November 5, 2013 – Singapore

With one last day to roam the city I decided to take it easy today. After grabbing a bite to eat at the food stalls I set off on a walking tour of the city. A little history first though. When the British first settled this area, Singapore became a very diverse area with lots of Europeans, Chinese, Malays and Indians. To avoid racial tensions they segregated the population into areas, the biggest ones bring Chinese, Indian and Arabic. Due to this segregation, the populations kept their cultures and developed each part of their city accordingly giving way to a very distinct Chinatown, Indian town, colonial district and Arab area.

The first part of my tour took me through the colonial area where the Europeans and other westerners would have stayed and the building look like exactly that. The famous one is the Raffles hotel (now converted into a shopping district) and it looks very Victorian like. Large cavernous halls with beams decent down And switch back stair cases going up.

After the colonial district I ventured down into little India where again, there is a stark district I’m the air (and not just because of the curry). Hinduism is everywhere along with mosques. Indians restaurants line the streets along with vendors and their wares reflect the culture.

The last part of the tour was Chinatown…which was basically like all the other Chinatowns I’ve been to except this one had a huge monastery.

I then crashed at a cafe and enjoyed the last little bit of warm weather I’ll be seeing in months. I hear it’s minus 5 with snow in Calgary. I leave for my flight tomorrow at 430AM so it’s an early night for me. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog as much as I have writing it. Cheers!

Picture of the Day:

After searching in 4 countries and 7 cities for 23 days, I found my book! (Yes I realize it’s for teens)

November 4, 2013 – Singapore

After another late night that involved the biggest casino I’ve ever seen (they didn’t allow cameras unfortunately) where I won enough money for a couple rounds of drinks, we headed out to Clarke Quay which is one of the bar scenes in Singapore. That translated to another late morning where I dragged myself out of bed at 11AM and got some breakfast at the food market just down the street. There are a few noticeable stands there, one of them serves congee (which I opted for for, it’s easy on the stomach).

I then hit up the island of Santosa, just south of Singapore. Ever been to Disney World? Reminded me of that perfectly. Long streets of shops, a big aquarium, a casino, universal studios and a myriad of smaller activities. The whole island was essentially geared towards tourists. I opted to go to the aquarium which is suppose to be one of the largest in the world. They layout of it is pretty standard aside from the big fish tanks you can walk through via a tube walkway. While they didn’t have any big fish, they had lots of sharks, smaller fish, jelly fish and dolphins. Overall not a bad exhibit but nothing worth going to twice.

After the aquarium I explored the rest of the island. I resisted pushing my luck and going to casino. I was already up and, knowing my luck, would have probably lost money. There are many hotels and shops on the island so I weaves my way through the walkways and paths.

The beaches were on the other side of the island so that’s where I headed. After passing the giant merlion statue I arrived at the beaches. The merlion is the official animal of Singapore and you see statues of it everywhere.

The beaches sucked. The sand was course and the beach small and cramped. When you looked out you had a nice view of the cargo ships and tankers pulling into the harbour.

After a full day of walking around it was time to head back to the hostel to get off my feet. I grabbed a bite to eat at a food court before crashing in bed for the night. Tomorrow is my last day in Singapore and the last day of this trip. I’m planning for a really easy day with a walking tour in the morning followed by some leisure shopping in the afternoon.

Picture of the Day:

I’m not sure how I feel about this one, I still prefer “merry”.

November 3, 2013 – Singapore

After a late night which translated to a late morning, I dragged my sorry ass out of bed and got some breakfast. I went to the hawker food court and felt immediately better after getting some food in me. I then washed yesterday’s stink off and headed off to the Singapore zoo.

The Singapore zoo is like no zoo I’ve seen before. While I still think the San Diego zoo tops it, it has a very different approach in displaying its animals. It’s gone after the open concept with very few exhibits actually having glass or fences separating the people from the animals. For example, the monkeys just had a little moat separating their exhibit from the people and could have easily crossed it (a few of the monkeys would actually just be hanging out on the road right above the people). How they get the animals to stay in their pens I have no idea.

While there were many crazy animals, the main attraction were the white tigers. While white tigers to normally exist (they’re not albino), tigers have a gene in them that actually causes them to be white and have blue eyes.

