TravelStream™ news feed for member aaronpolarbear on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/aaronpolarbear en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:36:57 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240670040/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240670040/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240670040/tpod.html Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:36:57 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Manila, Luzon, Philippines

Our flight was smooth but about 20 minutes longer than the hour that had been scheduled. Overall this made the flight around an hour late but it didn't really matter much for Lisa and I since we didn't have to worry about connecting flights. After picking up our bag and looking around for a ride back to the Melate suburb of Manila, we discovered that the taxis that you catch within the airport limits are around twice the price of taxis outside the airport. Considering that it is easy to see taxis waiting right outside the airport and that it is only a walk of around 200 meters to get to them, we used them to get back to our hotel for around 150 pesos. The first taxi didn't want to use his meter with us but the second driver used the meter without any complaint.

We stayed at Friendly's Guesthouse in Manila for our final three nights of the trip and mostly just concentrated on shopping, as this was our 2nd visit to the city. Of course Friendly's Guesthouse is one of the best places for having fun that we have ever stayed at, so we ended up drinking on the roof top on both the first and second nights. I got a little carried away on our 2nd night (April 22nd, 2009) and didn't make it to bed until after 7:00. I cannot recall completely what that night entailed, as Lisa went to bed around 2:30, but I am sure that it seemed like a lot of fun while I was experiencing it. The next day I woke up around noon and immediately felt the cost to my health from the fun of the night before. It didn't stop me from going shopping though and Lisa and I decided to make our way to Green Hills mall.

I had first discovered Green Hills by using Google, but the owner of Friendly's and some of the long term guests confirmed that it was one of the best and cheapest places to shop for souvenirs in the city. We decided to try and get there by public transportation and started by walking to the ___ station on Line 1 of the Light Rail Transit system. It cost us 15 pesos to go 5 stations away and we transferred at ___ to Line 2 of the LRT where we had to pay another 12 pesos to get to the ____ station. This station is the one used to get to the SM Mall of Asia, which is the biggest mall in all of the Philippines and something like the 7th largest mall in the world.

We shopped around this mall for a little while but soon decided that we should try and continue on to Green Hills to see if there were better bargains. We jumped in a taxi and a short ride and 50 pesos later we arrived at Green Hills. As I mentioned earlier, I was not feeling at my best at this point but Green Hills turned out to be exactly the type of place that we had hoped for. We spent about an hour browsing and buying clothing and other souvenirs before I ran out of energy and had to go home. We decided to forego public transportation this time and spent around 45 minutes in a taxi which only cost around 150 pesos. Although riding in taxis is very affordable in Manila, it is also a slow and frustrating process due to traffic conditions and every driver we had drove in a fashion that inspired riders to get car sick.

With my hangover now in full effect (and Lisa not feeling great either), we did not join the party on the roof of Friendly's again this night and we both got a really good sleep. We decided that we would return to Green Hills again for another round on our last day of our trip and this time we both woke up early and in a mood ready to shop. We had to check out of our room for noon, so we spent the morning sipping on coffee and packing up our stuff so that it would be ready for our flight later that day. After having a delicious lunch at Pizza Hut for 99 pesos each, we jumped on the Light Rail Transit system and made our way to Green Hills the same way as the previous day. We had planned on buying a canvas or tarp like bag to bring our goodies home, but the only bags we could find were fake designer bags that we didn't really want. The large designer bags went for 1,500 pesos (before the bargaining process began) and we could not find any cheaper options, so after we had bought several bags worth of goods, we figured our backpacks were now completely full and we headed home.

The jerky taxi rides and traffic of Manila inspired us to take the LRT system home. It was 17:00 when we left and I figured that no matter what option we used would be agonizing, but I was surprised that the LRT system was not nearly as crowded as Toronto's subway would be at rush hour on a week day. Since we were walking by Robinson's mall again, we headed back to Pizza Hut for a pasta dinner before returning to Friendly's Guesthouse for the last time. As we showered and packed up our bags we could see that the staff of Friendly's was busy cooking up a barbecue on the rooftop for its guests. I am not sure how Friendly's Guesthouse can be profitable because they always seem to be doing stuff like this for their guests. We were not hungry though, so we just showered, packed and headed to the airport.

The security process at the Manila airport is rather intensive and it took us an hour to get through it. We had found out earlier about the 750 peso fee for International passengers, but changed the rest of our Philippine currency into US dollars. I am waiting for the flight in the waiting room as I write this and I managed to secure one of the only available electrical plugs yet again. Every seat in the waiting room is full though and I had to give up my seat in order to get access to the electrical plug. I guess this is going to be a full flight because there are lots of people sitting around me on the floor and dozens of others are standing.

We have a long journey home in front of us now. Our flight to Abu Dhabi leaves Manila at 1:15 and is scheduled to last eight hours. After this we have a five hour stop over and then we get on a 14 hour flights from Abu Dhabi to Toronto. I will be glad when this flight is over but I am sad that our journey through Asia has finally come to an end. It will be nice to see the familiar faces of family and friends again, but it is still sad that I will have to return to a normal life once again. Unless something special happens in Abu Dhabi though, this will be my final journal entry and the conclusion of this story. If you have read any or all of this journal, I hope you plan on travelling through Asia yourself as I tried to provide as much practical information as I could remember.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240322880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240322880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1240322880/tpod.html Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:33:16 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Boracay, Visayas, Philippines

Our flight left on time, lasted only 60 minutes, and soon we were grabbing our bags and walking out of the Kalibo airport. It is not a big airport by any measure and it took only around 15 minutes until we had our bags and we were heading out the front door. Once outside we saw two options for how to get to the island of Boracay. There were a number of minivans asking for 200 pesos and a coach bus that was asking for 350 pesos for the same trip. These prices included the cost of the ferry to the island (which is only 25 pesos anyhow), so once we ensured that the minivan would be air-conditioned, we hopped in the first one we came across.

