East Asia Trip

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January 09th, 2010

Greetings to all,
The following blog represents a short overview of the Asian tour that will take us to 7 countries in the next 2 months. We hope you will enjoy our description of what we are experiencing. Some parts of this trip will be in an urban setting, whilst others will be deep in the jungles of the island of Borneo. We will not be able to make daily entries into the blog, because some of the locations we plan to visit have no internet access. We will include photos as often as we can. Some will be spectacular, others more ordinary.
Enjoy the ride!

Ottawa to Singapore, Jan 05th to 07th.
Ottawa to Montreal to Frankfort to Singapore. 19 ½ hours of flying, 7 hours of airport lounging, and 4 ½ meals. Love traveling.

Singapore
Singapore comes from the Indian word Singapurra. As with most things, the English conquerors mispronounced many words. Winston Churchill once said “Everybody has the right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses”. Singapore is a modern vibrant city/country with an area that has grown over the last 15 years from approx 590 sq km to over 700 sq km with extensive land reclamation into the sea. By comparison, the island of Montreal is 499 sq km! There are about 4.8 million inhabitants, over one million of which are ex-pats. The local population is 75% Chinese, 14% Malay, 9% East Indian, and 2% from around the World. There are 4 official languages, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English, the latter being the business and Government language. Singapore is one of the best run countries in Asia. The locals are hard working, innovative, and law abiding. It is safe to walk virtually anywhere at any time of day and night. The laws are quite strict, and fines for transgressions expensive. Singapore has been independent since 1965, when it left the Malay federation. The top industries are: manufacturing, the commercial port (one of the largest in the world), petrochemical refineries, Foreign exchange and tourism. The site of the city was first settled in 1819 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.
Singapore is a democracy, and voting is MANDATORY!

Life here is very expensive. Do you wish to own a car? The government discourages it. How? The import duty is between 100% and 150%. The more your vehicle is high end, the more the import duty is. A Porsche 911 Turbo costs $639,000 Singapore, or approx $470,000 USD. A low end Camry is over $50,000 USD. Once you have a car, you need a 10 year permit to drive your car on the streets. These permits are auctioned off every fortnight (2 weeks), and fetch a price of approx $10,000 USD! Your car is over 10 years old? You need to apply for another $10,000 USD road permit. Then you need a license plate, approx $600. lastly you need to pay a road toll every time you enter the center town area. Depending where you go in the city, and at what time, this automatic wireless road toll system could add another $500 Singapore per month… a mere $400 USD. Most people use public transportation. Notwithstanding, there are 550,000 private vehicles, and another 400,000 utility vehicles on the road here.

The average salary here is approx $1600 Singapore dollars, or just under $1200 CAD. Of this, one must save 20% for retirement, with the employer adding another 14% as an employer contribution to one’s retirement fund. Housing is expensive, but subsidized housing is affordable for the locals. The density of population here is the 3rd highest in the World behind Monaco and Macau. To stop land and housing speculation, one must hold his home for over 5 years before one can sell.
The fines are steep. Speeding can cost up to $10,000, spitting on the sidewalk $150, throwing a can of pop on the sidewalk, $500! Spray graffiti on government buildings and you get 6 lashes with the cane. Most people pass out after the second lash. They’ll let you rest, and give you the rest of your lashings another day. Death penalty to drug traffickers and kidnappers.

The city is modern with only a few British colonial buildings left. It has a Chinatown, and a little India, but these areas go back to the early colonial days and are quite small. Shopping here is amazing. There are jewelry stores everywhere, and tons of high end designer shops with huge inventories. Who buys this stuff, we’re not sure?

One of the fascinating things about Singapore is the evolution of the English language here. This was once a British colony, but with the ethnic mix, the English language has evolved into “singlish”. A good friend, Mr. Rex Shelley has written a neet book entitled “Sounds and Signs of Singlish”. It documents some of the linguistic oddities of the local lingo. Here are a few examples from Rex’s book:
Nothing in Singlish is pronounced Narting
“How long were you in your last job?”
“Quite long. About six mun. But I doan find the work so productive at the sheepyard, and am tinking of leaving”
“What did you do in your last job?”
“Skew me”
“What did you do in your last job?”
“Narting, lah”
“Arh?”
“Yes lah, I did narting lah”
“You mean every day you deed narting?
“Yah man! Narting!”
“But you were promoted?”
“Yes lah, because I deed narting”
“Ha?”
“I tell you man, I deed narting. So no gabra. So I got promotion.”
“Oh like dat ah?
“Yah, like dat.”
“Can you sole-der?”
“I doan tink so I can do dat.”

Lankawi Island, Malaysia, Jan 13th, 2010

Lankawi Island is located off the North Western coast of Malaysia, just North of Penangin the Andaman sea. It is a sleepy island with a population of approx 65,000 people. It boasts 7 traffic lights, nature parks, and a few of the typical tourist attractions found in tropical islands. The Pulau Payar Natl Marine park; a mini underwater world with a 198,000 gallon fish tank loaded with 5,000 marine and freshwater fish; a 2.2 km long cable car journey up and down the Gunung Mat Chicang “mountain”. A few kilometers East of the airport, there is a small city called Kuah town. From there, one can take a ferry to reach various small islands surrounding Lankawi, and one ferry reaches Satun, Thailand.

Tomorrow, we are off to Kuala Lumpur, the thriving capital and largest city in Malaysia.

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