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Fish Market Sashimi

The influence of Japanese food on American cuisine is huge – and we were excited to experience the real deal while we were in Tokyo.  We weren’t disappointed!  The food was definitely reminiscent of the things we’d find in the States, but much more emphasis was placed on the non-sushi items available.  Of course, sushi was to be had:

Chirashi Sushi

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While in Singapore we had one Friday night where we wanted to go out on the town.  Being the big partiers that we are, we decided that a bar is just not party-hard enough for us!  We instead opted for an ingenious venue found on a very touristy street: the Game Cafe!

Games!!!

The thing that drew us in was a special – all you can drink sugary drinks, and all you can eat chips, and all you can game, all night, for a very reasonable price!  We were sold!  Little did we know that we’d find classics in this game shop.  One of our favorites while we lived in California was the “Bean Game”, also known as Bohnanza, and we happened to find it there!  Of course, it was just the two of us so the game wasn’t up to its normal form.  We also found Quoridor, a game I had in high school, and tried out a bunch of new games as well.

The real entertainment of the night, however, was a giant group of 15 or so people who were playing a very loud group game – and would spontaneously burst out laughing.  Kept the mood lifted!  We had a blast — game nights are something you just don’t get so often while you’re travelling.

After our really great diving trip out of Mabul Island, we moved on to the last part of my Malaysian adventure: the Kinabatangan river and the jungle areas near it.  This river is a really special place for seeing wildlife – there are several species of monkeys, orangutans, crocodiles, elephants, hornbills, eagles, and many more to be seen.  The reason it’s so special, though, is rather depressing – since so much of Borneo has been converted into palm oil plantations, the once-vast jungle around the Kinabatangan has been reduced over time to its current size – just 1 km to either side of the river.  There is simply nowhere else for the wildlife to go, so you can easily see it from the comfort of your riverboat.

Nevertheless, it is a place that still manages to feel like it’s out in the middle of nowhere.  We stayed at Nature Lodge Kinabatangan, one of many outfits that offers lodging and daily trips out on the river.  I picked this particular place because of both the good reviews it got on the Web and because of the price – which was far lower for the basic Kinabatangan adventure than many of the other spots.  In addition, the staff were responsive to my emails and informative in their replies – something that is rare in Borneo.  Our accommodation was sufficient – it was rather basic and small, but comfortable – and all the on-site staff were super friendly.

To get there, we took a rather nice coach from Semporna to a random “coffeeshop” – just a strip of restaurants on the side of the road – where we were supposed to meet up with the tour bus.  Of course (being Malaysia) the bus was late, but we met a few other couples on their way to the same place and that gave us confidence that we’d actually be arriving to our destination!  The tour bus that did eventually come was a massive 4×4 setup, and we ended up needing it to get past the potholes and puddles and other things that we found on the way to the lodge.  A short boat ride across the river took us the last leg, where we were greeted with a short introduction, welcome juice and a few forms to fill out.  Before long we left on our first boat ride of the 3 day / 2 night trip, and we weren’t disappointed!  There were 4 boat trips all together – two afternoon and two morning.  We saw tons of wildlife! I’ll start with the birds:

Hornbills Abound

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Tropical Paradise

For Part Two of my Last Big Thing, I wanted to make great use of our scuba certifications from Thailand and go down into the deep again.  This time it would be off the eastern tip of Borneo.  I wanted to go to the world-famous Sipadan site, a volcanic island that drops down to ocean depths of 800 or more meters in a very short distance, but didn’t plan ahead enough to go.  Sipadan is now under regulation, and it appears that the best scuba shops don’t get nearly as many permits as some of the shops that are, say, generous to the local government.  We wanted to go with Scuba Junkie (no relation to Scuba Junction from Koh Tao) which had a great reputation and a beautiful island resort at a great price – but they couldn’t get us permits for the famous spot.  So we dived beautiful Mabul Island instead, and while it may not have had huge pelagics in town it did amaze us with beautiful wildlife! (more…)

Beautiful KL

As I said in the last post, we each picked one thing to do before the year was over.  My pick was going to Borneo!  I had heard great things about the island, and after researching it a bit more, three things in particular stood out for me.  First, I wanted to see Kuala Lumpur – it is a really big city made famous by the twin Petronas towers.  Second, I wanted to scuba dive Sipadan, known as one of the finest sites in the world to dive, with sharks and turtles everywhere.  Third, the Kinabatangan River has loads of wildlife that is easily visible because of the palm oil plantations that are slowly removing all the jungle habitat around the river (only 1km on each side is protected).  These three things turned out to make a really great Malaysian adventure! (more…)

While we were in Vietnam, Hazel had a realization – we weren’t having that much fun anymore!

