was having his first keyboard typing lesson while printing out my boarding passes and baggage claim, not the most reassuring sight to see. My "welcome back to civilization" treat check list would have to wait. Luckily, the rucksack and suitcase were there, and off I went to hunt down the night's accommodation, Betelbox Hostel. A brief MRT ride and my first use of an escalator in seven weeks was required for this. It was needless to say, the most singularly awesome escalator ride I had ever had.

As I boarded the shockingly clean train, a cocky feeling came over me. "Ooh look, the locals ride on cute rainbow colored trains! This is just like Disneyland!" It wasn't Disneyland though, it was, you know, a normal, functioning Westernized city. An abnormally clean westernized city (Singapore is that infamous "benevolent authoritarian"state where bubble gum lands you a $1,000 fine), but a city nonetheless. It just seemed like child's play compared to Kathmandu, and the perfect place to take a boiling, sterilizing bath in hydrogen peroxide & rubbing alcohol and reboot the hygiene; exactly what I needed to unwind. Upon disembarking the shiny choochoo train, I was greeted with bakeries, soya drink bars, a 7-11, food food food food! Delicious looking dirt cheap food that I didn't have to be frightened of and was literally everywhere. The thoughts going through my head were probably watered down versions of the wonder a Nepali would feel setting foot in the developed world for the first time.

"WAIT!"

...a local warned. I was about to get hit by an oncoming runaway taxi. I was so used to vehicles giving a warning honk as they passed pedestrians (extremely annoying when you first arrive in KTM, but life saving shortly thereafter) that my road awareness was at minimal strength. Over the next day, about five more J-walking related near death experiences followed before I finally got back into the grove of cars not honking their horns at 2 second intervals. I think I've got it down now. The tedious luggage overloaded walk to the hostel was nearly complete when I stumbled across one of Singapore's most reknowned traits: A "hawker" food court. This spartan outdoor cafeterias serve up dirt cheap meals of every shape and size for the local working class, and can be found everywhere. I stammered through it in awe and got tripped by an adjacent janitor. Instead of saying "sorry" though, he repeated "aggh! aggh! aggh!" ala Oddjob while patting my shoulder. I gotta say, Singlish is one baffling language. It's a hackneyed blend of English, Chinese, and mostly Malay, and was rapidly driving me insane. At the MRT station, "Mind the patetat" was posted instead of "Mind the gap." The station announcements read out something like "Changfew; Pakan Beru; Chingpingdong; Wongtangping; (sudden flawless Brit accent) Chinese Garden; Tewkedaodeedah..." In a 7-11 the next day, I asked the shopkeeper if she had any nail clippers...

"Nail cha-cha?"
"N-a-i-l C-l-i-p-p-e-r-s." (motions to nails)
"Nail cha-cha!"
"(grumble) Yes, nail cha cha..."

I've since gotten somewhat used to it.

Sweating like a dog, I found the hostel in the midst of a mildy seedy suburban main nightlife drag and scrambled upstairs. The helpful owner Mr Lum showed me the dorm room where a Congolese/Australian girl named... shit forgot her name... was settling down for the night. We broke the ice and chatted for a bit, though my extreme tiredness reduced my undeniable charm. jk. I went down to the common area to give the blog the massive update it needed that I'd written on the plane, and made friends with an Indian man whose name I also forgot. I told him tales of Nepal and a juicy culture oriented convo ensued. He was a bit of a bigot (refering to Muslims as "those bastards - excuse me..." (while in a Muslim country, mind you), but seemed friendly enough to make up for it. Then the question came.
Him: "Did you get any pussy?"
(double take)
Me: "I'm sorry, what?"
Him: "Girls."
Me in my Head: "Oh boy..."
Me: "Haha, no. Got a bunch of hints, but no results."
Him: "Hints like (graphic descriptions of sexual things)"
Me: "Oh haha no, just exchanged numbers..."
Him: "Oh. That's too bad, because Nepali girls are much more liberal than Indians. They already think you're God, all you have to do is buy them a drink and they're yours for the night."

If you are one of my parental units, read sentence number 1 & skip 2. If you are a friend, skip 1 and read 2.

1-Me: "Oh no, I'd never do that. I'm saving myself for the one special one."
2-Me: "Goddamnit, why didn't anyone tell me that sooner..."

In any case, this creepy Indian fellow had been staying in the hostel for months, doing "software development," and it rapidly became clear that he was probably a local pimp. Double checking of my handy Singapore Rough Guide revealed that the neighborhood, Katong, "Is home to a large devout Malay population. Not so Malay though is the rampant prostitution problem that goes unchecked by authorities." I had inadvertently found my way into Singapore's defacto Red Light District. No wonder I was so culture shocked by the skimpy, even by American standards, dress of the local women. That said, the area is, like the rest of Singapore, uber polished and by in large safe. I made an awkward exit from the conversation, finished my writing, and slept... not so well. The normal mattress was too soft, I'd gotten used to cushioned particle board. Oh wells.

---Vital Signs---
Hygiene = Awesome
Laundry = Sparkling
Juices Sampled = Starfruit, Chestnut + Sugar Cane, Guava Ginseng, Almond Soya, and Watermelon
Stomach = Currently engaged in battle with a stir-fried squid tentacle. I think the tenticle is winning.
Light Cold = Mostly Recovered