Happy February! (I originally wrote this post a couple days ago!) Four countries in one month; not bad right?
Getting to Singapore from Australia was quite a long trip. Starting
at 3am from the Brisbane airport, we eventually made it to Singapore about 18 hours later. But once we made it to the 31 degree heat of Singapore we were tired but happy. The great panda adventure had really begun!
Our hotel was in Little India so we walked around for a bit, taking everything in and eventually settled down at a hawker stall and ate mushy rice and questionable meat with big bottles of Tiger beer.
The next day we switched to a cheaper hostel called the Green Kiwi. It was such a great hostel! It had free breakfast, wifi and a rooftop patio.
We explored Singapore quite a bit in the two days. We started at the Asian civilization museum where we learned a lot about Buddhism. Which was very cool and also coincides with the book I'm reading by Jack Kerouac called The Darma Bums. We
then did a walking tour of The Clarke and Riverside quays which were the primary settlements along the river where business first started booming in Singapore.
The next day we went to the botanical gardens which was very beautiful and we got to see a monitor lizard too! We then went to Marina Bay where we saw all the buildings that make up the beautiful, yet interesting Singapore skyline. This includes three skyscrapers side by side with a bar in the shape of a boat resting on top, an amphitheatre in the shape of two durian fruits , the science centre that looks like a lotus on a pedestal and a Merlion statue that spits water all day and gets its photo taken more than anything else in Singapore.
We are very lucky to be in Asia during the time of the Chinese New Year, as there are lots of preparations going on for the celebrations, making the cities even more beautiful than before.
We then paid $30 each for a bus to Malaysia. It was a great bus ride as the seats were huge with leg rests and massage options! Pretty good for $30! There was a little hiccup at the Singapore border, but we still made it through okay.
So here we are in Kuala Lumpur! We are staying in Chinatown again, at a place called The Birdnest. We arrived in the dark which is when the Petaling market starts bustling with hundreds of people haggling for knock off branded purses, shoes and clothing. It was quite a shock and after 6 hours of travelling we were quite unprepared for it. The next day we made the mistake of checking out the downtown area, not realizing it was a Sunday and so the city felt quite unenergentic and we decided we needed to go home and take a break from all the craziness. I had a bit of a breakdown because everything was so different, we were so nervous about being robbed, we had to worry about malaria now, we couldn't eat ice, we had to treat our water, and being a tourist can be a little stressful. I also get a little bit tired of trying to be culturally sensitive and always feeling like you stick out like a sore thumb is difficult to deal with everyday. I knew this kind of breakdown was destined to happen, so at least it happened when we had the time to relax and a great hostel to be at.
Instead of exploring and pushing ourselves over the limit, we ended up hanging out with the owner of the hostel, Willie, two Germans and five Swedish girls. We all decided to head out to "reggae"bar. I have a hard time calling it a reggae bar because although it had Bob marley photos all over the wall, they only played two reggae songs. It was still a lot of fun though.
The next day I caved and got macdonalds because I wanted something a little bit familiar. And indeed it was. Later on, a British couple and an Aussie girl showed up at the hostel and we all went to Bukit Bintang, a shopping district with a very larger market place. We enjoyed a big feast with crab, cockles, noodles and I drank out of a coconut.
We then head for Taman Negara the next day, which will be a separate blog post.
