Singapore

Wow, Singapore is the exact opposite of Myanmar. I'm not going to say that one opposite was better than the other because they are both great for there own reasons. Myanmar is a very dirty, undeveloped and traditional country. While Singapore is a very clean, developed and modern country. I will probably be referring to Singapore as a country and a city, so you are aware Singapore is a city-country (that's what I call it anyways). It's is exactly like what it sounds like-a city that is also a country.
We took the MRT into the city(oooh I just can't get enough of MRT and LRTS and all that cool transit stuff, it's so fun!) We stayed at Victoria Hotel, it is a pretty good room and the location couldn't be better, right near Bugis Street!

I have defiantly fallen in love with Bugis Street, the shopping is great and cheap. It has the market prices and vibe with the mall air-con and size. Bugis is jammed full of tiny shops with 'trendy' (wow, I didn't know I'd ever use that word!) clothes for cheap. Most shirts, dresses, shorts and shoes are about $10-20. I went to Bugis for a good couple hours each day we were in Singapore.

Although Bugis was awesome, the definite highlight of my time in Singapore was dinner on the Singapore Flyer. Now that was spectacular. The Singapore Flyer is the worlds largest Ferris wheel, a sight to behold, even just looking at it. It is a breathtaking 165m high and takes half an hour to do one revolution. Our first out of four dinner courses was a salad. Oooh it was yummy, it was even topped with salmon and shrimp. A tasty mushroom soup was next on the list. Followed by the entrée, delicious stuffed chicken with potato and veggies. To tie things up was a decadent chocolate mousse brownie with strawberry drizzle. I also got a $10 mocktail. The food on its own was great but the view just made it that much better. Our dinner was from 7:30-8:30pm so it was just getting dark and the buildings of Singapore were just getting lit up. It was absolutely amazing seeing all those lights.

Another highlight was our Singapore Slings. If you don't know what a Singapore Sling is, it's a fruity tropical cocktail invented in Singapore in 1915. It was invented at Raffles Hotel so we decided to walk there to get one since in was in our neighbourhood. We walked out just as fast as we walked in when they told us it was a whopping $28! I think that's a bit much for a cocktail, even at a fancy hotel where it was invented. We walked across the street to Gravity Bar(inside the Carlton) and got one for only $10. It's amazing how they can charge three times as much just for being the birthplace of the Singapore Sling. Anyhow it was very tasty(I got mine without the gin) and It's cool to be able to say "I've had a Singapore Sling in Singapore!"

Our stay in Singapore was only three days long but the short stop here was well worth it. We are going to hit the beach in Bali next.

Inle Lake and Yangon

The first thing I thought when we landed in Heho was 'wow this is nice'. The temperature was quite cool compared to scorching sun of Bagan and Yangon (especially the latter). From Heho we got picked up and driven to Remember Inn in Nyaung Shwe. When we arrived in Nyaung Shwe we wandered around the market because it was too late to go out to the lake. There was all sorts of stuff at the market, most aimed at local buyers but some at tourists.

When we were done with the market we wandered out to the river, on the way we stopped at a cheap little ice cream shop. The river was a buzz of action, boats going here and there and people constantly asking if we wanted a boat tour.

We went on a boat tour the next day at 8am. Unfortunately it was a full moon and there was no floating market. But we did get to see plenty of the Inle Lake leg rowers. It was really neat, they would do stuff with the fishing nets with their hands, while using one leg wrapped around an oar to row in a snake-like motion. We also got to see ladies weaving and making thread from lotus fibre.

That evening we took the VIP bus back to Yangon. Oh was it ever great! The seats were like armchairs you could find in your living room-they reclined nicely and even had foot rests. To top it off they served us a candy, butter cake and a Pepsi. The only downside is that we got kicked off the bus at 2:00am for a half hour stop.
It was sooo hot when we got back to Yangon. By noon it is usually around 40 degrees, but it feels way hotter because of the humidity. When it's 40 degrees you really can't do a whole lot, go for short walks and then go back into the air-con room. Thank god we have an air-con room, a fan defiantly wouldn't suffice in these temperatures.

Next stop...Singapore!

Yangon and Bagan

Landing in Yangon was a big relief, we had finally arrived! We couldn't get a visa on arrival, so we had to get one ahead of time and that proved to be a bigger hassle than we made it out to be. We had planned on getting our visa in KL right after we got back from Cambodia...that was easier said than done. It just so happened that the Myanmar embassy was closed for a week, because it was a Burmese New Years festival (New Years in April I will never quite understand!). So no visa then. That's why we decided to go up to the Perhentian Islands for a few days. Finally the embassy was up and running again and we were able to apply for our visas. The embassy was a gong show, there was 5 minutes left in the application drop off and everyone was just shoving there passports through the window (us included). Picking them up a day later was also a close call with plenty more people shoving their pick-up forms through the window (including us). We finally got our visa and all was well, ready for a flight to Yangon.

We got picked up at the airport by a very old bus that took us and a couple more travellers to Motherland 2 Inn. We went for a bit of a walk around Yangon and in the evening we went to see the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. It was absolutely enormous and everywhere you looked there was gold, LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of gold. Archeologists believe the temple was built between the 6th and 12th centuries, although the legend is a fair bit more optimistic (apparently about 2500 years old). The pagoda faced a lot of earthquakes in the 18th century and was rebuilt in 1769. I think Shwedagon has constant upkeep because to me it only looks to be a few years old. It was very busy with locals and monks milling around and praying. There were tons of Buddhas everywhere! Some of the Buddhas were huge, one of them I could have comfortably had a nap in his hand (if I had climbing gear to get up there!)