After spending all afternoon at the zoo, I headed back downtown to grab a bite to eat. I has originally planned on just eating at the hawker centre again but I noticed I was passing one of the nicest malls in Singapore called Ion. So I jumped off the train and grabbed a bite to eat in the food court before doing a little shopping. Strangely enough, as far as shopping goes, I think Malaysia is better than Singapore. The mall itself is a crazy design (seems to be the trend here). The buildings are giant glass balls with TVs all along the outside. Half the mall is also underground and is connected right to the train station.

Today is going to be a tame night (is the plan anyways). Tomorrow I’m planning to hit up an island just south of Singapore where their suppose to have a really cool marina. Oh and beaches. I’m looking forward to beaches.

November 2, 2013 – Singapore

After one final meal in Kuching, I bid Malaysia farewell and I jumped in a plane to Singapore. As soon as I stepped out of the plane you could notice the difference between Singapore and the rest of SE Asia. This little island has beaten the odds and become a thriving and vibrant developed country in a pretty rough around the edges SE Asia. As soon as you step off the plane, you’re not sure if you’re in a airport or mall.

I checked into my hostel and met some guys that were staying in the same room as me, a Dutch, a German and a Filipino. Ironically enough we were all engineers so we bonded immediately (over many nerdy jokes). We decided to head to Marina Bay Sands hotel that afternoon so that gave me a little time to walk around Chinatown (where my hostel is). They have a hawker (street food vendors) here as well but it’s much more organized than in the other countries.

After grabbing a bite to eat I met up with the other guys and we trained it to Marina Bay Sands hotel. The building is insane. It’s 3 towers (58 floors I think) with a large deck connecting the towers on top. At the top there’s a bar and the famous infinity pool. Unfortunately you need to be a hotel guest (to the tune of $700/night) to swim in the pool so we decided beer would be a better investment and hung out at the bar for a bit.

We then went down into the Marina Bay mall that’s attached to the hotel and grabbed a bite to eat at the food court. The food courts here are like nothing in North America. You don’t have the big chain restaurants like McDonald’s and subway. Instead, it’s set up like a cafeteria and each restaurant is a different kind of food. This includes Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino BBQ, burgers and everything in between.

By then it was dark outside so we went for a walk through the Gardens by the Bay with the large artificial trees. They were all lit up so it made for a very picturesque scene.

We then headed back up Marina Bay Sands hotel to see the light show down in the bay. The show itself was pretty bad but seeing the city lit up in the night was awesome. After a few more beers we decided since it was Saturday night, we’d go out on the town. The locals kept talking about a club called Zouk so it sounded like a good idea to us. After a short cab ride where our driver explained to us how gum is the worst thing man has invented (chewing gum is illegal in Singapore), we made it to the club and partied the night away.

Daily Extra:
I haven’t cut my hair in 5 months, it’s getting out of control. Oh ya and there’s the Singapore skyline.

Picture of the day:
Marina Bay Sands at night.

November 1, 2013 – Kuching

I decided yesterday that I would go cave exploring in the Fairy Cave. With an early start to the day, I grabbed a quick bite to eat before jumping on a bus to take me to the town of Bau. It’s a small town with not much happening in it but it’s the closest place to catch a cab to the cave. When I got to the cave you have to climb up a staircase to the entrance of the cave, about 20m above the ground, to enter it.

Once I was inside it was a pretty cool sight. It was a big open cavern with vegetation everywhere. Bushes and plants were growing all over the place and the entrance of the cave opened up to the sky so it let light in. There were stairs going up to take you to the top of the cave where it stretches back even further. I strapped on my headlamp and ventured further into the cave. I thought walking through a jungle by myself was creepy but going through a dark cave is even worst. After about 15min of trekking I turned tail and walked back out. A pretty cool experience all together.

After venturing back out, I had planned to get picked up by the cab driver that had taken me there. There was a a catch though, when I asked him if he could come pick me up at 12PM, he gave me some flimsy answer “depends if I’m not driving anyone, if not I’ll come pick you up but if I am I won’t”. Unreliable at best. So while I was sitting there waiting (I was about an hour early) I started chatting with the park staff. I showed her a bunch of pictures from my trip and of Canada. About 15 minutes later she started talking to the other park staff in Malay and after their conversation she said he was going to town and could drop me off at the bus stop on the way. Beauty. Amazing what a smile and other qualities of human decency can get you.

