Malaysia/Singapore Day 4 - The Singapore to Langkawi Effect

July 21st
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?

Malaysia/Singapore Day 3 - Vivocity Singapore

July 20th
Singapore - Harborfront , VivoCity shopping plaza , Sentosa Island
Summary : Steve visits probably the largest shopping complex ever then takes a cable car to a crazy island to ride a segway

The day began at 9am ,we left the hotel and went straight for the MRT (what they call the metro system here) , $1.30 and a few stops and line changes later we were at 'Harborfront' , the location of one of the largest shopping plaza's in Singapore , so big they called it VivoCity and this place really is absolutely giant - walking from one side to the other could easily take about 10 minutes and its got somewhat of a honeycomb layout to it , and its attached to 'Harborfront center' , another shopping plaza.

We began by going upstairs to the top floor to look at the prices for the monorail to Sentosa Island (sort of like a pay as you go theme park if you will) and then (of course) to eat.

The food court was huge , as to be expected from a giant shopping mall. It was really nicely decorated , in an old china sort of style and with all of the stalls looking like they were put together with whatever materials they could get their hands on.



It was sort of a brunch sorta deal and majority of the stalls were still setting up - I decided on 'Chau Kway Teiu' or something like that , essentially HoFun noodles fried in some sauce with some clams and veg. I approached the shopkeeper , whom i soon found out spoke pretty much no english whatsoever and only spoke mandarin.
"Chau kway teiu please" (in cantonese)
which was quickly responded to by "kwei teiu nmmmaaahhh?!"
I nodded.
"chiilliiii mmmaaahhh?!?"
I panicked and said yes.
Fuck! i thought to myself. Generally speaking , most dishes you order here with an exotic name are already spicy to begin with , when they ask if you want Chilli's it is more like they're asking "do you want EXTRA chillis on top of your dish we fried in chilli oil and garnished with chilli seeds?"
The guy then started exploding and shouting all sorts of stuff at me and holding up random leaf boats he had by the counter. I didn't have a clue what he was on about , my mum cut in from behind and asked for medium for me (she was in the middle of ordering at the stall next to me apparently).

<Insert small image 031>

From here we went to enquire about the tickets to sentosa island , $60 for package A - whatever that was , we decided to get there first and then decide (you pay to travel there by monorail/cable car and then all the attractions can be paid for there)

(oh also. the food court is at the top floor of the mall , looking down one could see....)


We headed for the cable car station , which it turned out was through the mall and then through the other mall and then outside past some office buildings and up to the 15th floor.
And then off to the island we went , by glass bottomed cable car :X
Vertigo was not the word when the cable car floated out of the 15th floor of that office building and one could see all the way down through the floor to the people walking around.

And so , we floated towards Sentosa Island (id also like to mention it was like 34 degrees now)


Once on the island and after having a little walk around and such , i encouraged the parents to go onto the 'Luge and skyride' , essentially a half go-kart half toboggan thing which rolls down a hill and then you get a ski-lift back up to the top. It was awesome fun , they go surprisingly fast downhill - ignoring the huge BRAKE NOW signs and doing racing lines round the hill's hairpin turns was great fun too.
The chairlift took us all the way back up, which was apparently quite a ways because it took what seemed like forever (it may have seemed longer because the sun was making sweat drip off my nose)



We took a break in one of the nearby cafes to cool off , air-con is a true blessing in countries like these. A decision to head to the 'Underwater adventure' thing - we hopped on one of the many free shuttle buses after being pointed in the right direction by an old worker woman sweeping up rubbish (probably in her 80's or so). The underwater adventure was sort of like sea world , with many of the same creatures and such - however here they seemed to like to promote touching , with open top pools with fish , rays and small sharks to 'pet'.
Even one of the tall fish tanks had a hole in the side which essentially allowed you to stick your hand in at a downward angle to touch the fish.
The finale of the exhibit was a overhead glass tunnel thing with a moving floor which slowly pushes you along whilst fish swim overhead/around you


its a shame they didnt go the extra mile and put in a glass bottom as well , that would be immense.

