Time warp

Okay, I am home. My beloved Macbook died when I got back from Bali (just in time to NOT be fixed for my final exam) and promptly broke again in Vietnam. So yes, I am hopelessly behind here. But fear not, I will treat you to an extravagant buffet of Asian destinations and food porn as soon as I get my baby fixed. Again.

Manic update

It's weird keeping a travel blog when you get to the point where you're not traveling so much as living your life somewhere else. That said, much has happened. Here's a run-down:


1) Theemidhi - a Hindu festival in which devotees walk over hot coals.

2) Homesickness - the three-month mark is infamous as the typical onset of this phenomenon. My family got together for Thanksgiving. Mom posted the pictures on Facebook. School ramped up, and Singapore suddenly got less fun. The The Vinyl Cafe did an episode from Via Rail's cross-country train "The Canadian". Same route I took last summer, same sights, same observations about the people you meet and the experience of witnessing the truly spectacular country we call home.


3) Penang - Alisaur and I went to this crazy little island in Malaysia where we helped the locals (including a bunch of dudes with spears stuck through their faces) pull the 9 Emperor Gods float to the water and send off the gods for another year. We rode really terrible 10-ringgit bikes, saw way too many temples, ate some really spectacular asam laksa, used the pool and sauna at a posh hotel (shhh! don't tell anyone!) and went parasailing on a very touristy beach.


4) Kuala Lumpur - I took the train with two of the ladies from home (I do love me some trains). We went to the Skybar in the Traders Hotel for some great views of the Petronas Towers but split up for most of the weekend while they shopped and I...didn't shop. I visited the Batu caves (a Hindu temple inside a gorgeous natural cave) and tried my hand at batik painting. At the Kompleks Kraf, the government-sponsored art centre, I got caught in the rain and spent half an hour chatting with a lovely couple who raise "the world's smallest chickens", a Malaysian variety. They run a shop selling watercolour and pewter representations of their chickens. They gave me a glossy brochure...about their chickens. Then we had a great conversation about law and religion in Malaysia. After I left their shop I met a woodcarver who is passionate about noses - the great diversity of noses around the world. He pointed out his different carvings - that's an Irish nose, that's an Acehan nose, that's a Malay nose. I happen to like noses myself, so I was a fan.

5) I am currently back in Singapore, teaching myself about world trade law for the purposes of writing a research paper on it. Life is less fun, but within a week I will be done both of my research papers and chilling in Bali. That's what's getting me through.

6) Photos to come - they're up on Facebook but it's a bit more labout-intensive to get them onto Blogger and put them in the right places. I can't justify spending any more time on this right now, not when I have 3000 words to write and buckets of edits and citations to complete. But soon!

Festivus

Image from http://www.duke.edu/web/chinacare/midautumn.jpg

It's festival time in Singapore.

Last night a few of us went to a local family's house to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Traditionally this means lots of colourful paper lanterns, celebrating the harvest and telling stories about the lady on the moon. In its modern incarnation, one of the students in my residence - a true Singaporean - assures me that "it's all about the food." That means mooncakes, seriously rich pastries filled with lotus seed paste and salted duck egg. Sounds weird (from a Canadian standpoint) but they're tasty.

For the Hindu population October is the month of Diwali, the fesival of lights. Little India is decked out with light displays every night - think that hardcore neighbour's house in December, but substitute elephants for the reindeer.

Coinciding with Diwali but not (to my knowledge) connected with it is Theemidhi, where devotees walk (or, well, run) across a bed of hot coals. Of course, I had to see this, so at midnight on Monday I was at the Sri Mariamman temple along with an enormous crowd of the supportive and the merely curious.

Even more numerous than the spectators were the participants. I had somehow expected there to be an elite group of holy men solemnly walking across the coals. In fact, for several blocks from the temple there were barricades set up to control the throngs of yellow-clad men who had walked from Little India to the temple in Chinatown* to take part. They then lined up to walk (or run) across the coals.