He dropped me off and I grabbed a bite to eat in Bau before walking around for a few hours. There wasn’t much around, just a couple markets and street vendors. So I hopped back on the bus (I swear every time I take the bus they get worst and worst, this one felt like it was going to fall apart). I walked around a mall before heading back to the hostel to rest up before dinner. Not sure where I’m going tonight, it’s raining so probably somewhere close.

Tomorrow I fly to Singapore and I am so excited. I’ve spent the last week trudging through Borneo’s jungles, swamps, caves and scaling it’s mountains and hills. I am ready for the city.

October 31, 2013 – Kuching

It was an early morning today as I had to get down to the orangu tan sanctuary by 9AM to see the feeding. I grabbed a quick bowl of noodles and cha siew (I like the taste of that much better than Alex’s haw siew) and a water and walked to the bus station. After hopping on my bus it was about an hour bus ride to the sanctuary. From there we walked along a pathway to where the wardens office and feeding areas are

At almost 9AM on the dot, you could hear the sound of branches cracking and leaves rustling as the orangu tans swung their way through the trees to the feeding pits. They eventually slid down and ate the fruit. A couple brave ones even walked around the pathway, only a couple metres from the people. We ventured to a few more feeding pits deeper into the jungle before the orangu tans disappeared back into the jungle.

After returning to town I grabbed a quick bite to eat at a food market and then went to the bus station to figure out my route to the crocodile farm. The lady at the counter mentioned the next feeding time was 3PM. Since it was only 12PM, I figured a good way to beat the heat was to duck into a Starbucks and wait out the hottest part of the day with an ice coffee. I then jumped on my bus and made my way on the 1.5 hour ride to Jong’s Crocodile Farm. The farm doubled as a zoo with many types of animals there. However, the vast majority of them were the huge salt water crocodiles. He had 4 huge pools with 8+ crocodiles in each one. The main attraction was when they would string food up on a line about 1m above the water and the crocodiles would launch themselves up into the air and snatch the food away.

The bus ride back from the crocodile farm was an adventure in itself. Just as I was exiting the farm you could hear the thunder overhead and see the rain clouds coming in (and there’s no such thing as a light shower here) so I asked the lady where the closest bus stop was. Ah wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. First a little background on the bus system here. There are no assigned bus stops here. There are stops but to get on the bus you have to stand at these stations and flag the bus down before it passes you. This means, as the bus is coming at you, you have to read the bus sign quickly to make sure it’s the one you want and flag it down before it zips by you. Getting off the bus is even more chaotic. It seems like whenever you want or get off you hit the buzzard and the guy opens the door wherever he is (even if it’s on a busy highway) and you jump off right there. So I’m standing at one of these stops with buses flying by me when it begins to pour. I decide I’m flagging down the next bus and jumping on it. I finally flag a bus down and I walk up to the bus driver and say “Kuching city centre?”. There’s a moment of silence where he looked confused (which shakes my confidence a bit) but says yes and nods. I figure thats good enough for me and I take a seat. After a nervous 25 minutes where we’re driving through areas I don’t recognize at all from my ride out the farm, we eventually hit the main highway back to Kuching and make it back to the station. The bus itself was a piece of crap. Everything was shaking, the inside was wet because the windows didn’t close properly and looked like the old school buses from my elementary days. At least I know where all our old cheese wagons go now.

After getting back I’m planning on hitting up the top spot food court again for more seafood. As it’s October 31, I think there’s a Halloween party in the bar underneath it (no doubt for North Americans because no one else celebrates it) so I might check that out with a Dutch guy I met yesterday. Tomorrow I’m either cave exploring or going to another national park.

Daily Extra:

Good to see the Kuching branch of the family pharmacy is going strong.

Daily Double?!? I spoil you guys:
Probably the worst time to drive is when school ends (it seems like it’s at 1PM here). When parents go to pick their kids up they’ll drive their car in front of the school and just throw it in park wherever it might be . They then leave their car, even if it’s in the middle of the road.