At first we wondered why the minivans would be so much cheaper than the coach bus but it did not take us long to figure out the answer to that question. They really packed us in this minivan; at least 4 in every row and two people in the front seat. This may have been reasonably comfortable for tiny Filipina women, but it did not make for a comfortable ride for Lisa or I. The drive lasted around 90 minutes and in the middle of the ride we drove through some twisty mountain roads that provided great scenery. Once we pulled in to the ferry terminal, everybody got out of the van as the driver went and got tickets for everybody. We soon found out that although the ferry ticket was indeed provided, there were additional charges of 50 pesos each for an environmental fee and a terminal fee.

After everybody had paid their fees we got on a small traditional banton style boat (with outriggers on either side) and everybody put on their life jackets. I don't know if they have lots of problems with this short ferry ride but apparently there is a law that requires everybody to wear one. The ferry ride lasted no more than 10 minutes and covered a distance that I could probably swim. We had made sure to ask to go to Boat Station #3, but apparently the ferries didn't actually go to the boat stations because we were let off on the other side of the island. From here we shared a ride in a taxi (for 25 pesos each) that took was supposed to take us to Terminal #3.

We got let off of the bike at the top of a hill where there was a sign saying that no motorized vehicles were allowed any further. Fortunately a woman on that came with us for the ride explained that it was not possible to go any further but that it was only a 10 minute walk to our hotel (Melinda's Garden). She walked with us and made sure we found our way and I don't think it even took 10 minutes. It was still very hot and humid out though so at this point I was glad that we decided to leave around half of our baggage at Friendly's Guesthouse in Manila (for 10 pesos a day).

Once we arrived at Melinda's Garden a woman on their staff showed us to where we stay and explained that we were getting a free upgrade because they did not have any budget cabins left as we had reserved (via hostelbookers.com). All of the cabins in Melinda's Garden are constructed of natural materials in the traditional nipa style, except for the bathroom which is constructed of brick. It looks and feels very rustic but because the floor of bamboo planks, there are lots of areas for mosquitoes to get in. The walls were made of woven bamboo, which gives good privacy but the thatched roof has large open areas and the windows have no screens. Melinda's Garden, as the name implies, has lots of plants and shady areas where mosquitoes like to hide. It is a good thing that the bed comes with a mosquito net.

Soon after we had checked in to our rooms, we hit the showers to freshen up. The standard huts at Melinda's did not include hot water for showers, but that was hardly a necessity since it was always very hot outside and we did not have air-conditioning. The next thing on our itinerary was too hit the beach that we had seen on our walk to Melinda's: White Sand Beach. It is easy to see how this beach got its name and it is safe to say that this is one of the nicest beaches in the world. The water was also extremely clear, I figure visibility must've approached 30 meters, although there was some green seaweed that bunched up in some places near the shore. The water was what I would consider a perfect temperature (around 25 degrees Celsius) which was cooler than I expected considering where we were.

Right aligned: White Sand Beach is a very wide and long strip of beach that has been developed with hotels, restaurants and souvenir stores along a sand road that spans the entire beach. Melinda's Garden was around a 1 minute walk from this sand road, which made it considerably cheaper and a very quiet area. The prices along the beach were rather expensive for Filipino standards, although beer and alcoholic drinks were still very cheap especially during happy hour specials (which lasted from 14:00 to 20:00 at most places). San Miguel beer and San Miguel Light went for as low as 30 pesos during these happy hour specials.

Lisa and I spent 7 nights on Boracay altogether and most days were very similar in nature. The first three days that we spent on the island were accompanied by a perfectly blue sky and a sun that forced us to spend many hours in the water to cool down. We were not in a hurry to go on snorkeling, scuba diving, or any other sort of activities because we figured that the weather would always be hot and sunny and we could go any time. Instead we enjoyed the cheap beer and festive atmosphere on the island and mostly just laid around in the sun and swam in the water. Unfortunately the weather changed after this and the water was no longer as clear as when we first showed up so we ended up never making it on a snorkeling trip.

The sun was always present for awhile in the morning but in the afternoon clouds would roll in and it often rained. One day as we were sipping on some happy hour beers and watching offshore rainstorms we even saw two tornados come down from the clouds. They were far enough off shore that nobody felt any danger and in fact there were even clear skies over us as we watched the waterspouts several kilometers away. That night we got mild rain, as we often did during our last four days on Boracay, but one day when we went out for lunch we got caught in one of the heaviest rains that I have ever seen. The rain had been so light every other time it rained that we didn't bother bring our umbrella with us and we got completely soaked. It only took around 15 seconds in this type of weather to get soaked to a point that you may as well have been submerged under water.

Meals on Boracay can be expensive for Philippine standards if you eat on the beach. Lisa and I usually went to a restaurant that was a couple hundred meters from the beach along the main road of the area that was called Love Fastfood. Right aligned: Every morning that we were there I got a wonderful tomato, onion and cheese omelets for 55 pesos and a mango (sometimes mixed with either banana or melon) for 40 pesos. They also had sandwiches and burgers for around 30 to 40 pesos, although they often ran out of meat to make the burgers. Except for Lisa and I, the patrons of Love Fastfood were all local people and they all ate traditional dishes. These included pancit bihon (fried noodles and pork dish) and one that I tried and later found out was made from pork cheek. They were always accompanied with rice and cost around 40 pesos together. Although I probably wouldn't have tried the pork cheek (had I known what it was in advance), it turned out to be quite a tasty dish. That being said, I didn't order it again once I knew what it was.

