Singapore - Bhugis junction again , virtualand , Changi airport
Langkawi (an island off Malaysia)
Summary : The discovery of a super-arcade makes Steve wonder why he writes summaries in third person , travels to Langkawi island
We got an early start to try and get the most of singapore while we could - a trip out to Bhugis junction mall again for breakfast. I had a rather tasty japanese teriyaki dish , fried salmon and chicken in a really nice sauce then they pour on some boiling oil sauce stuff onto a special plate on a wooden block and then they serve it to you with rice to take back to your table , meat and sauce still boiling in front of you.
Afterwards we went downstairs and found a DC store , connected to a Tweety store , selling DCuniverse and tweety pie apparrel - everything from superman belt buckles to jewlery to shirts and such , it was pretty cool.
I then noticed an escalator leading downstairs.. we were on the ground floor - I didnt realise up until this point that the mall was actually 5 floors with a basement , a large neon side read Virtualand.
Mum asked whether i knew where the supermarket was in the mall , i told her it was down the escalators , she fell for it.
It was a pretty damn hi-tech arcade , all of the latest games there IIDX16 empress , latest Pop'n'music , drummania and guitarfreaks V6 , bunch of shooting games, Jubeat , slew of linked SF4 machines (lol @ blanka guy taking on all challengers and having 10 wins in a row) and card machines etc.
I played Jubeat for the second time , my first being at the London trocedero when it was on location test - skipped the tutorials and went straight into expert mode , ended up clearing the hardest song in the game with a B. Then tried IIDX16 to see what it was like , the screen was huge , and so was the turntable , easily 1.5x the size of my controller at home and further spaced as well - making TT spins pretty hard to do , failed Captivate2 on hyper (difficulty 9) which was lame. My brother found a machine where there was a large screen at the back of the cabinet and then it would let you throw plastic balls (ball pit balls) at the screen and try and hit targets - which was pretty fun , one of the levels was a streaker on a train and he runs around and opens up his trenchcoat and you have to kill him before time runs out without hitting pedestrians on the train.
From here we went to the airport since it was getting late.
After checking-in etc etc we had some time to burn , i took 30 mins to go to the 'Entertainment Deck' and send an email/update twitter/facebook etc. The Entertainment deck had a small free cinema for watching films , some TV's hooked up to headsets , computers with free internet , some LAN'd PC's with games like HL2 running , a room with Rock Band 2 and all the peripherals set up (with a disco ball and headphones coming from the ceiling and stuff - it looked like a proper recording studio) and then a bunch of 360's and PS3's hooked up to TV's with stuff to play.
Changi airport is supposedly one of the top airports in the world and though i didnt see it , i learned later in the day that on the top floor there is even a swimming pool...
We took the plane from Singapore to Langkawi , Chicken and rice meal on the plane even though it was only about an 1hr 30mins trip. We began exiting the plane.. I assume most of you have travelled before - the plane door connects to a bridge tunnel and you go straight into the airport...
Our plane had landed, and a staircase had been connected , we got out and had to walk across the airport runway to get to the actual airport itself , probably the closest any normal person will ever get to a commercial plane.
Got heatscanned at the airport for HN1 virus then exited, dad went to rent a car to use - meanwhile i took a picture of the cute polis car
Cant really imagine getting chased along the motorway by that thing.
In case you hadn't guessed...
(Airport Toilet)
Langkawi island is pretty undeveloped, Its pretty third world with most of the stall being outdoor with no air-conditioning , open sewers here and there , dirt pavements... and so on.
Our hotel here is pretty bad , huge room and bed , but slightly dirty looking covers , bad air-conditioning and a ceiling fan which appears to be connected to the ceiling via a half eaten Cheesestring. It started raining pretty bad at this point so we hung out in the hotel room for a while - i played some PSP to pass the time (Star Ocean : First Departure , im about 5 hrs in)
Went to visit a family friend who was also on holiday here in Langkawi , their hotel is about tenfold nicer than ours , automated air-con , ceiling fan attached to the ceiling via adamantium.. etc etc.
We went for dinner at a place near their's that my dad had heard about on the internet, we ordered a pretty grand meal - the largest surprise being the Tiger Prawns. We each had 1 , since they were pretty expensive.
Its sort of hard to distinguish from the picture and it sort of looks like KFC actually , but its HUGE (compare it with the spoon , which is a tablespoon) and covered in a sweetish flakey crispy layer, when the head and tail has been removed the actual prawn meat is easily larger than the mass of a typical fist , it was ridiculous - i didnt even know prawns that big could exist , it was about the size of a lobster. I also forgot to mention our group of 6 and one other couple were the only people in the restaurant all night , lucky for the owners our bill came to about 350 malaysian ringit (hereby shortened to RM350). Exchange rate at the moment is around 1 GBP to 5 RM fyi.
Thats about it for today , some form of cable car ride is scheduled for tomorrow i believe?
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