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All posts for the month January, 2014

The Sullivans along the river walk in Malacca

The Sullivans along the river walk in Malacca

The first stop on our 10-day Malaysian extravaganza with Mark’s Dad & brother was Malacca City, capital of Malacca Province, right on the historic Straits of Malacca. For many centuries and right up to the current time, the Straits of Malacca, separating the Malay Peninsula from Indonesia’s Sumatra, has been among the most important waterways in the world; going through the Straits cuts hundreds of miles off the distance between India or the Middle East to China & Japan.

During the Age of Discovery all the European colonial powers fought over control of the region. Malacca was first colonized by the Portuguese in 1511, who lost it to the Dutch in 1641. The Dutch, who were more interested in their colony centered in Jakarta, traded it to the British in 1824 who then ruled until Malaysian independence in 1946. That melange of colonialism shows up in a variety of ways – the food, the architecture, the language, and more, I’m certain. Just last night, for instance, we ate at a great Portuguese restaurant, pretty unexpected after our three-plus months in Southeast Asia so far.

One of the first things you notice are these crazy trishaws - bicycles attached to carts for schlepping tourists around. Not only are they decorated with zillions of flowers and major lights, but at night at least they're blasting out pop music. We're walkers, though, and never tried them out.

One of the first things you notice are these crazy trishaws – bicycles attached to carts for schlepping tourists around. Not only are they decorated with zillions of flowers and major lights, but at night at least they’re blasting out pop music. We’re walkers, though, and never tried them out.

How can you not love a city where you notice a small car that's *really* pink? We started to take a picture and noticed the driver was sitting there. Then he hopped out  and I saw he was wearing a pink shirt and pink shoes, and that the upholstery in the car was pink, too. My new best friend!

How can you not love a city where you notice a small car that’s *really* pink? We started to take a picture and noticed the driver was sitting there. Then he hopped out and I saw he was wearing a pink shirt and pink shoes, and that the upholstery in the car was pink, too. My new best friend!

Just six years ago UNESCO named the historic city center a World Heritage Site; tourism is booming and it’s easy to understand why. We found great food, interesting buildings, a great little Chinatown, a beautiful little river walk, and the most unusual trishaws we’ve ever seen. The only downside was that we were there over celebrations for Chinese New Years and as a result a lot of the city – or at least the central part of the city where tourists like us hang out – was closed. Not all, certainly, but apparently a lot of people were home celebrating with family instead of serving us, as they should have been. Someday I’d love to go back when everything is open and people are out and about.

Buildings along the river walk have all been painted and highly decorated.

Buildings along the river walk have all been painted and highly decorated.

Chinese New Years is a colorful event

Chinese New Years is a colorful event

Art on a wall in the city reminding us it's now the Year of the Horse

Art on a wall in the city reminding us it’s now the Year of the Horse

Mark was pretty happy riding an elephant statue

Mark was pretty happy riding an elephant statue

Sadly, though, we have no photos of the Straits. I walked down there our first day, and ran along the water’s edge a couple times, but basically the view is really pretty boring, just unattractive rocks and industrial wasteland. Too bad, since I was hoping for some great historic revelation.

Malaysia is a Moslem country, and a lot of places neither serve nor sell liquor. This place found a reasonable solution - I can buy it, but the locals can't.

Malaysia is a Moslem country, and a lot of places neither serve nor sell liquor. This place found a reasonable solution – I can buy it, but the locals can’t.

Lidd obviously doesn't look Moslem

Lidd obviously doesn’t look Moslem

And one more picture of the crazy, colorful trishaws

And one more picture of the crazy, colorful trishaws

This keeps happening when we leave weeks of smaller cities and towns in Southeast Asia: we got to Singapore and WOW! Colors! Lights! Look, a Banana Republic! And the costs – my God!. Meals here are at least 50 percent higher than where we’ve been in Thailand, probably more like double the cost. Last night we paid something like $14 each for the smallest Perfect Manhattans you’ve ever seen. The bartender asked if we wanted another and I boldly asked “Will the second be bigger than the first?” He agreed, and so there you are – being direct (rude?) can pay off.

Singapore is an interesting city-state. It’s just one degree north of the equator so the climate is pretty stable year round. (I should add that it hasn’t been nearly as warm these two days as I’d have expected; not sure what that’s about though.) Until the Brits came in the early 19th century it was pretty much just part of the Malay Peninsula, but they colonized it and brought in lots of English structure. They brought money, and so Chinese – lots and lots of Chinese – moved down here to trade; today the city is something like 85 percent Chinese, with the native Malays being a very small minority. And as far as I can tell from this brief experience it is as much a first-world city as just about anyplace you could imagine. A nice little reprieve from most of our time in Southeast Asia.

