Bali Day 1

Bali! I went to Bali! It was hot and humid and sweaty and dirty and so amazing!

Cheryl and I landed in the Denapasar airport around 8 pm and made it outside in about an hour fifteen (Indonesian customs, unsurprisingly, is way slower than Singapore customs). Cheryl's been to Bali four or five times now, and she always hires the same driver - there's no real public transit, so it's most efficient and fairly affordable to just hire a driver while you're there if you're going to multiple places around the island. Gede, who seems like a super nice guy, picked us up at the airport and drove us to our villa (another thing about Bali - villas/hotels are nearly as affordable as hostels) in Ubud, where we would stay two nights.

Ubud is about an hour north of Denpasar and is inland. The streets are very narrow and being in a vehicle is a bit scary, actually! Motorbikes are even more common than cars, so the traffic is pretty complicated and dense. We were pretty tired and had already eaten dinner on the plane, so we were relieved to check into the villa, scope out our room (bamboo walls, tile floor, nice large bathroom although the shower had no curtain!), and pretty much pass out.

The next day we got up early, because we were being picked up for an all-day eco-cycling tour. The van to pick us up arrived at 7:45. Cheryl and I climbed in and then rode along as the other seven people on the tour were also picked up. After about an hour, the van climbed a treacherous mountain road to a beautiful restaurant for breakfast, with an incredible view of Mt. Batur - an active volcano - and environs. Breakfast - and this turned out to be common in Bali - was flat pancakes that came in banana or chocolate, fresh fruit (which I skipped), and fried rice. And jasmine tea, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We got to eat outside in the sun, overlooking the volcanic valley!

The next stop - still in the van - was a small plantation, primarily growing coffee, although they also cultivate cacao, spices, and teas. We got a short educational tour, followed by an extensive coffee and tea tasting, which was so freaking cool. Cheryl loves the lemongrass tea and the ginger tea, and I love the super smooth-yet-robust regular coffee and the perfectly balanced ginseng coffee and coconut coffee. I also tried luwak coffee, which has been eaten and shat out by a mammal called a palm civet (related to a mongoose). It was discovered by indigenous farmers during Dutch occupation; they weren't allowed to drink the coffee they grew and picked, but noticed that after the civets ate coffee beans they pooped them out undigested. Now it's suuuuuuuper expensive. I also found it to be almost undrinkable, personally: It was very strong and a bit sour and really not my cup of (ha) tea. It was fun to try, though - even though the other people on the tour heckled me a bit for drinking poop!

After the plantation tour, we got on the bikes at last! The bike tour is virtually all downhill, so it didn't exactly give us the exercise we had hoped for, but it meant it was just very fun the whole time! We stopped on the way down to see a few cultural sites: A Balinese home compound, an elementary school, a park. I loved learning details about how people live in another place than I do, although at the same time I was a little uncomfortable taking pictures of someone's home, even though they clearly had an arrangement with the tour company. I want to learn, but I don't want to be creepy or exploitative. So I just made sure I wasn't taking pictures of people who were just living their normal lives - only pictures of the places we were being explicitly taught about.

The tour and ride overall revealed some incredible views of forest, foliage, and cultivated rice paddies. It's not my very favorite scenery - I like size, which is why Alaska remains the most amazing place I've ever been and why I am a sucker for the ocean and why I really want to go see the Sahara - but it is really, deeply beautiful.

At the end of the tour we had a nice lunch and then got dropped off back at the villa around 3. Cheryl and I took about an hour to rest and cool off before heading onto the streets of Ubud to do a little shopping. We perused the hundreds of shops on the main streets for a couple hours, grabbing a scoop of ice cream midway, ate delicious noodles for dinner, and then went home to bed!

And now this post is pretty long, so I'll save day 2 (Ubud and Seminyak) and day 3 (the beach in Seminyak!) for future posts! Also, there is suddenly a cat on my stomach blocking my view of the computer screen. Good thing I'm not doing anything too interesting today - I need a bit of time to relax and catch up on some chores - so I won't get too far behind, here!

Singapore Day 2

This morning I had several hours before I needed to pack up and leave to catch a plane to Bali, so I decided to head out to Clarke Quay, a shopping and nightlife area on the Singapore River just two MRT stops away.

It's another beautiful day in Singapore - humid and warm and so comfortable for me, especially after a chilly summer and the beginning of New York's sinister slide into winter.

