Holiday: part 1

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Opening scene:

Poorly prepared backpackers caught in an unexpected downpour walking along a road in Singapore, Singapore looking for their hostel. Just as they were reaching the shelter of a bus stop-BOOM- a bus wizzes by and sends a wave of street water crashing over me.. oh I mean her… nope. This is how my holiday with my mom started! And with good cheer we trudged on through the rain because we were already wet from the bus wave. Pura Vida.

Luckily this was the only time we ran into rain on our 2 and a half week journey.

The blaring contrast of Singapore to Hanoi (where I’ve spent the last 6 months living) was incredible and surreal that I was actually here. By far one of the most incredible cities I’ve had the pleasure of exploring. Even from the windows of the train leaving the airport I was mesmerized. Huge buildings everywhere but almost paradoxically surrounded by lush greenery and astoundingly clean. We had a wonderful time exploring the city but my overall feeling was one of eeriness! Its like the clean, organized and shiny city had this crazy façade. Everything was in its place, everyone seemed happy and there were no trash cans anywhere… where was the chaotic life of Southeast Asia?! I never truly shook this creepy feeling Singapore gave me but it remains my favorite city on the trip, minus the fact it was also the most expensive.

Our favorite day was day 2 when we wandered down by the crazy bridge and skypark. We found an great little river city tour that turned out to be well worth the $18. We got to see the Merlion in all it’s glory with having to wade through the crowds, and took a trip down the middle of the city center and gaze up at the giant edifices. We then found our way to these futuristic dome buildings that housed a cloud forest and some other kind of garden. Close by was this sky walk on some crazy fake tree things that were cased in plants.

What a diverse city Singapore is- from the sky scrapers to the lush gardens and parks to the inhabitants. There are 4 national languages! But it was soon time to leave and in good time as our pockets were emptying fast. Next stop, the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

An equally interesting city filled with amazing architecture but of an older origin. It wasn’t until we arrived in KL that we discovered that Malaysia is an Islamic country, where we were ironically spending Christmas. It actually worked in our favor, as on Christmas day everything was still open to go sight seeing! My favorite part of KL was actually our hostel (Reggae Mansion)! Well, that’s not very fair… Merdeka square (Freedom square) was a cool spot. Along the main road there are great buildings that demonstrate the architectural style of the city, museums, a really tall flag pole, the 7th home of Buddah and the only one outside of India. It was really cool to see and all the monkeys are so crazy. They are everywhere and can get pretty aggressive with you if they want something you got. We also wanted to see the “brickfields”. Sounds cool right? Well it turns out that’s just a fancy name for Little India…

Our time here was short but well worth it. I was eager to leave not to any short coming of KL but because I'm a beach bum at heart and I've been far from any beach for far too long.

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