Another shuttle bus and 20 minutes later and we had arrived at one of the island's beaches , it stretched into the distance and was bordered by trees - much like one of those pictures you might see in a holiday magazine. The sun was blazing still but had calmed down a bit since earlier and was now probably around 33 degrees - the heat seemed more bareable on the beach though since it gave me the chance to take my shirt off.



We stuck around to watch a dolphin show , which was okay i guess but to be honest once you've seen the shows at Seaworld Orlando a few dolphins diving out of the water is kind of ordinary.

A bus took us back to the monorail entrance where we was going to head back to VivoCity when i spotted a banner with Jackie Chan riding a segway with his trademark teethy grin.
Now im a pretty happy guy on holiday but i cant really top Jackie chan's teethy grin.
The offer was $10 (£5 or so?) for 'training' and a ride round the course - on a segway.
Ive always wanted to try riding a segway , it doesent seem to make any sense - how does it balance like that? how do you go faster? how do you turn? The money was worth it if only just to figure out how to control it.
Fair wait for in the queue and then we got our Segway 'training'
"okay , stand." he gestured at the segway he was holding upright
I stood on the segway
"lean forward is go forward , you try."
I leant forwards and nearly shat myself when the 2 wheeled thing jolted forwards with all the grace of the incredible hulk trying to do figure skating.
"okay. lean backward is stop , you try."
I leant forwards to start moving then leant back to try and stop - human nature practically forces the body to panic when you lean back and the thing you're standing on starts to lean back with you, the segway jolted to a stop , i leant forwards to stop myself from falling back , it started moving again , i leant back to try and stop it again and it stopped... then started reversing at an alarming speed.
"lean to steer ok." - i tried , it worked!
"ok you practice then go round the track ok" , the assistant had clearly had enough.
A few rounds in the practice area and i was off on the course , at some point i managed to grasp the concept pretty well and started speeding up - getting overconfident i started trying to do slalom along the dirt track - segway does not appreciate slalom - I crashed into a tree.
A little later down the track whilst doing donuts round some randomly placed black stones on the grass (trying to get the most of my $10) the segway starts making a loud siren noise - the light on the machine was flashing red... what the hell did i do?!
I jump off the segway for a few seconds and the siren stops.. i let go of the handle expecting it to self right itself and all that - it flopped to the floor. uh oh. i think i just broke a segway by being too awesome for it.
An assistant appeared out of nowhere and was like "ah this one out of batteries i think sorry lah wait i get another ok?" and dashed off.

All the people i overtook earlier passed by me , i took a picture of them


The guy came back with another segway and i polished off the rest of the track , the finish area was in sight... when the old guy in front whom I had already passed once on the way somehow managed to crash into a tree , i tried to evade around him - he reversed and into my way.
Brakes are not the segway's strong point , i crashed again - at pretty high speed too.
<CIMG 2552> (dont have this camera with me atm)
(see old guy behind the tree? he's about to get crashed the fuck into.)

Took the monorail back to vivocity where we had dinner , I got to try a Deer meat dumpling , it tasted like pork and beef put together and was really soft - thats one more off my list of animals to eat. Dinner was hofun in soup with crispy chicken and some Rice with chicken and chinese sausage cooked in a claypot with watermelon juice for a drink.



Thats pretty much it for today , we walked around the plaza some more and looked at the crazy shops (there was a National geographic shop which had a box in where you'd pay $1 and you can go in and the box is at -4 degrees celcius and has a giant fun to give a chill factor of around -12 degrees or so - my brother had a go but i didnt really fancy it). Also an electronics shop which had lots of consoles and stuff laid out , held a PS3 controller for the first time - really light and L2/R2 are really weird.
Got a taxi home to the hotel and spent the last hour or so writing this.

We're checking out tomorrow and then going to the airport to catch a plane to Langkawi i believe so this is pretty much it for Singapore coverage...