The promo literature makes much of the fact that none of the devotees get burns on their feet. I wouldn't go that far - I saw a fair few men hopping around afterwards - but for the most part they did seem pretty unfazed by it. Mark tells me this is in fact a "phyisically trivial" feat that takes place at a lot of self-esteem workshops or something. Still. It's not for the wimpy.


*Apparently the walk to the temple takes about an hour. In their bare feet. Keep in mind that that this is a modern city...one where you're fined for spitting or littering, and executed for trafficking in drugs, but still a modern city. I don't know, I just have some psychological aversion to walking barefoot on pavement. Just ew.

Borne-O!

Frequency of blogging is inversely correlated to intensity of living. Sorry for the dry spell on your end - I was just never moved to interrupt the flow with a blog post, which on a travel blog is almost necessarily restrospective. NUS has a week's break in the middle of 1st semester (Canadian universities, take note!) so a few of us rocked over to Kuching, in the province of Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo).

Our arrival coincided with Hari Raya, the end of Ramadhan. The owner of the hostel suggested we take a boat over to the nearby _kampongs_ (villages) and wander around until somebody invited us in. So we did, and they did. We were served lunch and cake by a lovely Malay family. We sat around making awkward conversation with the limited language that we shared, and laughed at the antics of their little grandson who clearly believed that clothing is the tool of the oppressor. Got a little sick that night - as far as we could tell it was the _rice_, of all things - but the experience was totally worth it.



Being in Borneo, of course we had to check out some apes and longhouses. Semenggoh Wildlife centre is a rehabilitation centre for orangutans and they're building a pretty substantial little family there. We headed over for the morning feeding time. Despite the staff's dire warnings about how dangerous the orangutans could be, they seemed pretty indifferent to the horde of people gawking at them and taking pictures.



Further down the road was the only longhouse we could access without spending a few precious days traveling further east. My doubts about the authenticity of the experience were confirmed when we pulled up to the village's own tourist registration centre and received stickers to wear on our clothes - as if we wouldn't be recognized as tourists. There was a "headhouse" so that us crazy Westerners could pretend that the long-dead headhunting ways were still alive, and the locals were clearly instructed to maintain a "traditional" veneer. A few satellite dishes betrayed the modernity that other travelers said was much more evident in the "real" longhouses they had visited.



At Bako National Park, home of the rare proboscis monkey, we hiked for six hours without seeing any wildlife except a bunch of crabs and unnervingly large ants. It's not that we were especially noisy, just that our timing was off and we ended up hiking during the hotter parts of the day. We camped by a small waterfall for the night and ate little boxes of cereal in the morning. Apparently the whole bowl-in-a-box thing is not a universal phenomenon - at least, the mini granolas I bought didn't open that way, and my Australian travel buddy was amazed at the concept. I may have recruited a tourist for Canada. One who's intrigued by the idea of things like bowl-in-a-box mini cereals, s'mores and pie.


The hike back out was lovely but similarly un-wildlife-y. I finally saw some fauna at the canteen, where local boys are hired to weild sling-shots at the macaque monkeys that try to steal people's food (and often suceed). I had a few hours to play with after lunch so I headed to the mangrove where the proboscis occasionally congregate. A few members of our group came with me but left to catch an earlier boat back to town. Minutes (_minutes_!) after they left a whole family of proboscis showed up. I watched them bouncing around in the trees about 20 metres away for about an hour. When it started to rain they scaled some trees a little closer and waited out the storm. Amazing. They look so awkward with their pot bellies and gangly limbs, jumping noisily from branch to branch, but they seemed completely at ease, playing and eating and completely unfazed by the human presence.



For our last full day in Kuching a couple of they guys rented motorbikes and we visited Wind Cave, which was underwhelming but cool in the unnerving way that you could hear but not see the bats and had to home you'd walk out without guano in your hair. Okay, maybe that isn't everybody's idea of a good time. But it was an experience. Worried about the weather, we headed back to town and had dinner at a steamboat barbecue that was really pricey but allowed me to eat substantial amounts of vegetables for the first time all week. Hawker centres in Kuching are cheap and delightful, but even the "vegetable rice" I ordered in one place contained more meat than vegetables. I'm now bingeing on salad.

