Adventures in Asia: Singapore

This morning we caught a RapidPenang bus from the quay by our hotel an hour south to the airport.  There we flew Air Asia to Singapore--and arrived 15 minutes ahead of schedule!

We decided to eat a late lunch at the airport, and then caught the MRT into Singapore and our hotel, one of many locations of the Singapore budget hotel chain Fragrance.  Ours is called the Fragrance Hotel Emerald.  It was raining in Singapore, the first time we've had rain during the day in our almost two weeks in Asia.

Once settled in, we caught the MRT again to the northern side of the island (almost an hour by MRT).  There, we visited the Kranji War Memorial.

The Kranji War Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission-maintained cemetery for mostly-World War 2 Commonwealth soldiers.  

Its layout is very similar to the World War 1 Commonwealth graves I visited in Belgium and France in November 2015, although, of course, the landscaping manages to differ in ways (e.g., there were no palm trees in Belgium).  

It was equally quiet and tasteful and sacred-feeling.  

Overall the ages of the deceased struck me as much older than those I had seen in the WW1 cemeteries.  The youngest we found was 19, whereas the WW1 cemeteries had plenty of 18 year olds, and even younger.  And there were numerous graves for men in their thirties and a surprising number in their forties.  Another difference was the fact that there were a lot of Muslim graves, and a memorial to cremated Indian soldiers, for whom cremation is preferred to burial.

We stayed at the cemetery far longer than I had planned, and actually past the official closing time of 18:30.  The sun was setting by the time we headed back towards the MRT station and entered the Singapore Turf Club.

To get in we had to pay $6 for a ticket (actually, that's the cheapest one), which is by far the most I have ever paid to enter a race track.  On the other hand, it is the nicest racing facility I have ever been to, and also, by far, the most popular.  

Certainly the number of people there was in the thousands, and possibly over ten thousand.  Nearly all of these, probably close to 90%, were Asian men.  Women, and even men of other ethnicities, were surprisingly rare.  

We stayed for four or five races, which took place each half hour.  All were raced on the poly track, but they have a turf and dirt track as well.  Every race we saw had twelve horses racing (so was full), and many had a thirteenth and fourteenth horse scratched. 

We ate Chinese food and watermelon from the Turf Club's food court for dinner before taking the MRT back to the hotel for the night.

Adventures in Asia: Penang, Malaysia

Penang's transit service, RapidPenang, offers a bus route called "CAT" (Central Area Transit) which tours the UNESCO World Heritage portion of George Town, which is made up of European (especially British), Malaysia, Indian, and Chinese influenced neighborhoods.  We rode this first thing this morning, and got to see many of the famous sights of George Town, including what's left of the old British fort, the Supreme Court, St. George's Church (oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia), and City Hall and Town Hall (I'm not clear what the difference is, but they're distinct buildings).

Then, after dropping off some laundry at a place in Little India, we took another bus an hour east to one of Penang's most famous beaches at Batu Ferringhi.  We spent an hour and a half there, strolling in the water and relaxing and reading on the beach.

It was a remarkably quiet and pleasant afternoon.  There were a few people here and there, but mostly it was very empty.

Today, and since we've arrived in Malaysia, really, the weather has been much cooler than in the other countries we have visited.  The highs have been in the low to mid-thirties, instead of 40 or 41 as everywhere elsewhere.  The lows are still in the high twenties, which has been the case in Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar, as well.  

Of course, this means it is still plenty warm enough to be on the beach, but thankfully not so hot that it's too hot to be outside during the afternoon.  Interestingly, two men we met on the ferry over from the mainland told us that El Nino has brought a heat wave to Malaysia.  They were eager to convince me that usually it's even cooler than this. 

Later this evening, after dinner at a cafe, we walked over to St. George's.

Then we headed into Little India so I could pick up the laundry.  Little India seems to be especially bustling after dark, with sari and video and jewelry stores appearing to be especially popular.  

