July 25- Bali, Indonesia

We arrived safely in Bali after a short flight from Singapore yesterday morning. We still need to finish telling you about Malaysia, so here goes...

We left Kuala Lumpur Thursday morning and took a 2 hour bus ride to Melaka. We arrived in the late morning, had a short orientation tour from Jamie, our guide through Malaysia, and then it was time for a Nyonya (regional cuisine) feast for lunch. Keeping a strong tradition strong, we stuffed ourselves and went shopping. Lunch was delicious, highlighted with freshly squeezed lime juice, ginger fried fish, and pineapple tarts (a local Portuguese influenced speciality).

After lunch, we walked around the town of Melaka, which is famous for its Chinese antiques and local handicraft shops. The buildings in the town were all traditional Chinese colonial shophouses painted in bright pastel colors, similar to the ones that we saw in Hoi An, Vietnam. The roads were closer to winding alley ways than actual boulevards, and the people could not have been friendlier. We did some damage shopping, before meeting up with the group for a boat ride through the town.

The boat ride was fairly ridiculous. The whole thing was narrated by Bernard, who seems to be infamous in the Melaka tourist circles. Not only did he point out the sites to be seen along the river, but he introduced us to Madonna and George Clooney, two of the river lizards we passed along the way. He described the government's effort to boost tourism in Melaka, and showed us the construction of a pedestrian walkway along the river as a part of the campaign to revitalize the riverside district. After a half hour or so, the boat turned around to head back to the pier, and Bernard began thanking us English, Dutch, Malay, Japanese, Korean, and French. He continued to thank us in more languages than we knew existed, and carried on all the way until we reached the pier again. He was even able to thank us in Californian (See you later, dude).

Back on land, we met up with the trishaw tour that had been arranged for us. Each country we have visited has a different name, and slightly different arrangements, but the Melakan trishaws take the cake. These were a regular bicycle with a cart attached to the side. Doesn't sound much different than the Vietnamese cyclos, you say? Well, the Melakan varietal was so colorful you would swear a clown had exploded all over it. Each one was covered in at least 500 silk flowers, Christmas lights, stolen medallions from cars (ours was a Beamer), umbrellas, and even speaker systems blasting everything from Bollywood hits to American 80's pop. It was quite a scene to see 10 of these streaming down the street in a row. On the trishaws, we took a tour of the cultural sites in the city; a Daoist temple, a Dutch church, and Fort Cornwallis, the local fort (every good town needs one). It was a nice tour and all, but the trishaws were really what made it an experience to remember.

That night, we separated from the group and celebrated our two month anniversary (since we forgot about the one month). We had been planning on going out for a nice romantic meal, but when we stumbled upon a dive-y little Indian restaurant in (you guessed it) Little India advertising vegetarian food, full of locals and no gringos to be seen, we decided that it was a bit more our style to dive in head first into the local scene. Not only were there no gringos, but there was no silverware. You would think that if the food was meant to be eaten with your hands, there would be some sort of scoop (think: guacamole and Tostitos) or it would be self contained (think: slice of pizza) or at least not be soup. If you were to think this about Indian food, you would be dead wrong. We washed our hands thoroughly and rolled up our proverbial sleeves and put our left hands under the table for the remainder of the meal. (If you think it is gross that they only eat with their right hands, we won't tell you what they use their left hands for.)

The waitress came over and spread a banana leaf in front of each of us, slapped down a huge pile of saffron rice and then drowned it in lentil soup. She then spooned out four smaller piles of cucumber salad, cabbage salad, pineapples in barbecue sauce, and fried tofu. After a deep breath, we dug right in and were quickly elbow deep in lentils. And it was DE-licious. After dinner, our tummies aching from being so full, we decided to revert back to plan A. We found a cute little upscale open air bar, where we sipped wine along the river's edge.

We got up early Saturday morning to catch a bus to Singapore. We were a little worried because we had heard that they fine, cane, or strike you for any violation of anything in Singapore. Not that we had any real reason to worry, but Jillian was afraid to sneeze lest she get caned for littering boogies. The bus ride was about 4 hours, and went smoothly. When the bus stopped at the border to go through Customs and Immigration, we were greeted, in true Singapore fashion, with soldiers wielding machine guns in a pristine looking building. They set the tone for Singapore perfectly.

Singapore was a very nice city to stop in for a couple days, but it was so sterile that it was pretty boring compared to most of the other cities we have been to. There was no real alternative culture, outside of the trendy club scene, and no real mainstream culture for that matter. On Saturday afternoon, we visited the Museum of Asian Civilizations, which was an absolute gem. This was one of the most beautiful museums we have ever visited, and it was chalk full of information and artifacts from all the different peoples of Asia. We had to laugh, because there were numerous displays of the very things we had bought on our trip. (We will soon instate an admission fee to come visit our apartment. Consider buying a membership if you are planning on freqenting the collection. Unfortunately, at this time we cannot offer a discount to family members).

Saturday night was the last night with our group, and we ate at a restaurant that our guide had picked out for us. He had heard the food was good, but what made the place stand out was the chef. He was a shamelessly self promoted body builder (possibly stripper) and he covered the menu with Glamour Shots of himself.

After dinner, we went to the Singapore Zoo's Night Safari. This was a special area of the zoo that is only open at night, and you can see the "nocturnal" animals sleep. We took an hour long tram ride through the park and saw lions, tigers, bears (oh my), zebras, elephants, big ugly things, rhinos, giraffes, little ugly things, capibaras, antelope, smelly things, anteaters, and scary things with big teeth (well, Jillian found all of them scary since there didn't seem to be any fences anywhere). After the tram ride, we walked through the park, and saw an abysmal zoo show, before heading home.

Sunday morning, we were on our own again! We decided to celebrate our freedom by (surprise, surprise) shopping in Little India. We had read that Singapore is a good place to buy cheap electronics, and Nintendo had just come out with the DS Lite, so again, our mission was clear. Ari needed to have that Nintendo, and he needed to have it cheap. We went to two electronics malls (Yes, entire malls with nothing but electronics. Needless to say, Jillian wasn't in her element). We scouted out every store to see if they had the DS, and then we had to go back and see which one would give us the best deal. It was quite an ordeal, but at the end of the day, Ari was a very happy camper. In being a thoughtful husband, one of the games he got was for Jillian. (The one he picked tests your intelligence daily, and he knew that she would enjoy beating him over and over again, which she does.)

After that, we went to check in to our hotel, so we could relax a little and Ari could try out his new toy. The hotel that we stayed in, called 1929, was super cool. It was a chic boutique hotel, with Marimekko bedspreads, rooftop jacuzzis, and fabulous retro furniture in the lobby. Our room even had a cool little music box and CD player in it. We were finally able to listen to the Malay hip-hop and Indian mantras that we had picked up.

That night, we went to Orchard Road, the high end shopping district, for dinner and shmying. Marcey had taken us to Takashimaya in New York, an upscale Japanese department store on 5th Avenue, and we wanted to check out the one in Singapore. The two were worlds apart (literally and figuratively). The one in New York boasted only exquisite Asian inspired clothing, accesories, and furniture, while the one in Singapore was immense and can only be described as KJC Penny's meets Bloomingdales. There was a lot of inexpensive Western style clothing mixed in with some well known Western designers, but very little Asian influence anywhere. We were pretty disappointed, although the 7-11 on Orchard Road had sour apple Slurpees, which made the whole trip worth it.

We headed back to our hotel on the early side, because we had to get up a few hours later for our flight to Bali, where we are now. We are having a great time here, and we will tell yyou all about Bali in our next post.

Lots of love,
Jillian and Ari