Another affordable place to eat was called Andok's and fortunately they are a chain that exists in many places around Boracay. They offer a wide selection of Filipino dishes, but also barbecued chicken for very good prices. It was not the best barbecued chicken that I have ever had but at 125 pesos for a half chicken, it was hard to complain and I ate around 3 entire chickens during my week on Boracay. The best food to be had was along the beach and although it was relatively expensive, it was easy to find plenty of excellent European or Asian specialties. Twice Lisa and I ordered a wonderful chicken schnitzel from a German/Philipino restaurant. It cost 255 pesos, but came accompanied with a god sized salad and side dish of french fries to satisfy nearly any appetite. More importantly it had seating right on the beach which is very convenient after having a half dozen beers through happy hour.

Another cheap place to eat, which is also a great place to shop for souvenirs, is called D'Mall near Boat Station #2 on Boracay. The mall is really just a collection of stores and not the air-conditioned enormous single buildings that we call malls in North America. A lot of the stores sell the same stuff at the same prices, but with a little bit of patience and some bargaining there are good deals that can be found. Nearly every store of the area sells cheap white t-shirts with Boracay and a picture on them at a rate of 2 for 150 pesos, but the better shirts start at around twice this price. Lisa and I ended up buying a couple cheap t-shirts and a nicer one (for 150 pesos), as well as a few nice beach bags (100, 180 and 220 pesos). We bought a few other souvenir trinkets as well, like fridge magnets and some kids' toys, but I ended up drinking the bottle of 12 year rum that we planned to bring home originally. Tanduay rum is very cheap in the Philippines, especially if you can appreciate bottles aged 1 to 5 years. A 750 ml bottle of 12 year (the second highest grade they make) was only 160 pesos, but the 8 year (85 pesos) and 5 year (60 pesos) are about as cheap as I have seen rum anywhere in the world.

Overall our week in Boracay was one of the most relaxing and beautiful stops of our eight month journey. The lack of air-conditioning made the heat a little unbearable at times and at dusk and dawn you had better be wearing air-conditioning, but aside from that it is hard to find anything not to like about the island. It was refreshing to see that most of the people visiting seemed to be Philippine, although there were also lots of Koreans, Chinese and Japanese as well. There were not nearly as many Europeans or North Americans as I expected, but then again it was exactly an easy place to get to. The weather could've been nicer for our last four days there, but the sun was always out for at least a couple hours each day. I have wanted to see a tornado my entire life, so I am sort of glad that we had some bad weather too. Now I got to see two of them within the span of 15 minutes.

Our flight from Kalibo was scheduled to leave at 13:15 and we did not want to take any chances of missing it. We got up early and checked out of our hotel by 8:00, not knowing how efficient the process of getting to the airport would be. After going to the local bakery and stocking up on snacks, which were widely varied and only 5 pesos each, we jumped in a tricycle and got a ride to the dock for 50 pesos within seconds. After paying another terminal fee of 50 pesos each and a ferry ticket for 25 pesos each, we were soon in a boat and on the island of Pasay by 8:45. From here we quickly found a ride in a minivan for 175 pesos each and we arrived at the airport really early. Fortunately this little airport is surrounded by restaurants that offer cheap meals and ample seating to accommodate the wait.

It was good that we ate before getting into the airport because once we were inside there was very little food or snacks to be had. There was a little coffee stand and a booth where you could get a massage, but very little else. The waiting room slowly filled up and eventually every seat was taken and there were lots of people standing. Our flight got delayed by 20 minutes and still no other flights left before us. Fortunately since Lisa and I got there quite early, we had our choice of seats and I found one where I could plug in my laptop and we watched a movie during our wait. There was several TVs for everybody else to watch but the programming was boring and not in English.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239706860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239706860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239706860/tpod.html Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:02:23 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Manila, Luzon, Philippines

