Category: Singapore, Indonesia & Malaysia (2016)

Unlike Singapore that was never on my travel radar, Bali has long been just the opposite – the desired land.  In my imagination, Bali held the seductive appeal of a multi-faceted Paradise!..  The Bali of “Eat, Pray, Love”, a film I reluctantly watched on a sleepless cross-Atlantic flight and loved in spite of my own better judgement, was the lover’s dream, the place to enjoy every moment of one’s being.  The Bali of the original book, which I simply had to read, because “the book is always better” (and it was), made the place even more attractive – it was a place of beauty and peace, where one can find one’s true self.  WikiTravel proclaiming Bali to be “the famed Island of the Gods, with its varied landscape of hills and mountains, rugged coastlines and sandy beaches, lush rice terraces and barren volcanic hillsides all providing a picturesque backdrop to its colorful, deeply spiritual and unique culture, stakes a serious claim to be paradise on earth” only confirmed the fact that we needed to go there NOW.  Pretty much every single travelling friend and acquaintance I talked to have been to Bali and was singing praises to the island.  At some point it started sounding like everyone and their mother have been to Bali, absolutely loved the place, and were raving about it.

Turned out – they were still there…  Making a total mess of this long-lusted for Paradise…

What can I say?…  Either the stars collided and conspired to make the Murphy’s Law especially active at the particular time of the year of our visit, or the modern-day maxim of “Too many fucking disappointments are usually a sign of too many fucking expectations” was to blame, but I had a feeling of having been cheated.

To be fair, not everything we experienced on Bali was horrible, even though we came pretty close…  The flight towards the island was quite nice – on approach from the plane Bali looked green and inviting, the surrounding ocean blue and clean, and all this definitely kindled our hopes to the heights they were not supposed to be at.  The higher you rise, the harder you fall – this definitely applied to our expectations of the place.  Or maybe Bali IS supposed to be admired from afar.  Like the Pyramids of Giza, or Stonehenge, where visitors are not allowed inside.  You feel disappointed at first, but then quickly realize that hordes of enthusiastic and determined tourists flooding to any historic site by the thousand on a daily basis can easily even it to the ground in no time. Not you, of course, but all those other idiots!… This should bring if not gratefullness and serenity, but at least contentment with the state of events.

Getting a little bit ahead of myself here, I have a piece of earnest advice to any visitor to Bali – if you want to like the place, or at least find any resemblance to what you might have imagined about it, you have to make the effort to go as far from the airport as you possibly can.  Do NOT under any circumstance go anywhere near places like Seminyak or Kuta!  That is, if you are not into the cheesy, kitschy version of Asia with throngs of drunk, high and puking tourists crowding the streets, sex and drugs offered openly on every corner, and ear-splitting music blasting out of nightclubs that dominate the landscape and definitely outnumber the palm trees in the area.

Seriously inebriated and barely-clad visitors were stumbling from one bar to another, buying coke and speed from eager street dealers, all the while pushing prams with cases of booze stacked carefully under the screaming offspring trying to reach out to the beer cans strategically positioned in the cup holders.  The proud face of Western civilization – warts and all!…

Having dropped our bags at the hotel, we headed straight to the beach.  To our major disappointment (which suspiciously started setting in as a theme on Bali) it was crowded and VERY dirty.  Plastic bottles, candy wrappers and God knows what were being collected by tractors (!) into huge piles, which the wind readily scattered back all over the sand.  We were so disappointed with the mayhem we saw, that started seriously considering leaving the following morning, regardless of the fact that our hotel was already paid for 2 nights.  We resisted the urge, though, and decided to give Bali a chance (if only a short one, for the already planned 2 nights).  Beer, found in a colorful gypsy bar on the beach definitely helped with calming our tits…  We sat there, sipped our beverages, gasped at the phenomenally beautiful sunset, trying to relax and watch the world go by.

In hindsight, staying put turned out to be the right decision and we glad we did not run away at the first signs of trouble.  We did see some nice parts of the island, and although our faith in Bali was not restored, its reputation was at least partially reinstated.

Some of the irrelevant highlights from the island included the “Wei Tu Fat” shop (I fucking kid you not!), the more mainstream “Holycow Steakhouse”, and the “Rizky Laundry” joint (sometimes you are better off not knowing…) all spotted out of the taxi window on the way from the airport (oh, how I wish we could have stopped at the “Wei Tu Fat”!!!!….).

Numerous statues all over the island were adorned with colorful cloth skirts (really neat!), and made the place look festive.

