After our marathon day in KL, normally we would take it easy for a day. But seeing as it was my birthday, we couldn’t just lay around all day. In the morning we made an effort to be more respectable tourists and went to see some of the sights. There was a big square with some museums and government buildings surrounding it. That kept us busy for about half an hour. After that, KL’s main draws are some rainforest (seen it), a big cave (seen it), and the Petronas Towers, which we somehow hadn’t seen the day before so we headed there. The Petronas Towers were once the tallest buildings in the world, but now eclipsed by something in Dubai. I remember them from some movie - maybe James Bond or Mission Impossible or something like that. They are pretty much as spectacular as you’d expect. We went and took our touristy photos, but I knew they really would shine, pun intended, at night, so we headed underneath for… wait for it… a big shopping mall. Hey, it’s my birthday so I can do what I want. We spent the day doing what we normally do in Asian malls - sampling lots of food, people-watching, and sometimes just a little shopping. The Avengers had just come out so we killed some time and went to watch that. We’re not into our superhero movies but thought it was good. The rest of the audience ate it up and would laugh histerically at every joke, the cheesier the better. Either they all know English or the person who did the subtitles worked wonders with the timing.
I normally don’t like to do much for my birthday, but used the excuse for us to visit a fancy rooftop bar at a nearby hotel for some amazing views of the Petronas Towers. We had our one drink and ordered up some nachos (why? I don’t know, maybe desperation? Mexican food is, no matter how much I hope it is, never good in Asia).
KL was awesome. Sort of in-between Bangkok and Singapore, though a lot closer to Bangkok. Bangkok is a bit cheaper, but the main thing it has going for it is it’s food - Malay food is pretty good but it’s nowhere as good as Thai! So we kept moving. It’s about time for another respite from the heat - this time to Cameron Highlands. Steph heard there’s tea plantations and it’s where Jim Thompson mysteriously disappeared - hey, let’s go there!
We wanted to let you know what our first full day was like in Kuala Lumpur. This isn’t a typical day in an Asian city for us by any means, but it does illustrate what kind of crazy stuff you can get up to if you’re not merely sightseeing. I’m not sure how this will turn out - it may be kind of like one long run-on sentence, but hopefully it reads a bit better than that.
Our hostel offers free breakfast on their roof, so that’s how we started the day. Toast with jam and tea or coffee. You can just see the Petronas Towers from here. There isn’t a whole lot of famous stuff to see in KL, aside from said Petronas Towers, so we just started walking and headed in their general direction. We are staying in the Chinatown area of KL and at first glance it looks like there’s lots to do, but nothing is open in the morning so we’ll save this for later. It’s hot in KL, maybe hotter than Singapore. We walk for about 20 minutes and simply can’t take it anymore, so duck into the first mall we see, just to cool off. There is a 7-11 in the mall so we grab a big slurpee and slurp away. Low and behold we’ve stumbled into probably the largest mall in KL - Berjaya Times Square. Time to look around. We spot a Papa John’s pizza, but it’s a bit expensive by SE Asia standards and it was like 9 o’clock, so first we head to Auntie Anne’s pretzels - one cinnamon sugar pretzel, please. Oh my there is a giant Krisby Kreme here. How did we miss it? The standard glazed is still the best doughnut in the business and it tastes just as delicious 5,000 miles from home. The New York Cheesecake flavor wasn’t the best. As we’re letting our morning sugar-rush settle down, we scout out the mall a bit more. There is a giant amusment park on the 5th floor. Steph is excited. In my effort to avoid that, we opt for the indoor archery range. Steph is surprisingly good, if not a bit erratic, and has me beat in our competition before she chokes in the end. Typical Steph. There’s a video arcade next to the archery place, so we stop in for some action. I pride myself in my skill in the basketball-shooting games and made sure I had the record beat (handsomely, I might add), except for the one’s that have obviously been fixed by some lousy cheaters. Plus, you gotta love watching some of these guys kill-it at Dance-Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and all the other nerdy games. I’m not sure why at this point, maybe because she was just so darn excited, but I let Steph talk me into going into the amusement park. It was actually pretty impressive - they had a full size roller coaster, complete with loop-de-loop, lots of other rides that spin you around and upside-down, and even midway games. It wasn’t too expensive and you are allowed to come and go as you please. I’m sold, let’s do it. Steph loved the roller coaster and screamed like a little kid. My favorite was like those big ships that go in big loops. My least favorite was the DNA Mixer, which was a platform that flipped forwards and backwards until you think you’re gonna barf, then does it a few more times. Steph opted out of that one, which quite frankly was