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Published: January 17th 2007
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No going back now. I've begun this trip to parts unknown of myself.....and I guess the foreign countries I will be visiting. So I've started this adventure in Singapore to slowly acclimate to everything that is new with this part of the world. A couple of Jaime's (my sister) friends, Kevin and Eugene are kind enough to let me stay with them. I switch back and forth between the two every week so they can share the gwei lo. They both picked me up at the airport after a 20+ hour flight and no sleep for 26 hours or something like that. They had some wicked movies on Singapore Airlines. A lot more selection and the option of my fav, chinese movies. I only watched two movies ("Men Suddenly in Black 2"-no so good, "Little Red Flowers"-cute) and read the majority of the flight. So arriving at 2 in the morning, they took me to this restaurant where I had noodle soup with prawns. Eugene told me to try this black thing called "century egg". So this is how it's going to be eh? Yup Jaime warned me about these two and their antics. I reluctantly nibbed it but that was
Pretty flower
One of the thousand orchids at the Botanical Gardens about it. I couldn't really taste anything except the congee it came in. Boh well. So basically this is a chinese delicacy where duck, chicken or quail eggs are preserved in a clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw mixture then buried for several weeks to several months. Yum. I'm sure I'll be experiencing worse things later in my travels and I'll be sure to write about them.
The weather is fine now, sunshine and HOT but when I first arrived it rained everyday. However, that didn't stop Kevin from taking me to Chinatown. We were drenched but it was fun. I saw lots of things to buy but I'll have plenty of time for that. What's there to do in Singapore? Eat, shop, and watch movies. Lots of shopping. There are tons of malls and I've been to several already and will probably be to several more before I leave here. The food is good. I've dined on fish head curry and vegetables, fish balls, lots of soup, and this dish called roti prata. It's like a pancake made of flour, egg, fat, and water and served with curry. It's super good. And surprisingly my stomach has been
Dendrobium Concham x Dendrobium lasianthera
Unique orchid. Who knew there were so many different kinds. a-okay. Mind you I took Dukoral, the travellers diarrhea vaccine. The only thing I really miss food-wise are veggies and fruits. I could go for a salad right now. I have to go buy some lettuce and other stuff because you can't seem to get salads eating out. Well at least the places we all have gone, mostly cafeteria, food court style places.
The Botanical Garden was super nice particularly the Orchid garden with over 1000 species and 2,000 hybrids. I took lots of pictures which you can see on this page. I have yet to go to the zoo and the night safari which is suppose to be pretty cool. It's pretty awesome walking down the street or in malls and seeing ads with Andy Lau!! For those of you who don't know me and my Asian obsession, I have a little thing for Andy Lau. I went to go see One Last Dance with Francis Ng. It was cool to see my fav movie types on the big screen and not some poor quality pirated copy from Toronto. Next on the list of movies to see is Confessions of Pain with Tony Leung!! I'm still waiting to
see Andy Lau on the big screen. Oh ya good times.
Eugene took me to Johor, Malaysia a couple of days ago. His parents have a new house in JB as well which they are still in the process of setting it up. It's a very nice home in a nice area, except the rest of JB, what I saw, wasn't very impressive. Well not impressive in comparison to Singapore. There is quite a difference between the countries which is strange considering the proximity to one another. You cross the border and BAM totally different. And what I mean by different is more dirty, stray dogs running around, older beat up cars on the road, and just plain dirty. Singapore on the other hand is super clean, haven't seen any stray dogs (just 3 cats), all polished clean new cars on the road. During a prata breakfast at some food stall in JB, some local malays were totally starring at me. Normally, back home it doesn't bother me and I just ignore it but here it's different. I feel more self-conscious here. The other day I was walking on the famous Orchard Rd in Singapore and I heard two
Crazy fluff ball
Eugene's dog, Fugo (Japanese for Puffer fish). Chinese guys say "Baat poh" which means bitch. But I later found out from Eugene it also has another meaning depending on the tone, "white girl". So luckily I didn't flip them off or anything like that. I'm sure I'll get more of that as time goes on.
Well that's pretty much it for now. I'm not littering or spitting my gum out on the street so no troubles here......yet😊 I am now trying to figure out where I will be heading next before I go to Bangkok, either Hong Kong or Australia. Time to do some number crunching. Don't want to blow all my money on the first leg of the trip and not be able to go to China, the main attraction. I'm was thinking of spending Chinese New Year in Singapore with friends (18 Feb) and then head to Bangkok on the 25 Feb. I'll keep y'all posted on anything new and exciting to come.
Lates.
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Jaime
non-member comment
meh
the food court places are called Hawker centres. And yes, Eugene made me try the century egg too...congee..NASTY. Did you notice ENTIRE families on scooters in malaysia? so dangerous... have fun