Another signature sign of Bali was what seemed like billions of roadside shacks selling petrol of suspicious colors not in plastic Sprite bottles (as in the rest of the non-sophisticated Asia!), but in fancy Absolute Vodka glass bottles.  This alone made us doubt whether we came to the right place, for which town/city/island/even fucking country in their right mind goes through THAT much vodka?…  Unless they are buying the empties in bulk from the Swedes, or the Russians…  But that’s way too far to travel for empty bottles, unless said Swedes or Russians make it easier for the locals by coming to Bali on vacation with suitcases full of booze, and still drinking their allotted dozen bottles a week each…  All this is purely a speculation – I honestly have no idea as to why Bali is flooded with empty Absolute bottles.  No matter how they get there, thumbs up for the entrepreneurial spirit of Indonesia, power of Absolute advertisement, or drinking capacity of the Russians/Swedes (or all of the above combined!).  “Making cheap petrol diluted with donkey piss look great again!” should become the new-age slogan for the masses.

Oh, and a guy on a little scooter with 4 (!!!!) huge dogs on it!!!!  This was absolutely epic!  He whizzed past us way too fast for any photo opportunity, but I still admire his sense of balance!

The definite highlight of our short stay on Bali was Ubud.  Home to the Monkey Forest and famous rice terraces, Ubud came as close to the paradise island of my imagination, as the hordes of tourists crowding every square inch of the place would allow…

The Monkey Forest’s major appeal was the tourists being the ultimate minority on premises, and outnumbered at least 10 to one by (yes, you guessed right!) – monkeys!  Monkeys were given free reign and run of the place, and they were everywhere – grooming each other on the benches, lazing on the tree branches, paths and railings in the sun, jumping all over the visitors, and stealing everything that was not nailed down.  Despite the big signs at the entrance, and warnings all over the Internet screaming about NOT bringing food or drinks, every 5^th visitor to the place seemed to have sneaked in snacks for themselves or monkeys, and ended up paying for it.  The sneaky bastards raided every single bag and rucksack they suspected of containing food, jumping all over their owners with complete disregard to mental or emotional state of the latter, or their willingness to be subjected to the first-degree search of their belongings.  The few visitors, who started freaking out and protesting against such treatment, despite having goodies of interest in their bags, were quickly bitten, scratched, or otherwise insulted, disregarded and left alone with their rage. 

Seeing that en mass our human compatriots seemed to be losing in intelligence to our biological ancestors, filled our hearts with unspeakable joy.  All in all – 5 star recommendations, and our ultimate thumbs up to the Monkey Forest!  Just make sure not to bring any food or water with you, for things can get ugly pretty fast.  Just saying…

Ubud also struck us with the sheer number of wood carving shops.  They were everywhere – every second place was a wood carving gallery/shop/whatever, and having walked through the town we can solemnly swear that Ubud has the highest concentration of wood-carving enterprises per square foot anywhere on this planet.  The carvings looked phenomenal, and I guess the supply must be caused or at least supported by the demand, so somebody must actually be buying them. Although for us it was hard to imagine why on Earth would anybody spend a couple hundreds of dollars buying a life-size sculpture of a tiger fighting a giant snake, and then a couple thousand dollars on shipping said sculpture to their place of residence!…  What can I say?….  The intellectual competition keeps being won by monkeys of the Forest at a disturbingly consistent rate…

And coffee!  We were really happy to discover that coffee was really big in Ubud.  Finding a place for a nice espresso or a cappuccino was a no-brainer (and the coffee was really, REALLY good!).  What you also could not help but notice, were the ads for Kopi Luwak all over the place.  The “special” coffee beans, eaten and excreted (yuk!) by an Asian palm civet (a shaggy-looking mix between a rat and a weasel), supposedly adds superfluous flavor to the brew due to it’s being processed through this weird animal’s organism, and is highly priced at 110,000 Indonesian Rupiahs (~$9) for a cup as opposed to 20,000 Rupiahs for a regular cup of espresso (~$2).  Now, why would anybody want to drink something brewed out of the stuff coming from the rat’s ass completely beats me!..  Moreover, if you google Kopi Luwak, pretty much every publicly available source tells you that it tastes disgusting and is completely overrated.  Yet, throngs of tourists can’t wait to try the stuff (mostly because back at home they would be charged ~$80 for a Kopi Luwak espresso, but still…).  As my home-country’s saying goes “Don’t look for logic where you did not put it”…  Another round for the monkeys, it seems…

