So, after a long train ride from KL we get to the Singapore border, where it stops for the formalities at Immigration. This all goes without much ado and within the hour we’re back on the track to Woodlands train station, Singapore. But when we exit the station (it’s early morning) we see there’s not much about and we’re fresh out of money – Singapore money anyway.

A walk across the road into some building complex uncovers a large food court, bustling with activity. There are ATMs too, so once we pick up some cash we approach one of those Chinese stalls for a coffee. We want it with milk, which costs us a few cents extra, but It comes with sweet condensed milk (yuck!) so we get them to replace them, which costs us another few cents. But the end result is strong and the mug is deep, so we’ve got what we need.

Once again we’ve researched some hostel options before hand. Singapore is notorious for being costly and we’ve had to prepare – dorm beds in hostels are the only option this time. There’s a conglomeration of them near the Lavender area of Little India (again?), so we take the subway there. We walk for a long while checking out the hostels in the area, but they’re all quite expensive (expected) but mostly in a pretty shit state (surprising)! It starts to drizzle and we sit down somewhere for a drink and use the WiFi to do some more accommodation searching. Whilst Ebru stays with the packs I run to check out the last few options and finally I reach Mercury Backpackers Hostel (57 Lavender Street / +65-63960500).

Now, hostels should be clean and comfortable, cheap and have a good atmosphere. But what these folks offer for (at the time) SG$27/pp is not yet printed in the backpackers’ dictionary. To be honest, if it hadn’t only opened a few weeks ago, it’d be a wonder that all the 15 or so other places were still in business.

Comfortable beds in small (max 6 beds), spotless rooms with ample electricity sockets and electrically secured lockers per bed; all are air conditioned, some have window wash rooms with better facilities than most budget hotels will offer; hot/cold drinking water dispensers; laundry wash/dry machines (coin operated) and hanging area; communal cooking facilities (though not extensive); WiFi; Internet workstations in lobby; 3 minutes walk from the Lavender MRT station; 5 minutes walk from various local restaurants (“coffee shops”) serving excellent food; a common area with large flat screen TV on each floor; breakfast on the roof garden (not included in our price as it wasn’t available then; a JACUZZI on the roof top as well as deck chairs and a charcoal BBQ for guest use. Let’s see, have I missed anything? Well, I can tell you that the manager is very proud of the business and he was constantly inquiring about any problems or suggestions we could identify. He was particularly interested in feedback on the orthopaedic pillows they selected for the beds, which have a special shape and should maintain perfect comfort. Well I can tell you that we were very comfortable indeed! And when we asked at check-in whether they had any rooms with windows, they not only put us in one but also made sure we had the room to ourselves as long as possible (in our case all week).

Yes, Mercury is a phenomenon and I would recommend it to any traveller wholeheartedly. Our first afternoon in Singapore is spent in a hot tub on a roof top, several high rise buildings surrounding us, and it was just what we need to recharge after a strenuous journey and will remain a very fond memory. To crown this, we find that we can easily manage Singapore on a tight budget, with the hostel costs under SG$30/pp (excluding breakfast) and all the tasty Chinese food at the coffee shops priced between SG$5 to SG$15 for generous servings.

Now, as for sightseeing and cultural interests, this island has a lot to offer.

We only move around the main CBD area and we have five packed days. There’s a great variety of sights to see but another thing that makes this city enjoyable to be in is that everything is well finished, decorated; it looks clean, colourful and interesting.

The architecture looks marvellous, by day and night! Tall skyscrapers all over the place, brown, green, grey and blue, with old colonial mansion hotels, churches or buildings between them.

Neon lights at night.

The building that dominates the view at the moment is the Marina Bay Sands hotel – it looks something like a hi-tech banana-ship stranded on three tall lego buildings.

The lobby inside is quite impressive, too.

And you can go to the top for a bird’s eye view of the city – or for a swim and some cocktails if you’re a hotel guest.

Just in front of the hotel, there is a is a shopping mall that seems it could double as an emergency shelter for the whole city – it’s massive!

And all the cream of the crop brands are of course there – how else would Ebru be able to buy her Pradas for this season?

The whole Marina Bay area is an engineering wonder, actually. There’s a good information centre in the area which gives a lot of info about it. The area is built entirely on reclaimed land (don’t ask me who took it away in the first place, they didn’t mention), but it was not there a few decades ago. This land reclamation process has been going on since the early 20th century if I recall correctly, and using this method they have increased Singapore’s land area from about 500sq.km around a hundred years ago to over 700sq.km today! And beyond the Marina Bay Sands hotel there’s more development going on.

