Beautiful oh Beautilful Signapore

Well we are once again at the end of our stay in yet another city.. Singapore.
We spent the day visiting this beautiful city at massive speeds which , i'm pretty sure, i feel in love with.

Last night, after we were all settled in our dorm room, we went outside to enjoy a nice breeze with a few other backpackers. We met three people in particular with whom we ended up going to grab a beer in some local pub. We walked around town (around 10) to find ourselves following the music of a local band in a bar near the Penang tunnel (about 30 minute walk from our place). The place was nice.. outside and quite big. Me and thalia ordered a pizza too. They didnt have anything available from the menu other than a 4 cheese pizza (how original) but it ended up being one of the best pizzas i ever tasted.. mmm, thin crust. We stayed there for 1 beer and found ourselves paying a bill of 95$ SGD for 6 drinks and 1 pizza!!! WHOA we are NOT in Vietnam anymore!!
You know early on, we were debating staying 1 night or two nights here .. but after that, we are definatly staying only 1! We are already broke! lol.

So anyways.. we had a good time and the band was GREAT so wtv. We walked back to our hostel around 1am and there was not a sound anywhere! no noisy motorbikes or cars.. just.. quiet. People actually sleep here.

We found out some other great stuff... Did you know that they drive on the opposite side of the road here? How about that u can't chew gum (found out, it's 1000$ fine) and you can't eat or drink inside or on any public transportation.. no spitting, no littering, no bird feeding and it goes on.. I even saw one tshirt that said Signapore doesn't allow pets either. Weird. But, you really see all these rules come into effect cause the city is SPOTLESS and .. it smell really great here.

As we were visiting the city today (we took a hop-on/hop off city tour bus - you can hop-on and see the sights then hop-off whenever you want to walk around , then, have the option to hop back on again) we noticed so many great things. Because it's a tropical country , the misture of greenery and cityscape is wonderful. Either side of sidewalks and streets are invaded by various plants,trees and flowers which make it such a pleasure to look at. They are large green areas all around the city so you don't get overwhelmed with cement and tall buildings and there's a great mix of modern, contemporary and old fashion buildings all around town. It gives you the impression that you are in a different city at every corner. It seems that the city designer planned everything so closely that the vibrant colors and different style of architecture and mix of cultures is just flawless.

Anyways i'm really impressed by this place. Paula said that she would really see me living here cause it's everything I ever wanted. From greenery, to the city life to the various culture and religions .. this is really an "isa place"
But .. not yet I guess. Because the country is so small and always growing, you can only buy a "flat" here if you are married or longterm engaged. Singles can only buy one if they are over 35 so... not yet... Unless I start practicing my convincing skills on some people.. cough cough.

They are so organised here. They have everything under control. Another cool thing they have is to control traffic flow. In the big streets , there's these big structures that have "E R P" on them which .. stands for something .. I don't remember. Anyways, those are tolls which work in peek hour. Every Singapore vehicle here is equipped with a chip or "debit card" which automatically charges you an amount when you pass in Peek, work day, hours. That way .. people try to avoid them, making circulation... a breeze. Smart? ya. But it really shows you how they charge people here. You pay for everything.. Even napkins at a restaurant. :| oh well.. sleeve it is - just kidding *looks away*

Now, what do they do with all this money you give the country? Well, they pay for structures and building that cost from 33 to 600 millions dollars (there's a lot!) all the big structures here are funny and, thought of, designs so they cost A LOT!

Oh! i forgot to mention the food. Well, everything is REALLY expensive here right? even food.. However, they have these really cool open area "food courts" that are right on the streets where food there is cheap.It's like the food courts that are in the malls in Canada but outside, under a rooftop. We eat there today and ewww.. compared to Viet is really gross but I think it's just what we ordered since we just pointed to a picture.. we didn't know what we got.Pas grave.. The concepts is still really cool!