a good choice, though I would have loved to see her barf, which she most certainly would have done. After the DNA Mixer I needed a break for a bit, so we took the monorail train over to a different mall, Lot 10, to eat in their food court, which we heard was “amazing.” It was pretty cool - like a clustered maze of food stalls serving mostly Asian food but also some Western as well. Steph went with her Singapore fav - Carrot Cake, the white variety this time (not as good - while I opted for the Chinese beef noodles - basically plain noodles with this slow-cooked beef mince concoction on top. Both were good. Topped it off with a shaved ice dessert with strawberries on top. You gotta be careful with the shaved ice desserts here, as they often include beans and condensed milk on top, but this variety was delicious. After lunch we scoped out Lot 10 a bit, bought a big bag of Tutti Frutti Mentos since we had never heard of this flavor before (as it turns out, for good reason), scoped out the sales at the department store, then headed back towards the amusment park. We kept seeing a coffee shop called Old Town White Coffee all over the place, and Steph said it was famous from around here, so even though we were no more than 200 feet from our last air-conditioning we stopped in for ice coffees. Half the price of Starbucks and probably the best iced coffee I can remember - may have to let Steph stop for coffee breaks more often. On the way back to Times Square we stopped at a big mall dedicated to electronics. It’s crazy there could be this big of a mall strictly for electonics, as there is really only so many cameras and computers on the market, and thus lots of copies of the same store, but the place was packed. We did some browsing but aren’t really in the need for any gadgets at the moment so headed back for more roller coasters. A few more rounds on the rollercoaster and my big flipping ride and we’d had enough of the amusment park. Turns out there are two arcades in this mall, so we went for a few more rounds of basketball as well. We were getting pretty tired at this point, so stopped off at Starbucks for the half-price Frappachino offer they had on at the moment. Steph loved the worker there that stood outside ringing a bell and saying “special discount for you! Half price!” in a very funny accent. We finally left Times Square for the day and walked back over to Chinatown. The Central Market there is pretty cool - a bit touristy but well organized with lots of different types of shops, not just the same few shops over and over again as some markets tend to be. I tried for some of my favorite deep-fried bananas from a dude outside but they were pretty cold by this point and basically not edible. He charged me a ridiculous tourist price too - that’s 66 cents down the toilet! Back in the Market we couldn’t resist the fish spa, where you dip your feet into the aquariums full of little fish, who eat all the dead skin off your toes. It’s extremely tickley (is that a word?) but Steph swears it leaves her feet feeling super smooth. We hadn’t had luck finding anywhere decent for dinner by this point, so reluctantly went for re-heated chicken satay in the Market food court. Not the best but decent. It seems Chinatown in any city has a good night market, and in KL it is no different, so after dinner we went to see what was on offer. Mostly the same stuff as the night markets in Bangkok - knock-off watches, sunglasses and purses, touristy t-shirts, plus lots and lots of food. We found lots of good munchies - I had a semi-cold beer, some of that delicious Chinese dried BBQ pork we had in Singapore, and Steph found a place that grilled up a skewer of broccoli for her, basted in a chili sauce. That was the winner. We both picked up pairs of knock-off sunglasses for the beach and we got some mangosteens (some strange fruit Steph claims is very good for you and usually very expensive at home) to go. Back to the hostel for a shower and straight to bed - that was one hell of a day! Now, as I said earlier this isn’t exactly a typical day for us - we basically went all out and just got whatever we wanted, but all of this, including our own room at the hostel, set us back just a pinch under 100 bucks. That’s a pretty good day for a hundie. Now for some sleep so we can do it all again tomorrow!
Biggest Krispy Kreme ever! This is the upstairs seating area
Adam on the DNA Mixer
Adam's Beef Noodle
Yummy shaved ice
Fish Spa - this was when we were trying out the tank with the big fish!
There aren't many places that we've been to that we can honestly say we didn't like. Sandakan was one of those places. We came here for a couple days after leaving the Kinabatangan to clean ourselves up, enjoy a nice air-conditioned room, and catch up with stuff on the world wide web (it had been 6 whole days!). Sandakan allowed us to do all that, but it wasn't exactly in comfort. The town is, in a word, a dump. It's dirty, overcrowded, with no good food and almost nothing interesting to see. The place we stayed at was a dump too. The bathroom/shower, as they do it in Asia, wasn't draining properly so the entire floor would be covered in water for days after taking a shower. We were happy to not have to bathe in the river, but this wasn't exactly a huge step up. Needless to say, our flight to Kuala Lumpur couldn't come soon enough.