The most impressive thing to me about the whole project, though: the Common Services Tunnel .

Moving away from Marina Bay Sands we head West through the CBD, Raffles Place and over Ann Siang Hill (hills were prestigious real estate here), a quaint little area full of wine bars and pubs – not cheap, but a good place to have a drink at the end of a day.

Over the hill lies China Town. You were going to ask whether there was a China Town, I know. Well there it is, and it’s got, amongst many other things, a Mosque Street, a Temple Street and a Pagoda Street, each with an accompanying building, and we recommend you visit each one. Quite impressive.

Not far from there, just off the end of the South Bridge Road, there’s a nice little street (I think it’s Tanjong Pagar Rd), which is packed with restaurants, and here we found a Korean style BBQ place which is worth a visit. HiStory serves an all you can eat buffet for about SG$20, which you grill on a gas BBQ on your table, and it’s not likely you’ll be left wanting for anything. They have various meats, seafood, vegetables and sauces; even ice cream for those with space remaining.

Another good day out is a stroll down the Orchard Road. Here you walk past mall after mall, one more extravagant than the other. If you’re backpacking, don’t expect to be able to buy anything – but be satisfied with viewing it all from the outside only.

Somewhere in-between we encounter a small suburb with really cozy little houses, probably with French influence. A nice area to live, methinks… if you can afford it.

Eventually, after many, many shopping centres, we reach a park. The park has a cafe, but this one is no ordinary cafe. These people had the funky idea of combining a park cafe with an art studio and so, proudly present the Art Palate Cafe. Mom, I so hope that you will have the opportunity to visit this place one day, you’d love it!

Here you can sit down and sketch the city skyline over a hot cappuccino, take painting lessons or even just write post cards.

Last but not least, there is the Botanical Garden. We get here way too late in the day to enjoy it properly, but it’s interesting none the less. It’s a huge green area built by the British; a beautiful setting to spend a day with lots of interesting things to learn. For example, a superb feature here us that they’ve built a “Health Garden” in which there are samples of hundreds of plants and information displayed about their medicinal uses – very interesting indeed.

Also fascinating to learn was that the efforts of one keen British botanist, H.N. “Mad” Ridley, had a huge impact on shaping the economy of the S.E.Asian peninsula and probably the world. He had radical ideas about cultivating rubber trees for mass production and was ridiculed for it, but once he worked out a sustainable method for harvesting rubber without killing the trees, he’d basically paved the way for a huge rubber boom to take place in the world, which is something he foresaw before his contemporaries. He bred millions of seeds at these very gardens, which he distributed along with his instructions and, directly as a result of this, Thailand, Malaysia (and perhaps others I don’t recall right now) went on to become the world’s largest rubber producers.

And you’ll be even more befuzzled to hear that on this very day of our visit, there is an elephant auction going on!

There you have it! Lots of fascinating stuff to see and do in Singapore. I hope you get the chance to visit some day!


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Our trip through Malaysia is sadly only a through trip but we allow ourselves a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur to pick up the aroma. From Phuket bus terminal we take a 08:45 public bus to Hat Yai (262THB/pp) which gets us there 7 hours later and we check into the King’s Hotel, a hundred metres from the train station, for an overnight stop before our 16:00 departure the next day. Hat Yai is a transit hub. There’s not much of interest as far as I can tell, but it’s got a large town feel and the buildings are quite colourful. There are lots of Chinese here so walking through the streets is a bit like walking through China Town anywhere, with Chinese pictorals on buildings and lanterns and such all over the place.

Dinner is a bit of a disappointment – we get some seafood Tom Yam from a street stand near the bus station which upsets my stomach – so I spend the night thoroughly researching options for a good western style breakfast for the next morning. (http://phil.uk.net/hatyai/food.html ) gives some good recommendations on the subject and I decide to visit the Bamboo, but we don’t find it. However I do find a darn good Full English at a place called The Swan, which sets me up for the day. We spend the remaining few hours WiFi-ing at the Post Laser Disc where I spoil myself with a superb pint of Guinness draft while we update the blog and research our destination. The Guinness does cost 220THB but I don’t expect it to be cheap and who knows when next I’ll find one.

Our train from Hat Yai is a rattly old 2 coaches which take us to the Malaysian border within 2 hours, where it then joins with another few coaches from Malaysia. We only manage to get sitting places (450THB/pp) but we recon we can handle it for 16 or so hours. The immigration process is very straight forward at the interim station stop. The train is ok but journey turns out to be very uncomfortable. I guess our bodies are tired of sitting for hours on end. We hardly get any sleep.

