Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

We left Cambodia and I think it was a nice place to check out once in my life, but I don’t think I would go back again.  It’s a big tourist trap and completely driven by the tourist’s dollars.  Other than the temples, there’s not much else to see there.  So off to our next and final destination.

It’s all true. Singapore is super duper clean.  We snagged a taxi and headed over to Darren’s uncle’s place.  All I could notice was the cleanliness of the city.  The highways and roads were spotless and who would have thought that the sales ban on chewing gum would have such an impact.  Singapore is a modern urban city with little in terms of natural resources, but it makes-up it’s shortcomings with wonderful city planning, impressively enticing tourist attractions, and lots and lots of hawker complexes to get decent food at any hour.

Originally, I was supposed to stay at a hotel in Singapore but the rooms were too small and I ended up crashing at Darren’s uncle’s place, Uncle Ron.  It was a nice comfy place and I basically had my own room and bathroom.  This was awesome cause it saved me some bucks in the process.  The taxi system is pretty cool out there.  If you call from a land line, the automated system recognizes the address that you’re calling from and it gives you an estimated time on when a taxi will arrive.  It’s pretty slick and it’s just another cool example of one small thing that Singapore does right.

We went to the Hotel to meet up with the other late comers (they were on a different flight from Darren, Becky and I) and we headed out to one of the many hawker establishments in town.  These hawker places are like food courts but they are more or less open/outside and covered by a roof.  Most of them are ordered super duper late and some stalls are open 24 hours. Picture Yaohan’s food court, but with an outdoorsy setting to it.  The place we went to was a total turnoff cause each food stall had one or more people soliciting business.  They got into your face and followed you around with their menu.  They were such pathetic naggers and I wanted to tell a few of them to fuck off, but I constrained my manner cause didn’t want to turn into bigger assholes than them.  It turns out that we picked one of the newest hawker joints and their prices sure reflected this; $15 for sweet and sour pork at a late night hawker stand?!?  Come on!!  I settled on some spicy fishball noodles for $4 and we then we called it a night and headed home.

The next day, we met up with the gang to eat stuffed prata for breakfast.  It’s basically a crepe style roti filled with various ingredients.  We ordered about 6 or 7 different kinds; and the ones that came to mind were mushrooms and onions, mutton, and cheese.  It was really good when eaten with the light curry sauce that accompanied it.  I’m surprised this type of food isn’t more common out in Vancouver cause I think it would be quite popular.  Anybody want to start a roti prata place with me?  It’s cheap, easy, tasty, and fast.

Next up we went to Vivo mall.  It was supposed to be the newest and biggest mall in the city and it was nice but it wasn’t that big compared to Mall of Asia in the Philippines or even Metrotown in Burnaby.  The most surprising thing to note was the Gap store there.  I walked in and I was expecting a lot of the similar things that I would see in North America but the prices were outrageous.  Plain crappy looking t-shirts with Gap emblazoned on the front were priced at $40 and jeans were a whopping $110.  That wasn’t a typo, I said $110.  Holy crap!  These were in Singapore dollars but it’s still the equivalent of approximately $30 and $80 respectively.  Are the Gap jeans that expensive in Vancouver or have I really not boughten from them in a long long time and not noticed that they’ve priced themselves into a higher fashion echalon recently?  Anyway, the other store we spent a lot of time in was Osim.  This is the same place as in the lower mainland that sells the massage chairs and other cool relaxation devices.  We must have spent an hour and half at the store, playing with all of their chairs and gadgets.  The staff were perfectly content about letting us try out everything in the store.  I think we pretty much demoed everything from boogie boards, gyrating stools, and massage pens.  In the end, they conned us into buying a noisy eye massaging device that was supposed to help the blood circulation around the eyes.  I think that’s just a fancy way of saying it makes your eyes go red and bloodshot.  I also bought a misting fan and some special insoles that provide some reflexology treatment to my body.  It’s supposed to use pressure points on the feet to provide better comfort/posture to different parts of your body.  Perhaps I wasted $10, but it was my last full day on vacation and I wanted to spend some money.

The rest of the day, we ate the majority of the time.  We had a late 4pm lunch and hunted down some hainanese chicken place.  It was damn good.  A simple meal of boneless chicken, veggies and soup.  3 hours later, we ate at some chinese restaurant called Jumbo.  Uncle Ron treated us and it was also a damn good meal too!  I should also note that restaurants in Singapore generally don’t believe in giving out napkins or tissues.  It’s a weird concept and I don’t really understand it but I suppose it helps lower operational costs.   Anyway, we had two crab dishes and once again, I have to say that crab in Asia is 10x better than Dungeness crab in Vancouver.  My disdain for dungeness is only amplified after sampling the different tasting crab in other parts of the world.  With both crab dishes, I had clutzy accidents which resulted in me splattering myself with sauce from the crab.  Needless to say, by the end of dinner, I had a lot of stains on my shirt.  Embarassing stuff.  It didn’t help that I didn’t have a napkin to wipe the crap off either.  We ended up at Ian’s, who is Darren’s cousin and also Uncle Ron’s son.  He had a small photo studio in his apartment and we clowned around with some photos.  I’ll be sure to get my hands on the photo of JimmyT doing his Star Trek phaser pose.  I will distribute it to the masses cause it’s so dorky and funny.  The look on his face is priceless.  We capped off the night at another hawker complex and ate dessert.  By now, I was just hours away from heading home.

I was going home alone cause I wasn’t able to get on the same flight as anybody else.  That was fine and I was going home via Hong Kong.  I was at the airport and I had a lot of Sing dollars in my wallet so on a (stupid) whim, but I spent $80 on 4 boxes of chocolates and 2 boxes of chili prawn crackers.  So if I give you any chocolates or prawn crackers, just know that they were expensive even if they suck.  My leg of the trip from Singapore to Hong Kong was fine.  It was on Singapore Airlines and it was great.  The flight attendents on Singapore Air are great.  I love their planes and the individual screens and the choice to watch whatever I want.  Unfortunately, my leg of the trip from Hong Kong to Vancouver sucked ass in typical Air Canada fashion.  First of all, our plane was about to pull away and then it stopped cause they discovered some undisclosed ‘problem’.  It took them over an hour to fix the problem and after they resolved that issue, they needed to top up on gas because they had burned off too much in the hour and half that we were sitting on the tarmac.  The whole time we sat there, the baby sitting in the row in front of me was crying the whole time.  You could tell that everyone nearby was agitated and annoyed by the long delay and the relentless wailing of the baby didn’t help the situation.  I also ended up sitting next to this old chinese guy who had never gone to Canada and his knowledge of English was non-existent.  I should have just pretended that I didn’t know any Chinese but I let him know that I knew a little and that was my first mistake.  The rest of the flight he was asking me questions and I played translator for him throughout the 12 hour journey.  I was nice enough to help him with his forms and his meal selections and he thanked me by bumping me throughout the flight, yawning out loud (I’ll give you a demo of it the next time I see you), fumbling with his headset, and by talking to me closely with his bad breath.  Lucky me!!!  12 hours of that horror.  Awesome!  I guess I have more patience and tolerance that I thought I did.

Anyway, that was it.  I didn’t get hassled at customs and I was out in a jiffy.  My dad picked me up and the gig was over.  Crap!  I miss vacation already.  I’ll close this off with great memories with some great friends.  This trip was a lot more fun than I expected and I think I may go back to Asia in 2008.  Or I hope I win the lotto this week and then I’ll continue my travelling stories sooner than later.  Until then, my escapades are on hold.  I hope you enjoyed all of this and thanks for reading.  Cya at the next social event!

~Anthony