Doesn't look so bad in this pic
In retrospect, staying somewhere in Sandakan's suburbs would have been better. The suburbs looked a bit nicer than the city and it would have put us closer to Sandakan's two main draws - the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center and the airport (to get outta there!). Sepilok, luckily, is world-class. They rescue injured, orphaned, and illegally-kept orangutans and slowly rehabilitate them with the ultimate goal of being released back into the wild. They run off donations (check out the Orangutan Appeal UK if you want to adopt one) and the money brought in by allowing tourists to come in and watch the feedings. We were there for just such an occasion. They have built a platform in the forest where they lay out some fruit twice a day for the orangutans to come and eat. It's not an enclosed forest, so while most of the orangutans that come to the feedings are ones the center is rehabilitating, wild ones can also show up so you never know what you're gonna see. Initially two juveniles showed up and but had to be pretty sneaky in getting some food, which was being guarded by an aggressive and greedy long-tailed macaque.
Time to eat!
Obviously the most comfortable position to eat in
Once the juveniles left we thought the show was over, and many of the tourists left. After about 10 minutes a big male and female showed up for a feed. It was while we were watching them that the resident "naughty orangutan" came walking up the boardwalk behind everybody. He seemed unimpressed by us but did enjoy watching us scatter as he casually walked through the crowd. The rangers were telling us to move out of his way, which seemed pretty obvious until one french lady stood her ground and let him walk right up next to her. It wasn't until the rangers told her that he likes to bite that she finally moved, before the orangutan had a chance to sink his teeth in her leg as I was hoping. This went on for about 5 minutes - orangutan walking around and tourists scattering - until he apparently had enough and walked back down the boardwalk. On problem was, this was also the way out for us. We gave him a few minutes then cautiously followed. We caught up with him at a junction, where a ranger tried to lure him down a different path so we could make our exit. This worked just long enough for us to slip by, but he then decided that he wasn't done playing with the tourists and started following us down the boardwalk. So that's how we found ourselves - getting chased by a naughty orangutan. It wasn't a high-speed chase - he never went faster than a slow walk - but Steph was freaked out nonetheless and wouldn't let him get any closer than about 100 feet. I thought it was pretty cool and could have sworn he only wanted to give me a high-five, but wasn't about to find out. He followed us all the way out to the parking lot and climbed onto the roof of the cafeteria building until one of the rangers walked over, handed him a banana, and they walked off hand-in-hand. So that's what he wanted!
Naughty boy
The chase is on
The next day we showed up at Sandakan airport about 3 hour early (did I mention we were ready to leave?) and off we were to Kuala Lumpur! Click HERE for all our Borneo pics.
You may have seen the Gomantong Caves on TV before. They were featured on Planet Earth or Human Planet or one of those BBC documentaries. Actually they may have been in both, because there are a couple different phenomena going on here - one animal-related and one human-related. The cool animal-related event to see here is the bats. There are something like 2 million bats living in the cave, and every evening around sunset they leave in a mass exodus to feed in the surrounding forests. At least, we thought it was every evening. Apparently, some nights the bats decide not to come out. Not sure who is making this decision amongst 2 million bats, but they chose not to come out the night we were there. The tourists were there with cameras ready. The bat hawks were there, ready for dinner (aside from the never-ending flow of bats leaving the cave, the real attraction is supposed to be watching the hawks catch and eat the bats mid-air. Again, so we hear). But the bats never came, so we left a bit disappointed. Lazy bums.
we found one bat inside
Bat Hawk - where's my dinner?
The other big draw to the Gomantong Caves are the swiftlet birds that share the enormous limestone cave with the bats. Not actually the birds themselves, but their nests. Not actually the nests themselves, either, but the people that climb rickety ladders high up the walls to collect said nests. Those crazy Chinese think that the saliva the birds use to make their nests makes you "strong," or maybe they just think it tastes good, but either way they are willing to pay top dollar for it. High quality bird's nests can go for as much as $2,000 per kilo! Bird's nest soup is the most famous delicacy, but we've also seen a lot of bird's nest drinks in Singapore and parts of Malaysia (Malaysia has a strong Chinese population too). Now, the guys who collect these bird's nests better make good money, because their office is disgusting. It smells terrible. Bat and bird poop covers the floor. Who knows how deep it is (we walked on elevated walkways). The floor and walls are crawling with cockroaches and these nasty little bugs that visit you in your nightmares.
swiftlet in it's nest
what is that thing?
