Obsessions of Asia

We are woefully behind on posting since we came back to the United States. Despite having almost constant access to computers and the Internet, we have focused our time on seeing family and friends. Even for me, it is hard to say, "Mom, I know you haven't seen me for two years, but I just have to get those Obsessions posts done..."

So, without anymore excuses, here come Asia's obsessions:

India- Spitting. An easy one. The average Indian might spit 1200 times per day. And we aren't talking about small little bits of spittle. We're talking about pieces of lung the size of a fist. Sure, lots of Indians also have a paan habit (think chewing tobacco, but different ingredients that also happen to make one's spit Kool-Aid red), but even those that don't chew still spit. And before the spitting comes a noise that sounds like the regurgitation of a cow. Wait, most Indians don't eat cow, so a goat. Like hawking up a goat.

Sri Lanka- Water tanks. What is a water tank you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you even if you didn't ask. A water tank is a man made lake. Sri Lanka has a lot of areas that are at altitude and are very wet for part of the year, but very dry for the rest of the year. So, starting a thousand years ago or more, digging giant water pits became the prerequisite for growing any large city that wasn't on the sea. And they did it with gusto. Some of the cities have dozens of lakes that are far larger than many dammed lakes in the US, and they were all dug out by hand. Or maybe with hands and a rock and maybe a chisel, but you get the point. Good job, ancient Sri Lankans!

Malaysia- Tourism posters. If all the Asian countries were elementary school students, Malaysia would get the "Tries Hardest" certificate at the end of the year. Not only are tourism posters in nearly every window of Malaysia, they are in nearly every hotel and vaguely related travel business everywhere in Asia. They must have printed millions of them. And that makes it even sadder that more people don't visit Malaysia, which really is a spectacular country.

Singapore- Rules. Singapore has rules for everything. And fines for not following most of them. The list of fines in the subway cars was as long as my arm. (We especially appreciated that one of the highest fines was for bringing the smelly durian fruit on the train.) If you like to conform, consider moving to Singapore. If you have ever voted Libertarian or are a card carrying member of the Tea Party, consider vacationing somewhere other than Singapore.

Indonesia- Cats without tails. Didn't see that one coming, did you? We saw hundreds of cats in Indonesia and every one of them had some or all of its tail missing. We can only assume that people think they should not have tails and take it upon themselves to cut off the tails with whatever sharp instrument is laying around when they see a cat with tail intact. We thought that we might see this in other countries, but it was really just Indonesia.

Thailand- 7-Eleven. Think of all the 7-Elevens you have ever seen. Multiply that number by 100. That is how many 7-Elevens are on the average block in Thailand. It used to be a joke in New York that Starbucks would often have locations right across the street from one another. 7-Eleven in Thailand might regularly have three stores on a block. I don't understand how they stay in business, especially since they are more expensive than most Thai businesses, but they all seem the thrive. Since I love Slurpees, I thank the Thai people for making cheap Slurpees available everywhere.

Burma (Myanmar)- Gold leaf. I had never heard of someone's job being to hammer gold until it was gold leaf. In Burma, that ranks as one of the most popular jobs. Where does all that gold leaf go? Buddhists in Burma buy the gold leaf and then rub it onto the Buddha statues (or anything else that they believe should be gold) at the Buddhist temples. This keeps everything bright and shiny. Oh, I should point out that only men are allowed to do this. Women aren't allowed to touch the Buddha statues, but can buy some gold leaf and have a manly man rub it onto the Buddha.

Cambodia- Angkor Wat. It seems sort of lame to be obsessed with your biggest tourist attraction, but Cambodia unquestionably is. It adorns the flag, half the stores in the country are named for it, and it inspired enough awe that even Pol Pot didn't destroy it. And Pol Pot destroyed just about everything in Cambodia.

Vietnam- Motor scooters. The average person in Vietnam has 3.2 motor scooters. Approximately. Through a quantum trick, they ride all of them simultaneously. So, while Vietnam has only 80 million people, 250 million people ply the roads on motor scooters at any given time. And most of those 250 million are going down the road that you want to cross. The streets of the large cities look like a moped convention.