More Food Porn

Because really, what else is the point of traveling?


Nowhere back home can you walk around a foodcourt with a dish of open flame. But that's exactly what you do when you order a steamboat. I didn't take the picture in time but there was a huge flame coming out of the top when I set it down on the table. This is in a mall. So much for the stereotypcal uptight Singaporeans.



This is salak, or as the lovely lady Liz calls it, "snakeskin fruit":


The skin peels back to reveal crispy white flesh that's vaguely reminiscent of - Mom, you're going to love this - Quality Street chocolates. Truly, it reminds me of taking the lid off a box of QS and smelling that strange-but-delicious mix of the strawberry chocolates and the hazelnut chocolates and the coffee chocolates all intermingled. That's what this tastes like. You can't make this stuff up.



In Chinatown we had a video fail. Here's the transcript:

"Um...it's...interesting. Chewy. No, not good chewy. Gristle-y... No, it's okay. I said I'd try it and I'm going to try to eat the whole thing. *another hesitant attempt* Ugh, how do I do it without the toes hitting me in the face? Ew ew ew. ...Hey, how did you get all the meat off it? Is all that really edible? ...No, no, I'm sorry. I'm all for not wasting any part of the animal but I just can't do it."



Yeah, Alex ate chicken foot. It was not good.

A Happy Journey

As seen on the MRT:

Harmony Tour

Okay, I'm a little behind on my posts. School, etc.

Last weekend the school organized a tour of Hindu and Sikh temples. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures. Even though we were told that we could photograph everything except certain items, it just feels tacky to be blatantly touristy in somebody's place of worship. Anyway, the students who led the tours did a great job and I'm incredibly thankful that I was one of the relatively few people who decided to seize the opportunity to go.


The Hindu temple was vibrant and noisy, full of people eating, praying and smashing coconuts (to symbolize the breaking apart of the ego). Like the many sculptures and deities, the whole vibe is about the divine manifesting itself in all aspects of life.




The Sikh temple was more solemn (but still beautiful). They also gave us a bhangra dancing lesson and tied turbans for us. Of course, it's usually just men who wear turbans but I wasn't going to miss out on it. One of my friends told me I looked like Simone de Beauvoir... One of the old ladies there was thrilled to see us all with our turbans on. She beamed and matted each of us on the shoulder as we passed. So cute.

Downpour

There is really nothing like a tropical rainstorm. When blue sky darkens before your eyes and and the rain comes down so hard that it seems like your little island in the sun might be sinking into the sea. The thunder isn't distant like at home - it's all around you, intense, personal.

There is rarely a sharp divide between indoors and outdoors here. In the relative shelter of the law campus's open-air food court, the walls and the conversations and my last-minute readings faded against the power of the storm.

The Singapore Experience: Shopping and (More) Food

What I did on my trip to Southeast Asia...bought a sweater. For the obscenely cold lecture theatres in this delightfully hot country.

Tuesday is my day off, so after a morning date spanning 15006 km I headed to VivoCity with three goals in mind. Long pants for a temple tour I'll be doing on Saturday. A sweater to bring to class. A hula hoop. Success on all fronts. Honestly, if I hadn't ben successful that would make me the worst shopper EVER because VivoCity is colossal.

Food courts are still intimidating at times. I could have gotten hor fun which jut makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. The Boy's uncle says I need to learn to make Hakka food, so when I saw a sign advertising "Hakka pork belly" I actually thought about it...well, until I actually thought about it. I settled on puri, which I had somehow always assumed would be crispy. Nope, just puffy bread. Anyway, as with a lot of Indian food I soon realized I had no idea how I was supposed to eat it.

Dessert was ice kachang which was good in a weird way. Can't say I'm totally sold on the idea of corn niblets in my sno kone, but I'd eat it again:



Oh yeah, and the good people of Singapore are polite enough to act as though it's perfectly normal for a Random Canadian Girl to be toting a bigass hula hoop around on the bus. Which I appreciate.

Haw Par Villa

On Sunday a few of us went to Haw Par Villa, a theme park based on Chinese mythology and built in 1937 by the family that created Tiger Balm.


