We departed Cambodia once again in a bus (since there are no trains in the country) bound for Ho Chi Minh City. Until we got to the border, the movies playing on the bus were in Khmer (the Cambodian language) and from the border on, we switched to Vietnamese. There were a couple seriously violent Asian films and... wait for it... Sharknado! Yes, that phenom from the Cannes Film Festival, Sharknardo, was playing on our bus. In Khmer. But they don't take out the soundtrack - they just add in someone talking over the dialogue in Khmer - so we could almost hear the English. It was brilliant.
We arrived in Saigon (though our arrival was somewhat tarnished by getting suckered into a fake taxi who charged us ridiculously for driving around in a circle - which I wrote off as paying our "stupid tourist tax" for the vacation). I was surprised by how European the city's architecture looked, with wide promenade-style streets and the grand opera house...
Thought there were plenty of palm trees and war museums to remind you where you were...
We named Saigon "The City Where You Are Most Likely to Get Run Over By a Moped Crossing the Street". Mopeds abound in all the countries of Southeast Asia, but in Ho Chi Minh City, they swarm like bees and do not stop for pedestrians, so be careful and run like hell when you step off that sidewalk. (And allow extra time for getting up the gumption to cross intersections if you're walking somewhere.)
We headed to a Vietnamese Water Puppetry Show (and I'm still trying to figure out how the dragon puppet rose up out of the water and shot fireworks out of its mouth)...
And then took a dinner cruise along the river...
Then, the next day, it was off to Singapore!
(Observe! The Mer-Lion, mascot of Singapore.)
Singapore is lovely and clean, easy to get around and extremely western in feel (or maybe that was just compared to the countries we had just visited). We even had dinner at a California Pizza Kitchen for a little taste of home.
We were there for Singapore Day - their national independence holiday.
And of course, while in Sinagpore, I had to have a Singapore Sling to celebrate (and it was freaking delicious! - though expensive, as everything is in Singapore).
We grabbed drinks at the top of the Marina Bay hotel...
And visited Clarke Quay where there is every kind of entertainment imaginable - I saw a belly dancer and must have stood for five minutes watching a guy who made scooping ice cream into a performance art.
The next day, after a little walk along the waterfront...
It was time to head to Malaysia!
Kuala Lumpur is an interesting city. It is by far the most Muslim of any of the countries we visited (most were very Buddhist), with a plethora of mosques, many women in hijab, and a bank based out of Kuwait offering currency exchange at the airport. KL is an exercise in contrast. On the one hand you have the gorgeous, posh pockets of the city like the area around the famous Petronas Towers...
And on the other you have the smog and crowded less affluent areas that would be right at home in Beijing (if Beijing was tropical). We had hoped to visit the Forest Reserve (FRIM) - a rainforest where you can actually walk through the canopy across rope bridges between the trees - but sadly the canopy was closed for maintenance for a month, so we explored the city instead. Visiting the iconic KL Tower:
An orchid garden where we were warned to watch out for passing monkeys...
And Little India, where we had one of the best meals of our entire trip (and that's saying something) at a little restaurant called Aroma (if you're ever in Kuala Lumpur, I highly recommend it).
In Little India, I also posed in front of this fountain and even boosted myself up to sit on the rim... which is apparently illegal. Sorry, Malaysia! Luckily, the cop who came to get me was understanding of the fact that I was a stupid tourist. I'm usually very good about being culturally sensitive, but I just wasn't expecting a fountain to be sacred. Whoops.
When we tried to leave KL we had a bit of an adventure. We were flying up to Surat Thani in Thailand (in part because there have been some issues near the Thai/Malaysian border and we wanted to give that region a wide berth) out of KUL. However, we didn't realize that KUL (one airport code) had two different "terminals" which were a half hour drive away from one another. We asked our hotel to arrange transport to go to the international airport... and almost missed our flight to Thailand because our flight was out of "KLIA-2" or the "LCC Terminal" (low cost carrier). I'm not used to two terminals being so far away from one another and having the same airport code. Like if JFK and La Guardia were called the same thing - and no one taking you to the airport asked which one you were going to. So FYI, if you're ever flying out of Kuala Lumpur, be sure you know which terminal in advance! (The airlines do NOT tell you this when you book your ticket and some have flights in BOTH locations.)
Okay, that's my traveler-beware segment complete. Up next, back to Thailand for a look at the southern island region!
We arrived in Saigon (though our arrival was somewhat tarnished by getting suckered into a fake taxi who charged us ridiculously for driving around in a circle - which I wrote off as paying our "stupid tourist tax" for the vacation). I was surprised by how European the city's architecture looked, with wide promenade-style streets and the grand opera house...
Thought there were plenty of palm trees and war museums to remind you where you were...
We headed to a Vietnamese Water Puppetry Show (and I'm still trying to figure out how the dragon puppet rose up out of the water and shot fireworks out of its mouth)...
Singapore is lovely and clean, easy to get around and extremely western in feel (or maybe that was just compared to the countries we had just visited). We even had dinner at a California Pizza Kitchen for a little taste of home.
We were there for Singapore Day - their national independence holiday.
And of course, while in Sinagpore, I had to have a Singapore Sling to celebrate (and it was freaking delicious! - though expensive, as everything is in Singapore).
And visited Clarke Quay where there is every kind of entertainment imaginable - I saw a belly dancer and must have stood for five minutes watching a guy who made scooping ice cream into a performance art.
Kuala Lumpur is an interesting city. It is by far the most Muslim of any of the countries we visited (most were very Buddhist), with a plethora of mosques, many women in hijab, and a bank based out of Kuwait offering currency exchange at the airport. KL is an exercise in contrast. On the one hand you have the gorgeous, posh pockets of the city like the area around the famous Petronas Towers...
And on the other you have the smog and crowded less affluent areas that would be right at home in Beijing (if Beijing was tropical). We had hoped to visit the Forest Reserve (FRIM) - a rainforest where you can actually walk through the canopy across rope bridges between the trees - but sadly the canopy was closed for maintenance for a month, so we explored the city instead. Visiting the iconic KL Tower:
An orchid garden where we were warned to watch out for passing monkeys...
In Little India, I also posed in front of this fountain and even boosted myself up to sit on the rim... which is apparently illegal. Sorry, Malaysia! Luckily, the cop who came to get me was understanding of the fact that I was a stupid tourist. I'm usually very good about being culturally sensitive, but I just wasn't expecting a fountain to be sacred. Whoops.
When we tried to leave KL we had a bit of an adventure. We were flying up to Surat Thani in Thailand (in part because there have been some issues near the Thai/Malaysian border and we wanted to give that region a wide berth) out of KUL. However, we didn't realize that KUL (one airport code) had two different "terminals" which were a half hour drive away from one another. We asked our hotel to arrange transport to go to the international airport... and almost missed our flight to Thailand because our flight was out of "KLIA-2" or the "LCC Terminal" (low cost carrier). I'm not used to two terminals being so far away from one another and having the same airport code. Like if JFK and La Guardia were called the same thing - and no one taking you to the airport asked which one you were going to. So FYI, if you're ever flying out of Kuala Lumpur, be sure you know which terminal in advance! (The airlines do NOT tell you this when you book your ticket and some have flights in BOTH locations.)
Okay, that's my traveler-beware segment complete. Up next, back to Thailand for a look at the southern island region!
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