Laos- Fruit shakes. I try to find something deeper than a food for country obsessions, but fruit shakes made with fruit, condensed milk, sugar, and ice are what hold the country of Laos together and makes the whole country so friendly. That's pure speculation, but locals and tourists alike can be found drinking delicious and cheap shakes all over the country, and we were certainly fans. For those who are not feeling happy enough after a regular shake, many places seem to offer "happy" shakes, which come with whatever drugs they happen to have in stock (pot in most places).

China- Crotchless pants. No, China isn't turning into 1980s New York. Any child under the age of three in China wears pants with a giant slit down the crotch and no underwear underneath. This allows them to go to the bathroom anytime and anywhere they like. And I do mean anytime and anywhere. Let's say the kid is waiting in a busy ticket line inside the train station with the parent and needs to go to the bathroom--that's what those pants are for. Number one or number two? Doesn't matter. Does the parent clean it up? No. It stays there for others to step in. While China seems likely to take over the world one day, we hope they get rid of crotchless pants prior to that.

Mongolia- Chengis Khan. Yeah, I thought it was Genghis Khan, too, but not in Mongolia. This founder of the Mongol Empire is known for uniting the nomads of Mongolia, declaring war on anything that moved, killing about a bajillion people, and creating the beginning of the largest empire the world has ever known. That, of course, makes him the hero of Mongolia. Based on our experience, I don't see the second coming of the Mongol Empire anytime soon.

There you have it: the obsessions of Asia. Disagree with us? Too bad. Write your own blog. Or leave us nasty comments about how we disparaged your country. That's why our home address isn't on the blog. Well, that and we don't have a home yet...

From Rupees to Rupiah: Financing Asia

All through our travels, people told us how cheap Asia would be...and, looking forward to bringing down our average daily budget, we hoped that they were right. Luckily, they were!

Here are the numbers by country. In case you forgot how we do this, these numbers are for two people, including visa costs and all costs on the ground (and in the air if we took internal flights). Sometimes we also include the cost of a flight into the country if that was the only way to get there.

India: $53 per day. Visas cost $74 each at the embassy in Istanbul. India is one of the cheapest countries we've been to, so staying there for five weeks did wonders for our financial (if not gastrointestinal) health. Hotel rooms ranged from $10-$25 depending on level of comfort (except in Mumbai, where it's hard to find a double for less than $50); restaurant meals could usually be had for a buck or two, and street food for pennies; and train transport in sleeper class cost less than a hotel. Not getting ripped off on cabs and tourist excursions required some negotiating.

Sri Lanka: $80 per day (including flight from Chennai, India, which costs about $120 per ticket; $53 per day without flight). No visa fees. Sri Lanka's hotels and food were a little more expensive than India's, but it made up for it with what is possibly the world's cheapest public transport on a $-per-hour basis. If you plan to visit more than two historic sites in the "Cultural Triangle" area, getting a pass can save you $25 or more.

Malaysia: $47 per day. No visas. Some travelers complain about Malaysia being pricey, but as it turns out, the only traveler item that is really expensive in (Muslim-majority) Malaysia is beer! As long as you don't drink much, the country is terrific value, especially considering how developed it is. Air-con double rooms with shared (but very clean, hot-water) bathrooms cost $10-$15, and delicious, cheap street food abounds. Transport is a little pricier than some Asian countries, but you usually get comfortable, AC buses on smooth roads. We stuck to the peninsula this time and didn't do any fancy tourist excursions, but our memories of our previous trip to Borneo are that prices were very reasonable there, too.

Singapore: $111 per day. No visas. We only spent two days in Singapore, so this is kind of skewed, but it's certainly one of the most developed and expensive countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the cheaper hotels are in the red light district, where we found a decent private room for $35 a night. Public transport, museums, and restaurants are comparable to Western prices, but taxis (which are metered, hallelujah!) and street or food court foods are relatively cheap.