Malaysia/Singapore Day 2 - Shopping in Singapore

July 19th
Singapore - shopping districts , riverside , tourist hotspots
Summary : Huge shopping and tourist site-seeing day out , with most of the shopping thrown in just to avoid the insane hot weather.

Woke up at 4am , i can only assume due to timezone shifts and such because apparently my parents woke up at a similar time and couldnt get back to sleep. Went back to sleep and woke up at a slightly more reasonable 8am.

We walked to 'Bhugis Junction' , a 4 story mall nearby to our hotel. We went to basement level as we heard food was to be found there , and we were hungry again (this is a common occurence in this blog i would like to point out now , Singapore/Malaysia/Asia has a shitton of food shops everywhere - for example , this 4 story mall has 3 floors and 1 basement , basement is full of snacks/desserts stalls , 3rd floor is restaurants , 4th floor is food court. Overkill? well.. it was all full today...) Half the shops down in the basement were still opening but we managed to find some nice stalls , I bought some BBQ chicken satay sticks , a 'pork floss bun' , a 'mango snowdrop cake' and some fresh Soymilk for around $6 - the exchange rate of GBP to Singapore Dollars at the time of writing is around 2.3 - so somewhere between cheap and normal price for food here.
Sorry for lack of food pictures, i'll try to remember from now on.

From here we went into Bhugis street market , a very large covered market area selling all sorts , our aim at this point was to head to Chinatown.
We eventually discovered a metro station, the metro here is pretty advanced , much like the metro in HongKong. They use a similar card system to the oyster card , however they also use the same cards for single trips - but with a $1 deposit. So if you dont have their metro card and just want a single to another station , press the buttons on the machine and then it'll write onto a temporary oyster card for you to scan on your journey - you then return the card to a machine and it'll take it back and give you back your $1 - odd system.
Other noteworthy things other than the general spotlessness of the place is they have doors on their platform which only open when the train is at the station - i guess to prevent people from falling in or trying to commit suicide. The train carriages are also almost double the width of ours and are all connected at the hinges (like the long connected london buses) so you can stand at one end of the train and potentially see and walk all the way down to the other end.


We arrived at Chinatown , essentially a mecca for tourists - and it shows , majority of the stalls here seemed to be trinkets , souvineers , suit tailoring shops (its cheaper here) and stuff like fake jewlery and that. It was very pretty and well decorated though , and at least they had the useful shops around too such as ice drinks and such.
Our exploration took us to a large buddhist temple in the middle of chinatown in the form of a huge pagoda.



The walls of the room was decorated in statues , we suspect each containing the ashes of a person , large deity statues at the middle of the room and even a real monk at the front blessing people. My picture doesent do it any justice, really a beautiful serene room.

Upon leaving , we tried seeking some shelter from the relentless heat , we wondered into a multi storey market sort of place , the bottom floor was a huge market selling fresh food - everything from vegetables to exotic fruits to dried fruits/veg/herbs to meat to live fish to... live frogs, crabs and tortoises! I say that like it was a good thing , dozens of frogs living on top of each other in a small box partially submerged in water and with a plastic net over the top to prevent them from escaping was more the case , the turtles were in giant metal cages at the side of the stall.
Despite having eaten frogs legs before , and would be willing to eat turtle if given the choice - i did feel sorry for the poor things. A crab managed to escape in front of us, i imagined it being like some form of finding nemo scenario - it was quickly foiled when the shopkeeper discovered.... she took her tongs and grabbed it and threw it back in the box with the other crabs. ruthless.

We decided we would head to 'Clarke Quay' , a riverside area with lots of shops and such.
Our poor navigation led us to an old style indoor mall full of shops selling... action figures. Yup. Action figures , toys , models all that stuff - transformers and ultraman seemed most common but obviously some ecchi models and stuff around as well.
Left that mall and started heading in a random direction , we found a rather unique looking building and mum tried taking a picture of it - as soon as the camera clicked a security man came running out and said no taking pictures whilst on the grounds of the building - and pointed out that we were walking on their outside tiles and hence 'in' the building , crazy guy.

