Singapore & Malaysia

Singapore

After traveling 40 days in Indonesia, it is a nice feeling spend a few days in a highly-developed city and country. Singapore is impressive; it is clean, without traffic jams (which surprised us greatly), and without the hassling taxi drivers trying to crowd us into their cars. And the food is diverse and delicious, especially after all the Nasi Goreng (fried rice) we had been eating.

We have been kindly invited to stay with Stéphanie & Denis, a couple of Belgians who have called Singapore home for three years now. Denis tells us it would be hard to leave this city, where the expats have such a high quality of life. The older Singaporean people have a harder time following it, but the government helps them.

We spend a day visiting the Botanical Garden, Little India (a neighborhood which feels like another country), and some beautiful colonial buildings. We cap off the evening at the Boat Building in Marina Bay for the view and some very expensive cocktails.

Kuala Lumpur

An easy bus ride brings us to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It looks like a smaller Singapore that’s a bit less organized. The Bird Park is a large open aviary, in which the birds can move and fly about somewhat freely. It‘s a great place to get face-to-face to many birds from South East Asia.

For dinner, we overate at Betel Leaf, which is the best Indian food we’ve ever had, bar none.

We head over to an island called Penang, the “Pearl of the Orient”. It’s an impressive mix of culture from many immigrants that is particularly evident in the architecture and the amazing food.

We didn’t spend very much time in Malaysia for two reasons. The first is that the monsoon season would likely give us a bad time on the east coast. Second, but more importantly, we changed our plans last minute and have decided to go to Chiang Mai in Thailand to see the Loi Krathong festival. We’ll take a 40 minute taxi ride to the bus station in Penang to take a 5 hour bus to Kuala Lumpur to take a 30 minute train to the airport. From there we fly roughly two hours to Bangkok, take a 1.5 hour bus ride to the station, and then take a sleeper bus for 10 hours to Chiang Mai. With all the transits and security, we hope to see in place after 24 exhaustive hours. Let’s see how we do.