October 30, 2013 – Kuching

I grabbed some congee from a restaurant not far from my hostel and then proceeded to head straight to the bus station. There are no roads to the actual nature reserve so to get to it, you have to bus to Bako bazaar and then take a boat 20 minutes down the river to the park headquarters. After arriving at bazaar, I joined forces with a couple from Germany and we took a boat down the river to the park HQ.

While there are many animals and just about every vegetation on Borneo that reside in the park, the stars of the show are the Proboscis monkeys. You navigate through the park using its system of trails which vary in difficulty and length. Feeling a little less than ambitious, the first one I took was a short one and was known for its monkey spottings. While not overly difficult (although I don’t think anything will feel difficult after mount Kinabalu), the trail was not as easy as I had hoped. You could hardly call it a dirt path as there were roots, branches, rocks and other debris covering the trail. It really felt like you were in the jungle. The noise was constant too. There were always crickets chirping, birds screeching and insects buzzing all around you. Also, as if Malaysia isn’t hot and humid enough, the tree canopy traps the heat and moisture in making you sweat even more than normal (when I showed up at the park HQ for lunch, just about everyone had looked like they took a dip in the ocean with their shirts on). The trail ended at a beach with a hut where I kicked back and relaxed for a little bit before heading back to HQ.

The second trail I went on was through a mangrove. It wasn’t the rain season so it was about as dry as it was ever going to be. That being said, the ground was still muck and you had to trudge your way through it.

The third trail was a big loop and the first half kilometre was on an old wooden walkway about a foot off the jungle floor. After the walkway ended the terrain got pretty rough so I decided to turn back as I had to meet the German couple back at the boat so we’d make it back at the bazaar in time to catch the last bus back to Kuching.

Smelling like sweat, sunscreen and mosquito repellent, I headed back to the hostel to shower up before going back to the Top Spot food court for round 2. I’m getting the crayfish tonight. Tomorrow I head to another park to hangout with some orangu tans before heading to a crocodile farm.

Daily Extra: Animal Sightings

Bearded Pig

Macaques (these guys are little devils)

Proboscis Monkey

October 29, 2013 – Kuching

I woke up and went about deciding how I wanted to spend my next few days in Kuching. The thing to do around Kuching is to go see the (jungle) world heritage sites all around the city. I had a bit of a late start to the morning and limited me to which parks I could go to that day so I decided to take it easy and explore Kuching instead. This wasn’t such a bad idea as my legs were still pretty stiff which would have made trekking through dense Borneo jungle a challenge.

After working out my schedule, I took a walk down to Chinatown and found me a great noodle soup in a little hole in the wall of a restaurant. The staff was friendly and the food was good so I’ll probably be back there for a late night snack.

I then walked down the waterfront promenade. Like most of the waterfront promenades I’ve seen in SE Asia, the water was murky and there were food stands set up all along the pathway. It was nice to get out though and get a little bit of a feel to the city.

After my walk, I headed down to the Top Spot food court (recommended by both my tour book and Alex) which is situated on the sixth floor of a parkade. The layout of the food court has all the restaurants lining the outside with tables placed on the inside. The main dishes are all fresh seafood (which looks to be the catch of the day) ranging from an assortment of fish to giant crayfish. I ordered the red snapper and some kind of green vegetable. That, combined with the sweet chilli sauce proved to be an awesome combo.

After one last stroll through Chinatown I settled in for the night. The next day I’ll be getting up early to go see the Bako Nature Reserve.

A Backpacker’s Diary: I finally did laundry today. I had been holding off on it but after climbing Mount Kinabalu my bag started to smell like sweat and body odour. When the lady gave me my bag of clean laundry back I exclaimed “Yes! My laundry is done!” And took a big whiff of the bag. She laughed and mentioned it must had been awhile since my last load (which it had). I simply replied “No one should ever be this excited for clean underwear”.

October 28, 2013 – Kota Kinabalu

I woke up this morning with a stiff pair a legs and decided today wouldn’t be too ambitious of a day. I packed my things for the third last time (the only annoying thing about backpacking around) and stored it away in the lockers because my flight to Kuching wouldn’t be until 745PM.

