Days 268-269: On Foot

I've mostly been exploring around the George Town part of Panang on foot. My initial walk from the bus station earned me a bit of a reputation with the people at the hostel, and some of my other walks have only heightened it. The first day there I walked around George Town more, covering a lot of ground as I ventured to some areas in town further from the hostel.

The next day I followed the coast west along the island maybe 5km to the fancy rich area called Gurney and ended up at a big shopping mall called Gurney Plaza. One of the staff at the hostel had recommended it to me as one of the best places for food on the island. Normally shopping malls aren't high on the list of people looking for good food, but this place had a massive food court underground with a mix of both fast food and sit-down restaurants. The dish I ended up with rice and beef in some sauce full of Malaysian spices that was pretty amazing. After, I decided to visit the theatre and watch The Hobbit, since I haven't been to a movie in quite awhile. It cost something like $3.50 (and another $2.50 if I'd wanted popcorn and a drink - a nice change from the ones at home). The selection of movies playing was also pretty fantastic. There were probably 20 different movies playing, some only once or twice a day, but ranging from Bollywood to Chinese to big Western movies. The commercials were also of not. Prior to the movie there were at least 20 commercials, which was a bit tiring. Luckily they were almost entirely badly dubbed or subtitled Asian commericals, which was amusing enough to keep it entertaining.

I had another meal (less impressive, but still good) at the mall before walking back to the hostel, having to stop a few times to wait out the bursts of rain, and making it back relatively dry.

Days 266-267: Bus to Malaysia

After a few days of aimless wandering and nearly unending rain in Singapore it was time to move on. I did an overnight bus to Penang leaving Singapore at 10pm with the plan to save on a night of accomodation by sleeping on the bus. Unfortunately 2/3 of the bus was a big group of Malaysians travelling together who were pretty rowdy. I skipped by some of the other cities I intend to, such as Kuala Lumpur, so I could start in the north and work my way back south. The bus finally got to Penang around 7am, but then I made the unpleasant discovery that the bus station is in the middle of nowhere, with no atms around and no way for me to pay for a bus into town. A very sweet Malaysian woman offered me bus fare, which, being me, I had to politely refuse. If I'm desperate sometimes I'll take charity, but this one was my fault and there was an easy way for me to solve it myself, so I would rather just handle it on my own. In the end I found an ATM at a 7-eleven, but by then I was already committed (and didn't know which bus to take anymore) so I just walked the entire 10km to my hostel with all my bags. At least it wasn't raining!

My hostel is in Little India, and after dropping off my bags I walked along the waterfront some and watched a bit of a bike race that was going on. Mostly I just walked around the surrounding streets, which, to be honest, seem pretty run down in a lot of places. It might be a fun city to do some urban photography in, since there are a lot of crumbling walls and washed out looking signs on old buildings. I've very roughly planned out my next month, and am staying in George Town for a few days to do some day trips around the island and the nearby area.

(I've been trying to upload pictures, but the wifi here is too slow and can't handle them. Maybe I'll come back and add photos later on...)

Day 264: Skygarden (and Rain)

More rain! Luckily this time it started earlier in the day so I didn't get caught in the middle of some outdoor activity. Since it was going to be another wet day I decided to visit "Gardens by the Bay", an impressive group of structures that combines nature and some pretty wild engineering and architecture. Normally visiting gardens on a rainy day isn't the brightest idea, and it's true that I did miss out on a bit of the area due to the weather, but the parts I really wanted to see were mostly indoors.

The grove of strange tree looking buildings is called the Supertree Grove. In addition to being pretty decorations and housing vertical gardens up the sides, the Grove is something of a power station for the larger garden, helping generate electricity and aiding the heating/cooling systems.

The main section of the garden is located in the two glass domes. The taller one is the Cloud Forest, and as one would expect it's cool and humid. I really enjoyed Cloud Forest. It has an artificial hollow mountain in the middle, with a waterfall pouring down over the side. Different paths and walkways let you climb through and up the mountain, seeing the change in vegetation as you ascend. The variety of interesting plants also allows me to have a post with what I can only assume is the nightmare of all blog-readers: poorly shot amateur flower photography!

The other structure has the confusing name of Flower Dome. It is very dry and mostly contains cacti, succulents and dry climate trees like baobabs. It also was decorated for Christmas, and having Santa and reindeer flying through a patch of cacti was a bit strange.

I thought about sticking around for the lightshow over the bay, but it was still raining and I didn't really have anything to do in the meantime. Plus, light shows aren't really a huge draw for me. Instead I took the metro to a shopping mall and got some dinner and looked around a little, since it kept me indoors.

Day 263: Skybridge (and Rain)

Notice the theme with titles? I guess when you go to a city that's almost exactly on the equator, in a tropical climate, during their rainy season, you have to expect getting a little wet.

My plan for today was to go up to the MacRitchie Reservoir for a little exercise. There are a lot of reservoirs around Singapore to gather and store water, and the area around MacRitchie Reservoir is a big tropical park that includes the zoo, the night safari, and something called the TreeTop Walk, which is what I was mainly going for. The bus I took to get there dropped me off at the wrong place despite me telling the driver exactly where I wanted to go, and then questioning him doubtfully when he told me we were at the stop I wanted and it didn't match the description I'd given him at all. It was still near the MacRitchie Reservoir trails, but not the trail I wanted, so I had to walk 5km extra to get where I wanted to be. The day started off lightly overcast, and the weather was nice for the first couple hours. When I got deep into the woods the rain started to come. At first I tried to duck under trees or into shelters when the rain got really hard, but soon I was so wet that it didn't really matter anymore. By the time I got to the TreeTop Walk I was soaked through, and then learned from the attendant there that the path on the other side was closed due to the number of fallen trees the previous day that were blocking it. He still let me do the walk, which is a 250m long suspension bridge over the jungle canopy, and then turn around and walk it again to retrace my steps back. I took a different route back (going to where I had wanted to get off the bus the first time). Once the rain came I didn't see many animals, but before it started I saw quite a few lizards and small furry things running around, as well as a lot of monkeys.