Indonesia: $102 per day. One-month visas on arrival at the airport cost $25 each. Indonesia was surprisingly expensive, though that's largely because we did a lot of pricey activities like SCUBA diving, chartering a boat to Krakatau volcano, and a few other organized tours. No-frills internal flights between the islands were a pretty good deal, usually less than $50 one-way and could be booked just a day or two before. Buses and trains on the ground varied a lot in price and quality. Hotel rooms for $10-$15 could be found, but were usually pretty disgusting; if we wanted cleanliness and AC, we usually had to pay at least $25. Cheap street food could be found in most places, though not so much in touristy Bali, where we usually had to shell out for real restaurants.

Thailand: $83 per day. No visa fees. Considering how many touristy activities we did in Thailand (diving, elephant training camp, etc.), this is a great average. Hotel and transport standards are pretty high, but competition for the tourist buck keeps prices low. Markets selling cheap local food are pretty easy to find, and even fancy restaurants are probably cheaper than the Thai restaurants you find at home. Just try not to get robbed, which could certainly send your costs soaring!

Myanmar: $77 per day. Visas cost $27 each in Bangkok. This average includes flights into and out of Yangon from Bangkok ($130 each roundtrip), which accounted for one-third of our expenditures there. Once you're on the ground, Myanmar (Burma) is super cheap in all categories, though its rough roads, ancient vehicles, and power cuts often made it feel more like traveling in sub-Saharan Africa than Southeast Asia.

Cambodia: $53 per day. Visas cost $20 each at the border. Cambodia is excellent value. $11 a night got us rooms with bathroom, AC, and sat TV in both Siem Riep and Phnom Penn, the two most touristed cities in the country. Markets and restaurants offer cheap food; bus transport and tourist site admissions are pretty reasonable. If we had stayed longer, or ventured out to less touristy places, it probably would have been even cheaper, but even so, Cambodia was one of the cheapest destinations on our trip.

Vietnam: $66 per day. Visas cost $45 each in Phnom Penn, Cambodia. Vietnam's one of those countries that feels more expensive than it is, probably because people are trying to rip you off almost continuously. But we did manage to stay in some pretty nice hotel rooms and eat decent food for not a lot of money. Trains cost more than buses but are much nicer (which isn't the same as saying that they're actually nice!), especially for overnight travel. Halong Bay overnight cruises can be an especially good deal for a decently swanky experience...provided your boat doesn't sink in the night, of course.

Laos: $57 per day. Visas cost $40 each at the border. Laos is pretty poor, so the roads and buses aren't always the nicest, but hotels were quite comfortable, food was inexpensive, activities like kayaking were very reasonable, and prices overall about as cheap as could be.

China: $92 per day. Visas cost $160 each in Vientiane, Laos--the most expensive of our entire trip. (They are about $100 less expensive for non-Americans, though.) Yunnan province, in southwestern China, was incredibly inexpensive; with $10 hotel rooms and cheap bus rides, it cost no more than Laos, where we had just come from. As we moved east and to the bigger cities, things got more expensive, though you could always find cheap and tasty food, even in Beijing. In general, China didn't feel overpriced considering the good quality of rooms, trains, and food that we got, and some tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, were surprisingly reasonable.

Mongolia: $121 per day. No visas needed for Americans, though most nationalities need one. This number is high because we spent 6 of our 8 days in the country on a private jeep tour of the Gobi. If we'd managed to find a couple of other travelers to share the tour with, costs would have been halved. Otherwise, the country's pretty budget-friendly: In Ulaan Bataar, the capital, a hostel room with breakfast, Internet, and shared bath cost $15; there were expensive restaurants and cheap local-food canteens to choose from; and the 15-hour train from the China border cost around $9 for seats, or $25 for sleeper berths.

So, Asia had a few expensive countries, but was mostly pretty cheap for us. Hope that this post was slightly helpful to you if you're planning to backpack through Asia. If you have any questions, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you!

Sing, Muse, of Singapore (and its food)!

(We actually spent a couple of days in Malaysia between Sri Lanka and Singapore, but we're going back there later, so we'll write about it in a different post.)

Singapore! So clean, so safe, so air-conditioned, so much public transit, so many cheap ethnic eats = something to sing about, indeed.

