Singapore: Chinatown "revisited"

It rained again yesterday and for fear of having to stay in the house again, I decided to start my journey earlier. At 8.30AM the alarm clock rang and I without a care in the world, turned it off. I woke up late but it was still earlier than the other days. Before my suspected curse of waking up at 11 and having the sky turn grey by 12 becomes confirmed, I hurriedly left the house just a little after 11.

By 12, I was in Chinatown and the sky is anything but grey. Actually it was burning hot. After walking through Pagoda St. and Terengganu St., I reached the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum.

I sought refuge from the menacing sun in the 6-level temple (basement and rooftop included). It was the first temple equipped with air-con and lifts that I’ve ever visited.

Lanterns are hung around the temple in celebration of Wesak Day.

More lanterns! Wesak Day will be celebrated here until 1st June.

100 Dragons Hall. A hundred Buddhas are enshrined on both sides of the hall wall.

More pictures of the temple at the bottom.

After a walk around thePagoda-Terengganu-Sago St. market, I proceeded to Chinatown’s Oasis of Cool. I’ve been wanting to walk up Ann Siang Hill Park and I tell you, what a great disappointment it was.

Basically, this “hill park” is nothing but a short 3-minute path. Oh well, I’ll treat that as a cool path to go to other streets it connects.

Walking down the park, I turned into Telok Ayer St. and visited another temple, the Thian Hock Keng temple.
There’s a mosque on that road too, but you can forget about it coz it looks like nothing but a shophouse. Just like the mosque and Hindu temple on South Bridge Road, it’s not worth a visit. There’s nothing! Ok fine, I admit I didn’t go into Masjid Jamae on South Bridge Road coz it looks uninviting. Don’t shoot me if I’m wrong about it being boring. I did go in the Hindu temple and you need to pay for your camera though I don’t see why you even need to take pictures. ‘Nuff said.

I had soft bun on Boon Tat St. (it’s supposed to be famous for satay but I don’t see any. Maybe just at night?). It’s a bun with kaya and butter in it (and I think that’s all). After that my friend came to meet me. Well, actually, he came and I had to go to the MRT station to pick him up. Not long after that it started to rain. Hmm…who brought the rain?

Because it started to rain I thought it’d be good to seek refuge in the Tooth Relic Temple again…and got my friend to take pictures for me hehe.

The Ten Thousand Buddhas Pavilion on the roof. In the pavillion is a gigantic cloisonne Vairocana Buddha Prayer Wheel (fui~that was long. Got it from the brochure :P)



Every turn of the cylindrical wheel represents a single recital of the scripture and mantra of the Dharma sutras that are placed inside the wheel.



Wheel of sutras! Oh my big face.

Singapore: Chinatown escapade (right...)

Today’s my first time traveling as a tourist alone. I’ve always wondered how those lone backpackers feel when they walk in a foreign land. And…unfortunately, I still don’t quite know. That’s coz it was raining the whole day! I took a bus to the nearest shopping mall (for some reason my cousin kept telling me to go there, so I went) and after getting a sim card I immediately went to the bus stop. And I thought the buses are systematic. There’s a board that shows you the time the next bus will arrive but surprisingly the time can change. Sometimes it’s just stuck there. Oh well. At least you know it’s coming soon and not hours away.

While waiting, the rain started to pour. It started with a drizzle but soon, water was flowing in onto the bus stop grounds. I took the bus to Chinatown and when I got there something like an hour later, it was still drizzling. Great. There goes my afternoon walk around Chinatown and up Ann Siang Hill Park. For the rest of my 2 hours as a lone tourist, I was in McD eating its expensive fries (S$ 2.15 for a medium fries) and making plans for the rest of my days here. I now have tour packages set out haha. So much for my trip.

My cousin came to find me after that and we went for dinner at Central and took a walk along Clarke Quay.

I like the creativeness of that place. Oh I like it. I simply love the creativity of the restaurants and bars there. That’s like what I wanna do if I own a shop. I love it.

Check this one out. It’s called Clinic and the settings are made to look like a hospital. How cool is that?