I wandered around the spacious and really lovely mall area for a bit, and then outside and across the river to the outdoor restaurant-ish area. It was only about 9:45 am when I'd gotten there, and it turns out nothing opens until 11, so I had time to kill. I had been able to grab an egg custard and taro bun from a pastry shop on my way out of the subway (the way the subway is connected both under and above ground to vast shopping areas reminds me of Montreal, btw), so I ate those out of doors and sat, journaling, overlooking the river.

Come 11, I wandered back over to the indoor mall side of the river and browsed the shops and Christmas displays. I'm definitely starting to recognize some of the elements of Singaporean fashion - not that different from New York or anywhere else but fairly specific. More LA-like, actually, which makes sense given the climate. I'm also starting to recognize the price and high-end nature of basically everything! Ha.

I passed a very fancy looking coffee shop/restaurant and almost didn't go in because I was intimidated by the fanciness of the coffee, but I steeled myself and was welcomed by the lovely woman working there, who sat me in a comfy chair overlooking the incredible river view, and served me a hazelnut cappuccino and two macarons.

Actually I was tempted by the expensive, enticingly-described black coffees, and I probably should have gotten one of those to counteract the sweetness of the macarons, but regardless the capp was delicious. I can't turn off my baker brain, of course, and the macarons were good but not perfect. Beautiful on the outside, but the insides had hollow spaces, so the bite didn't have enough crackle at the beginning or enough chew, and the filling wasn't as soft as it should have been. The peanut butter caramel one had ok-to-decent taste; the bittersweet chocolate one was more fully flavored and less hollow. I'd give them a solid B and I don't regret the SG$2.50 I spent on each; they're prettier than my own but slightly less satisfying in terms of taste/texture, and I'd give my own macs about a B as well. What I think all this means is that I am overdue for a first visit to Paris. Herme, I need you!

Anyway, I eventually headed back to the ground floor, where I thought I was going to grab ice cream (you may be beginning to wonder if I ate only dessert for lunch. The answer to that is, no comment.) and then go home, but instead I felt satisfyingly full of sugar already and I couldn't resist the temptation to go back outside and sit in the sun and look at the river some more, so I did that instead.

Seriously, I am pretty sure that sitting in the sun is legitimately my favorite activity. Above baking, reading, or hanging out with friends. Now, if I can sit in the sun while reading and chatting with friends and eating homemade ice cream, all to the better, but even (and sometimes especially) if I'm alone and caught without reading material, there is still nothing I'd rather do.

I finally got up the willpower to go inside and head home, where I've been chillin' out with the cats ever since. I do really want to go back there for dinner sometime, since it's supposed to be a great nightlife scene (hahahahaha did you ever think you would hear me say that?), plus I want some of the savory pastries from the pastry shop and I want the ice cream still and also there's a coffee shop I didn't go into that I totally want to try. And now it is time to go to the airport! See y'all when I get back from Bali, suckas!

Singapore, Day 1

After I chilled out a little and showered and said hi to Cheryl's cats, I copied down some of the suggestions she had emailed me about stuff to go check out and headed right out into the city!

I did so many things today!

First I walked around Little India as planned. There are lots of great looking Indian grocery markets on the street leading from the MRT stop into the Little India neighborhood, and then the main thoroughfare is packed with shops selling fabric, jewelry, and miscellaneous useful stuff. I accomplished my number one priority, which was buying a watch (actually I, uh, bought two, but I spent less than $10! So there! Little India = the place where Singapore actually isn't expensive, I guess).

I also grabbed lunch in the neighborhood at this crazy looking place called the Jungle Tandoor Restaurant. This restaurant looked exciting and rainforesty from the outside... and inside it was completely decked out in fake foliage and animals.

And I did not even remember to capture the elephant in the near right corner

or the giraffes in the near left!

I was the only patron in there for the first fifteen minutes, and I ordered aloo jeera heeng, which I had no idea what that was but it was cheap and turned out to be delicious potatoes in curry paste and lemongrass. And a really nice mug of tea!

After that I hopped on the MRT to the Somerset/Orchard area, which Cheryl had mentioned was fun to walk around and had great stores. By "great stores" it turns out she meant so many extremely expensive designer stores in a few blocks that it faaaaaaar outstrips Manhattan's 5th Avenue designery stretch. And yet somehow every store was still huge. I don't fully grasp how that worked, geographically, but somehow it does. Anyway it was pretty interesting to see! And a bunch of them had strange large Christmas trees/displays. Also, violet perfume totally smells how Neuhaus' violet chocolate truffle tastes, aka super weird and I am still confused about if I like it or not.

Somehow I don't think this Christmas tree comes off quite as weird in thei picture

as it did in person.