Admission to the park is free; entry into the "Ten Courts of Hell" costs a dollar. If you want to see some fabulously graphic and campy sculptures - not to mention some really interesting "sins" - it's all on my Facebook page. Sorry - there were just way too many photos to post here.

Bahasa Indonesia

Singapore's National Day was last weekend. I celebrated by leaving the country. What? The locals do it. Singaporeans are a patriotic bunch but loads of them flee the National Day crowds for nearby Indonesia. That's why we couldn't get a ferry to the beachy island of Bintan and instead settled for Batam Island, which we assumed would also be beachy, maybe just somewhat less nice and correspondently less touristy. Well.

One of the first things out of the mouth of our hotel's guest services rep was "Why did you come here? Why didn't you go to Bali?" The locals seemed similarly surprised to see us, four young western girls wandering around Batam Centre. Taxi drivers would drive slowly alongside us, honking repeatedly even after we waved them away. We were honked at by taxi drivers who were clearly already carrying fares. We were honked at by drivers who weren't even in taxis.

Armed with three phrases in Bahasa - thank you, how much, too expensive - we headed for a nearby mall and bargained for knockoff handbags. The shopping is really only cheaper if you're willing to haggle. Prices are rarely marked on the tags, and the prices quoted to us were clearly inflated. After you refuse the initial price, and especially if you do so in their language, it will drop by as much as a third.



Batam is famous for its seafood, and deservedly so. We had supper at the Golden Prawn, which we were later told is expensive for the locale, but it was good so hey. One of those places where you can see your food swimming or crawling around in its tank before you order.









OUr driver waited for us as we ate, then took us to a nightclub in a building shaped like a cruise ship. I mean, a full-sized cruise ship sitting there in the middle of the city. I'll have to get some photos from the other ladies because for some reason I didn't take any. And my mother will have a fit if she reads this because it's so sketchy, but the driver came INTO the club with us. And then proceeded to call his buddy, who tried to give us beer and assured me that he was "a good man." We didn't stay long.



Sunday was beach day. The guest relations rep gave us a list of recommended beaches and we negotiated a cab fare to one that was supposed to be a fun tourist area. We found ourselves on a tiny, rocky beach next to a rundown picnic area. Back in the taxi, zigzagging across the island, taking in expanses of nature peppered with little homes and shops. We headed for Turi Beach, supposedly a beautiful white-sand beach, attached to a resort but open to the public. Nope. Despite the assurances from travel websites, the hotel and our driver, the resort staff would not let us onto the beach. Instead, they recommended a place nearby that would let us pay to use theirs. After 3 hours we were on a small but nearly deserted resort beach. Honestly I loved every minute of it - that was why I had taken the trip, after all. By the time we left I'd gotten enough sun that I no longer matched my bathing suit, so I'd consider the day a success.



Sick of overpaying for taxis, we looked for a place to eat near our hotel. A couple of street kids came up and manhandled one of my friends so we ducked into the nearest pub - only to find ourselves in the local expat hangout. We chatted with the Australian owner and an English gentleman in a smoking jacket(!) who runs a business out of Singapore. Before we left a tough little Scot who works in the pub gave us advice on dealing with the kids in case they approached us again - "just punch'em in the face!"



I didn't get the vacation I expected. Instead I got a handful of new experiences. I was mystified by a new culture. I struggled with the language barrier. I contemplated the meaning of my relative wealth in bargaining with the locals. I laughed - a lot - at the constant stream of random events, at the unexpected results of every step. The four of us stayed up late in our hotel room, discussing what we could possibly tell people whe they asked about our trip. Our conclusion? It was so worth it - but really, you had to have been there.

I love love love love:

crazy pastries in the dining hall at breakfast

living the dorm life, seven years later

peanut butter scientists turned law professors

stepping out of the (completely unreasonable) a/c into a humid southeast Asian night

facebook albums

quickie video chats

clothes hung to dry outside my window

being constantly surrounded by fellow travelers

my life.

The food, oh baby the food.