The rice terraces were not just a tourist show – they were the actual rice patties on a slope of a hill, photographed to death by every visitor to Ubud.  Moreover, you can actually go in there, and walk around the patties, flooded with water, among tiny, stooped, toothless and leather-skinned rice farmers.  Up close and personal, a walk through the rice fields makes you realize how much tedious, raw physical labor is involved in bringing that rice to your table.  It also make you wonder how the most widely consumed staple food of the world is still planted, harvested and threshed by hand.  The sheer amount of manual work needed to produce the average of 700 million tons, consumed by the population of Planet Earth annually is simply unimaginable!…

It took us about an hour and a half to get to Ubud in the early morning hours, and almost 4 to get back to Seminyak crawling through the absolutely fucked up afternoon traffic.  Way too many people on the island!…  Time to rid it of at least two and move on. 

Next stop – Gili Trawangan!

What can I possibly say about Singapore that nobody already knows?… That it’s far, it’s small, and it’s expensive?… Despite the really, REALLY long flight, we only spent 2 days in this city, posing as a country, pretending to be an island. Or is it actually an island, pretending to be a country, posing as a city?… We were confused, as are so many visitors, and I have to admit the actual visit to the place did not really clarify matters much. However, in spite (or maybe because) of the brief nature of the visit, we did manage to add a couple more things to the generic list.

Here I do have a confession to make, though – Singapore has never really been not only on my bucket list, but even on the travel map of places I potentially thought about going to. Ever. The “small, expensive, and far away” triad was never a winning combination for me. Yet, somehow the place started appearing on the horizon – first with Anthony Bourdain’s documentaries, announcing Singapore to be the food mecca of the world, then with the realization of it being the 2^nd gateway to Asia after the already familiar Bangkok. This time we had our eyes set on the further parts of South-East Asia, and never ones to pass on a good meal or a convenient flight connection, we thought “Why not?” and opted for Singapore.

We arrived in torrential rain, and a 5-second dash from the taxi to the doors of the far-sightedly booked Clover 5 hotel, left us both soaking wet. The rain was warm, though, which was definitely a new experience, and within the ten minutes it took us to check in and drag ourselves and our suitcases to the room, fog started steaming off us in the air-conditioned hotel environment.

Our room was shiny clean, chilled to perfection and absolutely tiny. This was not a surprise, for by definition the country/city/island should be limited in space, and in any case the room was really well-organized – we even managed to find place to put our suitcases in without blocking the door to the bathroom! Island or no island, the hotel rooms of European capitals still beat Singapore in size. I remember a hotel in Rome I once stayed for work in, where I could easily touch all 4 walls of the room while lying on the bed. The ceiling was luckily out of reach. Compared to that memorable experience, our room in downtown Singapore was gigantic – there was space for a bed, one bedside table, a narrow table under the TV bolted to the wall, 2 suitcases and 2 people. We had to jump over the suitcases to get into bed, but after an eternity spent confined to airplane seats, any exercise was a welcome change.

The need for exercise and fresh air sent us on a late-night walk in the neighborhood. Although, I have to admit that hunger and thirst did not play the last role either. A lot has been said and written about airline food, and while it never really made it to the 1^st pages of Zagats or Michelin Guides of this world, a steady and inevitable decline has been one of its primary attributes ever since the birth of commercial aviation. All the more reasons to search for freshly-prepared, non-nuked food on the ground.

Here I have to say that during our 2.5 days in Singapore we definitely found some really good food. We had some non-descript fare as well. Two constants, prevalent in all our meals, though, were that none of them were really bad, and all of them were quite pricey. It’s easy to eat well in Singapore, eating on a budget (or at least not breaking the bank) is an art one has to master. We quickly figured out that food markets, aka hawker centers, were our best option. They are plentiful, open most of the time you might want a bite, competition is fierce (which makes the food fresh and the service fast), and you can try a lot of different local delicacies in one sitting and at a reasonable price.

Satay by the Bay and the Chinatown Food Street are just the two out of a myriad of hawker centers worth the visit. If you visit these two (watch out for opening times, though – despite Google’s claim that Satay by the Bay is open 24 hours, it does not start waking up until 11:00 in the morning), you will see that Singapore brought the concept of a food court (locally known as a hawker center) to a whole new level.

Not surprisingly, it is in Singapore that you can find a hawker stall that not only has its own website, but has been awarded a Michelin Star. Unfortunately, although we did manage to find the Tai Hwa Pork Noodle soup stall the following day, the place turned out to be closed on Mondays (just our luck!…), so the only thing we took home with us was a photo of it.

