Southeast Asia - Part II
Monday June 11th Continued
After Holland Village, we went to Tanglin Mall and had lunch at Spageddies. We had a nice ‘Western’ meal there and was given an opportunity to experience the service in Singapore.
Your tables’ food is not brought out together, by any means. My M-I-L was almost done eating before the rest of us even saw our food. Then the three other meals were all brought out at various times. We came across this type of ‘service’ all throughout Asia. Per Rigs, this is usual Singapore service and no one does the polite thing of waiting for all parties to receive their food, before eating.
We then met up with the rest of the crew and went to Singapore’s Chinatown. It was pretty much like every other Chinatown in the World (include the Chinatowns in China!). We bought a few little items here and there, but we still have an overflowing amount of Chinese memorabilia, from when we went to China, 5 years ago. After spending some time wandering around, we hopped onto the MRT and went to Little India.
We didn’t spend much time in Little India and I didn’t even buy anything! I had wanted to go to Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, but it was closed and I didn’t feel like sticking around for an hour til it re-opened. Maybe next time, right?
After hopping into a cab, we went over to the Raffles Hotel, so little Bexy could have her Singapore Sling. It was quite tasty and oh, yeah, very expensive. Besides my boozing it, the Raffles Hotel is very glamorous and old style Colonial. James was not allowed in, as he was wearing shorts (long pants and collared shirt are required for entrance to the Hotel itself), because when you have to spend a MINIMUM of $400 a night, you don’t want the riffraff in your fancy shmancy lobby. Along with my drink, we had some lovely English tea cakes and biscuits.
We celebrated my nephews Birthday later that evening, he seemed to enjoy all his new toys and it was nice to be able to be there to help him celebrate. Rose, the Helper, aka Slave, prepared a lovely dinner (in her outdoor kitchen, she never really used the main kitchen to cook). Oh, then she cleaned up after us and washed our clothes from the previous day. Seriously, I want a helper.
We stayed in this evening as we had an early morning flight the next day. It was nice to hang around and play with the kids.
Tuesday June 12th
After a busy morning of loading ourselves and bags into a Maxi Cab, we boarded our SilkAir flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. When others say that all American airlines provide top service, they have not flown on SilkAir! All the Flight Attendants are well dressed and look fresh, clean and happy. Completely different from our American bedraggled, grumpy and messy looking Flight Attendants (no offense). Despite our flight only being about 2 hours, we were served a full meal, with drinks and even had REAL silverware. The service provided and HOW it was provided was fabulous and made us realize that maaaaaaybe American’s aren’t top-notch like everyone says.
After landing in Siem Reap, we had a chance to experience Cambodian Immigration. In Cambodia, you receive your Visa upon arrival (although you can get one in advance). Odd thing was, they only took US dollar. We found this quite strange really, most of the tourists going to Cambodia are not from the US, so how would they have any US Dollars?? But it was pretty painless, despite not having an e-Visa. There was a very long line of Immigration Officers all in a row, which our beloved passports were passed along. Seemed quite archaic really, but efficient.
We were met by our private Tour Guide, Ros, who would be taking us around Siem Reap. He was very friendly and spoke excellent English. We headed to our hotel, which required us to head down Hotel Row. Seeing as Cambodia is really trying to promote tourism and is encouraging visitors, there are many new hotels being built. Boy, they are really taking it up a notch, as these hotels are beautiful.
Our hotel, Sokha Angkor was just lovely. We were greeted with a cool drink and cold towel to cool off. Our bags were brought up to our lovely rooms and we all relaxed for a bit. Our room had a huge soaking tub, sadly, we did not use it but would have loved to. The room was very clean and well kept. We decided to explore the hotel a bit and went for a swim in the extremely beautiful, warm, clean pool. So far, this hotel was proving to be my kind of place.
After a cooling off, we found two remorque-moto’s (large trailer hitched to a motorbike) to take us to the market. We negotiated price and ended up being taken there and back for about $6 total for two remorques. Good deal!
The Market was setup like the usual Asian markets are - tons of stalls and booths full of things (or crap, as James calls it). Let me state this again, it was bloody hot. So freakin hot. We all wandered around, buying things (crap) left and right. I ended up getting some neat items (crap) and was quite pleased with my bargaining.
My 6yr old Niece had just gotten her ears pierced and was all over the jewelry area, like ticks on a dog. She was just going nuts over all the earrings! It was so cute watching her hold up enormous hoop ears and dance around.
After about 2hrs, we were sweating profusely and needed some air. I believe there was some ‘arse sweat’ going one. Yeah, nice. Plus, the fish market stench was too much and we were all about to vomit. Especially, after watching all these women hack off fish heads, while sitting amongst the flies, gutting fish. Yum.
Once we showered off the fishy smell, we headed out to our special dinner at the Aspara Theatre on Wat Bo Road. Our dinner consisted of the following:
Fried Spring Rolls, Samossas & Tempura
Chicken soup with lemon grass
Fresh country side salad
Saraman pork with coconut milk, red spices and peanuts
Wild Steamed rice
Coconut custard and fruit salad
During the dinner, the Aspara dancers, which are legendary characters from the Khmer Pamanaya, performed the following dances:
The Reamker – Khmer Pamayana
Preah Ream
Preah Lak – Lakshmana
Reap – Ravana
Neang Seda – Sita
Hanuman
After our lovely dinner and dance, we crashed back at the hotel and ended our first day in Cambodia.
Comments
Hanuman is the name of the Hindoistic ape-god. (I think)
Would you like to contribute to a book about height and tall people a friend of mine in US are doing research for? send me a mail!
Posted by: Josephine | July 13, 2007 2:13 PM
Your trip looks so amazing, I'm jealous!!!
Posted by: Legal Goddess | July 13, 2007 8:20 PM