I rolled out and went to go foraging for food. I remembered there was this little restaurant just down the block that was very popular the night before so I sat down and ordered myself their most popular dish. When the dish came, I recognized it from my tour book (albeit from the Singapore section) as a simple chicken, cucumber, chicken broth and rice meal. However, like all the simple dishes out here, it had great flavour and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

The rest of the was spent leisurely walking around town (at a very slow pace), enjoying the weather and hanging out on the waterfront promenade. The weather was nice and it was the first sunny day I’d seen on 4 days.

After taking it easy all afternoon, I grabbed a bite to eat at the place I had ate it that first night I rolled into town. It’s owned by a old Chinese lady and she served up a mean cream based noodle soup.

After dinner I hopped on a plane and headed to Kuching on the west side of Borneo. I’ll be spending the next couple days there exploring the various nature reserves and indulging in the awesome Sarawak food.

October 27, 2013 – Kota Kinabalu

Everyone had gone to bed at 7PM yesterday to be set and ready to go by 3AM. We scarfed down a light breakfast and then set out on the trail with my guide. I’ve never had altitude sickness before but I woke up with a slight headache and a loss of appetite and is the only thing I could attribute it to. The poor girls in the room next to me were throwing up something fierce so I suppose it could always be worst.

It began with a 20min stair climb all the to the base of a jungle where we proceeded to climb over rock and tree for another 20min. We finally reached the part where vegetation ceased to grow and it was all bare rock. I would call this the beginning of the 3 difficulty and the most exhaustive. There were ropes anchored into the wall and we basically had to shimmy our way across a rock face on a small ledge for about 200m (this was done zig zagging up the rock face as it wasn’t just one continuous ledge, almost like switch backs). Then, still hanging onto the rope, climb up and over the rock face to more walkable ground (about a 45 degree inclination) and then make our way up that for about 1.5km. Ah yes, and the whole thing was done in pitch black with only a headlamp lighting the way.

When I finally cleared the steep portion, it was much more doable terrain and I probably would have been in better shape had I been able to breath. At this point, we were nearing the 3800m+ altitude mark and it was getting increasingly harder to breath as the air was thinning out. Let me tell you, nothing is more freaky than trying to suck in air that’s not there. Breaks went from every 200m to every 100m to every 20 steps etc., and it was taking longer and longer for me to recover.

The last 200m is essentially a scamper up a cliff, grabbing onto any rock and crevice you can reach to pull yourself up, all while trying to breath and not stumble from the dizziness (whether that was the altitude or lack of oxygen I wasn’t sure). HOWEVER, the summit? Amazing.

After enjoying the moment of my latest conquest (and what a conquest it was) and snapping a couple pictures we headed back down. I had beat out most of the people and the peak was just starting to get busy as I was leaving. The climb down? So much easier. The hardest part was trying to keep my jello legs from collapsing on themselves with every step I took downwards. We cleared the climb down in just over 3 hours.

Just to put things in perspective on how fit some of these people are, I was always in the top 5% in my entire group for time and it took me a total of 8 hours and 57 minutes to climb and descend Mount Kinabalu. The men’s record going up and down? 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Trophy Picture:

Mount Kinabalu Confessionals:
Kilometre 0-2: This ain’t so bad, I’m a trekking machine. Time to take this mountain the the cleaners!
Kilometre 2-3: Okay, it’s getting a little tough but this ain’t my first rodeo. I live next to the Rocky Mountains, this ain’t no big deal.
Kilometre 4-6: Oh my god where is that lodge. I can’t even look up the trail anymore because all I see are more steps. Just look down Matt, one step at a time.
*Sleep while listening to girls next door puke*
Kilometre 6: Alright mountain bring it! I’m all rested and ready to go
Kilometre 6.1: Well I’m pooped.
Kilometre 6.1-7: I really don’t care how fast we go, as long as I don’t fall off this rope. I guess it was too much to ask for a harness. I also really wish I could see more than 2m in front of me.
Kilometre 7-8.5: Getting harder to breath… Alright Matt, we’ll take a break after 30 steps, okay 20 steps, okay 10…nope this is happening now.
Kilometre 8.5-8.7: WHO DOES THIS FOR FUN? WHY DID I PAY FOR THIS?
Summit: *Speechless*
Kilometre 8.7-0: Alright gravity, do your thing.