You can think whatever you want, but it turns out that after 9 months being a tourist just isn’t that easy to do.  You start to want to just hole up in a single place, do nothing, see nothing, and relax.  Hazel, being an excellent problem solver, came up with a solution to our problems – we’d just plan every day to the end of the trip, and that way we would have all the great bits about being travelling (seeing other cultures and landscapes, experiencing food and drink traditions, etc) without all the work.  So the goal was to have plans set for the remaining 77 days of our trip.

Organized!

It turns out that planning 77 days is no picnic!  To get organized, we do what we always do – make a Google Doc!  We have a spreadsheet where each row is a day and it details where we’re sleeping, what we’re doing, and how we’re travelling if we have any plans.  Days where the accommodation is not figured out are marked in red, and successful days we’ve already had get marked in green.  At first we had a lot of red, so Hazel and I each picked one big idea, and worked our hardest to make it happen.  I wanted to scuba dive at another world-class location, and Hazel chose to walk the Overland Track in Tasmania.

Figuring this out was great for us.  We saw exactly how it would happen, and even figured out how to make it to the Melbourne Lindy Exchange in Australia after going on the track.  So we rang up Qantas and changed our flights around to give us a lot more time in Oz, a lot less time in Thailand, and a lot more time in Singapore.  Though it took forever to get booked, we ended up with a schedule that we knew would work and could concentrate on doing stuff we wanted to do instead of stuff we thought we ought to do. Sweet As!

Bánh xèo in Saigon

I had decided, before we arrived, that the main purpose of my trip to Vietnam would be to sample as much local food as humanly possible, and to learn to cook some of it!  Even though our trip was a whirlwind, I am confident that I succeeded in my goal.   (more…)

Leaving Cambodia

So after we finished seeing temples in Cambodia, we didn’t want to deal with another border like the last one we dealt with.  So we flew to Vietnam, the land of delicious food and a really long coastline!  In fact, it was so long that we spent about half our time travelling!

We ended up not being so happy about this, but c’est la vie.  We used a number of different modes of transportation – trains, planes AND automobiles!  Our favorite was the train, where we took a first class sleeper car from Da Nang to Hanoi.  There were four people in the cabin and nice comfy beds to sleep in, along with air conditioning (though the weather was pretty mild anyway).  We’ve found that trains gently rock you to sleep whereas planes and cars don’t have nearly the same relaxing feel to them.

Our least favorite mode of transportation was the bus.  We took two overnight buses in Vietnam, and one was definitely better than the other but they are both suboptimal when it comes to rest quality.

Sleeper Bus Vietnam Style

At first it seems really cool!  Everyone (almost) gets their own bed, separated from the others, and there’s a bathroom on board.  But the truth comes a little later when the reality of Vietnamese roads sets in – the driver is going crazily fast, causing you to float out of your bed on occasion, and he doesn’t hesitate to use his really loud horn (at all hours of the night) to warn other drivers of the speeding bullet hurtling down the road at completely unsafe speeds.

Then you find that your second overnight bus has no bathroom and that you are shoved into a communal platform-bed with 4 other travellers in the back of the bus where it’s even more bumpy.  At that point you become convinced that the train is worth the extra cost!

The plane was pretty much as expected.  It was convenient, reasonably comfortable, and most importantly it was fast!  The only downside is that airports tend to be really far from the downtown areas of town.  But if you have the cash, this is the way to go!

The second day we hired a different tuk-tuk (our first driver was a bit pushy and upsold us a little too much) and went to the famous Ta Phromh which is a temple that’s been left in its semi-ruined state.  Trees are growing literally out of the walls!  It is pretty cool and very atmospheric (and part of Tomb Raider was filmed here).

I've seen sand castles but not sand temples before

Crumbling Temple

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Once we arrived in Siem Reap, we quickly found out that there was more to that area than just Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat itself happens to be the world’s largest religious building, but immediately adjacent (i.e. 5 minutes drive by tuk-tuk) is the humongous 9 square kilometer Angkor Thom which was an entire walled city.  Within it is Bayon, the state temple, and numerous other ruins inside.  Other temples can be found all over the area.  Indeed it would be difficult to see all the sights in this area in one trip if only because you’d get so bored of seeing temple after temple!

We made a plan that served us pretty well as far as getting to see a lot without paying too much.  The first day we hired a tuk-tuk driver and an English-speaking guide to take us around several of the sights, point out what we might miss, and explain the history and geography of the temples in the area.  That day we went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and another smaller temple, Banteay Srey, which was quite a distance out of the way.

The Entrance to Angkor Thom

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