Hor Fun is More Fun!

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So here we are, our last blog entry!

The plan for our final leg was to take the train from Singapore back to Bangkok, from where we pick up our long-haul flight home, stopping at Ipoh and Langkawi on the way. The idea was to get some final sunshine on the beach in Langkawi and to have some good Malaysian food as well, before heading home to cold weather and having to cook for ourselves... Unfortunately, the weather man had other ideas, but at least we had some good food!

Landing in Singapore from Manila was like heaven, as once again we were graced with the calm, clean streets and polite Singaporeans. This time we stayed in a lovely hotel near Orchard Road, where we made good use of the pool and gym on our first afternoon there. After Manila, we were delighted to find no cockroaches sharing our beds and Mark's overexcitment lead to him clearing out everything from the mini-bar each day and using the room's free Nespresso machine to exhaustion! You can take the boy out of Worcester...

We were meeting Jan and Alek for a classic Singaporean day of shopping and snacking, as they were transiting in Singapore on their way back to Sydney. It was good to catch up, as the last time we saw them was 6 months ago in Australia, so we had plenty of travel stories to bore them with (sorry!) and Mark could try out his 'travel hair' and new skinny-ish jeans on some unsuspecting victims... Fortunately, we had moved to a nice bar by this point, so we had a few cocktails too 😊

Singapore was all geared up for Christmas, with the shopping malls showing-off huge christmas trees and blaring out carols, so we tried to get in the festive spirit. It's still strange for us to be outside in the warm around christmas time though, so we decided to focus our short stay on what we think Singapore does best... food!

After our disappointing food crusade in the Philippines, we were very pleased to re-explore Singapore's cafes, food courts and hawker centres looking for our favourites of stir-friend beef noodles, Hainanese chicken rice, char kway teow and nasi lemak (so much char kway teow, in fact, that we had to take a break after failing to finish the 'medium-sized' portions we ordered in one Food Republic). We also branched out into Korean food, which was delicous, and have since decided that South Korea is now on "the list"!

On our previous visit to Singapore we tried a couple of places to eat in Little India but didn't make it to the predominently Indian Tekka hawker centre... which was a mistake, it turns out, as we found some AMAZING food there. We spent two nights in a row tucking into a feast of chicken murtabak, freshly baked naan and authentic indian curries. Yum!

We also thought we should branch out a bit, and visit somewhere new, so we made our way across to Clarke Quay for drinks one evening and people-watched all the expats and tourists who had glammed up and headed down there for a big night out. There was a nice atmosphere, as it was a Saturday night and had been decorated with plenty of 'Christmas trim', so we sat nursing some happy hour drinks for a while, before heading back for the aforementioned (and bargainous) feast at the Tekka Centre!

All too soon it was time to move on (and stop shopping!) and head back up through Malaysia and Thailand... The 11-hour train journey to Ipoh went without incident. Well, apart from Mark being shouted at by Malaysian passport control for taking photos of the train! It was a great way to travel and see more of the Malaysian countryside, even if it did take quite a long time, and we decided that we were very glad to be rid of long-distance bus rides...at least you can get up and wander around on the train. This turned out to be a major benefit on this trip, as our carriage was being blasted with freezing aircon - we had to take a couple of trips to the buffet carriage, which had no a/c, to warm up over hot coffess and the occasional nasi goreng.

Ipoh was described in our guide book as having 'food so good even people from Penang go there to eat' so, seeing as we needed somewhere to break the long journey to Langkawi, we stopped there for a couple of nights to investigate.

Mark spent a couple of hours in our slightly dingy hotel room researching a culinary tour for us that would keep us occupied all day (it might have good food, but Ipoh doesn't exactly have any sights!). First on the list was "melt-in-your-mouth" kaya (coconut jam) puffs from a local shop. This was officially breakfast, as the strategy was to only eat food on the trail, so we could save space and ensure we could fit everything in!

After wandering around lost for a while (we didn't have a map, and the one we had drawn on a piece of paper wasn't really cutting the mustard) we managed to find the Ipoh Parade shopping mall, which sells Chee Cheong Fun in its food court. This is soft rice noodle roll chopped up and served with green chillies and sesame seeds. Ours also came with curry sauce, because the lady serving Mark asked him something in Malaysian to which he shrugged and nodded, not knowing what was said. It was actually quite tasty, despite the slippery texture, and was definitely improved by the accidental addition of curry sauce!

A plate of Char Siew was next on the list. It is an old favourite of ours from our first trip through Peninsular Malaysia, and a good memory test to see which foods we could remember the names of (it appears that if we associate food with Malaysian words then they are very easy to remember...the rest of the Malay language, not so much!). Char Siew is BBQ'd pork belly, and comes with a bit of rice, some cucumber and some very tasty thick soy-type sauce. Yum.

