10/27/13 - Chicken Up - Korean Fried Chicken (The real KFC)

Believe it or not, last weekends festivities came courtesy of more inspiration obtained from hours of time spent in an airplane.  At some point and through some publication that I can't remember, it was either the Economist, The Straits Times or the Silkair in-flight magazine (talk about a disparate group) I had happened across an article about Korean Fried Chicken.  In the past 10 years I've probably eaten fried chicken less than 10 times, but a rather unhealthy obsession developed after reading this article.  Apparently the difference in style is the chicken is fried twice, leaving a very crispy skin and tender, moist meat inside.  It is then accompanied by Korean beer and you get to chuck your bones in a little garbage cans at the table, sounded like fun and meant to be a social, group activity.

I figured there had to be a place like this in Singapore and after doing a little research, stumbled across Chicken Up.  The reviews sounded good, but we had Sarah confirm first with one of her Singaporean classmates.  He's turned into my go to 'stamp of approval' for all things Singapore.  Once it was confirmed with two thumbs up the only issue was finding a time that worked for everyone interested.  Last Saturday it all came together and that was how we found ourselves winding our way through a street full of restaurants and convenience stores displaying the South Korean flag.  Turns out there's a Little Korea in Singapore.

We had heard there was an all you could eat buffet with beer option for a reasonable price so we all signed up and 10 minutes later a plate full of wings with soya sauce and large beers with tiny glasses appeared on the table.  Reinforced the whole "feeling like a giant in Singapore" complex I occasionally get.  We began making a mess pretty quickly so it was a little tough to document the endeavor.  I did grab a pic of the little empty trash bin, post chicken carnage.  I think it got filled up at least 5 times.  We cycled through soya wings, kind of a sweet and sour chicken, popcorn chicken and chicken stew.  Even though it was a "buffet" everything is made to order fresh, so as long as you keep ordering the food keeps coming.  Someone (I may have played a role) had the bright idea of ordering some more wings and fries and it was at that point a few of us started experiencing a case of the good old fashioned meat sweats.  Pretty rare here, but at least we were in Singapore so its pretty easy to pass it off as just "regular sweats."

The final plus/negative is they blast Korean pop on the stereo with the music videos being shown on the TV's.  Think Gangnam Style for 2+ hours, the unintentional comedy is simply off the charts.  It seemed like each progressive video had a group with more people in it, from 3 girls to 6 to 9, to hmmm, I think they have enough out there to play a game of 5 on 5 basketball against each other.  Oh wait, they all have NBA jerseys on?  Perfect.  The jokes really just wrote themselves, if the music didn't slowly drive you insane and we had to leave after 2 hours, you probably could have sat there all night coming up with entertaining quips.

All in all a great evening although we all seemed to pay the price the next day.  Could have been the salt, could have been the grease, could have been the cheap Korean beer.  Likely a combination of the 3. Reminded me of Ted and Marshall paying the price for a Gazolas pizza in Chicago.  My bet is, we don't learn our lesson either and make a return trip at some point in the next year.

10/17/2013 - Borobudur Birthday

A few months back I had asked Sarah what she wanted for her birthday and received the usual response “Something good.”  At that point in time we already had some fun trips lined up and given the limited space in our living quarters we have not been accumulating too many new toys so this was becoming a sticky wicket.  Inspiration struck though, when we found out Tiger Airways was starting Friday evening flights from Singapore to Yogyakarta.  Temples and the opportunity to get more use out of the camera was too good of an opportunity to pass up.


We arrived at the airport a little earlier than normal and after clearing immigration I was reminded that there was a Tiffany’s in the airport and it did offer duty free shopping.  Hmmm, we ultimately bypassed that shop and settled in for a birthday donut instead.   It was a good thing we had that little birthday snack beforehand because getting through the Yogyakarta airport reminded us with a slap in the face how lucky we are to travel through Singapore so often.  First there was a line for your visa, then there was a line with 3 people working in it for immigration with a final line in place to have your luggage scanned again.  The entire process took a least an hour and stomachs rumbling, we hoped our driver would still be waiting for us.  Little should we have worried as Yano, our friend and guide for the next 48 hours, was grinning from ear to ear and whisked us away into the infamous Indonesian traffic.


The first question he had for us was “Do you like mushrooms?” This seemed a bit odd, but yes we did, so we started winding through first city streets, then jungle roads, to finally little village roads to arrive at a famous mushroom restaurant for dinner.  We thought that each dish we had was going to feature mushrooms, we didn’t realize that 90% of each dish would be mushrooms.  Mushroom satay, deep fried sweet and sour mushrooms, mushroom curry – we were impressed.  Full of fungus, we hopped back into the car to continue on to the Saraswati hotel.  It was Sarah’s birthday after all, where else would we stay.

Apparently it was low season so we nearly had the hotel to ourselves.  This didn't really matter as Yano would be back to pick us up in the morning at, gulp, 4 AM, so we could get to Borobudur temple for sunrise.  Luckily we were only a 10 minute walk from the temple, so if he overslept we would have been fine, but there he was the next day, looking just as tired as us and joking how he was going to take another nap while we went on the tour.  I had to admit, at 4 AM, even I was questioning our sanity.