The bus took a little over an hour to get to the outskirts of Manila and then around another 30 minutes to navigate through the city to the Pasay area. We didn't ride the bus the whole way, but the attendant on the bus let us know where the most convenient spot for us to disembark and find our way to Melate was. The first taxi driver that we talked to agreed to use his meter when we asked, then in the next breathe said "250 pesos." We were not going to play that game and simply walked 10 meters down the road and flagged down a passing taxi. This driver agreed to use the meter and dropped us off right in front of our Hostel for only 80 pesos. We gave him a 20 peso tip to encourage fair service to foreigners.
An elevator took us to the 4th floor of a building that seemed to be right in the middle of all the expensive hotels in Manila. The room we had reserved cost 890 peso which got us a really small air-conditioned room that had a bunk bed in it. Fortunately the bottom half was a double bed, which allowed us to use the top bed for storage. Besides the bed there was only a small end table as far as furniture went. The beds had very thin mattresses, but we put out travel mats underneath of the mattress and then found it to be comfortable enough to stay there four nights.
The reason to come to Friendly's Guesthouse is the location and the atmosphere of the upstairs area. The upstairs is the top floor of the building and (except for the dorm rooms), most of it is used for common space. There are lots of tables and chairs, both outside and on the patio and cold beer is available for 30 pesos (cola is 20 and water is 15.) There are lots of books, instruments and even hookahs lining the walls of the common room; a lot of thought has been put into making this place have a jovial atmosphere. There is also a large kitchen that guests are free to use and a space to do your own laundry as well (although they will do it for you at 35 pesos per kilogram.)
Our room did not come with a private bathroom, but there were lots of communal ones on our floor which provided a steady stream of warm water. Despite trying to clean up at our hotel in Angeles, I was still filthy from the day watching the Easter celebrations, so the first thing I did was hit the shower. After we were cleaned up, we were ready to explore the town and find some food. Almost everything in the Melate area was closed for Good Friday, but it still wasn't that challenging to find some decent food close to our guest house. We ended up eating some snack foods and drinking some San Miguel Beer from a small establishment across the road from Friendly's that reminded me of a bai hoi joint from Vietnam.
The next morning we woke up and wandered upstairs to use the free Wi-Fi and enjoy some complimentary coffees. The Internet service seemed to go up and down, but stayed up long enough for me to Skype family and friends back home. By the time we had finished our second large mug of coffee though, we were both trembling from a caffeine overdose and decided to go out and look for food. We soon found out that there was a large mall just down the road and that it had a supermarket in it. We wandered down to the mall and were surprised to see that not only was it open today, but that it would be open regular hours (9:00 to 21:00) on Easter Sunday as well. Thursday and Good Friday are the big holidays in the Philippines but Easter Sunday does not seem to be too big of a deal.
The Robinsons Mall of Manila is a huge and modern mall with more American brands & stores than anywhere else I have yet seen in Asia. Alas, although I had seen a Taco Bell advertisement on the bus ride into Manila, there was no Taco Bell at the Robinsons Mall that I could find. I am a fast food junkie though and was happy to see a Wendy's again as well as pizza slices from Pizza Hut at a rate of two for only 53 pesos. The Robinsons Mall is vast but the prices are obviously not the best that you would find in the Philippines. It almost seemed to be a tourist attraction in its own right because many people were hanging out in the courtyards having their picture taken with the mall as a backdrop.
The climate was so hot during our stay in Manila that we were mostly content to hang out at Friendly's Guesthouse where we could duck into our air-conditioned room when necessary. The roof top patio has a fantastic view of the Melate area and lots of travelers congregate on this patio to share stories while drinking San Miguel or Red Horse beers (30 pesos a bottle from Friendly's). Furthermore the staff and ownership are always doing things on the patio to make your stay there more entertaining. One night they brought out the bongo drums and banged away to the music in the background. On Saturday night they brought out sliced bread, bruschetta, cheese, mushroom and tuna spreads for the guests to enjoy. The quantity was enough that this could have substituted for dinner but to make double sure that everybody was having fun, they also brought out around a dozen bottles of European wines.
We had drunk quite a bit of beer before the food and wine came out; enough beer that I decided to try out the wine, even though I normally stay away from the stuff. We met a few of the other travelers that had been in Manila for awhile and they mentioned that they were going to a local barbeque place to eat dinner and asked us if we'd like to come along. We both love barbeques and wanted to know the best local places, so it wasn't long before four of us sitting down on plastic chairs in front of a local restaurant that had an outdoor grill fired up. We ended up spending quite a bit of time at this barbeque place. Enough time to put down another three beers (each) and eat around a dozen meat skewers. We had quite a few different kinds but my favorites were the cherry tomatoes wrapped in bacon. The bill for 6 beers and around 20 of these meat skewers was 400 pesos.
There was a lot of street kids coming up and trying to sell us cigarettes, candies, sunglasses, roses, etc. We did not want any of their stuff, mostly because we believe that almost all of the profits of their work just goes to an adult handler anyhow. Instead Lisa went to the convenience store and bought them a liter of milk and several glasses. Milk is relatively expensive in the Philippines, so this was a nutritious treat for them and Lisa has a lot of new little friends. One of the kids didn't care for milk much though and left his glass on our table. It only took another minute before another young girl came up and asked if she could have it. We were glad to see that it didn't go to waste.
It is pretty normal to have the street kids in Melate ask you for money or some of whatever you are drinking or eating at the time. It hasn't happened to me with water yet, but any time I have a large bottle of iced tea, I haven't got to finish it. I don't mind sharing what I have as far as food and drinks go but I hate parting with my money, so this has been a very successful strategy for them with me. After watching a movie like Slum Dog Millionaire and seeing flocks of postcard toting children handing all of their revenues to an adult handler in Cambodia, I don't agree with supporting this type of system. In my mind it is best to donate directly to hands-on charitable organizations or schools, but also giving food and water (or anything else the adult handlers cannot use) also does good.
By the time we had finished up with dinner, quite a few nightclubs across the road had opened up for business. One of them was playing house music and Lisa was in the mood for dancing, so we headed over there. The club was almost empty when we first got there, but beers were only 60 pesos and the music was good, so we stayed for awhile until it filled up. The night starts getting a little foggy from here on for me, but I remember meeting some people from South Korea that were also in Manila on holiday. Although Lisa seemed to get along fabulously with a gorgeous tall Korean girl, the alcohol caught up to both of us rather intensely and we went back to our hotel without saying good-bye.
For our third day in Manila (Easter Sunday), we decided that it would be an excellent time to see the tourist sites of Manila that we wanted to see. Manila is a city famous for traffic congestion, but on this holiday the streets would be about as empty as they could be and we wanted to take advantage of that. We started by walking along Roxas Blvd, a road that follows the sea-front lining Manila Bay. It has been developed as a paved walkway (alongside the road) and lots of other local people and tourists do this walk as well. We were surprised to see lots of children swimming in the water because it did not look like a very sanitary place. It was hot enough outside though that I could not really blame them though. I figured that they were likely poor and needed to have fun too, but next to the American embassy there were entire (well-off) families that had come down for a swim. Maybe the water is cleaner than it looked.
As we walked past the American Embassy, we started to approach the Intramuros district of Manila. This area was originally an Islamic settlement that the Spanish had built up in 1571, after they took control of the city. Although the area had seen its share of war and revolt over the years, most of the buildings and structures had survived until 1945. Unfortunately during World War 2, Manila saw a great deal of action and in addition to all the human suffering, the city was pretty much leveled of its buildings. 150,000 people died in the Battle of Manila and to put that in perspective, 140,000 died in Hiroshima. Manila was known before World War 2 to be one of the greatest cities in the world, the "Pearl of the Orient", but it never fully recovered from its former glory.
The first tourist site that we ran into was the Rizal Park, which is called Luneta by the locals. Where we first started walking through the park is a statue of Dr. Jose Rizal, a Filipino hero that was executed by the Spanish on December 30th, 1896 for instigating revolution. The Rizal Monument was being guarded by sentries in full regalia and it contains all of his mortal remains. I hung out long enough trying to get the right picture that I got to see a changing of the guards. However even being dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, I was still felt defeated by the heat in the 15 minutes that I stood around taking pictures. The guards themselves wore full (very hot) uniforms and marched in meticulous routines that must've left them sweltering. Their faces did not show it but this duty must be challenging for even the most diligent soldier.
Shortly after leaving the Rizal Monument we came across the spot where the Spanish actually executed Dr. Jose Rizal, forever making him a national hero and martyr. We continued walking through the 60 hectares of the park and saw statues and monuments for dozens of other Filipino heroes as well. Without a background in the history of the Philippines, these statues didn't mean much to me but this park was mostly populated by Filipino people who would appreciate it. Lining the side of Rizal Park is three gardens which all charge an admission, the Chinese Garden, the Japanese Garden and the Manila Orchidarium. Although they were very affordable (5 pesos/each for the gardens and 100 pesos for the orchidarium), Lisa and I were already feeling the effects of the heat and wanted to make it to Intramuros on our own energies.
There were literally dozens of horse-and-buggy drivers soliciting our business, so we didn't exactly have to walk, but we found their persistence annoying and we generally prefer to take in sites at our own pace anyhow. I would have to recommend these horse-and-buggy rides for just about anybody else though because we were thoroughly exhausted after walking around in the Manila sun for the better part of four hours. I heard them offer a price of "6 dollars", which I can assume is US dollars but I do not know how long of a ride that would provide. We managed to find our way to Intramuros on our own easily enough and passed by the Manila City Hall on the way.
The walled inner city area known as Intramuros is now lined by a modern and beautiful golf course that made me wish I knew how to play the sport. The 18-hole golf course follows the circumference of Intramuros, along what used to be the moat used to protect the 64 hectare city. The city walls themselves are mostly still erect and it is possible to navigate a 4.5 km section beginning at the Intramuros Visitors Center (near the entrance of Fort Santiago) if you feel so inclined. Lisa and I wandered through the old city's cobbled streets until we came across San Agustin Church. This church was built from 1587 to 1606 and is the only building of Intramuros to survive the bombing of World War 2. Not far from this church we came across some more famous sites. First was the Manila Cathedral which was destroyed several times, and last built in 1951, even though it looks like it was built several hundred years ago. Then in front of the cathedral is Plaza de Roma which was formerly used as a bloody bullring until converted into the plaza that it is today.
After walking from Melate, through Rizal Park and around Intramuros over the course of four hours, we decided to take a taxi back to the Robinson Mall for some food and air-conditioned goodness. The first taxi driver did not want to use his meter, but the second one we flagged down did and the ride cost only 50 pesos (plus a 10 peso tip for being honest). Again we treated ourselves to the Pizza Hut deal of two deluxe slices for 53 pesos and soon returned to our guest house for a shower. We spent the rest of the night relaxing and watched the sunset over Manila bay from the roof top terrace of Friendly's Guesthouse.
After four nights in Manila, it was time for us to catch a plane to spend a week on the island of Boracay. Although we had earlier tried to score more "free" tickets (where you still pay taxes and fuel surcharges) from Manila to Caticlan months earlier, our credit cards did not work on their website and we were denied. About a week before coming to the Philippines we decided to try again and now it worked out. Unfortunately since we were now only booking the tickets two weeks in advance, we could only find cheap tickets to Kalibo and they were no longer free. Still, at 6,872 pesos we were able to obtain two return tickets that would allow us to spend a week on one of the world's best beaches. At CDN $45 for each direction, these tickets were still a bargain by any measurement, although we would have to endure an extra 90 minute bus ride compared to flying in to Caticlan.
Although our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:35, we were not sure how far the airport was and knowing how bad Manila traffic can be, we left our hotel at 9:00. Once again, the first taxi that we flagged down didn't want to use his meter (and wanted 200 pesos), but the second one did and got us there in about 30 minutes for 105 pesos (plus another 15 peso tip). The entrance to Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International airport was very Spartan in nature and had no restaurants where you could eat before checking in. Fortunately checking in was a fast and efficient process, although we had a surprise domestic departure tax of 200 pesos each. Once we were waiting for our flight, there were lots of familiar restaurant chains available and Lisa and I had an original cinnamon bun each from Cinnabun at a cost of 130 pesos each.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239369600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239369600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1239369600/tpod.html Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:27:44 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Angeles, Luzon, Philippines

