Makin' Moves

Hi everyone, apologies for our blog being dormat for the past few weeks. We're currently enjoying some morning rain (what else is new?) in Chiang Mai, Thailand and finally catching up.

Last post left at our departure from Australia. After landing in Singapore we quickly discovered the city's proximity to the equator and a few days of 40+ degree heat broke us in for the hot weather that lay ahead. Decided to stay in Little India and consequently ate a tonne of delicious chickpeas, lentils, and rice as well as the odd carniverous meal. We have yet to visit India in our travels, but our best guess is that Little India, Singapore is probably as close as you can get to actual India without visiting. For the most part we just wandered the city and checked out some of the different neighbourhoods. Found some time to go shopping on Orchard Road, but didn't buy much due to luggage restrictions (at this point, a purchase bascially means that something else needs to be tossed).

Aly had the chance to meet up with her friend Phil, who was attending NYU's Tisch School for the Arts at their Singapore campus. Conveniently enough, we were in town for his commencement ceremony, which was held at a swanky resort on Sentosa Island (essentially a theme park island just off the mainland). All in all, it was a pretty awesome event that included ice sculptures, great eats, bottles of Moet (popped by the dozen) and some interesting people. Thanks to Phil for sneaking me in with my fanciest backpacker outfit.

The following morning we caught the train to Kuala Lumpur to spend a few days in Malaysia's capital. Singapore is very westernized (clean and everyone speaks English), so this was our first jaunt out of Westernized nations. Again, the focus of our time there was on the food (surprise!): we had some fantastic Char Kway Teow (stir fried flat rice noodles in a chili and blackbean sauce), one of my new favorites. Also had a variety of great Malay curries. Funny enough, one of the highlights of the K.L. eats was a chicken wing meal we had at a restaurant on a chinese food street. They grilled them over a wood fire, fanning the embers and spinning the scewers of chicken wings like a swiss chalet rotisserie chicken.

Of course we did the usual tourist itinerary, checking out the Petras twin towers. Impressive, but moreso in the evening when they're all lit up. After our few days in K.L., we trained it onward to Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. Georgetown is more a "foodie" town, specializing in a variety of cusines. Some of our favorites were Roti Canai, an extremely stretchy roti (think a cross between a croissant and naan) with dal to dip it in, more Char Kway Teow, and Hokkien Mee (curry shrimp broth noodle soup). After three days of gorging ourselves on street eats for less than $2/meal, we decided to fly to Bangkok before we put on too much weight.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from Bangkok, but in hindsight I probably could have spent a bit less time in the chaos. Our guest house (Wendy's) was great - clean rooms, hot showers, nice breakfast and centrally located on the Sky Train lines. Did a little shopping at some markets (which I am quickly tiring of as they all seem to have the same stuff), spent a day "wating" (checking out temples) and did a couple of days trips. After a couple of days in Bangkok, our friend Kyla showed up, to spend three weeks of her precious vacation time with us. With Kyla fairly adjusted (quickly I might add!) to the time difference we took a day trip to the floating market.

I had sort of anticipated that this would be one of the more touristy aspects of the trip, and indeed it was. Nonetheless, it was still pretty cool to float down the river and buy fruit from old ladies in boats (first time trying mangosteens, which are great) and being constantly hustled by vendors hawking just about everything under the sun. On our way back we stopped at a teak wood carving factory, which was a surprisingly interesting experience. All of their carvings were from one piece of wood and the relief work (Aly's words) was really impressive.

Since it was Tuesday evening, we opted to check out Lumpini Stadium to watch some Muy Thai. We arrived just in time to catch the main event of the night (ringside no less). The atmosphere of the stadium was interesting to say the least, with locals screaming bets at bookies between rounds (at least thats what it looked like to me).
After a few more servings of green curry, mango salad, and phat thai, we ventured off to Ayutthaya the next day, Thailands former capital city. Walking through the ruins was a pretty surreal experience and definitly worth the trip out there.

Our thai is coming along - we've learned a few key phrases such as "lo dai mai krup" (can you give me a discount?), "tao rai" (how much?), "Sawadee Krup" (hello/greeting), "aroi" (delicious), "kop koon krup" (thank you), and "Sabadee mai krup" (how are you?). All of which have come in handy and from I can tell, the Thai people seem to appreciate the gesture (or at least find our attempts at the language funny).

We'll post more about Chiang Mai and the Islands soon.