All in all though... wow. It's soo nice here!
The best place so far. Nothing ghetto. I can't wait to show pictures. Wow I wrote a book.

We are heading to Penang now , near the border of thailand. We were supposed to go to Kuala lumpur for 1 day but, because it takes only 6 hours to get there and we don't want to get a hostel, we would be arriving at 3 am by bus... and ... that doesn't make sense. We would be stuck till sunrise doing nothing.. so off to penang directly it is. 12 hours away. We will be beaching it there for a couple days.

Hope everyone is doing well and tty soon!

Hot and Humid Singapore!

You know.. when we managed to find a flight from Saigon (Ho chi minh) to Singapore for 19 singapore dollar + taxes , we really thought "Wow! this is really awesome" but that side was quite a weird experience. Now, dont get me wrong.. the flight was on time (give or take) the price was fair and the airport really wasnt far from town. However there must have been something pretty fishy with that flight. Me and paula were convinced that our plane had a bet with some other company for who can reach singapore the fastest. Our plane reached altitude (38000) under 2 minutes , the plane was shaky the entire time (the wings seemed very unstable) and we got to singapore in almost record time (i was convinced it was 30 minutes but aperently it was 1.45 min) the landing was quite brutal as well.. or well... maybe it was a new pilot but we got here safe and sound. Did you know that there's a time change? yup, one hour. Maybe that's why it seems like a really fast flight.. we were expecting 3 hours and then they said 2.5 hours and we got there in 1h45 hours :S

We got out of the airport and had to take a skytrain (ouuu) to the next terminal where we had to go take the citytrain to little india (where our hostel is) the city train which is like a outside metro is SO CLEAN and spacious wow. i was reading the signs and it's illegal to eat of drink on it (penalty of 500$) so thats probably why. After the train we had to walk 8 minutes to our hostel ahhhh our bags are sooo heavy... our poor backs! We got to test it out this time! ouufff.

Remember our "crossing the street skills" that we got in Vietnam ? Well, forget about them here! it's illegal to Jaywalk (penalty of 1000$) WTF! it's also illegal to chew gum! what a tight a** town lol. And we though that canadians were stricted.

Oh well.. i really need to get off this internet .. my free 30 minutes are up. Ill come back tomorrow. The hostel is REALLY nice .. we have 6 bed dorms (theres 5 rooms of 6 beds in the hostel) and its backpackers villa here .. pool tables, computers, foosball tables and tv area.. very nice! we are meeting lots of nice people! we already met a calgary girl that's backpacking alone (gusty much?)


ttyl!

Vietnam Overview

Hello Hello!

Tomorrow we leave Vietnam to Singapore, so here is a quick outline of my feelings and reactions to our experience here... I must say that Vietnam (or at least the places we have visited here) is definately NOT the relaxing nor the sight seeing vacation hot-spot; however, the experience has been quite interesting... I guess it has already been established that the place is so polluted!!! My first reaction was to find it way too hectic... we were scared to cross the street at first but it's amazing h0w we can get used to, and fall into place, in just a few days... now, we've leant, we just have to throw ourselves on the street and walk slowly, and simply let all the scooters, bikes and cars makes their way around us... (by the way, there is literally no traffic lights here, anywhere you go, you just see a constant flow of "things" coming right at you so, and unless you do like the locals (and step out on the streets anyways) there is no crossing the street...

Well, enough on the crowededness of Vietnam... I, personally, really enjoyed many of our activities here... Visitng the War Remnants Museum was really interesting, I leanrt a lot about the Vietnam War and was actually quite moved by some of the things I saw, especially, the pictures of so many children that were handicapped because of all the toxic dumped in this place during the war (and it makes it even more real when you walk down the streets and see a large number of people on the mid-thirties handicapped - not a coincidence if you ask me). It blows my mind to think that an apparent attempt to stop Communism from spreading in South East Asia turns into something like this... to top it all off we visit a section in the museum that shows the different ways that people were tortured... like I said, I really cannot comprehend this, but I woun't get into politics now...