We woke up the next morning at 5:45 and walked back to the LCCT airport as quick as we could get ready. Our flight to Manila was scheduled to leave at 7:20, but we were hoping to have a McDonald's breakfast before boarding the plane. The lineup for checking in for our flight was a little longer than normal, so it was nearly 6:45 by the time we had our baggage checked and headed to McDonalds. We ate as quickly as we could and that turned out to be very necessary. After we had cleared customs and security and made our way to our flight's gate, we saw that the people were already boarding and we were essentially able to board without a second of delay.

After missing our first three "free" flights from Air Asia (tickets we bought 6 months in advance and just had to pay taxes and the fuel surcharge), I was happy that we made the last five and this was the last of them. These two tickets cost us a total of 261 RM ($90 CDN) including the extra fees for baggage and some chicken sandwiches on the flight. I am not sure how Air Asia stays in business but I sure appreciate that they are around. Although the flight boarded on time, we ended up leaving 30 minutes late because some passengers that checked their bags but did not board the plane and then another man that left his laptop at the security check thinking they would put it in the carry-on storage on the plane for some reason.

Although the pilot warned us that we would be passing through some turbulence, the flight was rather smooth and the pilot even managed to arrive on time despite the earlier delays. By the time we had made our way through the Clark airport it was only about noon. Lisa had changed our remaining Malaysian money into Philippine currency, but that only gave us 500 pesos (about US $10), so the first order of business was looking for an ATM. We had read that the Clark airport didn't have one in the guidebook, but I figured they must've had one now by April of 2009. It turned out that they did have one, but it was not working with our foreign credit cards for some reason. Instead we ended up changing one of the US $20 bills we had carried around for emergencies into Philippine pesos from one of the money changers working at the airport.