But, it's crowded. And there are SO many malls. You could get lost for days and never see the sun! Plus, hotels are kind of expensive. Proper restaurants and all that nice public transit don't come cheap, either.

So, Singapore's not perfect. But, after a long stretch in mostly "developing" countries, we definitely enjoyed spending a couple of days in this supermodern, space-agey little city-state.

After getting settled in at the cheapest hotel we could find (perfectly clean, but with separate by-the-hour prices and a couple of bonus ladies of the night permanently hanging out outside the main doors), we decided to plunge right into Singapore's superdeveloped side...so we hopped on the MRT and headed to Sentosa.

Sentosa is an island in the harbor that has been completely kitted out for tourism, Singapore-style...which means that tons of sand have been imported to set up a fake beach, concrete "nature trails" have been laid down and escalators installed to take you up hills, huge hotel and restaurant complexes have been constructed, and everything is linked by light rail. I'm not sure why we thought that this would be a fun place to visit, but we checked it out anyway.

The view of the harbor from the light rail is nice.
Sri Lanka has its plastic yellow buddhas...Sentosa has its plastic yellow lionfish.And let's not forget the merlion. In the 1960's, someone decided that Singapore needed a wacky statue to bring in more tourists, so this half-lion, half-mermaid monstrosity was born. The original one on the mainland apparently spits water like a fountain, but the Sentosa version has cool glowing eyes...
OK, the real reason we had gone to Sentosa was because we read that there was a fun "luge" there that we could ride. Putting nothing past technologically advanced Singapore, I had assumed that there was going to be an actual icy slide, like in the Olympics...but we were dismayed to discover that it was just a concrete track and that the vehicles were more like carts that you sit in. So, we chose not to pay $15 for a ride...

Then we were going to try to visit the casino, but they charge you by the hour to store your backpack (they won't let you carry it into the casino), so we left in a huff. Andy, a much more experienced gambler than I am, insists that a casino should never charge you in any way--that way you'll stay longer and lose more money. I guess that's the logic behind all the free food and drinks in Vegas and such. Anyway, it seems Singapore hasn't caught on to the international gambling etiquette.

So Sentosa was a curiosity, but kind of a bust. We did much better on our second day, when we visited the Singapore Zoo. It was probably the best zoo I've ever been to. It's located in Singapore's remaining patch of rainforest, and many animals can even range freely over large areas. We got to see a lot of funky Southeast Asian animals, as well as some worldwide favorites.

Mouse deer are not really deer (or mice), but are funky little creatures found in various places in Asia.
Proboscis monkeys are the largest monkeys in the world and have awesome Gonzo noses! They live only on Borneo, and we saw many in the wild when we went there a few years ago. We won't be back on this trip, so we were happy at least to be able to see a few of our favorite monkeys at the zoo.
We caught meerkat feeding time and learned that they love a snack of cockroaches.
Andy posed me next to a reticulated python, the longest snake in the world, just for comparison. These guys are found in SE Asia, so we'll be on the lookout.
We never saw mandrills in the wild in Africa, but they are still awesome.
Bat balls! Bat balls!
The zoo had a few Komodo dragons, which got us excited for our upcoming trip to Komodo National Park in Indonesia...
There was a special section devoted to animals you find in Ethiopia, which we thought was awesome. We never saw this walia ibex in the wild there, but the zoo had several specimens. It's a goat, not an antelope, but still has pretty impressive horns.
Favorite animal in the zoo: the pygmy hippo, which dances around on its toes on the riverbed, doing a kind of water ballet. Found only in some remote parts of West Africa that we did not get to. Next time!
Singapore also has an impressive museum called the Asian Civilizations Museum, which has history and artifacts from, you guessed it, many Asian civilizations. I especially enjoyed riding this palanquin made with horn handles, from Sulawesi, one of the 16,994 Indonesian islands we will not be visiting.