Another interesting part of the experience was the two day visit to the Mekong Delta, where we got to go on the floating markets, see how rice paper and rice noodles are produced, and coconut candy (yummy!!!)... We also got to go further away from the city and see life on the outskirts of city (not a very pleasant bus ride, but very culturally enriching) and I must also say that I find it refreshing and it even gives me some sort of hope to see how people in places like this can live such satified lives with such little "things"... ( I truly think sometimes they are better off than us in a sense... :o) We stayed overnight with a local family and although we didn't get to talk to them much, just walking around the little village gave us some perspective on how they live, which needless to say, is very different from ours. Also, we realized every Vietnamese knows how say "hello" and "I love you"in Enlgish...

Also, loved all the markets, trying all these new and funky fruits and the street food of course! (don't tell my doctor I said this...). Food here is amazing and things are truly very cheap!

I think I'm blabing on too much... but in a nutshell I've enjoyed learning about a new place and seeing some things I had never seen before...

Until next time...

Paula ;o)*

2 day stay @ the Mekon Delta

Well, We just arrived from a 2 day stay in the south of Vietnam.. the Mekon Delta. We went to see the famous Floating markets,a rice factory and the canals.

The floating markets are for the marchants that don't have the means to get a booth at a regular market but still have the produce to sell/exchange to other marchants. They sell everything from fruits & veggies to live chickens and ducks in boats. They sell only for 1 hour of day but is super echtic all day anyways. Looks like this (im going to upload pictures soon but for today.. i forgot my usb cable.

I was really hoping to see the rice fields (which you can see in almost any picture representing vietnam) but we didn't get to go :( Oh well. It was still all pretty cool.

We spent the night at a local family's house where they served us good food and gave us a place to sleep. Even though it was in the complete boonnneyyyy of CAN THO city and we had to sleep in Mosquito bed nets because it's a Malaria infested place.. it was still the best sleep me and thalia even had.. weird.

We came back today at 5h (1 hour ago) and our getting ready to head to Signapore. We are taking a plane tomorrow at 4pm. Where we have a hostel set up already. We are only staying 1 night and 1 day so we are going to the night safari and riding the biggest fairest (spelling??) wheel in the world and then , the next day, visiting the town. We'll see if i can chekc my emails from there.

Btw.. I saw a Bagpackers bag here ... you know , the ones that cost 200$ in canada... ya.. mm... I made her bring it down to 18$ for a "The NorthFace" 100L. :O and i can't even buy it! because i still have 4 weeks to carry stuff around! Damn Canadiens and their profit margins!

Anyways, For those interested , i didn't get a picture of the toothless guy but you'll be able to see what he looks like in my pics cause they are all toothless here!! :P haha

Alex; Can you translate these to mom. And I send you the adress soon although i'm not sure it's a great idea to send anything.. it will cost you a fortune.

Hmmm Toothless men

I would just like to clarify that toothless men are NOT my type. He was fascinated by the fact that we were canadian and that we wanted to walk rather than taking his Taxi bike/tricycle thingy a magig and he kissed my hand and then grabbed my face. mmmmmm priceless.
Thalia and Paula sure enjoyed that.

Ho Chi Minh

Well im Vietnam (ho chi minh) with my 2 chiquitas, we arrive about 2 days ago. We staying in this lil hostel , not bad ! I mean its pretty close to everything. This city is mad crazy, you think New york doesn't sleep,well you're wrong!!! This place is full of people, full of noise...espacially scooters, they are everywhere....we were scare at first to cross the streets but now it's a peice of cake....we're locals NOW!!...In general ,it's not a very nice city..., there's pollution, chaos of people but they are nice to us... always a smile on their face...even a kisss...right Isa!!?? haha...Gotta love those toothless vietnamese taxi guys ...mmm just isa's type...Ok enough for today!!!