Sentosa Island, Little India

We took a monorail over to Sentosa island, which is a place that feels like a government-owned Disneyland, complete with various attractions and rides, theme characters, and a tram! It's also a beach.





We did a zipline down through a forest and across the beach - touristy, but fun
The cable I was about to be hooked onto.
We had dinner in Little India and walked around...I guess I didn't take any pics. We went to this huge store called Mustafa that had *everything*; clothing, fabric, sporting goods, jewelry, luggage, home goods, grocery store, pharmacy....

After that we stopped of downtown for a bit before heading back to the room.

Sign that tells you where there are parking spaces (this city is so organized!):
Lucky fountain

Singapore flyer and a Singapre sling

We got up late because we had such a long day yesterday. It was raining again so we headed out to the science center to see a special exhibit on Pixar and all their normal stuff - another great museum.

Before that, though, we wanted to stop into one of the mall food courts for lunch. The one thing we certainly won't forget about Singapore is the number of shopping malls. They're everywhere. At every metro station, you walk out into a mall. There's a street called Orchard Road that's entirely malls, at least 15 or 20 of them on one street. We're not really sure how the city supports so many. It's like walking down 5th ave and every 5 feet there's a designer store, except every 5 feet there's an enormous mall *filled* with designer stores.

We went to a hawker market for dinner - you walk around and pick out whatever you feel like from the many stands: thai, malaysian, cantonese, japanese, indian, pig organ soup... anything you want.

On our way to the Flyer, we saw this huge new hotel/casino
The Flyer is the tallest ferris wheel in the world (yes, taller than the London Eye)

Views from the top



Had a Singapore sling cocktail at the hotel where it was invented. Personally, I thought it tasted like cherry cough syrup...

Singapore: Chinatown, Arab Quarter, Clarke Quay

We got off the overnight train, dropped our bags in the hostel, and hit the town. We all immediately noticed how different Singapore is from KL. It's a beautiful city - spotlessly clean, colorful, with interesting architecture everywhere.


Incense and flower stands outside the temples in Chinatown

Rub for good luck!



After lunch in the Arab quarter (shawarma!) we visited the National Museum, which is the best museum we've seen so far. It had a great headset system that talked you through the history of Singapore, and several galleries devoted to modern living.
We had dinner riverside with 2 friends from Duke


And a drink afterward

Last day in KL

Hey guys,
I didn't take very many photos on this day, so you'll have to wait for one of my companions to upload theirs...but I have a few.

First we have a few pics from the night before at the night market. We tried some of the infamous fruit called the durian. It is known for being extremely smelly, and it is. It's the yellow part inside that you eat. It has the mouthfeel of room-temperature cream cheese, and the taste of a rotten onion. Bleh.


Also I found a pork bun.

So the next day we took a cab out of the city to see the Batu caves. We had to climb a few hundred steps to get inside...




Later we visited a police museum, which was pretty cool. It was basically a giant anti-communist propaganda display on the inside. I thought this tank was sweet, though.

Malaysia

Hey guys!

Guess what? We're still alive.

I'm sitting in a starbucks in a mall in Kuala Lumpur. Evan and Alaina are upstairs in the indoor amusement park, probably on a roller coaster this very moment.

As you know we have had limited internet, so I'll post right now my pictures from our time in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. There aren't very many because (1) there wasn't really that much to take a picture of in Penang and (2) most of the time I was a little too concerned about our safety to be waving the camera around. The people there were all a little creepy and in your face.

Anyway, here's a little recap: most of our time in Penang was spent sitting by the pool and eating. We mostly stayed by our hotel but took cabs into town to go eat. We had a mixture of malay, indian, and western food. One dinner was at the very classy Eastern & Oriental Hotel, where we got a brilliant multi-course dinner including amuse-bouche, salad, soup, palate cleanser, main, dessert, and tea &chocolates for an absolute steal compared to what it would cost at home. The other meals we tried more local places including an open-air indian restaurant that had amazing naan. The pool was very nice and we played cards and relaxed.

But whenever we left the hotel grounds, things were strange. Random horse on the beach, creepy cab drivers trying to advertise their 'day tours'... everything kind of seemed like a tourist trap. One really cool thing we did was go to a 'fish spa' where you put your feet in a pool with special fish that nibble all the dead skin off you! Tickles like crazy.


We went for a nightcap at the hard rock cafe which was near our hotel, and I pretended to play the drums.

Right. So on to Kuala Lumpur. We had a cab drive us to the little old broken-down train station outside Penang and boarded our overnight train. This is our first class cabin!



We got to our hostel about 5am and wend back to bed. We woke up and started exploring the city. Compared to Taipei (and Tokyo even more so) Kuala Lumpur is pretty dirty. There's trash in the streets and sketchy characters around, but it does feel safer than Penang. The people are a little less nice than in the other cities, although I'm not sure if that's partly because they speak a lot of English here and we understand them better. The taxi drivers honk and try to lure us into their cabs everywhere we go. Most of them refuse to use the meter and you have to haggle a price. Also, it's pretty unbearably hot during the day, and very humid. On the other hand, there are aspects of the city that feel very modern, well-planned, and pleasant. There are a lot of green patches around the city, including the lake gardens, a big park area where we visited the orchid garden. There are mega-malls with everything you could want - activities, all the designer shops, restaurants, etc. There is a Starbucks every 5 feet. There are cool looking buildings around, and a monorail system!

Note to parents: we are being safe. I promise. Do not worry. Yes, I'm sure.

The monorail:

Chinatown (eating lychee)
Flower stall in Chinatown

Some pics from the orchid garden



The KL Tower was the tallest before they built the Petronas towers.
Petronas towers (big mall underneath, of course)
Motorcade into the King's palace because it's a national holiday for his birthday celebration (the king's role is mostly symbolic)
We had high tea at the top of the KL tower today, as it was a more cost-effective way to see the view. It was a very nice view.