It seems odd to me to have a Chinatown in a city that is overwhelmingly Chinese, but here it is.

It seems odd to me to have a Chinatown in a city that is overwhelmingly Chinese, but here it is.

Imagine our surprise to learn that Chinese New Year's - bringing in the Year of the Horse - is the day-after-tomorrow. There are horses all over the city.

Imagine our surprise to learn that Chinese New Year’s – bringing in the Year of the Horse – is the day-after-tomorrow. There are horses all over the city.

Normally we wouldn’t have jumped from Thailand all the way to Singapore and then started working our way north up the Malay Peninsula, but we’re meeting Mark’s dad and brother tomorrow morning, and it just worked best this way. So this has been a pretty short visit to such a great city, but there have definitely been some highlights.

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel is this amazing three-tower behemoth topped by what looks like an oversized surfboard, on top of which is apparently a ginormous SkyPark of swimming pools, palm trees, day beds – everything you need 60 floors above ground level. We didn’t go up there but the views from the ground were really something. Often unusual, modern architecture doesn’t work but for me, this sure did.

Three towers and a big surfboard on top hosting a huge elevated park. Ignore the fact that it's owned by Newt Gingrich-sponsor Sheldon Adelson and it's pretty cool.

Three towers and a big surfboard on top hosting a huge elevated park. If you can ignore the fact that it’s owned by Newt Gingrich-sponsor Sheldon Adelson, it’s pretty cool.

Then there was the Gardens By the Bay, a new 250-acre park that includes lots of great outdoor space but also two climate-controlled domes, a Flower Dome and an artificial Cloud Forest. The latter seemed kind of lame and gimmicky to me, but the Flower Dome was a grand slam home run. One section was succulents and “bottle trees,” including what I think are the first Baobabs I’ve ever seen. Another section was a California area that I swear smelled like San Francisco. Then there were Mediterranean, Australian, and South African sections, all in this great space with appropriate micro-climates. Very cool. And beautiful.

Happy Jim and a flower

Happy Jim and a flower

This was one of my favorites. A succulent whose survival adaptation is to look dead or at least dying so predators will leave it alone. It worked - I thought it was really ugly.

This was one of my favorites. A succulent whose survival adaptation is to look dead or at least dying so predators will leave it alone. It worked – I thought it was really ugly.

Some of the "bottle trees" in the Flower Dome. They evolved in arid climates to store moisture in those bottles, which is why you don't see any of them in Minnesota.

Some of the “bottle trees” in the Flower Dome. They evolved in arid climates to store moisture in those bottles, which is why you don’t see any of them in Minnesota.

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year's Eve as we move into the Year of the Horse. So there were lots of horse design around the city, including here in the Flower Dome.

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year’s Eve as we move into the Year of the Horse. So there were lots of horse design around the city, including here in the Flower Dome.

Another highlight of the Gardens By the Bay was the Supertrees Grove, structures as much as 150 feet high, that serve as vertical gardens. At night they do two 15-minute light-and-music shows that were fun.

Another highlight of the Gardens By the Bay was the Supertrees Grove, structures as much as 150 feet high, that serve as vertical gardens. At night they do two 15-minute light-and-music shows that were fun.

Today we spent time in Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum. When we got our tickets we were told that there was a free guided tour of the Southeast Asia gallery starting in five minutes, and while I often get frustrated with guided tours we decided to give it a try. It was perfect. Suzie, the docent, is from LA, so her English was pretty darned good. On top of that she was fun, interesting and knew her stuff. And just to make it perfect, she kept it short – 35 or 40 minutes, hitting a few highlights in the gallery and then we were on our own.

So that’s been our brief experience in Singapore. I’ve been running pretty regularly and this is a pretty good city for early morning runs though at about one degree north of the equator I’m not eager to run midday. And then tonight we’re going to hit one more highlight, or at least I hope it ends up a highlight. Or high-dark?

We’re going to Nox, a restaurant where you dine in the dark. Not just dimly lit, but dark, as in pitch black. No light at all. And I thought the artificial cloud forest was gimmicky? This gets great reviews, though. The wait staff are apparently all blind, and they guide you to your table and help you settle in – just like they do all the time. Stripped of vision, in theory your other senses are enhanced, giving you a very different experience with the food and wine. At a minimum it should be a memorable experience and I don’t have to worry about what I wear!

The view of downtown Singapore from our 10th floor pool. That white obelisk near the center is a tribute to Singaporese who died during the Japanese occupation during WWII. It's been a real learning experience to keep running into these memorials all over Europe and Asia to that horrible war and the awful things the Germans and Japanese did. I think it's a tribute to our ability to forgive and forget that people don't still hate them. Of course, as an American who's traveled in Vietnam, it's a good thing we have that capacity....