The pictures are incredibly blurred. I refused to use flash because the picture would lose its night feel but a blur image doesn’t give much feel either huh? I’m itching to go back there. Maybe I’ll go during the day and get a better picture. I didn’t check the menu but if it’s not too expensive, I’m definitely gonna register there as a patient :)

This is one cool store selling puppets (If I’m not wrong)

Later we walked to Boat Quay and at its end we reached the business district (well, which part of Singapore isn’t? Ok, ok, I’m just exaggerating) I saw this statue.

My cousin told me to be careful coz it will pee on you if you get too close and I totally believed her. I even considered walking closer. Then she said, “Go over there to take the picture of the bird. But be careful not to go too near. It will poop.”

That’s when I realized she was pulling my leg. Damn. She even asked if it pooped. But hey, the peeing statue, it’d be cool right?

Constipated bird.

Finally, a little treat. My cousin let me try this little cookie in what looks like a pantyliner pack :P

It sure doesn’t taste like a pantyliner (god knows how a pantyliner tastes like, I don’t even wanna know), instead it tasted like heaven (Ok fine, so I like to exaggerate. Sue me). I think she bought it in Japan and one box containing only 12 pieces costs S$10. Swallow that.

P.S.: I didn't even finish the Vietnam post yet and here I am talking about Singapore. The Vietnam photos are in my laptop; when I can go online with it, I'll blog. Too lazy to ask for my cuz's password. And maybe I need to install things too. Nevermind. In the meantime I'm using my cuz's com. Her com is in the room I'm sleeping in. Thank god!!!

Day 3-4 Sapa Part 2

We met up with our tour guide Mu at the hotel and began our trek to Lao Chai village. Just as our journey started, someone grabbed my hand. It was a black hmong woman we met earlier. She seemed to have misunderstood that I promised to go to her village (wherever that is) and was pulling me away from our group. God that was freaky. Luckily I managed to escape.

In no time more and more black hmongs started to follow us. Many of them are from Lao Chai village including Mu.

What they really do is they would ‘mark’ (as my friend puts it) each of you and when you reach Lao Chai for lunch they would start asking you to buy their overpriced products. I was the last to enter the hut for lunch and that made me their first ‘victim’. I bought a small pencil case-like bag for 20000VD (~RM 4) after cutting it down from 50000VD.

Some posing before we cross the bridge to the hut.

And that’s Liu and Lang, the 2 tiny girls that followed us. They’re all tiny for their ages if you noticed (like Mai and Xu).

At the stop along the trek, these helpless foreigners were surrounded by more salesgirls :P

After lunch we continued our journey to Ta Van village.

Finally after a total of about 11km trek we reached Ta Van village where we would stay the night.

This is our homestay.

All our meals were taken under the night sky. Mu is a great cook. I dare say we had ‘nem’ or springroll everyday since we reached Vietnam and hers was the best. In fact the whole meal was the best. What have we been paying in other places?!

Oh and did I say they love to serve fries? Fries are like the second food we had he most to nem. Mu’s fries were different. She fried them with garlic. I don't think I've had fries this way before.

The next morning we continued our trek to Giang Ta Chai or the Red Zao village.

This trek was the worst, sometimes having to go down slippery steeps, sometimes having to walk on an edge where we had to balance ourselves against the strong wind, and sometimes endless climbs. Regardless we arrived in one piece and relaxed at the waterfall while Mu went to prepare our lunch.

Strange thing is we saw no Red Zao around. Maybe their houses are scattered far away from the hut where we had lunch or all of them have went to Sapa.

After lunch we trekked what seemed like an endless journey, probably because we were tired from all that climbing already, to the road where a van picked us up. The van took us back to the hotel in Sapa. After a couple of hours of shopping around and later dinner, a bus took us back to Lao Cai train station.

A couple sat in front of my seat and from the moment I entered the bus, they have been kissing and hugging non stop. My eyes! My eyes! The sky soon turned dark – you know those evening skies, hate them, they make you strain your eyes yet you see nothing – and I felt like vomiting. The couple wasn’t making things any better. After trying to ignore them for like an hour I accidentally saw that they have switched places! Do you call that skill, or what!?

Take a look at the train station toilet. Maybe this is why they say Vietnam is the next China :P

We stayed another night on train and the next morning, it’s Halong Bay for us!