This all sounds a terrible enough place to work, but the thing we still can't wrap our heads around is that some of these guys actually live IN the cave! There were a couple little shacks we saw with makeshift beds. They didn't even make an effort to keep the bugs out, seeing as the houses only had 3 walls and open windows. Osman told us he once saw a guy sleeping in the cave and actually saw a cockroach crawl into and then out of the dude's mouth. The word gross has lost all meaning.
home, sweet home
there goes the neighborhood...
It was definitely interesting to see the caves and watch the guys climbing high up to the roof to collect nests, but let's just say we didn't linger in there for long..
Wow! Where to start? We just returned from three days along the Kinabatangan river where we had an amazing time. Before we get to the really good stuff, a little background of the area. Palm oil is a massive industry in Borneo. It's made from the fruit of palm trees. An incredible amount of rainforest has been cut down to make way for row after row of palm trees - as far as you can see in any direction at times. Not only is the declining rainforest a problem for the animals that live there, but going from one of the most biodiverse areas in the world to a one-crop plantation is a major problem. It's like a ecological desert. Luckily it's not all bad news. There are still large areas of rainforest that are mostly intact and semi-preserved for the native plants and animals. Most of this is in the mountainous interior of Borneo, which unfortunately isn't where orangutans and elephants and some of the other major wildlife like to live. Some areas of lowland Borneo, luckily, still remain viable habitats for much of it's wildlife. That brings us to the Kinabatangan river (no, I do not know how to pronounce it). Most of the rainforest along the upper Kinabatangan has been logged heavily and converted to palm oil plantations, but along the lower Kinabatangan there remains a narrow strip of rainforest on either side of the river. The area is relatively small, maybe only a mile or two wide in places, others much narrower. The good thing about this, at least for us tourists, is that all the wildlife from the area has been squeezed into a relatively small space. This makes the lower Kinabatangan one of the best places to view wildlife that we have ever seen, right up there with Yellowstone. There are, of course, many different tour companies offering trips to the region - mostly packaged 3-day 2-night trips at lodges along the river, similar to what we did in the Amazon. For this trip, however, we decided to go for a homestay instead of the package thing. This will give us a more intimate experience with the wildlife and a short glimpse into the daily lives of people that live here. Osman's homestay provided all that, though to be honest we were glad it was just a short glimpse. Osman, his wife and 6 kids live very simple lives that center around the river. They bathe in the river, do their laundry in the river, and use rain water for drinking and cooking. They do have electricity but no air conditioning. It was the most basic accommodation we've ever stayed at, but Osman and his wife made us as comfortable as possible and fed us three big meals a day. After all, we didn't come here to stay in luxury.
Shower time
Days along the Kinabatangan involved boat cruises and jungle treks in the morning and evening, with breaks during the early afternoon for lunch and to play with Osman's kids. You are constantly hot and sweaty here. I just don't know how they do it. Steph and I would be worn out just from being in the heat all day and be in bed by 8pm. Anyways, our favorite activity was definitely the boat cruises. The cooling breeze as you glide across the river in the boat felt amazing, plus it's the best way to spot wildlife. Our first cruise started right upon arrival. They told us "Do you want to go on cruise now? I just saw elephants across from our house." We looked at each other and said, "Uhh, ya!" So off we were, just across the river from Osman's house was a huge herd of wild pygmy elephants. Pygmy elephants are a unique species native to Borneo; different from the Asian elephants of mainland Southeast Asia. Pygmy they may be in relation to other elephants, but they certainly aren't small. First we saw just a few lined up along the river, eating the grasses that grow on the river bank, but as we kept idling up the river, the line of elephants grew longer and longer. We counted at least 60 elephants right in front of us! It was surreal - it felt like we were at some theme park that has been cleverly designed to resemble a natural river. Could these really be wild elephants?
Elephant shower - note this is upstream of where we showered
Steph thought the babies were "soooo cute"
The elephants stayed along the river during our entire stay, and we went back to check on them before and after every river cruise. Actually we think the number grew as the days went by - we're pretty sure there were at least 80 there at one point - splashing around in the water, trumpeting at us and at each other, and of course always, always eating. We saw lots of babies with their mothers, big males and everything in between. The elephants were gathering on this river in order to cross to the other side for greener pastures. Historically they would never do this, as it is a dangerous swim for the babies, but the shrinking forest has forced them to cross back and forth for food. It's a sad circumstance, but it allowed us to see a few swim across the river! We were lucky to see a baby with it's mother on one side and another female on the other make the long swim to the other side.