We had decided to spend a few days in Angeles because we were arriving in the middle of the Holy Week holiday (April 7th, 2009). It was Tuesday when we arrived and Thursday and Good Friday, everything would be closed in Manila but not in Angeles, which is a city mainly known for its sex industry. There were a number of taxi stands in the lobby on the way out of Clark Airport and they all seemed to be charging the same rate of 315 pesos (to Fields Ave.) We knew that this was a rather outrageous price by Philippine standards and decided to simply walk out on our own and look for another ride.

It was a very hot and humid day, as we carried our 50 lbs of gear (each) and it didn't take long before I was regretting our decision to walk out of the airport. We did manage to find a number of jeepneys (extended jeeps used like a bus), but they laughed at us when we asked to go to Fields Ave. They were all parked under a bunch of trees and didn't seem to want to go anywhere. We did manage to get them to point us in the right direction and continued walking, but it wasn't long before one of the taxis offered to get us to a hotel for 300 pesos. By now we were both very hot and sweaty and decided to simply pay.

We were not sure where we wanted to go in Angeles City, but one of the places suggested in the Lonely Planet Guide (Oasis Hotel) looked to be in one of the seediest neighbors that I have ever seen so the driver offered to take us to another hotel. The Oasis Hotel was on a street that looked to be simply a row of brothels, but as we got into the city of Angeles things started to look a little better. At least here there were street vendors and local people walking around. The taxi driver took us to a place and walked in before us to ensure that the rates were set high enough for him to get a nice juicy commission. They were asking 1700 pesos for a room, so we simply walked to a nicer looking place next door and found a room for 1000 pesos.

It was called the Ramada Hotel, and it had an attached (but expensive) Korean restaurant and a large clean pool beside it. The standard room that we got included a fridge, an air-conditioner, cable TV, hot-showers and free Wi-Fi so we decided to stay there for our stay in Angeles. Unfortunately they did not have any available standard rooms until 15:00, so we had some time to kill. We walked out to check out the city and find an ATM. On our walk down Fields Ave we first found an open grocery store and decided to check it out. It was so hot outside that we got a few Red Horse Strong beers, which were only 29 peso for 500 ml bottles (plus a small deposit for the bottles). This made walking around looking for an ATM much more manageable since we had not yet been able to freshen up from our flight and laborious airport departure.

We first found an ATM at one of the girllie bars of Fields Ave., but it was out of order. There were a couple girls hanging out in front of the bar and they told us the nearest working ATM was at the Jolliebee restaurant down the street. We found that in about five minutes and it was also not working. We asked a security guard (one of which was posted in front of every business in the city it seems) and they told us to try the SM Mall, further down the street. At this point we were starting to get a little concerned that none of the first three ATMs that we tried in Angeles would let us get any money because we didn't have enough local currency to pay for a hotel room.

As we approached the SM Mall, we noticed that nearly a half-dozen security guards (with very large guns) were stationed outside four different ATM stations. One of them was called BPI which we read would be able to give us the most currency on a single withdrawal. It seems like they were the best choice of the bunch for foreigners and locals alike, because everybody lined up for that one station despite the other three being available. Sure enough, this one did the trick and we were able to withdrawal 10,000 pesos. We were hoping to get more, but at least that would give us enough money to pay for our hotel.

Now that we had secured some money, it was time to eat and drink. The street vendors of Angeles seemed to offer almost exclusively Western style food at very affordable prices. The first meal that I had was a spicy chicken shwarma that cost 45 pesos. It didn't look like much, but went down very easy. Lisa found a burger from Jolliebee, which is a restaurant similar to McDonalds. We still had some time to kill before our room was ready, so next we went to a 7-11 to find some more beer. Here we found one-liter bottles of San Miguel for 65 pesos and they took our empty 500 ml bottles of Red Horse to cover the bottle deposit.

We sat outside the 7-11, drank the beer and fended off a continuous stream of beggars that approached us. We also tried out a few more offerings from the street vendors. A small Mister Donut stall offered a small variety of donuts for 12 pesos each and they seemed to be reasonably fresh and tasty. The best find was a peanut vendor that sold fried garlic peanuts at 20 pesos for a small bag. We had been eating peanuts very often throughout this entire trip and hands down, these were the best peanuts of all. I hope Toronto starts letting street vendors sell this sort of stuff one day soon. By the time we got through the beer and snacks, it was finally 15:00 so we went back to hotel to check-in and freshen up.

The rest of our first day in Angeles City was pretty uneventful, as we just watched TV in our air-conditioned room, caught up on news via the Internet and used the pool facilities of the hotel. Our second day in Angeles was quite a full day. In the early afternoon, as we were drinking beers at the side of the pool, Lisa and I heard what seemed to be a whipping noise slowly making its way down the road in front of our hotel. I climbed the 8 foot cement wall guarding the pool area and saw two local blind-folded and shirtless men being guided down the street as they flogged themselves with a whip. I turned around to tell Lisa what was going on, but she had already left to get the camera and chase after them.

I spent the next 90 minutes wonder what happened to Lisa but when she came back she had a good story to tell and a new souvenir. She had caught up with the men right away and took pictures and video of the ceremony that was taking place. They had continued walking about another 100 meters down the road to a small chapel where they laid down on the road and other men started beating them with the whips. This went on for about 15 minutes while somebody sang what seemed to be Catholic hymns in the background. There was one other Polish tourist there taking pictures, but most of the crowd that had gathered were local people.