We arrive in KL so early nothing is up and running yet. There appear to be a few huge, unmanned and unoccupied vibration-massage chairs in a corner and we head straight for them. There are a few Indian-looking fellows sleeping on the astro turf behind them with their laptop bags and whatnot (did they fail to spot the chairs??), but we sink into the soft seats and we doze off to the repetitive advertizements for Indonesian restaurants coming from a nearby TV screen. The only disturbance in a couple of hours is from a small cockroach on my arm, seemingly trying to explain that I’m in his seat.

Next we take a metro to Pasar Seni station and hunt down a place to stay. I’ve already got a few places earmarked on Google Maps – I’ve developed a pretty good system for hitting a destination reasonably prepared with locations and places to check out. We have to do quite a bit of walking in the baking heat and none of the budget places I noted down (all of which received good reviews on travel web sites) either have vacancies or are in the kind of shape that you’d want to spend a night there. So we check into a place called the Soho Hotel not far from Pasar Seni metro station. It costs us about 20$US for the room but it’s clean and has a decent bathroom, AC and a TV with a few English channels so it’s quite “luxurious”.

KL seems like a big city on the map but when we walk around we find we can get anywhere pretty quickly by walking – and we do a lot of this! (Besides, you can get a bit confused buying tickets for the different public transport systems they have – the MRT, the LRT, I can’t remember exactly but it takes us a few minutes to figure out how we’d leave the airport.)

Keep in mind that some words in foreign languages can be severly misinterpreted if not translated with care and precision.

One night we stroll past the Petronas towers, undoubtedly you’ll recognize them from pictures on television or magazines; a beautiful piece of modern architecture.

In the vicinity there are also a number of bars selling a variety of beers (and also Carlsberg,  come to think of it) at shameful prices (much like in the UK). But we are tired and dry after a day’s walking and must indulge, so we carefully inspect each venue’s happy hour deal and go where our buck promises to bang the loudest. – We’re sooo cheap!

China Town – yes there’s one here too. Nuff said.

In Little India Indian women hover about in saree-type dresses (though I recall they to a large extent seem to be from the Indian Muslim community) and street after street is rowed with colourful textile sellers and tailors. We intend to buy Ebru a nice burka but we can’t find one that’ll fit so we leave it.

Mederka square is the indisputable statement of national independence after years of British colonial rule. A cluster of large white and dark-wood English style cottages sit behind a smooth green field, which together used to be the colonial cricket club. The green is now a public park and buried firmly into the head of it is a hundred-something metre pole bearing the Malaysian flag.

There is actually a very nice little museum / tourist information centre adjacent to it which displays a number of historical photographs and associated information about KL’s past, and also on on display there are most delicate wood carvings by a very renowned association of artists. As I recall it, KL – like Hong Kong – used to be swamp land and the British set up camp here to build a colonial port as well as set up a load of tin mines. I always find it fascinating to learn how these places went from – what some would consider – wasteland to huge cities with massive populations infrastructures.

A lot of walking can be achieved in the Botanic Gardens. By the time we get there we’re pretty tired, but it is a lovely place to visit so I would recommend going there early in the day and taking your time.

The vibe in this city is so different from all the places we’ve visited in recent months. Of course Malaysia is a Muslim country and you do see ample evidence of this, not least in the price of a pint of beer. But KL is and feels like a big melting pot of cultures. It’s got the shiny steel and glass sky scrapers, but walk on a bit and there are colonial buildings of English style and in-between, the arched windows and doorways of the Islamic architecture. The modern architecture and large trees gives a sense of cleanliness and then, as you walk through the streets, you’re fooled to thinking you’re in India, with dust and grime and the occasional red splash of dry paan-stained saliva on a wall or lamp post, clearly marking the territory. But if we’re in India why all the Chinese…?

One thing we notice is that they sure like their graffiti here, and they’re damn good at it too! Have a look what we found in the canal:

The food scene is colourful as well: one minute you’re walking past a blinky McD, KFC, Starbucks or other franchise, the next it’s a halal restaurant, then you’re confronted by an Indian curry kitchen and to complete the menu some Chinese establishment dangles a roast duck from a metal hook in front of you.

We found some reasonably good food in an Indian cafeteria near our hotel (yes I did suffer accordingly the next day but it was very nostalgic and I enjoyed it).

However the hands down winner – and you’ll understand my not being able to pass this by – is Nando’s Chicken on Jalan Sultan street! My last meal in England before leaving on this trip was Nando’s and after five months of abstinence this is a welcome surprise, totally unexpected! I guess this is something of a belated Christmas present from South East Asia. How considerate! It isn’t cheap but it’s worth it!