This is our tour guide Mu (holding the umbrella). If you intend on making a trip to Sapa you can directly contact her and not go through a tour agency because that would make it cheaper. You can send her an email (lythimu_laochai@yahoo.com) for further arrangements. Oh and keep in mind that M.U. is not Manchester United it Vietnam. It means “honey”.

If she insists on knowing how you got her contact you could casually mention me…that might probably earn me some discount points the next time I go there…

…I’m joking.

Day 3: Sapa Part 1

Sapa was an experience like no other so I’m gonna be talking quite a bit about it.

In the wee hours of day 3 our train reached Lao Cai but we had to wait for a couple of hours before our van which would drive us to Sapa arrived. I was pretty sure it was our hotel’s fault for the confusion.

Upon reaching Sapa, the first thing I did was to take a bath (I didn’t take one for more than a sweaty day) and ‘Miss Malaysia no. 2’ subsequently followed. The itinerary was rather confusing and the two Switzerland girls we met while waiting for our van agreed. So for those of you who might be taking the Sapa tour, let me clarify it for you.

If you see your itinerary saying that you check into the hotel on the 1^st day and sleep in the homestay on the 2^nd night then check out of the hotel on the 3^rd day, don’t get confused. This is really what you do. You check into the hotel only to leave your luggage there. Soon after, you’ll be trekking to another village where you will spend the night.

After taking the breakfast provided by the hotel, we went for a walk with Mai and Xu as our guides. Mai is a 14 while Xu is a 16 ethnic girls and they both can speak English like they were from England.

Mai and myself.

It was really a different experience for me; with them ethnic black hmong girls bringing us around. People there are really friendly; they’d just walk up to you and start a conversation. Of course we soon realized that most of them follow you around with the hope that you would buy something from them.

A Red Zao woman selling handicrafts.

The Red Zao-s shave their eyebrows and the front half of their heads bald and wear a red headdress as you can see on the picture. Our tour guide explained why they shave their heads but I guess I wasn’t storing it in my long term memory so…I don’t know why!

Mai and Xu took us by the lake where they made flower crowns/bands/whatever-you-call-it for us.

I’ve never picked public flowers, especially not by the lake, especially not with so many friends, and especially not with ethnic people. See why I say this was an experience like no other?

Xu devotedly ‘weaving’ the flowers. I asked her to teach me how to make one myself because just two pair of hands (hers and Mai) can’t make so many flowerbands for all of us.

Everyone’s almost done!

We attracted a lot of attention while we were by the lake; Vietnamese tourists, foreigners, and even the black hmongs themselves!

She did not pose this way intentionally. We swear! Maybe that’s how she sits all the time. Maybe she’s contemplating marriage, or the problems of the world, I don’t know.

Who’s cuter?

The answer’s pretty obvious right? Someone might kill me if he sees this.

After we took more group pictures with our flowerbands over our heads, we rushed back to the hotel to meet our tour guide Mu. On the way, Xu say a love song which I must say, I fell in love with. I asked her what the title was and she said ‘Tiger’. I hope she knew what I meant by ‘title’. According to her, a Tiger sang this song to his lover.

And thus, at 10 AM, we leave Mai and Xu in Sapa and began our trek to Lao Chai village. Note: Lao Chai is a village whereas Lao Cai, the place our train arrived at, is a province.

Day 2: More of Hanoi

Before we take our night train to Lao Cai, we walked around in Hanoi again. Sounds like a lot of exploring in the Old Quarter but somehow there’s never enough time. Hmm..is the Old Quarter that big? Nah…

Almost every roadside or old eatery you see, the tables and chairs are reduced twice or thrice in size. In other words, they use what my 5 year old niece uses to do homework. Wait, do I have a 5 year old niece? Hmm…okaaayyy that’s not really important, is it?

A guy smoking pipe. Luckily he didn’t give me a piece of his mind when I took his picture. Over the next few days we realized that not everyone likes their picture being taken.

Woman pushing a cart selling shoes.

On the way to the Temple of Literature (Van Mieu). Finally some ordered traffic! The reason for it would probably be because the government buildings, embassies, etc are close by.

People selling things in front of Van Mieu. The old man at the rightmost end of the picture was really shy. Since I can’t see old man who has to work earnestly, I bought a chicken figurine from him for VD 10000.