And after that, I hopped back on the MRT to the Botanic Gardens! The Singapore Botanic Gardens are extensive and free. I walked around them for a little over an hour and probably covered about one third of the paths, but then I got hungry and my feet hurt so I decided to head home. Plus, my camera battery had died, so I want to go back anyway to finish seeing it and to take pictures!

Meanwhile, thoughts about Singapore:

Maybe it's more like DC than NYC? Maybe I just think that because it's so clean. Seriously, things being clean makes more of a difference to the overall feel of the city than I expected it to. I keep thinking everyone is fancy and then looking carefully and seeing that they're not any fancier than people in New York, it's just that they're in a clean environment. In fact, they're probably a little less fancy than people in New York, overall. I spent a few weeks once in NYC noticing that literally every single set of women's toenails that I saw was painted. I mean, I started feeling like leaving the house in sandals and unpolished toes was like leaving the house topless or something. In Singapore, some women's toenails are painted and some are not.

The MRT is more extensive and involves less hustling around than the DC subway system, but is cleaner and easier to navigate than the NYC subway system. Also, it is a monorail or something, so where the doors land is completely consistent, and the ride is so smooth that no one hangs on to the straps. After one day of navigating the system on my own, I have almost a complete image of the subway map in my head, and sort of feel like I could get myself anywhere in the city very easily. I'm sure that feeling is somewhat deceptive; for one thing, I haven't been able to find an adequate Singapore map anywhere, so there must be stuff that's just not on the transit map. Googlemaps, here I come :p Also, I've noticed recently that NYC has one of the few metro maps that includes significant amounts of streets/street names on it in addition to the pure train lines. It's really a brilliant idea and I don't know why more cities don't do it, since it means that you can be hopping around the city, decide to go somewhere, and figure out where to get off the train even if you're not sure off the top of your head which stop is near where you want to go, or even where precisely those streets/that neighborhood is that you're looking for.

Also, everyone is pretty darn friendly, and also everyone stands on the escalator but leaves a clear path for the almost nonexistent people who want to walk. Which is the opposite of New York, where lots of people are in a hurry but no one cares about leaving a lane, and I chronically come up behind people and shout, "EXCUSE ME!!!"

Anyway, those are my first impressions of Singapore! Pics to come on facebook :) And tomorrow afternoon, I fly to Bali! Woooo! I AM BEING SO INTERNATIONAL Y'ALL.

Hello, Singapore! Aka, yes, I will happily travel for 24 hours at a time.

Well, here I am in Singapore! In case you missed it, I am in the process of moving out of Hotel California in New York and into an as-yet-unknown sublet, also in New York, and in the meantime I am taking a vacation! Itinerary includes home basing it in Singapore with Cheryl for a couple weeks while taking weekend trips to Bali and Taipei, and then jetting to Melbourne for about a week and a half to check out Australia with my friend Mark! Home again on December 15th, after a more-than-24-hour layover in Honolulu (hahaha how terrible, right? :p). Basically, I am psyched. I've been to 48 United States and 4 Canadian provinces/territories, but never been abroad!

I left from JFK on Monday evening. I flew Singapore Airlines - 8 hours to Frankfurt for a two hour layover, and then back on the same plane for the 12 hour leg to SG. The plane was big and new and had personal tv screens with almost 300 free movie options. For the first leg I was surrounded by empty seats. There were four free and pretty darn delicious meals total, so I didn't even have to eat many of the snacks I brought along, and they came with free wine! Singapore Airlines = a champ. I also just like being in transit to begin with. When I'm in between places, I feel out of time. Not responsible for anything or worried about anything. Just in between, suspended. As Stew said in "Tomorrow Gone," "there is a stillness in motion that transcends the stationary." That speaks right to my heart.

So I finally watched Guardians of the Galaxy, Belle, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Maleficent (and thoroughly enjoyed all of them); finished a couple books; did the sudoku and the crossword; enjoyed my meals; and towards the end squeezed in about 6 hours of sleep, so that when we landed in Singapore at 7 am I would be just waking up and hopefully minimizing jet lag!

So basically I love traveling internationally, and I haven't even done anything in another country yet :p

Anyway, once I landed, customs took like one second and I caught a cab to Cheryl's school, where she'd left her apartment key and MRT (subway) card for me, and then I took the quick subway ride back to her place. I saw a bit of freeway-side Singapore on the cab ride, and it was beautiful. Lots of palm trees, which I'm used to as a Californian, but surrounded by really intense greenery thanks to tropical climate. Weird to see the palm trees and the greenery together! The buildings by the road looked newish and very geometric, like they were made of lots of little rectangles and squares all puzzled together, and a lot of them had colorful squares or stripes of paint accenting the white walls, too.