Our departure from KL is once again by night train, this time to Singapore. Since the train departs quite late we’re able to spend some time in town enjoying the finer things in life (you never know when the next one will come along).

We’re bracing ourselves for the costs in Singapore but are looking forward to see this place so renowned for its beauty and cleanliness. The train is already an improvement from the last one so it’s promising.

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Nothing to it! To avoid the hassle of arranging transport ourselves and changing at various waypoints, we paid the extra (total 1200THB/pp return) for a travel agent in Koh Lanta (Otto’s was pretty professional) to arrange a direct minibus for the exercise.

Literally, we got picked up at the  guest house at 7AM, drove for about 5 hours to the Thai-Malay border and did the exit and re-entry there.

No fees were involved. We had our departure card in our passports from when we arrived, got our exit stamp. Then we walked over to the Malaysia border post, filled out an arrival/departure card, got our entry visa and stamp, did a U-turn to the other side of the building, got the exit stamp and walked back to the Thai side. On the Thai side we prepared another Thai arrival/departure card, got the entry stamp and walked back to the bus to return to Koh Lanta.

Driving aside, the whole procedure took about an hour and a half, but this was mostly because of waiting in a queue of about 30 people at the Malay entry point.

Happy visa running!

A good sleep on the comfi overnight train from Chiang Mai and we wake up in Bangkok. Just in case anyone out there is thinking of taking this route, here’s a word of warning from the train company.

Not much time spent in Bangkok, only a few days, but what can I say? It’s a big city – impressively so! Be prepared for all the things that come part and parcel with traveling thru a big city. Pollution, traffic. Getting around takes time and money, tuk tuk and taxi drivers will attempt to charge three times the proper rate, and accommodation and food are relatively expensive too.

Though I must say that at no time day or night do I feel in any danger of being mugged or whatnot. (I think credit has to go to the Super Police.)

In the tourist district around Khaosan Road and that area there’s plenty to eat / drink / shop. Plenty of lights, night life and noise. 

If you want to do something nice, go to the river and hop on the ferry down to China Town. In the streets here you’ll be able to bargain on anything from fishing line to hair clips, sunglasses to the latest porn titles (sadly my laptop has no DVD drive so I can’t tell you much about that).

However the real hit is on one of the main roads called Thanon Yaowarat, a little further on from the White Orchid hotel. Here you’ll find several pavement restaurants, and one in particular we frequented was Lek & Rut Seafood – an absolute extravaganza for seafood lovers! 

Tom Yum shrimp soup (150THB): 

And last but not least, grilled shrimp straight off the charcoal BBQ only meters away (5 pieces 300THB !!!):  (I refrain from telling them what we’d call these “shrimps” back home as it might tempt them to hike their prices up a notch!)

A visit to the Emerald Buddha temple is a great day out.

Of course this story would not be complete without briefly discussing the question of the Ping Pong Effect: 

One night we ask some waiters for advice on where the action is and they recommend the Silom district, a few kilometres SouthEast of Khaosan. A lively place, full of bars and eateries, but mostly gogo bars, massage parlours and sex shows. Not knowing the best course of action Ebru steers us smack-bang into the middle of the gay district and we sit down at some bars for some beers. Good fun here I must say! Bit strange having the waiter blow kisses at me while I’m chatting to my wife but otherwise really good fun, and it seems the only place where they play a good variety of music and bars have a relaxed BAR atmosphere, unlike the more “lady-orientated” places. 

After that we move on and pop into a Ping Pong show – got to do it while we’re here no? Besides, I love Ping Pong! The tout outside the door tells us free entry and 150THB a beer; we confirm this with the mean mama at the counter inside and she agrees, so we order a couple of beers and sit down for the show. 

It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous, it’s dark and seedy and the ladies aren’t exactly the pick of the crop either (skills aside) – those of them who are ladies, as half of them are clearly men with tits. Straight away some gals come over to greet us and move off again, leaving their rum-coke glasses on our table. Clearly suspicious so we move signal for the lady to take them away as we don’t want them. For the next half hour it’s all lubricated paint brushes and Ping Pong balls; nothing I could ever train my fella to do, so we get bored and decide to leave.

Mean mama at the payment counter has been tallying up and hands us the bill: 

2 x Beer 300THB
2 x Ping Pong Show 800THB
3 x Rum-Coke 2700THB
——————————
TOTAL: 3800THB! 