It feels strange that a few short months ago I thought seeing free-roaming monkeys was exotic! The jungle itself was nice too. Lots of exotic flora (for me, at least) and very humid (both before and during the rain).

Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess my post title will involve (and Rain).

Day 262: Skyship (and Rain)

Without anything terribly pressing to hunt down in Singapore, my first day was a meandering exploration with another guest at the hostel. The exact route we took doesn't much matter, but we covered the majority of the city center, including the bay, the business district, the Muslim, Indian and Chinese districts, and a variety of other places, mostly while lost and not really knowing where we were going.

As I mentioned before, architecture is pretty impressive in Singapore. They have a lot of money, a lot of people, and not all that much space, so the inclination is to build up, and to build fancy. Things in Singapore don't get much more fancy then the Marina Bay Sands. Marina Bay Sands is a hotel/casino/shopping mall resort complex standing over the bay. It cost $8 billion (yes, billion) to build, and the hotel consists of 3 towers that support a giant ship/park. I know that sentences is confusing.

Three towers, giant ship, see? The bay has a lot to see around it, including a double-helix shaped bridge and a skyline of a bunch more tall hotels and office towers. We walked around the bay once earlier in the day, then again at night to see all the lights. Here are a few random mix of pictures from the area.

At one point late in the afternoon we were walking through a park when we saw dramatic black clouds coming towards us as if the armies of Mordor were afoot. Just as the rain started to turn from drizzle to downpour we jumped into a random shopping mall (Singapore is one of the few places I've been where seven floor shopping malls are truly random buildings strewn about). The ground floor was littered with cafes and restaurants, but a few odd things caught my attention and led me to investigate the mall more thoroughly. My suspicious about the mall proved correct when I checked out the 5th floor and found 6 video game stores, 2 video gaming accessory stores, 4 stores relating to other forms of games, and 5 stores selling figurines and models. It was a nerd mall. It was actually more of an electronics mall, and the 5th floor was where the nerdier elements of it gathered, but still, a fortunate refuge from the storm.

Day 261: Flying on South

For once I had a flight at a comfortable time and didn't need to get up in the middle of the night to catch it. The flight was on one of the bare bones budget airlines, but it was only for a couple hours, so it didn't really matter.

After getting through customs and getting my bags I took Singapore's thorough metro system across the city (/country) to near my hostel. Since it was already dark out by this point I got a taxi for the last 500m since I didn't feel like struggling around trying to find the place in the dark. There was nobody at the hostel to check me in, but they'd left things set up for me and after calling the manager I got everything worked out. I spent the evening deep in discussion with a couple of the other hostel guests and did a little research on what to do in the city.

Singapore is a really fascinating place. It's one of the few true city-states left in the world, and for such a tiny place generates a lot of wealth. Their aggressive immigration policies make it incredibly diverse, with 4 official languages and a real mix of culture and religion. The combination of growing population, limited space and lots of money also lead to some pretty awesome public works projects. The architecture is wild, and the the geography is.. flexible. Need more land? Build some new islands! Need more fresh water? Build a new lake! Need a mountain for a high elevation garden? Build something crazy! Since I haven't actually been to these places yet I'll stay away from too much detail at this point, but all shall be answered as I explore the city over the next week.

Days 258-260: Catching Up and Looking Forward

After a last breakfast with some of the group I packed my bags and headed across town to the hostel I stayed at in Bangkok before. It was pleasant the first time, and not having to stress over finding a new place is an added bonus, so coming back was an easy choice. I didn't really do much during this second stop in Bankok, partly just because I'd seen much of what interested me the first time, and partly I just didn't feel like rushing around for a few days. I still explored around, trying different restaurants and buying a couple things, but overall nothing really worth getting into detail on.
So tonight is my last night in Bangkok (yes, present tense!) I also spent my few days here catching up on all the blog posts and photos, and when I fly out tomorrow I should be all caught up with everything for the first time in months. The fact that I'm flying out is another one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight is a bit frustrating. I'm heading over to Singapore tomorrow, and originally when I booked this flight a year ago I was planning to just stop over and likely continue on to Australia. The problem is that I no longer wish to do that. Instead I want to spend another month or so in southeast Asia before moving on. The perfect solution would have been to end my flying in Bangkok, spend the 4-6 weeks travelling into Laos, then south through Thailand and Malaysia and ending in Singapore before flying on to Australia. Instead, I'm going to have to fly to Singapore, and head north through Malaysia and possibly into Thailand again, for the third time, before looping back, completely defeating the purpose of the flight tomorrow. Oh well. It's not really that big of a deal, and when I booked these things a year ago without really knowing what my plans were, there were bound to be a few problems.

Despite this hiccup, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm done all my tours, as of tomorrow done all that initial batch of very cheap, poorly planned plane tickets from the start, and for the first time in awhile have a lot of freedom to just wander wherever I want.