I'm in a country that has been described as a food-lover's paradise. I'm currently downing a bag of mangosteen, which is pretty sublime. The mango selection is amazing. You can get pineapple and oranges and melons and dragonfruit and kiwi and green apples on just about every corner.



Laksa: Noodles, prawns, cockles, tofu and fishcake in a spicy coconut-milk gravy. Yummy.

I've been flex on the vegetarian thing in the name of adventure. I'm the kind of person who would eat deep-fried tarantula if given the chance - I've just been veg for so long now that when cruising the hawker centres, the words "beef" and "chicken" and "pork" and "prawn" don't even register in my brain as "food". It's easy enough to score a bite of somebody else's, though, so I can try pig's brain soup without actually ordering a bowl (although I have to say that BSE has made me hesitant to ingest any kind of brain). Note to travelers: some hawkers will attempt to charge you above the posted price if you're sharing with others. Even though they're giving you the same amount of food. If they try to spring that on you when they bring you your plate, stick to your guns and they won't pursue it for too long.



Rojak: salad of fruit, vegetables and dough fritters in a seriously rich sauce with peanuts on top.

Not pictured: carrot cake - no cream cheese icing in sight. It's a savoury dish made from steamed white radishes fried with garlic and eggs, served either black (with sweet soy sauce) or white. You can get it with chili sauce if you're into it (I am). Greasy. Delicious.

You can get any kind of mock meat imaginable, and they really go all-out with it. I had mock fish yesterday and it actually had fake skin on it. I've seen people order mock chicken and never even notice that they weren't eating flesh. It's really impressive.

Mostly, though, I've been going to "mixed vegetable rice" stalls where you can choose your vegetable or meat dishes and get them with a serving of rice. They're usually very cheap, generally less oily than the more elaborate dishes, and a valuable source of green stuff. Now, if I can get some brown rice I'll be all set.

Chinatown

The Nova Scotia delegation is all here. 3/4 of us went to Chinatown today with another exchange student for the purpose of engaging in the fine arts of gluttony and shopping.



I'm not going to show you the food right now; that deserves its own post, and I'll get on that next/soon. But Food Street is basically one big, open-air hawker centre.



This is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which Lonely Planet informed me holds a ceremony every day at 7:30 to open the chamber and display the Buddha Tooth Relic, but alas. Nothing but a gorgeous building and some tourists taking pictures of it. So I settled for some mangosteens and a coconut.

I'm a frosh

A number of exchange students, my self included were a little...miffed about being excluded from our house orientation activities. Well, this morning in the bathroom I got an unofficial invite to take part. So I showed up, and just like that I was adopted by my housemates. So at 25, I'm having the residence experience I never had. I learned the Chinese words for various parts of the human anatomy as we shouted them from the rooftop (as part of the sanctioned orientation activities - so much for the image of the reserved, mild-mannered Singaporean) and consumed buckets of sugary beverages.

These kids are a riot. This place rocks.

Pump up the bass

Last night I went with some really lovely people to a really horrendous nightclub. I mean, I'm sure it was great as far as nightclubs go. There's obviously a market for smoke machines, hipster staff and ear-splitting bass because the place was packed. Guess I'm just getting old and crusty.

Oh yeah: the law school is stunning. My photos don't really do it justice, but check it out:





I was just invited to a cooking class as part of the freshman orientation in my hall. Party!

One of the nicest things in the whole world is the feeling you get when you make a friend. Or two. Or three. Or gads of them, while heading to your dorm kitchen or taking the bus or drinking in a public park because you're allowed to do it there but not on campus.

It was a nice day.

People here have a particular way of exchanging money. For the Chinese it's a way to signify the preciousness of what's being given and received - even if it's just $4 for your laksa or carrot cake. For Hindus it has to do with the flow of prana. Whatever the reason, money is typically given and received with both hands and with a slight bow of the head. It's very subtle, but once you start noticing it you begin to see the transactions differently. The solemnity given to the everyday manifestations of what might often be labeled crass commercialism...well, it makes you think about the person on the other end and about the privilege of being able to take part in the trade. And as a traveler, it's a special feeling to learn about these little cultural subtleties and to take part in them.