There is an incredible amount of wildlife along the Kinabatangan. You basically cruise around in your boat and watch for movement in the trees along the bank. It reminded us of Yellowstone - if you see another boat stopped and it's people have their cameras pointed into the trees, stop and see what they are looking at. We saw all kinds of birds - Oriental Darters (similar to shags or cormorants), Pied Hornbills (cousin of the toucan), egrets, cranes, eagles, kingfishers, and other colorful species that I wouldn't know. We saw all kinds of monkeys - long- and short-tailed macaques, silvered and red leaf monkeys, and the proboscis monkey, our favorite of the lot. If you've never seen a proboscis, it's something to behold. The males have a huge nose that hangs down their face, sort of like a squishy gourd. They gather along the river banks every evening to sleep, so the afternoon cruises were a great chance to see them up close. On one cruise we were in a small tributary, maybe 40 feet across, with two large troops of proboscis monkeys on either side. Maybe 40 or 50 altogether, jumping from tree to tree, chasing each other, and calling across the river to each other. It was so cool. We sat there for about 15 minutes (along with about 5 other boats) and just tried to take it in all the commotion happening around us.
Oriental Darters
Pied Hornbills - the male has the bigger beak on the left
A whole troop macaques in the tree if you look close
Proboscis monkey with her baby
A male proboscis monkey - check out that sniffer!
One day Osman took us for a short trek through the jungle. It's very difficult to see any wildlife in the dense jungle, but it is cool to just walk and hear the sounds of the forest. It was during this walk that we saw one of the coolest as well as the undeniably least-cool thing of the whole trip. You can guess which is which - leopard footprints and leaches. Okay, so I think it's pretty obvious that leaches are the coolest! Ugh, not so much. Osman found one the second we got off the boat, so Steph and I were pretty paranoid about them the entire hike. We wore long pants, but Steph had the added security of gum boots while I only had my running shoes (they never have big enough gum shoes for me). The leaches hang onto leaves close to the ground and grab onto you as you walk by. Every few minutes we'd stop and check each other and flick off any leaches that had gotten onto our pants. We did one final check in the boat and though I remained leach-free, one had managed to crawl down Steph's boots and got on her leg! Ha! Luckily it hadn't started sucking blood yet so I was able to just pull it off her. Steph took it all pretty well. So the cool thing we saw on our trek was fresh leopard prints in the mud. Osman said they were made only the night before, so the leopard could still be close by. As usual, Steph was terrified, I was excited, though even Osman said his heart was beating fast. That's not so comforting from your jungle guide!
Leopard print. No leach pictures. You think Steph was gonna let me pull out the camera before pulling that thing off her?
Okay, so the elephants were great, the monkeys were hilarious, but what about that great ape that brought us here? I remember seeing an ad for Malaysia in an airport 3 or 4 years ago with a picture of an orangutan in the jungle and thinking, "How cool would it be to see a wild orangutan?" Well, we can now say that it is very, very cool. During our river cruises we were lucky to see two different orangutans hanging out in the trees. Orangutans are solitary animals - they rarely come into contact with other orangutans except to mate or if there is a big fruiting tree that they all want a piece of. They are the only primate to build nests to sleep in - similar to bird's nests, made of sticks and leaves, except they build a new one every one or two days. So the easiest way to spot them is to look for a nest and see if there is an orangutan in it. They are pretty lazy animals - mostly you see them just sitting in their nests or foraging for food, not swinging from tree to tree as I was hoping. The first one we spotted was way up in a tree and not moving around too much, but still our first wild orangutan! The second we spotted was a big male laying in his nest. He was a little closer than the first, and with the help of binoculars you could tell he was looking right at us so you could see his big wide face plate. These first two spottings were pretty special, but neither was close enough to get a really good look, so while it was good to see them, we were ranking the elephants and proboscis monkeys as cooler wildlife experiences. That was until our last day, on a trip to the Geomantong Caves (more on that in a later post), when our guide spotted a female in the trees right next to the road, and she had a baby! We sat and watched her for about 30 minutes as she ate some leaves and started building her nest for the night. They were close enough that even without binoculars you could clearly see the tiny baby peering around it's mama trying to get a look at us. Magic.