-K

Penang/ Singapore update from Alaina

As Karen mentioned in her post yesterday, it's really expensive to use the internet at our hotel in Penang so we're going online at an internet cafe near the hotel. Here's a quick update from the past few days:

TAIPEI:

We arrived at our hostel in Taipei late Thursday night. The hostel was in a pretty good location because it was near Taipei 101 (the second tallest building in the world) and some clubs. However, it was down a dark alley above a tattoo parlor so that made it slightly sketchy. The lady who owned it, Vanessa, was very friendly and helpful for getting around the city. We had a tiny room with two bunkbeds and the bathroom was down the hall.

On our first day, we had breakfast at "New York Bagels Cafe" which we assume was a established to cater to all of the people from New York working in the finance district. We had a delicious breakfast with bagels and cream cheese and eggs. The bagels were actually better than the ones I could get at Duke! We then walked across the street to Taipei 101. To get to the tourist elevators that take you to the top of the building, you first have to walk through the fancy mall that is next door. It was hard to believe how many fancy stores they had there (Chanel, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton etc.) it made me think I was in LA or something. The view from the top was really cool and we used headsets that would tell us what we were looking at from different angles in the building. We spent the rest of the day going to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, a Paper Museum (where we made our own paper), and the Shilin night market. I'll add more details about the night market later once I can post pictures.

On Saturday we went to the National Palace Museum which has an amazing collection of Chinese art. Unfortunately the 25 buses of tourists from elsewhere in Taiwan ruined the experience for us because we had to fight with them to get close to the art. We decided to jump in a cab and head to the Confucious Temple which I will post photos of later. We wanted to buy some local souvenirs so we decided to go to the Taipei Craft Market which ended up just being a 4 floor tourist trap store selling overpriced items. We left disappointed and hungry and headed to the nearest mall food court for a late lunch. This food court almost outdid the foodcourts that we saw in Tokyo. We decided on Indian food since we were sick of Chinese food. We went back to the hotel to rest and Evan and I went out with two other guys that were staying at our hostel. We first went to a pub that catered to Americans and Europeans but got ripped off on the drink prices. We then headed to a club that was recommended to me by one of my future colleagues. $20 cover got us admission and two drink tickets. It took about a half hour to get our first round of drinks at the bar. The whole club was very smokey and crowded. It was definitely cool to see though. We stayed and dance for a little over an hour and then took a cab back to the hostel around 4:30am.

On Sunday we woke up late and grabbed some brunch (duck and tofu- it was delicious) before meeting Yatyng and the Zoo MRT station. We took a 30 minute gondola ride up a mountain to Maokong where we went to a teahouse and sat and had tea and dumplings for the afternoon. We then traveled back to the Hostel to start a load of laundry before going out to a night market again. I ate a scallion pancake and the sweetest most delicious mango I had ever had. Evan and I also shared a plate of food from a Mongolian bbq like place on the street where you fill a bowl with all the vegetables and meats that you want (in our case 2 types of tofu because all of the meat looked scary) and they cook it for you. We said goodbye to Yatyng and took a cab back to the hostel to finish our laundry and packing because we had an early morning flight.

PENANG:

After a four hour flight to Kuala Lumpur and a one hour flight to Penang, we got in a cab to go to the Holiday Inn Beach Resort. Our cab driver insisted on pointing all kinds of thing on the island out to us and even tried to have us make a stop for coffee. Fortunately we insisted that he take us straight to our hotel and we arrived safely. It was unbelievable to see how much development has gone on here in probably the last ten years. There are very tall apartment/condo buildings everywhere and many signs about new resorts that are being built. Our hotel is in Batu Ferringhi, a beach area that is 15 km from Georgetown, the main city on the Island. We decided to go into town for dinner at a restaurant we read about in our Lonely Planet book. After we got out of the cab and the driver drove away we realized that the restaurant was not what we thought it would be (we were dressed up and the restaurant was a casual cafe with plastic stools to sit on). It was also starting to rain so we jumped in another cab and asked to be take to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel (the equivalent of the Washington Duke or the Townsend for my friends from Duke and Michigan respectively) and had an amazing meal at the fancy restaurant there. My meal included lobster, soup, lamb, and a ginger/pumpkin dessert, and Evan and Karen had Caesar salad, mushroom soup, filet mignon, and peach flambe that was made tableside. It was a pricey meal but nothing in comparison to what it would have cost at home. We took a cab back to our hotel and walked around the market for a while before settling in for the night.

Today we woke up with 10 minutes until the breakfast buffet closed so we jumped out of bed and ran down to the lobby. The buffet was amazing with everything you could ever want to eat from cereal, fruit and yogurt, to custom omelettes and pancakes, to curry, rice and samosas. They even had a bunch of juice and an espresso machine which made Evan very happy. The sun was shining and it was getting pretty hot so we put on our bathing suits and laid by the pool and took a walk on the beach. We got to be outside for a good two hours before it started pouring (actually more like monsooning) outside so we had lunch at the restaurant by the pool and then went up to the room before coming to the internet cafe.

Tonight the plan is to head into town for some Indian food. Happy belated memorial day to everyone at home and congratulations to the Duke Lacrosse team on its first national championship!

Hi from penang

Hey guys!

They are trying to charge both my legs to get internet in our hotel room, so I will have to update from an internet cafe - no photos until Kuala Lumpur :0(

But we made it here! Can't wait to try all the street food and hit the pool.

In lieu of photos, I made you this drawing so you can feel familiar with our surroundings. That's our hotel on the beach, and a random horse was also on the beach today.
-Karen