Of course we refuse to pay and as she threatens to call the mafia her girlfriend is straight on the cell phone appearing to make a call. How intimidating… We wave the 300 Baht in her face, turning for the door and she decides to snatch it before we head out and weave our way swiftly through the streets back to – you guessed it – the safe harbour of the gay district! Be assured that I’m not that way inclined, but if it’s going to be nights out in the smutty areas of Bangkok, this is the place for me (of course with my wife as a human shield). 

Aside from that what else to tell?

Worth mentioning is that we have managed to settle our ongoing shared-laptop woes with a day trip to Pantip Plaza, a massive PC / technology market on Petchaburi road. Now that I’m the proud owner of a little ASUS 1218, we argue less, we talk less and life is a bowl of cherries.
As Confuscius’ famously said: “Key to a happy marriage – make sure each have own laptop.” 

We have to leave Thailand in order to do a Visa Run to Cambodia, but then we return to Thailand and move Bangkok to the Southern islands. The night prior to our visa run we bump into Mikko, a Finn we met in Boracay a couple of months earlier. It’s a good excuse to celebrate and to Ebru’s dismay I don’t go to bed early but head out with Mikko and Bruno from Germany for a few drinks around Khaosan Road. Well, an innocent conversation over an innocent beer later and we’re off to a bar to do Tequila Suicides as a parting ritual…. two tequila suicides and a shared bucket of rum&coke later the Mexicans have firmly taken over the party and ensure that I have a nice, deep sleep all the way to Cambodia  the next day.
PS: Mikko if you’re reading this, we have to hook up so I can send you those videos somehow!  

One night we were fortunate enough to witness a beautiful lunar eclipse over the city.

Another night we get to ride on Bangkok’s fastest tuk tuk.

On our final evening in Bangkok, which happens to be the same evening we arrive at Bangkok returning from Cambodia, we get dropped off at the main train station, stash our bags at the left luggage counter and race straight off to Chinatown for our final Bangkok Shrimp and Tom Yum feast!

Washed down with a couple of Singhas, we’re satisfied to the teeth and board our night train for the islands in the South.

Bye bye Bangkok! 

We booked the complete transfer between Luang Prabang (Lao) and Chiang Mai (Thailand) via a tour company in LP as we wanted to avoid losing time finding all the transport connections ourselves.

Overview:
– Ticket cost: 310000LAK/pp
– Get to LP North bus terminal
– Take bus from LP to Huei Xai terminal (Bokeo Province)
– Get to the Huei Xai – Chiang Khong river crossing
– Go to Immigration (exit procedures)
– Take boat to Chiang Khong (Thailand)
– Go to Immigration (entry procedures)
– Get to next transport connection to Chiang Mai

The Lao agent (Andy’s Air Ticketing Service, 49/3 Khemkong Road LP, Tel.+856-71260505) gave us a ticket receipt to the border town of Huei Xai and another one which we would show to the tuk-tuk driver there as well as their partner agents along the way for free onward transport.

Initial pick-up was at 18:00 in front of our guest house by tuk-tuk and dropped us off at the LP Nort bus station about 15 minutes later.

At the terminal office we showed our purchase receipt and got our bus tickets. The 19:00 “VIP” bus left almost on schedule (though another traveller told me the buses normally leave when they’re full so we may have been lucky). The ride to Huei Xai took 12 hours (on time).

The trip was not no luxury by western standards but no long bus trip is comfortable and all in all it was not bad. Although all seats were occupied, several pickups were made along the main road, the last being about 5 people who had rolled their car off into the vegetation. (I have no problem this as long as it doesn’t cause big delays or serious discomfort to paying passengers. These poeple also need to get somewhere and don’t have the variety of options we take for granted. They were camped out on the floor and I could only empathise with the discomfort of sitting cramped upright for several hours. There was no on board toilet as explained to us but this is a safer option as they can start to stink; several “refreshment” stops were made. Air con on older buses tends to be a problem so take something warm on board including something for your head.)

We showed our tickets to a tuk-tuk driver in Huei Xai who dropped us off at the partner agent. The partner was located right at the river crossing. They paid the tuk-tuk driver, converted our receipts to minivan tickets for the other side and put a sticker on us to signal a free ride with a tuk-tuk on the Thai side. They excorted us to the immigation office for passport stamping (no fee was involved) and then to the boat. (There is also a money exchange office right at the border office so you can convert your remaining LAK to THB).

Bye Bye Lao. The boat trip to the Thai post was about 5 minutes and there we simply filled out our arrival/departure forms and got our Visa On Arrival stamp for 14 days. Again no fee.

We got on a tuk-tuk near the immigration office, which took us to the partner agent on the Thai side (about 10 minutes). They checked our minivan tickets and half an hour later we were seated in a nice minivan en route to Chiang Mai.