Our first orangutan spotting - pretty hard to see
That's more like it! This is the mama, see video below for her baby
Our stay along the Kinabatangan was once-in-a-lifetime. We were lucky to see what we did, and who knows how long it will be there. It's comforting that we saw lots of babies - elephants, monkeys and even an orangutan. Obviously this area is sustainable enough that the animals can continue to live here, reproduce, and maintain a healthy population. Unfortunately the future of this region isn't so clear. The forests here aren't exactly protected, and from what I can tell there isn't much to stop the palm oil plantations from further overtaking the rainforest. If you want to read more about it, I'd recommend this article from National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/borneo/white-text. This brings me to my tree-hugger plea, skip it if you want. You may want to come here one day. It's an unforgettable experience. Even if you don't want to, maybe future generations from you family will want to. If you feel really passionate about it, you can donate money, write the Malaysian goverment, or any number of things that will be sure to help. Or, more practically, you can do just a small part to help. It's not realistic to ban or eliminate the need for palm oil, in fact that would devastate the people of Borneo, but reducing the demand would help to stop, or at least delay, the need to expand the palm plantations. Supposedly 50% of the products in your house contain palm oil - mostly soap and food. So all I'm asking is, next time you are at the store about to buy something, check and see if it has palm oil in it. If it does, try to find a similar product without palm oil. It's that simple. Probably won't cost you any extra money. I know I'd love to come back here one day.
I never thought I’d visit Borneo. Who goes to Borneo? My cousin visited Borneo once as part of a National Geographic expedition mapping out caves or something like that, and it just seems like the kind of exotic place you see in documentaries but would never actually go visit. Well, here we are. Kota Kinabalu, or KK as it is called, is the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah. The island of Borneo is actually pretty massive - the third largest non-continental island in the world behind Greenland and New Guinea - and it is split into three countries. Indonesia has the largest slice, followed by Malaysia with it’s two states Sabah and Sarawek, followed by tiny Brunei. I’m not really sure why we chose Malaysia, probably because Sabah contains an amazing amount of things to do in a relatively small area. You’d expect Borneo to be all jungle and backwater towns, but KK is surprisingly large and modern. We were a bit more in our element in KK than in Singapore - it is cheaper, a bit grungier, and it has amazing sunsets. For our one day in KK we decided to visit the nearby island of Sapi, part of a group of islands composing the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. All of these islands are pretty touristy, as they are only about 15 minutes by speedboat from the KK pier, though they still maintain their rainforest interior and the reefs surrounding them aren’t in too bad of shape all things considered. We did a bit of snorkeling (word to the wise - don’t try to play with clownfish, I was bitten by Nemo!), laid on the beach, and did a short walk around the island. A nice day in the sun and we particularly enjoyed watching the Asian tourists try to swim.
Snorkeling area - notice all the PFD's
Nemo attack wounds
The Borneo Lonely Planet raves about the Filipino restaurants serving up BBQ seafood during the night markets in KK. We are not into seafood, especially Steph, though I enjoy a shrimp or two every now and then. It all looked pretty cool - each little open-air “restaurant” had a bunch of fresh seafood sitting out front. You basically point at what you want and they go grill it up for you. We were basically “just looking” until one eager salesman started talking to us and telling us what everything was. I thought the lobsters looked cool, and when he told me I could get a small one for only 10 ringgits (about $3.30), I was sold. I added another 200 grams of shrimp for another 10 ringgits and we had a seat. Luckily these restaurants also sell non-seafood so Steph ordered up a plate of a Malaysian staple - Nasi Goreng Ayam (nasi = rice, goreng = fried, ayam = chicken), so chicken fried rice, and only 4 ringgit ($1.30). The chicken fried rice was actually really good (best I have ever had), but my seafood turned out to be amazing. Everything was cooked perfectly, nice and buttery, and they had some sort of seasoning on top that added just the right amount of saltiness. I don’t love seafood, but this was one of my favorite meals that I’ve ever had. Pick out what you want, have a seat, and this delicious meal is served up for less than 7 bucks. Can’t beat that. My only regret is that I didn’t discover this until our last night in KK. For dessert there’s Pisang Goreng - thin slices of banana dipped in batter and deep fried. I literally couldn't believe it when the lady told me 5 pieces for 1 ringgit (33 cents). I was sure there was something lost in translation, but that's actually the tourist price - other places gave me 7 pieces for 1 ringgit. If you can find fresh ones, it is absolutely divine.