After the beating had finished, the men were taken inside and Lisa waited around outside to see if the ceremony was over. Two or three minutes later, some of the men that were sitting outside of the home started talking with Lisa and soon she invited into the house. She had to walk through a long hallway and eventually saw a group of about twenty people (including children) that had gathered in one small room where they were washing off the participants with buckets of water. The red water was everywhere and ran over everybody's feet, including Lisa's sandals. It only took a few seconds after having their backs cleaned that they were covered in blood again. These wounds were vast and severe.

While their backs were being washed, one of the people started talking with Lisa. He asked Lisa where she was from and mentioned that he had a cousin that lived in Toronto (like we do.) He said that his name was Frankie and that he had not slept very well for the past six nights because he was worried about the pain that he was about to endure. He then took the bloody rosary from around his neck and offered it to Lisa "as remembrance." Lisa thanked him and said that she would definitely be remembering this. Frankie said that "Only in the Philippines would you see this" and we do not doubt that.

After Lisa got back to the hotel and cleaned herself from the blood that had gotten on to her, we began to drink in earnest. After putting back a half-dozen beers, it was starting to get dark and we decided to go look for some food. Along Fields Ave., we were surprised to see a place offering "Buffalo Wings." Since both Lisa and I thoroughly enjoy buffalo wings back home, we decided to try this place out to see if these were really buffalo wings or simply chicken wings like everywhere else in Asia. I ordered 20 of the hot wings for 320 pesos and Lisa ordered a small deluxe pizza for 200 pesos. The wings were absolutely delicious and as somebody that has eaten buffalo wings in the city of Buffalo many times, I can attest to the authenticity of their taste. The pizza was great too so it is a pity that I cannot recall the name of this restaurant for the sake of this journal.

After our delicious meal, we were both a little drunk and in good spirits and decided to have some more beers from one of the local clubs. These clubs were completely catering to the tourists, which consisted almost exclusively of older white men and younger Japanese and Korean men. There were very few white males of my age (35) and we didn't see another female tourist of any age besides Lisa. We really stood out and as we walked down the street the girls standing in front of the clubs were all trying to get us into their establishments. We first went into a smaller place because they listed local beers for only 55 pesos.

Inside this bar, there were only two other guests and about twenty scantily dressed young females serving beer or dancing on a stage in the center of the place. I don't think they are used to seeing younger couples in this type of place, as they treated Lisa and I quite differently than the old white men that they usually see here. They were very respectful that Lisa was my wife and simply made polite conversation with us as we drank our beers and watched the dancers. Eventually two younger men walked in and they seemed more interested in Lisa than the girls that were hired for entertainment. They bought Lisa two beers, which she politely accepted and soon found out that they were secret police officers.

The next place we went to was a bar called Dollhouse which was a much larger venue than the first place we went to. The performance here was similar to a Vegas show; dozens of girls put on choreographed dances that although were quite evocative in nature, never showed any nudity. The highlight of the night was when there was a beauty contest for girls painted with body paint. They had on small bikini bottoms to cover their private parts and body paint to (sort of) cover their top halves. I was surprised to see people bringing out expensive camera gear to commemorate the event and soon found myself running back to the hotel too grab my camera.

We ended up staying out quite late and drank more beers that we should've, but fortunately we remembered to drink plenty of the water provided in coolers around our hotel before going to bed. The next day we still both woke up to hangovers and headaches and found out that we had to move rooms, since ours was reserved somebody else that day. The Ramada Hotel had no other standard rooms available, but we were able to move to a deluxe room at a cost of 1300 pesos per day. This room was much like our first room, only it had a better (less noisy) air-conditioner, a better TV and was substantially bigger than the standard room.

By the early afternoon, I figured that I should walk around the city and take pictures of the sites I could find. As I was taking pictures of the jeepneys and tricycles that were passing by, I was approached by a friendly man that said he knew me from the hotel I was staying at. I thought I recognized him as a security guard and started chatting with him (mistake #1). He mentioned that he owned a club in town and that it was having a grand opening that night. He asked me to come along so that I would be able to find it and that he would give me a t-shirt and treat me like a VIP if I came that night. I figured it was a short walk away and was surprised when he flagged down a tricycle and asked me to get in, which I did (mistake #2).

The next thing I knew I was taken quite a few kilometers out of town and started getting worried that I was getting myself into trouble. We stopped at his house, I don't remember why, but my guard was let down as I was introduced to his wife and saw lots of young children running around. I went in with him (mistake #3) and soon I was brought into his house and offered a beer, which I accepted (mistake #4). As I was drinking the beer, the man brought me out a sandwich and began introducing me to other people (which were all large males) that happened to be at his house that day. I was actually worried that this sandwich may be drugged, but I ate in anyway (potentially a mistake, but it was not drugged so only #4.5.)

Soon a man that was supposedly his landlord came in as well. The man thought brought me there explained that he owned his landlord for three months of rent and passed the landlord a large stack of bills. Soon after this, he brought out a deck of cards and asked me if I could do him a favor. He said that Bicycle card decks cost 400 pesos in the Philippines and that he would pay me to get him some cards from Canada. At this point, I should've realized that something was wrong because I had purchased two decks of cards on the flight from K.L. to Manila for only 8 RM (which is around 100 pesos) and nothing is ever cheapest on a plane. However, I sat there as the landlord started playing with the cards, telling me that he'd like to show me a trick.

It turns out the trick was a scam that I was about to fall for. It started by us playing a game of 5 card stud, where he explained the rules of poker to me even though I told him I knew how to play. Next he said "one more hand" and started playing a game of 7 card stud. After he had dealt out the first five cards (2 down, 3 up), he said he wanted to place a friendly bet to cover the cost of the beer that I was drinking. Surprised that I was expected to pay 100 pesos for the beer, but unconcerned since it was only a few dollars, I agreed and pulled out my wallet. Big mistakes (#5), as the men behind me were simply evaluating how much money I had and Lisa had just restocked my wallet with 3000 pesos earlier that day.