Tickets in hand and fully garbed up in required sarongs, we traded Yano for a new guide and began following the army of flashlights to the top of Borobudur.  It was still quite dark when we reached the top, but wasn't long before the black turned a shade of grey and various roosters throughout the valley had a competition to see who could be the loudest.  15 minutes later, Mount Merapi became visible and you hoped that since the sleeping giant blew its top 3 years ago it would be OK keeping a lid on in it for the rest of the weekend.   Suddenly the red orb started poking its head over the mountain range and everyone became silent, even the roosters seemed to comply.


Too many pictures later, we began our descent down the hillside while learning about the history of the temple.  Earthquakes had destroyed much of it before being painstakingly restored through the help of UNESCO.  Even good old Mr. Raffles had stumbled upon it in his exploring days before making his way to Singapore and having a hotel named after him where we now have the pleasure of being able to purchase overpriced Singapore Slings.

At the bottom, we recharged with coffee and banana fritters for breakfast before heading to Prambanam Temple and switching from Buddhists to Hindus.  This temple had been completely destroyed by an earthquake and the work to restore it is still ongoing.  You could walk up the stairs and into the temples for Brahma, Siva and Vishnu, however, to see Sivas home you had to put on a hard hat.  Upon closer examination, the sign claimed that it was relatively stable and safe to explore.  Relatively seemed like pretty loose terminology, but if it is good enough to communicate safety then I think I’m going to start working it into my daily vocabulary, like “that food was relatively good, the house is relatively clean or my work is relatively complete.”  Even after taking our lives into our own hands, we survived and celebrated with some coconut juice.

The ride back to the hotel was a replay of the prior week with a lot of head bobbing and nodding off.  At this point we had been up and roaming about for 12 hours and were pretty beat, but reached down deep for some final shopping energy.  Our persistence was rewarded when we found the exact souvenir we were looking for at a local stone shop and procured a miniature lava stone stupa for 75,000 rupiah.  This also qualified as a new birthday record as how often does anyone give you a present that costs 75k of something?  A nap by the pool, followed by some local Indonesian treats for dinner capped off the day, another Asian birthday success story in the books.

10/13/2013 - Borneo Bound

Kuching, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, is only an hour and 15 minute flight from Singapore, perfect for a weekend trip.  After a nice relaxing break in the Maldives, a jungle adventure seemed to be the perfect jolt to bring the energy levels back up.  We woke up early Saturday morning with a full day spread out before us.  First stop would be the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre to get up close and personal with the local orang-utans with the rest of the day being spent kayaking down a jungle river.

After winding through the Chinese quarter to pick up our fellow adventures for the day (from Hong Kong and Australia) we spent another 30 minutes driving out to the reserve.  Once there, we applied copious amounts of bug spray hoping that that the legendary mosquitoes of Borneo had not encountered Deep Woods Off before.  Free advertising for SC Johnson, it worked.   The only instructions we received from our guide was “be quiet and don’t make sudden movements” and then a gesture towards the path that was winding its way through the jungle.  Not entirely sure what we had gotten ourselves into, we followed the herd of people with cameras and started picking our way slowly over rocks and roots, necks craned skyward.

Two hundred meters later, 8 people were looking way up in the trees and pointing.  A brief flash of reddish orange hair contrasted against the green foliage and then it was off and moving.  Thick, ships rigging ropes had been hung in the tops of the trees and as we continued walking, we saw that they all led to one place – a natural amphitheatre with a large platform and hundreds of bananas on it.  The orang-utans are in their natural environment, but the park rangers have two daily feedings to draw them out.  Personally, if I could play in the trees all day and knew where food would be morning and night, I wouldn't leave either.  For the next hour we watched them cartwheel down the ropes to the ranger, grab a few bananas and then clamber halfway up to eat before repeating the process.  The little baby hanging onto and climbing over its mother to grab a snack was easily the highlight.

Eventually the food was gone and the big apes went swinging off to where they had come, probably for a banana induced nap.  We earthbound creatures followed the path back to the van to gear up for round 2 of our excursion.  30 minutes later we reached a local Dayak village, one of the indigenous groups of Borneo, to meet our guide and carry our kayaks down to the river.  

Within 30 seconds you had the Survivor theme song alternating with Indiana Jones music ringing in your ears as your mind couldn't make up its own mind about which one was more appropriate.  You didn't know if an au naturale Richard was going to roll down the hillside into the water or if an overhanging tree was going to dump a serpentine present into your vessel.  Personally, I thought a mini snake would have been fun, if only because I had at least 3 different lines ready to go with, with the leading contender being “snakes, why did it have to be snakes?"