Seafood feast
open-air "restaurants" in the night market
From KK we headed up into the mountains for a much-needed respite from the heat. Mount Kinabalu is less than a couple hours from KK and is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia at 13,436 feet above sea level. You can climb to the top of the mountain, but it is both very popular and very expensive so we opted out. Once we saw a short glimpse of the peak I was regretting not climbing it, but they pretty much make you do it in two days, with an overnight stay in a hut that you have to reserve months in advance. The trail to the top is only about 6 miles, so we looked into doing it in one day, but they make this pretty hard to do and the clouds envelop the peak every day at about 9 am, so you’d have to start very early. We saved ourselves the hassle and just did a long day hike through the jungle and hung out at our hostel, officially named Kinabalu Mountain Lodge but unofficially the Moth Capital of the World. This place was overrun with moths. We knew this coming in, as it mentioned it online, but we were not expecting this. Literally thousands of them covering the walls at all times of the day, but of course mostly active at night. There were all shapes and sizes, with a few being solidly bird-sized. Let’s just stay Steph was not a fan. I thought they were pretty cool when they just sat there, but some of them would go frantic and flap around in your ear. Why do bugs do that?
Mount Kinabalu in the background
Some of the many, many moths
One day we were having lunch outside the park when a group came up to the restaurant with a big banner. Apparently they were protesting against something and it didn't take much convincing to get Steph's support behind their campaign, even though she had no idea what they were campaigning for. They could have been protesting women's right to vote for all she knew, but Steph jumped in there for the photo op. Turns out they were fighting an Australian company's mining plans in Borneo, so probably a good cause. Stop Lynas!
Mount Kinabalu was a pretty cool area, but there just wasn’t that much to do if you weren’t doing the summit hike. We really enjoyed the cool mountain weather, but were looking forward to seeing more than just rainforest - we wanted wildlife! So we booked a room at Osman’s homestay on the Kinabatangan River in eastern Sabah - the best place to see orangutan, monkeys, and pygmy elephants in the wild!
First impression of Singapore: reminds us a lot of Hong Kong - first-world Asian city with a lot of white expats, professionals, and tourists running around. Port city. Former British colony. Both are mixing pots of many different cultures, equaling a diverse population as well as cuisine. Singapore probably doesn’t retain as noticeable of a British aftertaste as Hong Kong does, but it has been independent of Britain since the 1950’s so much longer than Hong Kong. The mix of cultural influences in Singapore is also different - there is a very large Chinese population but also stong Indian and Malaysian influences as well. That brings us to cuisine - Singapore is known for it’s good food, and 95% of our research into the city was focused on what to eat and where to get it. If you are a follower of our blog you’ll know what big fans we are of Asian shopping malls - not so much for the shopping as for the food courts that inevitable occupy either the basement or top level of the mall, or sometimes both. This is no different in Singapore, though their food courts are much too commercial - there are actual chains of food courts (if that makes sense) and they all have a theme to which they are decorated to the max. We tried them a couple times, but opted for the much more hole-in-the-wall hawker centers instead. Think of a big open-air cafeteria with lots of tables set up and row after row of food stalls, each selling only a few dishes as they do in our beloved Thai food courts. The popular opinion of these hawker centers is too see which stands had the longest lines of locals and get in line with them. If, however, you aren’t into porridge (whatever that is), which always seemed to have the longest line, you can always go with chicken rice. Chicken rice is a classic Singaporean dish - fragrant rice cooked in chicken broth with slices of poached chicken on top. That’s it, not to weird huh? You can put chili sauce on it or a dark, sweet soy sauce. It only costs about 2 or 3 bucks per plate and while it is good, it didn’t exactly blow our mind (it is just chicken and rice, after all). Our favorite dish that we tried turned out to be black carrot cake, and it’s not what you are thinking. It’s kind of like a stir fry of carrots, onions, radish, cubes of rice dough, and egg with a sauce that seems to be primarily the dark soy sauce. It sounds weird but it is good, though I’m not sure I’d want it for breakfast as it is often enjoyed in Singapore.
Chicken Rice
Carrot Cake
We tried a lot of different food in Singapore - most of it we liked, though anything containing seafood pretty much didn’t get eaten. Probably my favorite was the dried BBQ pork - a favorite gift for Chinese New Year. It’s sort of in the middle between bacon and jerky - not too dry but still nice and chewy with a thin layer of barbeque sauce. Perfection. Steph even liked it though don’t tell her that it tastes a lot like bacon.