The Raffles Hotel was deliberately NOT on our list – everybody and their mother goes to Raffles, sits at the bar and orders a Singapore Sling, feeling on top of the sophisticated world. Raffles is the Singapore equivalent of the Hofbrauhaus in Munich – every visitor considers it an authentic local experience, and not a single local would be seen dead within a 100 meter radius of the entrance. Anyways, our aspirations lay with the far less conventional crowd, we were content exploring the back alleys and street food stalls, and who likes Singapore Sling anyway?…

We did not completely opt out of the tourist program, though. While we were happy to skip The Raffles, something else was definitely on our sightseeing agenda. Gardens by the Bay – a futuristic city park, blending the concepts of nature, urbanization, technology and science into something that could easily be found in the latest movie by Steven Spielberg, or Luc Besson. Ironically, the Gardens weren’t modelled off a sci-fi fantasy, but became an inspiration to some: the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Xandar planet was created having the Gardens as its prototype.

The Gardens is an ongoing project by the government of Singapore to transform their already quite green city/island/country from the “Garden City” it is commonly referred to, to a “City in a Garden“. Even though most visitors get familiar with the Bay South, the largest part of the Gardens, the complex comprises two more parts – Bay Central and Bay East, the latter still being mostly a work in progress. All three span 101 hectares (250 acres) and are built on reclaimed land, with the cost of the project of over $1 bln. To the joy of the visitors, the Gardens can be visited free of charge, with the exception of the two conservatories – Cloud Forest and Flower Dome, where you have to pay an entrance fee of 28 Singapore dollars (~19 Euros).

The signature Supertree Grove with its famous hi-tech giant trees is there for each visitor to admire for free. The supertrees, towering over the Gardens in their 16-storey magnificence, are not trees at all. They are vertical gardens, that perform a multitude of functions – from being home to a variety of ferns, vines and orchids, to being the environmental engines for the gardens. They harness solar energy that is further used for lighting of the Gardens, they collect rainwater for irrigation and fountains, and even serve as air intake and exhaust pipes for the conservatories’ cooling systems. AND they look really, really cool! They say the best time to admire the Gardens is after sunset, when the Supertree Grove is all lit up, but even during the day, it looks absolutely amazing. Even if you are not into high-tech environmental stuff, the sheer size and beauty of the place will not leave you indifferent.

There is something in the Gardens for everyone – the geeks will enjoy the technology bits, the nature aficionados will appreciate the beautifully recreated tropical and desert climates inside the domed conservatories, those looking for a quiet retreat from the hustle and bustle of the busy metropolis will appreciate the secluded corners of the park designed for meditation. The Gardens are quite central, easy to reach by the fast, convenient and easy to navigate Singapore MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) from everywhere in the city, and should be on the must-visit list of every tourist that happens to be in the area.

MRT is another must-do Singapore experience. With its impressive coverage of 170.7 kilometers (106.1 mi), it is fully automated with trains operating without the need for drivers. The system is reliable, spotlessly clean, safe and fast, with the network covering the whole city/island/country. MRT is also one of the main reasons for the infamous chewing gum ban in Singapore. Yes, unless you did not know, bringing chewing gum to Singapore, even for personal use is illegal! After several quite costly incidents on the MRT, when the carelessly spat out chewing gum blocked the doors of the automated trains and paralyzed the whole system, the Prime Minister decided on the ban, which prohibits chewing gum to be sold, bought, or brought into Singapore, and introduces a hefty $700 fine for spitting out gum on the streets. Even though the ban was viewed as harsh and controversial when first introduced, and people complained at the beginning, such complaints fell on deaf ears of the government. One of the later Prime Ministers of Singapore is even credited with the “If you can’t think because you can’t chew, try a banana” response to claims that the draconian anti-gum ban stifles creativity in the nation. Judging by the highly-innovative society and hi-tech environment of the island, bananas must have helped, for there were no further claims to revert the ban.

We did go for cocktails in the end. Although not in the Raffles bar, but in Jekyll & Hide, that we found on the pages of our Lonely Planet, and took the time locating in the maze of downtown streets. The cocktails were imaginative, with wacky names like “Vaping Geysha” and “Captain Boomerang”, beautiful and pricey, so we limited ourselves to one each (otherwise we would be required to cut our just beginning holiday short), and retreated to a nearby pub for the comparatively cheap $10 beers. We tried not to think that back in Munich double-sized beers of an astronomically higher quality cost only a third of an asking price on the island, and patted ourselves on the back for good thinking and not planning more than 2 days in Singapore.

Next stop – Indonesia!