That’s my chicken.

The doctors stelae in Van Mieu. Students can be seen touching the heads of the tortoises and then subsequently touching their own heads so they can do well in exams. I was trying to take a candid picture of this girl but she got suspicious so my friend pretended to pose for me. So fake hehe~ :P

The Van Mieu is very big so if you’re wondering where the entrance is, it’s on the Quoc Tu Giam street. Don’t be like us, circling the place before finally reaching the entrance.

View from the Flag Tower. We weren’t allowed to take pictures from above; a grumpy woman guards the tower making sure nobody snaps any pictures but my friend managed to steal one. I'm not going to get sued for this am I?

Many tourist attractions close from 11 AM to 2 PM and on Mondays and Fridays, so it’s advisable that you check the operation hours first before you make your plans.

There was some confusion on the time we depart to the train station so I ended up not having the time to bathe, while the 3 guys (Miss Malaysia 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd) rushed to bathe with whatever little time we have. Princesses.

We got a 6 berth cabin despite paying $90 for the tour. However, we got a 4 berth cabin on the way back but the interior of that train was much older.

Great place to flaunt your yoga skills. Can’t imagine how the tall Caucasians would manage the what little space they get.

To end this entry, let's look at one 'lapchai' we came across.

'Lapchai' means handsome. There were many lapchai-s, most of them are in uniforms, but we only managed to take his picture. What a waste of the rest!

Day 0

I totally forgot about our dramatic journey to the airport! This is supposed to be in Day 1 but now I guess it’ll have to be Day 0 or Night 0, for that matter.

As usual, we had to take a late night bus from Penang to KL from where we would then proceed to the LCC Terminal. We took the 10.30 PM Gunung Raya bus and at about 2 AM my friend and I were both awakened by a frightening sound. The first thing that crossed my mind was that we were plunging down some slope. Mom has been constantly planting thoughts of the bus crashing and stuff like that into my head due to the recent accidents involving the Konsortium busses.

The bus stopped by the road side and a few people went down to examine the tyres. It so happened that the sound came from the tyre exactly below where we were sitting. We saw them taking out a scissors and trying to cut loose something. Immediately, creepy thoughts like a head being caught in the tyres jumped into my mind. The bus continued the journey making a couple more stops from time to time.

When it struck me that I should record it down, the sound wasn’t as loud anymore. This is what it sounds like after some 30 minutes.

Sounded like a lion dance performance doesn’t it? It first started with the sound of an ancient choo-choo train (I had to do that :P) later progressing to a lion dance and later what sounded like an old sewing machine!

Well, almost.

This one sounds like a slightly modern train.

Imagine our fear as we had to be at the airport by 5.40 AM the latest. For something like 2 hours the bus crawled along the highway. Before we knew it, it had already passed Pudu Raya where it was destined to, and was at Shah Alam, stopping at a place to get its tyres fixed. Apparently the inner tyre burst and somehow it was making the sounds.

The driver blamed us for not letting him know we had a flight to catch. One lady on the same bus also had a flight to catch though hers was 30 minutes later than ours. Finally the bus dropped us at a taxi station and there the taxi drivers tried to slit our throat with exceptionally high rates of RM 100 per taxi.

That lady who was already in her middle ages surprised me with her incredible denseness by saying, “We’re already late. Just give us a considerable price okay?”

We’re already late?! That’s what you say after they agree on a price you biatch. You don’t show your desperation! What are you dumb?

In the end we paid RM 80 per taxi and got to the airport just right on the dot. That was one hell of an experience. After being terrified about visa requirements (that’s thanks to Chee Chong who said we needed visas just the night before our trip), I had to go through the experience of almost missing a flight. And you know what? Even Chee Chong himself confessed that the bus incident must be him and his bad luck. Oh well. It’s an incident no money can buy.

Day 1: Old Quarter, Hanoi

We reached the Noi Bai airport close to 9 am in the morning and from there shared a big taxi (which is a van, but they call it a bus. Of course they have real busses too) with a few more strangers to the guesthouses/hotels we had in mind. However, as expected, after the driver dropped everyone off, he picked up a man who then ‘briefed’ us about a better hotel. I did not like the idea because I had already read about taxis insisting that you go to their recommended hotel so they could get commission. My friend’s friend (now my friend as well :P) who was with us agreed. No!!! Wrong decision! Oh well. What can I say to a person who gives me an impression of a big boss?