The 11 kilometre river journey took us over some ‘mini-rapids’ past soaring limestone cliffs, up a back creek to a waterfall and a stop for lunch at a local village.  After eating about 4 coconut pancakes with palm sugar in the middle for dessert, I have a new rival to peanut pancakes as my go to Asian Pastry.  I had 3 pieces of pink dragon fruit too though, so that balanced out the sugar.  Near the end of the voyage we came to a natural sandbar where we went swimming in the surprisingly cold water and up into a natural cave on the other side of the river.  Feeling refreshed and glad to give our tired shoulders a break, we had the energy to finish strong and once again haul our gear up a steep escarpment.   At that point the day finally caught up with us and the entire group passed out hard on the trip back to Kuching.  No easy feat given the winding, bumpy road.   A nap in the car turned into a nap in the hotel, followed by a pretty early bed time.  We may have survived 1 day of adventures in Borneo, but 39 days with Jeff Probst watching on would have likely done us in.

10/6/2013 - Living is easy in the Maldives

We have been lucky enough to see some amazing places in the past year.  Southeast Asia truly has a lot to offer and we still have a lot of locales to visit.  The Maldives, however, had been on our list from the moment we knew we were moving to Singapore.  So from the time we had booked our flight last April until last week it was always in the back of our mind.  The multiple flights to and from Penang as well as some trans-Pacific flights paid off and we cashed in miles for a free flight.  Much like the rest of the trip, the landing into the Maldives was its own experience.  None of the islands are very large so the airport is actually its own island.  When you start to descend its just, blue water, blue water, lighter blue water, sand, boom, you're suddenly on the ground.  You get to the end of the runway.....and the plane just does a U-Turn and goes back to the "gate" and you exit on the tarmac.  Loved it.

After grabbing our luggage we walked to the other side of the airport and got in line for the next leg of our journey - 35 minute speed boat ride to our hotel.  Some hotels are far enough away you actually need to take a float plane to them, but one of the reasons we had picked the Anantara was to avoid that extra hurdle.  If the water was going to look this incredible at the airport, we couldn't wait to get out to the island.  The ride was a little bumpy, but not too bad and before you knew it the boat was turning into the channel in our own private lagoon and reef to drop us off.  A welcoming committee playing on some bongo drums was waiting on the dock and another lemon grass scented cold towel was provided to cool down with.  Cold towels might be a tradition we import back to the States, nothing better than one on a hot day and after this trip, bongo drums may prompt a Pavlovian response in me signalling its time to relax.  It helped we heard them each day when new arrival showed up.

Check in was a breeze - it was helpful that were coming in the low season and throughout our stay we often felt like we had our own deserted island.  Next stop, our over the water bungalow that would be home for the next 4 nights.  Surprise surprise, waiting for us was a bottle of champagne and some chocolate covered strawberries as an anniversary present.  We didn't remember even telling them that, but we certainly weren't going to turn them down.  Not that we had had any doubts, but sitting there on our deck, enjoying our champagne, watching the fish swimming by (whoa was that a shark?) yes, the trip was going to be awesome!

We were on a mission to relax so the rest of the week slipped by pretty quickly, so just a few high points.

1) The sunrises and sunsets were incredible, to the point that they almost look fake.  We might need to go into the postcard business after this trip.  The 3 hour time difference worked in our favor so even the late risers that we are got to see a few sunrises and we of course took advantage of sunset happy hour before dinner each night.

2) We had been a little concerned that for all our meals we were effectively stuck at the hotel.  No walking down the street or taking a tuk-tuk to a cheap $4 dinner anywhere.  Of course that had been a needless worry as well.  Breakfast by the water every morning was a pretty easy way to start each day.  I alternated between eggs one day and crepes the next and finished off with a fruit and cheese plate each day - the combo of the food I love most about Singapore (fresh tropical fruit) and an item a Wisconsin guy misses the most (access to good, reasonably priced cheese).  I'm treating this 2 year stint as if its graduate level training in breakfast buffets so that I can be prepared to teach a course when we return.  Think about it, it really is valuable information everyone should have.

Dinner was then similar to breakfast - out by the water either at our hotel or a 2 minute pontoon boat ride to the other side of the lagoon and the sister resort.  Floodlights lit up the water for about 20 meters so you could see everything swimming by at night as well.  We took a tip and on the last night ate later as apparently the sharks show up around 9 PM.  Sure enough, starting around 9 until the time our wine ran out one baby black tipped shark after another cruised by our table.  Were we the immature couple humming the theme from Jaws each time this happened? Guilty, but you know you would have done it too.  I found out I have a little Dr. Evil in me as all I wanted was for one to eat another fish, but they seemed content to swim laps instead, even with the theme music motivation.


3) Snorkeling was like becoming a cartoon character in Finding Nemo.  Whether it was climbing down the steps of your room and seeing different types of clown fish, lion fish or the occasional shark or going further out and seeing monster sting rays swim past. One day we did an excursion to another reef and on your right was layers of coral and fish and on your left was a massive drop off that turned into a blue abyss.  Off in the distance a school of manta rays swam by, much like a flock of geese.  We weren't quite quick enough to catch up to the turtle that was further ahead but the eels we did see were like ribbons cutting through the water. If there was ever a time to get scuba certified, this was probably it, but the silver medal for snorkeling was a worthy consolation prize.

Hopefully global warming turns out to be false and this incredible place doesn't disappear back under the ocean in our lifetime.  As 3rd anniversaries go it was perfect - maybe we can make a return trip for our 30th.