Andy thinks this is a Buddha, and thinks this is from Thailand. I cannot confirm either of those assertions. Guess we should have taken notes at the museum!
No trip to Singapore would be complete without a trip to the mall. Actually, I'd like to see you try to visit Singapore without accidentally ending up in a mall at some point. A lot of MRT stations spit you out into a mall whether you want to go there or not!

Anyway, there are malls dotted all over Singapore, but the real megamall area is Orchard Road, which is just mall next to mall next to mall for about two kilometers. Here is a shot of just one of the many futuristically-designed malls you can find there--and I congratulate myself at actually figuring out how to emerge from the malls into the sunlight to snap this external shot!
Chinese New Year is approaching, and it will soon be the year of the rabbit. About 75% of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, and the malls are going crazy decorating for the holiday. This demonic rabbit made out of flowers was definitely my favorite of the many displays we came across.
Clarke Quay is an area along the riverfront that has lots of outdoor bars and restaurants. "But isn't Singapore really hot?" you ask. "Who wants to eat outside? After all, people stay inside all those AC'd malls for a reason!" Well, I have three words to answer your question: outdoor air conditioning. Yup, those crazy things that look like heat lamps hovering over the quay are actually air conditioning the outdoors. What will Singapore think of next??

Our final stop in Singapore was the old-timey Raffles Hotel, named for Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore. Also founder of the London Zoo. And the biggest flower in the world, the raffelesia, is named for him. Interesting historical character if you're looking for someone to read about sometime.

Snacks of Singapore

We didn't think we had enough food pictures to warrant a whole separate food post, so here are some shots of things we ate in Singapore!

The cheapest, and often tastiest, food in Singapore is found at "hawker centers," which are like food courts. They sometimes specialize in one type of ethnic cuisine--you find a lot of Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian food in Singapore, since there are large populations of people from all those countries living there.

Near our hotel was one that had mostly Chinese food. Andy got noodles with pork, I got noodles with duck. Each plate cost around $2 US. Very delicious! (This meal also marked our first use of chopsticks on our round-the-world trip...)
Much to Andy's delight, we quickly discovered that there is a 7-Eleven about every two feet in Singapore, and that they sell $1 slurpees. (That's one Singapore dollar, worth about 80 US cents.) Of course, the largest size of slurpee available in Singapore is about the size of a small in the US, so Andy had to drink multiple ones each day. In Andy's other hand is a cold canned soy milk, my perhaps slightly healthier beverage of choice on several occasions.

I first had aloe vera yogurt in El Salvador and was pleased to find it again in Malaysia and Singapore. This one is made in Thailand, so it seems I have even more of it to look forward to in the future. This yogurt also had surprise bonus jellied bits in it, which I enjoyed.

If you think that Andy was happy to find all those 7-Elevens, imagine how ecstatic he was when a new friend told us that Singapore also has Dairy Queens!! A quest to find them was immediately planned, and in the mall-land of Orchard Road we found two, one on the street and one in a very posh mall basement, right underneath the Gucci store.
It was a limited DQ menu, so no Mr. Mistys (aka Arctic Rushes) for Andy, but we did get our first Blizzard fix in almost a year. And Singapore has crazy Blizzard flavors! Andy got blueberry-almond and I got green -tea-Oreo. Yummmmm.
If you think that's all, you're wrong. After our main course Blizzards, we had to have a dessert Blizzard! In the name of moderation, we shared an apricot-almond blizzard. No pic here, you'll just have to take our word for it.

I should mention here that we stupidly forgot to take any pictures with my college friend Leslie, who lives in Singapore and met us for drinks and dinner on our last night in town. It was so great to catch up with her and hear all about her Asian adventures since graduation. Her friends were great, too (John tipped us off about the DQs, and we will be forever grateful!). Thanks for a great night out, Leslie!

So, as we hurtled toward the airport in the icy-AC'd MRT train, I thought back over my two and a half days in Singapore. I might not recommend it as the most exciting vacation destination ever, but with the good public transit, safety and cleanliness, great location in the middle of Southeast Asia, and fun mix of foods, and air-conditioned outdoors, it would certainly be a comfortable enough place to live for a couple of years. And given how many Western expats we saw around the city, I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so.