We found ourselves in Clarke Quay central eventually , another mall like place with about 5 floors.
We sampled one of their unique franchises 'Ka yun kaya toast' , essentially a shop which specializes in selling toast with kaya (kaya is a coconut based kind of jam , tastes like honey i guess?) , i had some french toast and normal toast (and an iced lemon tea on the side), both came with kaya and both rather tasty.
Downstairs at the basement floor of the mall was ... more food stalls - mum ended up buying a dish of mixed fruits.
One of the stalls here sold a rather unusual thing which we also noticed at the market...



Im not sure why the chicken is black tbh , dad thinks its just like that - much like how there are black people and white people , but i dunno... Cant imagine it being very nice to eat , skin would be rather thick etc etc.

We headed outside to the actual Clarke Quay area , a river lay in the middle with restaurants along both sides as far as the eye could see (well.. until the river went round the corner , i dont have xray vision after all.). Walked around for a while , before the temperature began to get to us,



im not sure exactly how hot it was out today - the clouds were overhead and the sun was just shining through it , it felt around 34 degrees in the shade perhaps , i was in shorts and a small shirt and could go from dry to sweaty in about half a minute after stepping outside from a mall.
As such - we headed back to the central mall , retreating to the comfort of the air conditioning.
A short walk took us from the mall to the metro again


Artsy shot get!

We went to see the Merlion , thats Mer-Lion (a Lion which is half mermaid , why? i dont know. ) , Singapore's landmark - although certainly smaller than big ben/eiffel tower
Its a large sculpted thing which sits out in the river and shoots water out of its mouth , its a pretty big deal here and they stick its icon on everything.
From here we flagged a taxi back to the hotel , everyone needed a rest as it was now around 6pm and we had been out since around 10am.

Brother went out for a swim so it was just me in the room , took the opportunity to shower and then do some cartwheels around the room naked and jump on the bed some (with the curtains wide open, surely nobody can see me on the 7th floor).

We went to the Bhugis junction again , this time to the 4th floor to try the food court - i had a japanese Tempura with Soba thing which was alright although a little plain , mango pudding for dessert.
Had a little look around the shops , there was some sort of asian celebrity thing going on for TVB (a chinese channel) No idea who they were but there was a lot of screaming and cameras so i followed suit.



We then went back to the basement floor for some more dessert , we each got an ice cream mochi (wiki mochi if you dont know what it is , i cant explain it.) A shop specializing in ice cream filled mochi was here and oh did it have selection , shame they were $2 each and pretty smallish (£1 for an ice cream you could eat in 2 bites)



It was deicious but over way too soon , probably not really worth $2 either.

Our final stop of the day was to Bhugis village , a 7 story plaza place (2 stories of food places of course , asians love their food.). There was a large arcade on the 6th floor , it was really advanced, they had some crazy looking pogo game and lots of fighting game cabinets , linked SF4 / GGX / Blazblue / KOFXIII cabs (linked as in you can sit opposite some guy playing SF4 , and fight him.) , there was also some card game called eternal.. something , where you move physical cards onto a lower screen - it somehow reads the card you placed and interprets it onto the game , you can then move the cards RTS style and fight with against the computer or another player and get experience , which is saved somehow - the machines are online as well so i assume you can even play someone in another arcade which is pretty sweet.
The final floor which we didnt go to (but i wish we did now) is supposedly the largest LAN gaming centre in Singapore.
Oh. on the way back to the hotel we saw this -


Click to enlarge i hope.

A whole fried duck head? duck tongues? pig tails? Yum!

[ Have typed up 17th to 19th in one sitting , took about an hour and a half apparently. My arms hurt a little from typing on this laptop. Just about to hit midnight on the 19th so i guess i'll go to sleep now as i think we're doing a big day tomorrow. - Hope i actually get to upload this stuff soon as the internet in the hotel is charged pretty extortionately. I also think i'll start using my mums camera and then somehow transferring the pictures over as my phone camera has about a 50:50 ratio of good:blur pictures which is upsetting. Goodnight! ]

Malaysia/Singapore Day 1 - Arrival in Singapore , ripped off by timezones

July 18th
Somewhere over the ocean / Kuala Lumpur Airport (Malaysia) / Changi Airport (Singapore)
Summary : Tired jetlagged Steve arrives in Singapore at last , is amazed at the state of the city and the beauty of its design.