We were on the bus to Bagan the next night, ready to see the stupas. Oh my, was the bus ever bad! To start things off we had something very loud and obnoxious on the speaker, I think it was someone chanting in Burmese. To keep the sound going we had some really loud Burmese music videos being played all night. The seats were quite hard and impossible to get comfy in, let alone sleep. We got into Bagan at about 3:30am so we walked around until we found New Park Hotel. Our search for the hotel was serenaded by about half a dozen barking dogs.
Once we checked in to the hotel we slept for a little bit and then walked out to the market for a shop. The market was composed of both stuff for the locals and souvenirs. I bought a nice hand bag for myself and wandered around to see plenty of vendors selling lacquerware, carvings, t-shirts and traditional longyis.
Our second day in Bagan we spent out at the stupas/temples. My oh my, neither pictures nor words can come close to describing the beauty. The temples of Bagan are unlike ANYTHING I have seen before. Stupas speckle 42 square kilometres of landscape, they are as far as you can see. My favourite stupas were the ones you could climb up and get a view. The first one we visited at about quarter to six in the morning was so mystical. There were stupas as far as you could see in every direction, and a thin layer of mist hovering around the temples for added beauty. I just sat and stared wide-eyed, it was incredible. I could describe it all day and you still wouldn't know what it is like. Even pictures don't near do it justice. The only way to wrap your head around the beauty is to be there and witness it. I'm sure I could have sat there for hours in silence soaking it in-and I LOVE to talk!

For our final day in Bagan we hired a taxi to take us out to Mt.Popa. On our way out to Mt. Popa we stopped at a family palm sugar factory. They were also making peanut oil there with the help of a cow. The cow was attached to a shaft and on the other end was a bowl stuck into the ground with peanuts in it. With a little motivation the cow would go around in circles causing the peanuts to get ground up. Of course they also made palm sugar stuff there too. One side of the kitchen was where they made yummy but excessively sweet palm sugar candies. On the other side they made the booze, palm sugar rum I think. I tried a little and it was pretty good.

They gave us a little bit of traditional Burmese food and Chinese tea. The plater consisted of tea leaves, roasted garlic, sesame seeds, fried beans, and fried batter of some sort. It was very good! After our snack was finished we went and bought a few packages of palm sugar candies from them. A little goes a long way with those candies so we shipped them back home to share and eat gradually.

There was a viewpoint we stopped at and took photos of Mt. Popa. There were some girls selling petrified wood and volcanic rocks at the viewpoint, I bought I couple of volcanic rocks, you could shake them and hear stuff rattling around inside.

Mt. Popa wasn't a hike it was just a bunch of stairs, but that was fine because the view was great. It overlooked the countryside below. The most amazing part was that there was a temple on top of the mountain, it must have been very difficult to build. On our way out of Mt. Popa village we stumbled across a nat(spirit) festival. As soon as we came to the door way everyone started taking our picture, and looking at us, I guess they were very surprised to see white people peeping in the door of a traditional festival. They were all very welcoming friendly but we had to go soon after we arrived. It was a very cool experience.

We are flying to Inle Lake next and staying there for a few days before going back to Yangon.

Perhentian Islands

My visit to the Perhentian Islands was quite nice for the most part. From Kuala Lumpur we took the 10 hour sleeper train to Tanah Merah. We then got a 1 hour taxi to Kuala Besut, where the boats leave from. Finally we went on a half hour boat to get us to Perhentian Kecil Island. We had been to the Perhentian Islands a few years ago so it was nice to see what had changed and what had stayed the same. I was very happy to see there was not much change, only one new resort on the Coral Bay side.

White sand, palm trees and azure blue sea is about the best way to describe the Perhentian Islands. Yup, that description is rather tasteless and you have all probably heard it plenty of times before to describe a tropical island. But that's it, that is what the Perhentian Islands are like.

Our first night we stayed at Maya Chalets. It was right on the beach, so it was quite breezy and cool. I thought the bungalow would be a great place to hang our hats for a few days, but by morning my opinion had changed otherwise. I woke up and I couldn't see very well but it looked as if I had a few dots on my arms. I got out of bed (I had been sleeping on a thermarest on the floor with a bug net) only to see that my arms were COVERED in red dots! I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was also covered in dots, along with my back! We went and asked the guys at the hotel and they didn't know what it was. We continued down the beach and asked our internet guy friend. He was pretty sure they were bed bug bites. We asked a few more people and they all were pretty sure it was bed bugs, so we looked online and came to the conclusion that it was bed bugs. I was VERY lucky that the bites never got itchy or I would be covered in scars and the bites would have taken way longer to heal. They took about a week to go away.

 

We moved over to Ewan's bungalows for a couple of nights, to steer clear of the bed bugs. Since Ewan's is up away from the beach there isn't much breeze, but I would rather be a bit warm than have bed bugs, any day. The food at Ewan's Cafe was just as amazing as I remember. Last time we came Ewan's Cafe was a little place that wasn't very busy. Word has gotten out and it has turned into a thriving restaurant, that is jam packed at lunch and dinner everyday.

During the day we would go down to the beach and go swimming. The snorkelling out in front kind of sucked there because most of the coral is dead. There was the odd patch of live coral with some fish calling it home, so I took my little underwater camera out. It was my first time taking photos of fish with it and it proved to be very difficult. One if the hard parts was diving down to get close enough to the fish without scaring it away. It was also very hard to keep the camera still while holding my breath. The last hard part was equalizing while I went down at holding the camera. I normally don't have to equalize when I'm diving down just snorkelling, but since I had a cold it would hurt my ears if I didn't. My cold is gone now so I will be able to go diving if we go anywhere with good diving.

Despite being eaten alive by bed bugs, my stay in the Perhentian Islands was quite nice. We are heading to Myanmar next, to see Bagan and Inle Lake!