There were even almost a dozen people standing in the street on the street in front of one particular video store watching a Bollywood movie on a TV mounted outside.  I also had to dodge a cow patty outside of the Hindu temple at one point!  Interestingly, we were walking through Little India as we heard the call to prayer from a nearby mosque--a bit of a glimpse of the multiculturalism Malaysia, and especially George Town, is famous for.

Adventures in Asia: Penang, Malaysia

This morning we walked over to KL Sentral to catch a 9:30 train.  Malaysia has recently upgraded their rail system, so we were riding a new electric train that travels pretty much from south to north along the west side of the Malay peninsula.  Our destination was Butterworth, about four hours north of KL.  It was a very pleasant ride, with some interesting scenery, comfortable seats, a concession, and Harry Potter movies playing silently with subtitles.

Butterworth is on the mainland across from Penang Island, so we caught a short ferry just by the train station to get over to George Town.

George Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site because of the uniqueness of its buildings.  It was founded about 230 years ago and quickly developed into one of the world's first multicultural cities, with Europeans, Malaysians, Chinese, and Indians all building after their own styles.  Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu influences are all obvious within only a block or two of each other.  

Our hotel is a short walk from the ferry terminal, and we checked in immediately.  Andrea wanted to nap at that point, so I went out to find some lunch and see a bit of the neighborhood.

I ended up eating Chinese roast chicken and rice in an outdoor food court.

Later, once Andrea woke up, we saw some of George Town's famous street art.

For dinner, we ate crab burgers at a little cafe called The Book which we found tucked in amongst the alleys of Chinatown.

Adventures in the Caribbean: Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

One of my favorite features on the cruise ships was the TV channel that plotted our course and showed where we were, how far we were from our destination, our speed, the temperature outside, etc.   I checked this every morning when I woke up, and multiple times throughout the day, too.  When I woke up this morning, I knew we were much too far still from Grand Cayman to get there for 11:00 as scheduled.  

Sure enough, eventually the captain came on to tell us that overnight they had seen a flare and we had had to go off course to see what was happening.  Apparently a coast guard took over before we arrived on scene, so no one seemed to know what had happened, but it had delayed us considerably.  

It was well after 12:00 that we arrived off the shore of George Town, the Cayman Islands' capital.  We had to tender in here, but we were much, much closer to shore than we had been in Belize.       

I am not sure why they haven't built a cruise ship dock, but there were so many cruise ships (I counted seven) that it would be a big construction project to build enough space to hold them all at once.  

We were in no particular rush to get ashore, as we had made our own plans again today.  Actually we didn't even have any particular plans, except we wanted to see a bit of George Town and hopefully find a beach to snorkel from.  In any case, we boarded a tender some time after noon and were ashore in no time.  

Once there we walked around George Town, including a stop at the post office to mail a post card. 

 We saw many of the banks that George Town is for, including some familiar Canadian ones.

The Cayman Islands as a whole are famous for their iguanas, and we were lucky enough to see two in a church parking lot, of all places!

Eventually we were ready to hit the beach, so we sort of did some aimless wandering to figure out where to go and how to get there, and we were mostly unsuccessful.  We did end up taking a taxi van for $5 each along with some other people to get to a beach.  But once we had been dropped off we realized this was not an ideal place to be, as it was very crowded, and the snorkeling prospects seemed dim.  I asked a vendor there if there was good snorkeling, and he tried to tell me there was, but another man told me not to listen to him, and that we should go to Cemetery Beach instead.

So now we were on a beach we didn't want to be on, and had to try to figure out how to get to the beach we wanted to be on.  I knew there was some sort of bus system, and we decided we may as well try to figure it out.  Actually this turned out to be quite easy.  Basically, there are little privately owned vans that run on set routes, and each ride is just $2.50.  They were running at least every five minutes, and we had a helpful driver who dropped us off at a path that led to Cemetery Beach.