Moved in

Campus is gorgeous. Laundry is free. Wireless is patchy.

It's still fairly deserted around here - most of my housemates are off at Orientation. I spent the day shopping for sheets. Ended up in Holland Village, which is known for being the place where expats congregate. I wandered through a grocery store with all the comforts of home...well, almost. Ragu spaghetti sauce is $6 a jar.

Another of my roommates, from China, is also an international student at the university. She met a local guy who showed us how to get to campus on the MRT - you know, to prevent the inevitable disaster of us trying to do it on our own the morning of registration.

We got Subway on campus and for the first time since I got here, somebody else was more baffled by the food selection than I was. I guided her through the selection process - sandwich, size, bread, veggies, sauce, combo, drink. My sense of familiarity was shattered minutes later when I found myself face-to-face with a squat toilet.

I tried a durian in Chinatown...possibly an acquired taste. I mean, it was okay. Not as bad as the naysayers say, but it didn't inspire in me the kind of fervent adoration I've seen in its admirers. Just okay.



After that we wandered around Clarke Quay, a spot on the Singapore River known for its nightlife, and into the Colonial District. It houses the Singapore Parliament, Supreme Court, Art Gallery and Asian Civilizations Museum, among others. It's also home to the stunning Raffles Hotel, where you can drink a ludicrously overpriced Singapore sling, shop for Armani home furnishings, or - if you're a freeloader like myself - sit in the gorgeous public-access courtyard and use the marble-laden washrooms without buying a thing.



Today was registration...one of the most organized events I've ever been to, but utterly exhausting. Maybe the Society Fair was a bad idea. Faced with a barrage of eager Singaporean undergrads I found myself joining the mailing lists for rugby(!), the campus radio station and the choir. Don't laugh. Despite my protestations that I absolutely CANNOT sing and that nobody (well, except The Boy) WANTS to hear me sing, the society rep - a paradigm of bubbling exuberance - dragged me over to the sign-up sheet and told me she looks forward to seeing me at the welcome tea. I'm sorry to say that I don't think she will.


Favourite moments so far:

-On Orchard Road, the most ridiculously girlie boutique anyone has ever laid eyes on. It's like the living room of a psychotic old lady who has 28 fluffy white kittens and feeds them only cotton candy; a place where all the pink and frilly things of the world come to breed. I desperately wanted to take a picture...but apparently everyone does, and there was a sign forbidding all photography.

-Getting a huge Indian thali (set plate) for SGD$4 (around $3 to $3.50 Canadian). With a guy coming around periodically to top up whichever of the fiery curries you like the best.

-Eating it with my hands. Of all the people in the restaurant, only the white girls were given forks. Damned if I was going to use mine.

-Getting a free Hellgate action figure from the NUS Second Life rep. I didn't have the heart to turn it down. Anybody want a Templar Guardian?

-Signing up for the environmental society, "Students Against Violation of the Earth". From campus security to dengue to the threat of terrorism on the bus, Singapore is not about subtlety when it comes to imminent danger.

Tiffin, malls and Orwelian graffiti

Day 3 in Singapore and finally this blog is a go. I'm staying at a hostel while I attempt to get things sorted with registration, housing and all that jazz. It has two cute kitties and is a few blocks from Little India, so I can forgo the pig organ soup for cheap and plentiful veg curries. As is tradition, I got hopelessly lost on my first day here. The first time wasn't my fault - the map was badly labeled. The second time was in the Mustafa Centre, Singapore's baffling take on Wal-Mart, while trying to buy a cell phone. The third was almost intentional - I felt the need to wander aimlessly around Little India without pulling out a map like some kind of tourist.

Yesterday my Aussie roomate from the hostel and I went to Orchard Road, the shopping district - full of massive, gleaming monuments to the consumer gods. Odd choice for two ladies who hate shopping, but we felt we should partake of the local culture. And I need some clothes for school.

The plan for today is to tourist it up in the Colonial District. I'll try to actually take some pictures for ya.