The driver took us to Fortuan Hotel where we were greeted by a man named David who was already waiting at the entrance. How surprising.

“Welcome to my hotel!” he said. Up till today I still don’t know if he’s the owner or just a worker. He showed us the rooms and we thought we might as well take it for the night before we search for other lodgings. After bargaining he gave us a 3 person room for USD 18/room. I don’t remember the price for a double bed room.

Before he briefed us about the available tours, he asked about the languages in Malaysia.

“What languages do you speak in Malaysia?”

“Depends,” I said.

“Japan? You can’t cheat me. I have Malaysian guests. I’m in the tour business, you know.”

-_-“ I said depends. Not Japan!

He told us he could speak Mandarin and I asked if he could speak Malay (Boring? Believe me, I’m not randomly blogging. This has a purpose). He said no and subsequently asked how we say “you’re very beautiful” in Malay.

“Kamu sangat cantik,” I said.

“Kamu cantip?” (or something like that)

“No, cantik,” I corrected him.

“Oh. Kamu cantik,” he said to me.

Wth, did he just hit on me?!

He was very friendly and smiling all the way but we later realized, after we come back from all the tours, that he wasn’t the same anymore. He was only being friendly to get us buy his tours.

We had our lunch at a place David recommended (which is expensive!) and walked around town for the rest of the afternoon. I bought a map for USD1 (about RM 3.20) which was incredibly cheap. A map would cost about RM 25 in Malaysia. Here are some photos of Hanoi.

View of Hoan Kiem lake from where we had our lunch.

The restaurant where we had our lunch (ground floor).

A woman selling 'pho', a Vietnamese noodle, by the road side.

Hang Hanh street. I like this street. It's cool and relaxing.

Looks peaceful? Wait till you see the traffic.

There are better videos in YouTube of Hanoi traffic. Mine doesn't show much. I wanted to take better ones but I ran out of space and the computer in the hotel doesn't even have a USB port.

Honking is like their national language and many of the traffic lights serve no purpose; even when they do, they last for a very short time, you have to run for your lives before it turns green again. Many small roads don’t have traffic lights anyway. The same goes for the road dividing lines. They drive on the right side of the road, but unlike the time when I was in Philippines, I couldn’t get that in my head because practically, they neither drive on the right nor on the left side. If they wanna make a turn, they just make a turn. Same thing goes for pedestrians. If you wanna cross the road, just cross. They’ll dodge you somehow. That’s how highly skilled they are.

We had our dinner at Hang Hanh street (I’ve practically memorized all the road names) where we had this cute (literally) waiter serving us.

This is him figuring out which drink is which one by one with his cuteness :P

And this is him again.

He stepped on my left toe, by the way. Thanks to him and my carelessness, kicking against concrete, my left toe was swollen for 4 days and I now have a new clot. Yay.

We later went to watch the water puppets.

Here’s where I satisfy everyone’s curiosity. What are the water puppets?? Joyfulchicken randomly said they were puppets made of water, which was not logical, but would most definitely make him a millionaire if he could come out with one (then again, a puppet made of ice, which is also water, would not, imho). Water puppets are just puppets on water. A stage is prepared where the puppets are being handled from behind the stage on water. How do I say this? Just look at the photos.

This is the stage. Bet you didn't think this is how we sit. I was surprised when I went in and saw seats like in the cinema.

Sorry for the blur picture. Will try to get better ones from friends if there's any.

And here you have the people behind the scenes.

Different stories are told throughout the show which was…how long? 30-60 minutes? Can’t quite recall. I’m not going to spoil it for those intending to see it in the future, but just a little tip, go for the cheaper ticket. It doesn’t make much difference unless you get the seats on the first row. So I say, go for the 20000 VD tickets. You have to pay an extra 5000 VD if you wanna take pictures and 10000 VD (if I’m not mistaken) if you wanna take a video but it’s really up to you coz they don’t check.

Just to end day 1, I’m showing you what some Malaysians would cringe at.

Seriously, it’s in the internet, if you can read Vietnamese. Perhaps custom made condoms, anyone?