This beach was much less crowded, and quite pleasant, really.  However, there were no lockers or anything like that, and I was nervous about leaving our passports and such unattended, so we opted to snorkel individually.  This was not as enjoyable as it would have been to go together, but it was not terrible, either.  We each went out twice, swapping off in between.  I lounged in the partial shade of some nice trees above the beach when I was not in the water.

By the way, Cemetery Beach is, not surprisingly, so named because it is right next to a cemetery.

The reef off of Cemetery Beach is certainly nothing like the reef at Roatan, and we had to swim much, much further out before we started to see fish.  But 50 yards or so from shore the fish were abundant and varied.  Many were similar to fish we had seen at Cozumel and Roatan, but there were some different ones, as well.  Probably the neatest spot we saw was a bit of an underwater overhang, under which were countless fish, most of which were yellow, teeming about, presumably feeling safe in this natural hiding spot.  I could dive down, however, and get right next to them, and have them swarm around me.  They did not seem disturbed by my presence whatsoever.

Once we were sufficiently worn out from swimming out to the reef, we tried to clean ourselves off as best we could, and then walked backed to the road to catch the bus back to George Town.  We ended up catching a bus going the other way instead, because we were in no rush and ultimately the route is just a big loop.  

The ride took about half an hour, and we had a nice tour of the northwestern part of Grand Cayman, and met a nice friendly man who told us lots of interesting things about the island, including some information about their political system and where we could find the legislature in George Town.  We stopped by once we got off the bus.

We still had a little over an hour before we had to return to the ship, and we were in no rush to do so.  The sun was lower and not as bright, and most of the cruise ship passengers had already cleared away, so walking around George Town was very pleasant.  

We stopped for a couple bottles of Caybrew beer, and then toured a little park that has historical murals and plaques and such describing some of the history of the Cayman Islands.  

We also bought a rum cake, which the Cayman Islands are famous for--but then when we got home we discovered the very same cakes imported from the Cayman Islands are sold at Safeway for a lower price!  As we headed to the tender the sun was setting, and only the Carnival Glory was still sitting anchored, as all the other ships had either left or were leaving.

There were two final tenders loading up and we got on the second-last one.  

The sun just dropped below the horizon as we were en route to the Carnival Glory.

The Cayman Islands was our last port of call.  Our final full day was spent at sea, circling Cuba en route to Florida.  We attended another art auction (where Andrea won a bottle of champagne), and enjoyed all of our favorite facilities for the last time.

The next morning we were in port when we woke up.  Passengers were to disembark in phases, and our phase was roughly in the middle, which meant we did not really know when we would be asked to disembark.  We ate breakfast in our room while packing, but had to leave our cabin by 9:00.  We waited out on deck for the announcement telling us to head down to the gangway.  We could lounge and drink coffee, and it was a nice morning, but it still was somewhat stressful, because they couldn't give us a very good idea of how long we had to wait.  It was about 10:15 or so that our phase was announced, and then there was a long line at customs, longer for those of us who aren't American citizens.      

Originally our plan was to rent a car again for the day and perhaps head back to the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades, or maybe visit the YMCA again, etc.  But since I had lost my glasses, and Andrea had not brought her driver's license, driving was not an option.  

Instead, we simply took the Enterprise Rent-A-Car shuttle to the airport, and spent the afternoon there.  We got there around noon, and our flight was not until 20:00, so we had lots of time to kill.  Actually, though, the time went fast enough, especially since we had not had wi-fi on the ship, and did in the airport.  

Our flight to Phoenix boarded more-or-less on time, but it was delayed on the tarmac two hours while some maintenance was performed on a hatch hinge, or something.  Our four hour-or-so flight to Phoenix ended up being over six, which we were not happy about, needless to say.  

We spent that night in a Phoenix airport hotel, and flew home to Edmonton the next morning.  Thankfully, our flight home had no issues (except that it took us home to Edmonton, where there was plenty of snow and freezing temperatures, of course).