Over to the old town next for Ipoh White Coffee. The old colonial mansions were worth a glance, but don't stop us when we are on a food trail! We think we had white coffee in Penang but since Ipoh is where it originates from, we thought it would be rude not to have a cuppa! We stopped at a Chinese restaurant where the friendly owner served us and then made sure it wasn't too sweet, as he said that western people usually don't like their coffee too sweet... We both nodded and smiled "yeah, it's absolutely fine!" but as White Coffee is made by roasting the beans in palm-oil margarine and sugar and is then served with condensed milk, it must be the sweetest, least healthy, coffee there is. If you pretend it's not coffee though, it actually tastes quite nice (even if it does make you want to run and clean your teeth!!).

Ipoh is famous in Malaysia for its juicy bean sprouts or “taugeh”, which are used in many of its local dishes. One of these is 'Ipoh bean sprouts chicken', which is exactly what it sounds like it is...We lined up for a helping, which is either served as chicken rice or with hor fun (noodles in broth). It was so tasty that we went back for more at dinner time (this time with a few less bean sprouts!), although we were disappointed to discover that they had run out of hor fun.

After a day of stuffing our faces, we got up bright and early the next morning to move on to the island of Langkawi. It was quite an adventure getting there, as it took 3 taxis, a bus and a boat ride but, fortunately, Malaysia is well organised, so it was a fairly stress-free adventure - and it was a nice change not to have to barter with taxi drivers for a fair fare.

We arrived in Langkawi at the start of the season, but maybe we were too early as we had mainly grey skies and patchy rain...not exactly the tan-topper-upper we were hoping for! We stayed in a bungalow room 2 minutes from the beach, which was great considering we could dash down to the beach for half-an-hour at a time (and run back when the rain clouds rolled in). There are 99 islands making up the Langkawi Achipegalo and we stayed on the main island which, despite being quite touristy (with a Starbucks and McDonalds), wasn't busy at all and was very different to the Thai islands. We'd definitely recommend it - it's lovely and green in the middle, the food is great (obvs!) and the beaches are long and white (and ours, Pantai Tengah, was pretty empty, even when the sun eventually came out on the fourth day).

We spent our days wandering around the small town, eating yet more fantastic local food and occasionally doing a spot of sunbathing. In the afternoons we would sit on our verandah facing the beach with cups of coffee...we felt properly middle aged when we spotted a hornbill-type-bird one afternoon and were taking photos of it with the couple in the room next door (who were a good 25 years older!).

In the evenings, even though the island is 'duty-free' and the cheapest place for booze in Malaysia, the nightlife is pretty low-key...we went out to Pantai Cenang once for beers on the beach and found it pretty chilled out, so the next night we just bought beers from a corner shop and just took them to Pantai Tengah to watch the sun setting over the sea. Lovely!

We left Langkawi on Sunday morning and took the ferry back to the mainland, where we taxied to the train station in preparation for our overnight trip to Bangkok...after a squashed, noisy (and slightly smelly) boat trip spent reminding ourselves how much more pleasant the train would be! Just when we thought we had successfully made it for an entire year without any major hiccoughs (and after missing Typhoon Yolanda by the skin of our teeth), we arrived at the train station in Alor Setar to discover that our luck had finally run out and that our train had been cancelled...Flooding in Thailand had meant the track had been out of action for the last four days and there was no sign of the situation changing soon.

The helpful lady at the station came to tell us the news before our taxi driver drove off and she did give us a refund on our tickets, but she didn't really have any advice on how we could get to Bangkok. She suggested we took a bus to Hat Yai in Thailand, but had no idea if the trains were running north from there....hmmm. She also confirmed that there was a train going south to KL that evening, but it was already fully booked, doh.
We didn't fancy another long distance bus journey, so we retreated to the nearest town and found a McDonalds for a re-plan. 12 nuggets, 1 chicken sandwich and a bottomless sprite later we ended up in a business hotel next to the motorway for the night. We managed to find some non-extortionate last minute flights to Bangkok, but unfortunately this meant another ferry ride back to Langkawi and another transit through Singapore Airport (the joys of Tiger Airways)! It wasn't the door-to-door train travel we had been hoping for, but we did manage to claim our S$11 GST refund while we were in Changi and used it to treat ourselves to a footlong Subway. Two days and too many forms of transport later, we finally arrived in Bangkok at 10pm on Monday night.

Bangkok is another favourite of ours for cheap shopping and tasty food. After some gentle bartering and a couple of aggressive "no looking, only buying!" stallholders, we ended up with a fresh supply of cookie monster vests and "Raybins" to fill up our now slightly emptier backpacks (we've been throwing away our grimy clothes for the last week or so, rather than carrying them home to do the same)! Hazel also dragged Mark into a salon for his first ever pedicure (Asian cities plus flip flops make for pretty gross feet), so hopefully we'll be coming back to the UK relatively clean and well groomed!

All that's left now is a final dinner of pad thai before we board the plane home tomorrow...

We've had an amazing year and have really enjoyed meeting up with some of you along the way 😊 We're so looking forward to seeing all of you when we get back! Thanks for reading and SEE YOU SOON!!!!!

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