To Singapore and Back

Early Friday morning, I hopped a bus with Wearn and her dad to travel to Singapore.

View from a high-rise apartment building in Singapore

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Sadly, we weren't traveling for pleasure: Wearn's father's older sister's husband passed away earlier in the week and we were traveling to attend his wake. So while I wasn't able to more fully explore Singapore, I was able to honor Wearn's uncle's memory and participate in something very special.

The bus ride took about five hours and then we took a cab from the station to the apartment building where Wearn's aunt lives. We quickly met up with some of Wearn's other relatives, grabbed a late lunch (chicken rice, sorry no pics) and set out in the building's patio area. The building has a pretty big, open space on the ground floor which was taken up by tables, mourners, banners, a large alter and the coffin. After sitting at one of the tables for a bit, someone brought around boxed drinks and some nuts and candy. The tradition is that when someone passes away, everyone comes to pay their respects and stay up all night with other family members. So, I stayed up until very late at night, playing cards with Wearn's dad and aunt. Wearn's aunt also tried to teach me some mahjong, but she couldn't quite recall some of the rules.

Wearn and I also took a bit of time to meet up with one of Wearn's very old friends, Siew Kee. We all walked back down to the food court Wearn and I ate at before and grabbed some drinks (coffee for me, fruit over shaved ice for Wearn) and chatted for a bit.

Singaporean food courts: They look about the same as Malaysian ones

We walked back to the apartment building with Siew Kee and then waited about thirty minutes for a cab for her (they were all heading into the night-club district, so they weren't stopping for us). Afterward, we returned to the mourners' tables.

There wasn't really a proper place to sleep for the night, so I slept on the floor (concrete. ouch.) until it was time to catch our cab back to the bus depot.

Night-time, from our room's window

And that was Singapore.

Reorganized Photos

Hello All,

So the number of photos in the Malaysia 2010 photo gallery that I originally posted completely ballooned out of control, so Wearn kindly reorganized them into some sub-galleries. Below you'll find all of the reorganized galleries. There are a ton of new photos and galleries here, so there's probably new stuff mixed in.

I've arranged them in chronological order, for your convenience. Enjoy!

Sunway

Putrajaya, I-City and Shah Alam

Malacca

Empire with Davis people

KLCC

Genting Highlands

Mentakab

Kuantan

KL with Wearn's friends

Jake's 24th birthday

Puchong

On the Way to Malaysia

What I Ate Today: For Lunch

All the dishes we had: (from the left) nasi kunyit, prawn noodle (?) and nasi lemak

Nasi kunyit (the yellow rice part) with curry chicken

Prawn noodle (?)

Nasi lemak with rendang chicken

What I Ate Today: For Breakfast

This is going to be the only, "What I Ate Today: For Breakfast" unless I actually eat something different for breakfast. It's usually some variation of this.

Peanut-butter and chocolate spread on toast, cereal (corn flakes) and Milo

More about Milo later.

What I Ate Today: For Lunch

Chili fried rice and salted fish fried rice.

Chili fried rice with iced lemon tea

Salted fish fried rice with black jelly drink

nom nom nom

What I Ate Today: For Snack

After I-City, Audrey, Barry, Wearn and I went to Shah Alam for some Roti Tissue. Despite what Audrey and Wearn will tell you, there's no actual tissue involved.

A guy making our roti tissue

Holy freak! It's like 4 feet of flaky, sugary goodness!

Roti tissue is a very thin, flaky flatbread. In this case, they've sprinkled coarse sugar crystals, sweetened condensed milk and honey on top. Nice!

Putrajaya and I-City

Today, Wearn's friend Audrey and her boyfriend Barry picked us up and showed us around two famous places in Malaysia. The first was Putrajaya (Malaysia's Washington DC) and the second was Shah Alam, a major industrial center.

Seri Wawasan Bridge

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The weather wasn't so good for taking pictures, so I got most of them whilst sitting in the car...

The Federal Treasury, just because I'm an econ nerd

Likewise for the Ministry of Finance

Putra Mosque

The first thing we did when we got to Putrajaya, actually, was to check out the Agriculture Heritage Park, a very nice orchard and park, with an eatery inside. We hung out here until the weather turned sour.