Now I've showered and decompresssed a bit in Cheryl's apartment, and said hello to her cats, and I'm about to wander her neighborhood - she's immediately outside Little India. After I find some lunch, I'll probably wander farther! But be back around 5, so I can meet her for dinner when she gets home :)

Camping!

Last Saturday, we didn’t have a night show, and we all had Sunday off, so the gals and I went camping!

Mike was kind enough to lend us his camping equipment, and even though it was drizzling and a lot of rain was predicted for the weekend, the four of us packed up and headed up to Lower Dewey Lake. We rarely have a free night/day all together, so we were determined to make the most of it! Tess and Meridith had been camping twice already, but Steph and I hadn’t had the chance yet.

 We hiked up the trail. We’d all done that hike several times, since Lower Dewey Lake is where the trails to many of the other destinations begin, but it is definitely harder with big packs on! Regardless, we made it to Lower Lake in good time, despite a continuous drizzle, and set up camp on a convenient little island with a great view of the lake.

Once we got the tent and bedrolls set up, and our friend Kristi came up and joined us, Tess and Meridith and I worked to get a fire going. All the wood was damp, as were the coals in the firepit, but after a while we kindled a pretty great blaze!

After that we just hung out, listened to some of Kristi’s jams, cooked up some hot dogs and buns and topped them with grilled/smoked peppers/onions/leftover mac and cheese, drank some beer, and toasted up some pretty darn perfect s’mores. The rain came and went a bit, but we never really minded. Honestly, there was nowhere I would rather have been during those hours!

Eventually we turned in – the four of us in one tent, Kristi in her own little tent – and got the best sleep we could manage! I never sleep too well on the ground, but it was so nice to be out in the wild (and snuggled up to my homies!) that I had a good night anyway J

In the morning it was raining harder, and the edges of the tent were pretty wet and our shoes were pretty soggy, but we ate some peanut butter-banana sandwiches, valiantly packed up, and headed down the mountain.

Having a hot shower felt pretty great!

In which Steph and I have unexpected adventures in the Yukon

About a week and a half ago, Steph and I had the day off together again. The day before, the Jons were able to get ahold of Sourdough Rentals for us, so we could rent a car to go to Whitehorse!

While we were in the rental office, waiting for Steve to hear back by phone from the owner about what our rental options were, an older man walked into the office. Eighty if he was a day, long white beard, crooked cane, big bone earrings, hat covered in little medals. He proceeded to chat with Steve and us, and it seemed at first that he knew Steve, although it eventually became clear that Steve didn’t actually know him, but that he had just been by earlier that day as well. Weird! The guy was from New Zealand and was here to surprise a friend in Anchorage whom he hasn’t seen in 24 years – the friend doesn’t know he’s coming!

Anyway, when Steve got the owner on the phone, the old man overheard that Steph and I were planning to go to Whitehorse on Thursday and asked if he could get a ride. He “doesn’t need to go back, only to Whitehorse, not back,” and could “chip in for petrol” and “could really use a ride.” Steph and I were pretty uncomfortable with that, and made up an excuse about having a full car. But this guy was very persistent! We could “stop by his hotel room in the morning” to pick him up! In fact, even as we were leaving and telling him that he would probably have to find another ride, he was still saying, “see you in the morning”! Weird.

Well, Steph and I got the car (a minivan, which was all they had left) Thursday morning without incident and headed out to Whitehorse, without the old guy. The minivan’s speedometer didn’t work, so I never knew how fast I was driving, but, you know, feelin’ out the road and all that. Made it across the border, made it to Carcross (about two hours from Skagway and an hour from Whitehorse), switched drivers, and got back on the road… only to blow a tire a few minutes later! Actually, what happened was that without either of us hearing the tire bust or driving over anything unusual, suddenly Steph lost control of the wheel. Hilarious panic!Sho shouts, “what are you doing?!?” and hilarious panic!Steph temporarily genuinely thinks she’s swerving the car around herself and shouts, “I don’t know!!” but we have the wherewithal to pull over and get out and check the tires, and sure enough one is flat.

Keep in mind that we are in Canada, in the mountains and the desert, and have no phone service – and even if we did, you can’t call AAA from Canada. So we went around to the back of the car and found the spare tire…

…but no jack, and no wrench.

Of course.

We thought were weren’t too far out of Carcross, so we proceeded to walk back along the highway towards town. We walked for about an hour – it turned out we were about three miles past the town, and finally, footsore and hungry, we turned into a gas station on the edge of town. We explained our situation to the two men behind the counter…

…who, rather than trying to help us, proceeded to laugh at us for not having a jack and for how much our situation sucked.