The view of downtown Singapore from our 10th floor pool. The white low-rise building right in front is the Raffles Hotel, the most famous and storied hotel in Singapore AND the origin of the Singapore Sling. Then the white obelisk near the center is a tribute to Singaporese who died during the Japanese occupation during WWII. It’s been a real learning experience to keep running into these memorials all over Europe and Asia to that horrible war and the awful things the Germans and Japanese did. I think it’s a tribute to our ability to forgive and forget that people don’t still hate them. Of course, as an American who’s traveled in Vietnam, I’m glad we have that capacity….

We arrived in Thailand back on October 10 – spent some time in Bangkok and then headed southeast to Koh Samet on the Gulf of Thailand. We discovered it was still rainy season so instead of spending more Thai beach time went through Cambodia and Laos for a couple months. Then it was back to Bangkok to get our visas for Myanmar. After biking in Myanmar for two weeks it was back to Bangkok again for a couple days of errands before heading southeast first along the Gulf and then across the peninsula to the Andaman Sea where we spent the last week in Ao Nang, just outside of Krabi.

Part of what’s so crazy about all that is that, while we spent nearly six weeks in Thailand, I still feel as though we just scratched the surface. Lots of beaches and islands we didn’t get to, and we didn’t travel north at all (we’d already been to both Chang Mai and Chang Rai on an earlier trip, but as usual when on vacation we didn’t have enough time to see them properly). That’s another good data point for answering the question of whether we’re going to get bored or tired of traveling like this, or if we think we’re going to run out of places to go.

Hardly. We’ve just firmed up plans to visit with our old Cambridge neighbors Bart & Ann & Wil in Bali for a week in April, meaning that we’ll spend a full six months in Southeast Asia before we head back to Europe for the spring and summer. And there will be enormous pieces that we won’t have seen, like most of Indonesia (where I could easily spend four months island hopping), Vietnam, the rest of Thailand, the Philippines, East Timor. To say nothing of New Guinea and the islands of the South Pacific that we’re missing. How we’re ever going to have time for Africa or Australia or Central Asia remains a mystery.

A few words about our last week in Thailand. We took a boat from Koh Samui to the mainland and then a bus to Krabi and a tuk-tuk to Ao Nang. Ao Nang makes no pretense of being a real Thai town – it’s a place for tourists who want to be on the beach. Unfortunately our first experience there wasn’t very good; our first morning we took the 20-minute walk from our resort to the beach and it was ugly. The tide was w-a-y out and it just looked bad. It definitely improved over time, though, and eventually we got into the swing of things. There are some beautiful karst outcroppings in the area and of course the beautiful, warm sea. It makes you wonder why anyone lives north of maybe the Rio Grande… And then there was some great Indian food, so we ended up pretty happy.

But now we’re done with Thailand. We’ve discovered Air Asia, a super-discount carrier here – there’s almost no legroom whatsoever, and they don’t give you so much as water, but the fares are cheap – so yesterday we caught a flight down to Singapore. We’ll spend three days here and then join up with Mark’s father and brother to spend 10 days moving up the Malaysian peninsula. We’ll probably spend more time in peninsular Malaysia after they leave and then head over to Borneo where, since we’re retired, we hope to avoid the headhunters.

Ao Nang with the tide out. A lot of barren-ness and it's all but impossible to go out far enough to be in deep water.

Ao Nang with the tide out. A lot of barren-ness and it’s all but impossible to go out far enough to be in deep water. Eventually the tide comes back in,though, and then it’s pretty great.

A long view of the beach with the tide in. Much better this way.

A long view of the beach with the tide in. Much better this way.

There were always lots and lots of long tailed boats lined up to take you to the many islands in the area.

There were always lots and lots of long tailed boats lined up to take you to the many islands in the area.

We took this one out one day to a couple of beautiful islands. Not isolated by any means - others were doing exactly the same, in some large groups - but very nice.

We took this one out one day to a couple of beautiful islands. Not isolated by any means – others were doing exactly the same, in some large groups – but very nice.

Boats plying the islands in the area

Boats plying the islands in the area

One of the beaches we stopped at. The tide was coming in and the beach was disappearing so the crowds had left. For a brief time it was all ours.

One of the beaches we stopped. The tide was coming in and the beach was disappearing so the crowds had left. For a brief time it was all ours.

And lest we don't give Krabi its due, as we passed through the town en route to Ao Nang we saw this, the most unusual traffic light in the world.

And lest we don’t give Krabi its due, as we passed through the town en route to Ao Nang we saw this, the most unusual traffic light in the world.