We arrived in Kuala lumpur airport , only to have to shop and wait around until our plane for Singapore. Waited around 2 hours or so in the airport then got on the plane , small plane this time (boeing 737) , the flight was only about an hour thank fuck.



Touchdown in Changi Airport in Singapore , please no more aeroplanes i thought to myself.
Collected baggage and then took a taxi to our hotel - the 'Golden landmark hotel' , fancy name and decor for sure , shame our beds are made out of wood and stones - we do however have a very nice panorama room leading out onto the city.


After unloading the luggage , having a shower and brushing teeth (much needed after what was essentially 40 something hours of travelling - including timezone shifts of course) we decided to go out and explore abit.

It was now around 10pm on Saturday , and we were in Singapore.. and hungry
Our first road took us to an alleyway full of shisha pipes and arabs , not sure whose idea it was to look for food was down a dodgy looking alley full of arabs...
After asking around (my dad speaks some Mandarin thankfully) , we managed to find some food stalls - this is probably the only time we had trouble finding open food stalls because since then its been absolutely everywhere - guess it just shows you need to know where to look for this sort of thing.



We ended up in some sort of Dessert cafe place which also served food , i had a pot of rice , mushrooms, chicken , preserved sausage and some other stuff. Bought some mountain dew from a nearby 7eleven to take back to the hotel fridge.
The roads here are ridiculously wide and all of the roads seem to be bordered either by shops/malls or canopy trees , useful for blocking out the sun.



The pavements and roads are also relatively spotless , this is most probably due to $1000 fines and such being in place for littering/spitting/dropping gum/vandalism/anything else antisocial - dustbins and recycle bins seem to be scattered everywhere here as well , not even giving you an excuse to litter - which (coming from Essex) is very nice to see.

Malaysia/Singapore Day 0 - The adventure begins!

July 17th
Essex
Summary : The adventure begins!

Our pickup for the airport came at just before 4pm , we loaded up our bags into the large Kia something or other and was driven to Heathrow , we almost always get a driver to take us there as its kinda awkward asking relatives to drive you there , train would be terrible and well... its just easier.
Our driver was a change from the normal one we have when we go on holiday , a tall burly chavlike creature , his music of choice wasn't garage or RnB however , we spent the 2 or so hour car journey listening to some AM station relaying the latest golf information , Tiger woods was on 2 double bogeys last i heard - which is very very rare... apparently. The car journey isnt normally 2 hours btw , usually only takes about an hour and a quarter or something but there was pretty ridiculous jams as we were travelling on
1. A friday
2. Rush Hour
3. The day all the kids break up from school
Feckin' chaos.

After check-in and all that (which went smoothly) , we sat around in the airport - got food and shopped around and such (i decided to invest £2.50 in ear plugs and some wine gums) . The gate took ages to be announced , the board said 'to be announced at 8:45' , we were waiting until about 9:20 or so before it changed.

The plane flight was pretty standard as 13 hour flights go , noteworthy movies on the plane included Hannah Montana the movie , 17 Again , Monsters vs Aliens... and thats it i guess. The whole system was an on-demand system which was pretty awesome - back in my day you'd have to make sure you're awake at the right time and tune into the movie channel or something. There was bejewled and Sudoku on the games too (along with some other popcap games and stuff)
I started by watching some of Hannah Montana the movie , then it started going into horses and stuff so i stopped - i dozed off to sleep at some point 2 hours into the flight.
Upon waking up , there was only 2 hours left of the flight - guess i slept quite a bit of the way which was lucky (thats not to say it was a deep or good sleep , babies crying and the jet engines being right nearby was unsavoury to say the least , god bless £2 earplugs. )
Inflight meals was some chilli beef with rice and a 'Nasi Lemak' - a malaysian dish.