Thanks, jerks.

Steph finally said, “well, can you please direct us to someone who can help us?!?” and one guy said in a totally rude tone of voice, “there’s a police station around the corner. That’s their job.”

So we found the police station, walked in, and explained our situation to the lady behind the counter. Who was lovely. She was sympathetic, kind, and helpful above and beyond the call of duty! She got us coffee, and even called Sourdough Rentals for us to ask where we should get the tire changed once we got to Whitehorse and to tell them that they better give us a deal when we got back! She also called in the police officer on duty, Dan, to help us with the tire situation. Dan was also very sweet (and, uh, hot :p), and not only drove us back to the car, with the proper tools, but changed the tire for us, much faster than either of us could have!

We have a thank-you note in the mail to the RCMP Carcross Deployment J

Well, we got back on the road – me driving, because Steph was a bit freaked out still – and made it to Whitehorse with no further incidents. We were famished, so we stopped for sushi first thing, then walked over to a tattoo/piercing/music shop so Steph could get her cartilage pierced.

The piercing went smoothly, although Steph was a bit faint after. But as she was sitting in the chair recovering, and I was holding her hand, guess who walks in???

Yep.

White-beard old guy.

There are four people in this room, and Steph and I are two of them. We are just frozen in shock. But he walks past us with, hilariously, zero sign of recognition, and sits down to get a tattoo!

Anyway, that was my favorite part of this story.

We left the shop, drove to the tire place to get the tire changed, and did a little Walmart-ing to kill the time. Actually, the tire change took longer than expected, since it turned out that the van had four different tires in four different sizes, so it was a bit of a struggle for them to match the new one! Oh, Skagway.

Once that was taken care of, we headed out of Whitehorse. However, about 20 miles out of Whitehorse there’s a right turn onto the Klondike Highway, to get back to Skagway. But Steph had never driven it before, and I wasn’t really paying attention or remembering that there was a turn, and it was hard to see and poorly signed. So we missed the turn without even knowing we missed it. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves crossing a beautiful lake on a cute bridge, and we both commented on how lovely it was – only to look at each other in alarm as we realized that we had never seen it before!

We were pretty perplexed as to how we had taken a wrong turn when we had been going straight the entire time! We decided to turn around, which was the right choice, but it also was a relief that Steph’s phone had one bar of service, so I turned on her data roaming and looked up where we were to be sure. Sure enough, we were on the Alaska Highway, which would have taken us all the way down through B.C.

We made the turn on the way back and made it back to Skagway uneventfully. But really, getting briefly lost was the final ingredient to make the day just ridiculous! Good thing we like each other, and had a good time all day anyway J

Oh, Alaska.

Next up: Camping! In the rain!

In which Alex comes to visit!

Alex came to visit August 1^st through 4^th. It was pretty great to see him, and I had most of two days off while he was here! He arrived on a Friday afternoon, and I showed him around town and bought him some ice cream at my favorite Skagway establishment: The Kone Kompany (except I still hate those freaking arbitrary Ks!). I’m over halfway through my second ten-stamp card for a free cone!

I had to take my leave of him that evening to do a show, but on Saturday morning after breakfast at the Station with the gals we took the hike up to Lower Lake. It was a beautiful day – he brought good weather with him, I swear, since it was rainy and cold before and after he left but sunny every day of his visit! We got a bit lost somehow – I’m still not sure how, actually – but retraced our steps and ended up making the whole Lower Lake Loop, which I had also hiked with my parents when they were in town. We ate lunch at a little picnic table back towards the start of the loop, then headed down and eventually grabbed dinner at BrewCo before he came to see my evening show. He enjoyed the show a lot!

On Sunday, we had planned to take the train to Fraser Falls and get off to hike to Loughton Glacier, but he didn’t have his passport (both of our faulty memories were to blame!), so we scrapped the plan. In the end, we grabbed sandwiches to go from Glacier Smoothie (I can’t get enough of their turkey pesto sandwich) and cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s, and walked out to Smuggler’s Cove, where we lay in the sun, read, talked, climbed around on rocks, and picnicked, all for about three hours. That evening we went to the Red Onion for $10 pizza-and-beer night with Meridith and Steph, which was also pretty great!

On Monday Alex had most of the day before he caught the ferry in the late afternoon, but I had a four-show day. So while I worked, he went to Lower Reid Falls and climbed around, ate at FishCo, then went back to Yakutania Point and bouldered over to Smuggler’s, before coming home to shower! Fortunately, I got off work early enough to walk him to the ferry. Bye, Alex! See you in a couple months! J