Wearn and Pomegranates, near the entrance to the orchard

Wearn on one of the orchard's walkways; Barry in the distance>

Audrey with some stylish cempedak headphones; normally the fruit is a bit bigger than an American football

Some groundskeepers snatched some rambutan and offered us some to keep us quiet (you're not supposed to pick the fruit)

After Putrajaya, we headed toward Shah Alam and I-City. See if you can figure out why I-City is famous:

Audrey and Wearn with I-City lights in the background

Wearn and I with neon cacti

Fireworks!

If you said, "Because there's a freakin' ton of lights!" then you are correct. They have, literally, and entire orchard's worth of these electric trees.

Malacca Town

Today, Wearn, Wearn's brother Cheng Chuan, Phyllis (Cheng Chuan's girlfriend) and I went to historic Malacca to check out the town's colonial-era history and eat some famous chicken rice.

Jonker Street: Famous for its antique furniture shops and its night market

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One thing that I've noticed about Malaysia is that each region claims a certain kind of food as their dish, and I've been very fortunate to be able to eat so many of Malaysia's famous dishes in the places where they are most famous. Malacca, it turns out, is famous for its Hainanese chicken rice, and I was yet again fortunate enough to have some. So here's a bonus, What I Ate Today: For Lunch:

Malacca serves their HCR in ball form

It's a really special kind of dish and it's pretty hard for me to explain how it tastes, but it's very soft, dense and tastes like chicken, as you might well expect. That description really doesn't do it justice. I'd recommend it, for sure. The restaurant is located just across the street from the Jonker Street sign and the queue for the place was about thirty people long or more when we got there (it's not a big shop, but the food is good and cheap). There are a lot of chicken rice shops in town, so it can be hard to know where to go, but this place was definitely good.

An example of the buildings on Jonker Street

Some of the work they do in the antique furniture shops on Jonker Street; I don't have more photos for obvious reasons

Phyllis at one of the many hawker stalls on Jonker Street

After checking out Jonker Street, we headed back to check out some of the sights.

A view of the canal

The Stadthuys: Dutch Town Hall

The history of Malacca, in many ways, mirrors the history of Malaysia. It's long and involved (historians create this complexity solely to ensure their tenured positions, I'm told), so I'll omit the details (you can read on your own on Wikipedia).

I will tell you that the red-colored buildings in the above photo date back to when the Dutch had colonized Malacca (1641-1824). This is also where you can catch...


A trishaw!!!!

Personally, I prefer the term "trickshaw", but what can do? We rode one of these bad boys over to the old Portuguese fort, A Famosa. In that sense it's a bit like a time machine (since the Portuguese controlled the area from 1511 to 1641; you don't care, I know).


In the video, our driver picked the Jordin Sparks, for the record.

Cheng Chuan, Phyllis and I, with an A Famosa cannon

The front of one of the fort buildings

Wearn and I with more cannons, St. Paul's church at the top of the hill

View from the top of the hill you just saw; Shows how the new is crowding the old in

St. Paul's Church was built by the Portuguese when A Famosa was first constructed and the Dutch later renamed it St. Paul's and turned it into a burial ground.

Inside St. Paul's, with the Dutch tombstones along the right wall

Malacca is a very special place because on a single stroll through the town you can experience hundreds of years worth of history. If you ever come to Malaysia, I'd highly recommend you pay Malacca a visit (unless you hate history and good food and fun).

What I Ate Today: For Dinner

On the way home from Malacca, Cheng Chuan suggested we stop and get some satay from Kajang, Phyllis' home town. Kajang is famous for satay (even Wikipedia says so!).

Satay! Specifically, duck (left) and fish (right)

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Kajang, on a map

In essence, satay (also spelled sate) is specially marinated meat on a skewer, served with savory and spicy sauces. For this trip, we got chicken, mutton, fish, duck. We also got a special leaf-wrapped rice snack, whose name I'll have to get back to you about.

I ate 13

Leaf-wrapped rice

We also had some Hokkien mee, one of my favorite noodle dishes:

Hokkien (char) mee

nom nom nom