Steph with dried BBQ pork
Singapore was hot! I guess this shouldn’t shock anybody as it is very close to the equator, but we were not ready for this kind of heat. When we travel we like to walk around a lot, mainly because we are cheap but also to get a feel for the city we are in. This held true in Singapore, but we had to take lots and lots of breaks to stay reasonably cool. Luckily AC is the name of the game in Singapore, and we would sigh with relief every time we’d hop onto the metro or detour through a mall (there are literally hundreds of malls in Singapore). Probably the longest air conditioning fast we had to make was during our trip to the botanical gardens. The gardens were nice but the real attraction was the orchid garden - aka Steph heaven. I moped around while Steph took about 491 pictures of the orchids, which I must admit were lovely. Luckily the gift shop had AC and I was able to pick up a refreshing isotonic drink to replenish my electrolytes - because when you are sweating profusely, why not pick up a can of Pocari Sweat?
This stuff was actually pretty good, but what's with the name? Who came up with that?
While there aren’t really any famous landmarks that I’d ever heard of in Singapore, there is plenty to see if you can brave the heat. Chinatown was our first stop - mainly for the food but also to admire the touristy but charming nevertheless row houses.
Little India was another district we visited primarily for the food (butter chicken and fresh baked naan…yummy), though we enjoyed seeing a small peek into Indian culture. After all, this is probably the closest to India we will ever get. The last district we visited in Singapore was the riverside district - containing a mixture of modern skyscrapers and colonial heritage. This is the area where Sir Thomas Raffles first made land in what is now Singapore’s CBD, which eventually led to the area becoming a British colony. Probably the most significant landmark, at least for tourists, is the statue of the Merlion - apparently the official symbol of Singapore, a half-cat, half-fish statue that squirts water out of it’s mouth. The tourism board came up with the idea, and judging by the throngs of tourists taking typically touristy pictures, it worked. Though apparently in Singapore slang, the word merlion means to vomit…
Classy, as always
Cool building - the Marina Bay Sands
For our final day in Singapore we chose to go to the zoo. No, the zoo is not for children. Singapore Zoo has a very good reputation as the “best zoo in Asia,” but judging by the standards set by any zoo I’ve been to outside the US, that didn’t necessarily mean much. We were, however, pleasantly surprised. The zoo was in every way as good as any zoo we have ever been to, with the added benefit (I think) of them being able to get away with things I’m not sure you could in the States. For one - there were lots of open-air exhibits. The orangutans were basically free to run amok, with ropes and bridges for them crossing the walking paths for us humans. If they decided to come to ground level they could easily walk over and visit the lions in their enclosure. They don’t of course, but they are funny animals. We’re very looking forward to seeing them in the wild when we visit (spoiler alert!) Borneo soon.
There was also a big open-air enclosure full of big fruit bats, birds, sloths, mouse deer and ring-tailed lemurs. It was really cool to get up close to the lemurs as they would generally ignore you, but I’m surprised they don’t have a problem with people trying to touch them and getting their finger bitten off.
Ring-tailed lemur
The rest of the zoo was pretty much like any other good zoo you could visit - there were elephants and monkeys and different areas for wildlife from various parts of the globe, all with spacious and natural enclosures. Steph liked the giraffes and I liked watching the gibbons swing from tree to tree. It was a good day.
Overall Singapore was great - certainly not our favorite city we’ve ever visited (not even our favorite Asian city), but it’s a good ‘intro to Asia’ city and could definitely keep anyone entertained for a few days at least. I must add a few thoughts about the strict rules that Singaporeans live by. The heated debates that often divide Americans on what the government should or shouldn’t allow us to have pale in comparison to the restrictions set on the people of Singapore. Gum is outlawed. No, not gun (well, that too), GUM. I’m not kidding. It, apparently, is just too messy so it’s banned. The only way you can get it is with a prescription from your doctor! That’s just one extreme example, though the restrictions and the highly publicized and hefty fines that you would incur should you break them are legendary - so much so that you can buy tshirts at every souvenir shop with the major infractions and the corresponding fine. Chewing gum - $1000, jaywalking - $1000, littering - $1000, spitting in the streets - $1000, having food on the metro - $500. If that's not harsh enough, having illegal narcotics is a mandatory death sentence! Steph was constantly paranoid about jaywalking, which is quite frankly one of my favorite hobbies. Anyways, we made it 3 days in Singapore with not one single fine and off we are to Borneo!
For more orchid pictures, and others from around Singapore, check out the album HERE!