The man who had driven me here then said he would like to make a side bet on the hand and threw down 2,000 pesos. He said I should do the same, but I said I didn't gamble. Not deterred he reached into my wallet and grabbed the money saying that I could not lose. I evaluated the cards that I had and realized at this point that I was involved in a scam. I should've grabbed my money and tried to make my exit there (mistake #6), but panic was setting in as I looked around and noticed that there were now five large men in the room with me watching my every move.

The next card went down and the man said he wanted to raise another 10,000 pesos. I explained that I had only 1,000 pesos left and that I didn't want to play any longer. The man making the side bets kept repeating how I could not lose, but of course at this point I knew better. I refused to put any more money down and things started getting ugly. The man that drove me there said that if I did not bet that not only would I lose my 2,000 pesos, but that he would lose his 2,000 pesos as well. This is where I said the S word....SCAM. This got everybody very aggravated and I started fearing for my safety. I had my digital SLR camera, several lenses and an HD camcorder with me. They knew that I had the camera and I figured this is what they were really after.

As tempers flared and I was refusing to put any more money down on the table, I just kept repeating that I was against gambling and that if they insisted that I play out this hand that "I fold". They (of course) didn't want to hear this answer and tried everything they could to get me to stay. I actually had my camera hanging around my neck as I entered this house (dumb, mistake #7), but I had packed it up as I started to realize the scam was going on. I got up and tried to leave the house, but they were blocking the doorway. The man that drove me there asked me if I'd like to see the cards and I said sure, but he would be the only one betting from this point on. They flipped up the cards and of course I had lost. They tried saying that I owed them 10,000 pesos because I saw the cards. I swore at them and charged for the door, pushing two men out of the way.

Fortunately this worked and once I was outside, I told them I was going straight to the police to report what had happened (mistake #7, I should've done it without telling them). They told me that if I did that I'd be in trouble, because gambling is illegal in Philippines. I told them that I would go anyhow, since gambling implied a chance of losing and this was a fixed game, they told that they would come after me at my hotel if I went to the police. I had told them which hotel I was staying at very early in the sequence of events (mistake #8), but I figured this was a bluff and asked the nearest person where I could find the police and they pointed me in the right direction. Within 100 meters I found two people wearing police uniforms and a motorcycle with POLICE written on it.

As I told one man what happened, he asked me questions like "When?" and "Where?" and when I said "Five minutes ago" and "Right around the corner", he wanted to take me to the police station ASAP. I explained that I'd rather show him the house where everything went down, but he insisted that I go the police station first, so I jumped on the back of the bike and rode to the police station #2 with him. From here I repeated the story and was soon brought into a back room where about six officers ended up and asking me how much they had taken me for. When I said "2,000" they asked "Dollars?", but fortunately it was only pesos. I explained that I knew I would not see my money again, but that this was an organized scam and I did not want to see other tourists taken by these guys. I felt that things were very close to escalating and perhaps the next person would get hurt and robbed and maybe even worse.

After sitting around for about fifteen minutes, yet another officer came in and told me not to worry, they were tracking the perpetrators down right now. I asked how that could be, since I hadn't yet showed anybody where everything happened or provided any type of general description of the men. I kept telling the senior officer, a man in plain clothes that claimed to be with "intelligence", that I could show him where these people lived. He told me gambling was illegal and I said that there was no gambling involved; gambling would imply that they stood a chance of losing so this was something else. He didn't try to imply that I was in any sort of trouble after that, but nobody seemed very anxious to see where this all happened just a short while ago.

Eventually I convinced them that they should go out to the house and I got into the back of a cruiser with two uniformed officers in the front and the intelligence officer in the back with me. I asked them to take me to the place where I found the first police officer (the one who drove me to the station) and they didn't know what I was talking about. The intelligence officer told me that this man was probably not even a real police officer, despite him having a uniform and a motorcycle with POLICE written on it. I asked why I fake police officer would drive me a real police station and he said that they have civilians that help them out with security issues in the city.

We drove around for 10 minutes but without knowing where I started, I was unable to locate the house again. I have a feeling that I could've found it with 10 minutes more effort, but who knows. Without being able to start from where I was picked up by the first policeman (real or not), it was not an easy chore. It is a real shame that this happened once I was in touch with the police because I found a policeman literally within 100 meters and five minutes of the event occurring yet nothing was going to be done. I was left with the feeling that the only real thing that would be done is that some of the police officers would later be asking for their cut. At least the policemen gave me a ride home afterward and treated me nice throughout the encounter I had with them.

Once I came back to the hotel and told Lisa what had happened, I did a little research on the Internet and found this article: http://www.everlastinglove.com/scam.htm. This scam was almost exactly what had happened to me; they used the exact same cards and all. They knew that I was married, so they didn't bring any pretty young girls in to distract me and I didn't let things escalate as far this poor chap did, but the similarities left me feeling that he was taken by the very same men. The senior police officer (with intelligence) had earlier told me that he had never heard of this happening, but when I insisted that this was too organized to be a first time, he had changed his answer to "first time this week".

In retrospect, if a local intelligence officer wasn't aware of this scam then there was something wrong and I suspect that I was asked "how much?" mostly so they knew what their cut should be. In the end I feel that things could've turned out much worse for me. I walked out with 1/3 of my money (1000 pesos) and more importantly my camera gear and good health. I was embarrassed that I had so many chances to maneuver out of this scam and was still taken by it. I am sure the night of heavy drinking with little sleep didn't help any, but really I have no excuse for it. I have been proud of how I have avoided being scammed what-so-ever for the first 7 months of our trip through South East Asia, but now I don't feel so proud of that any longer. At least I didn't get hurt though, because other man that wrote about this scam let it escalate to where guns were involved.

Not wanting to let this event faze me for too long, I decided to have another fun night out. I finished up the last few beers that we had stocked in our fridge earlier and by the night we went to another one of the big clubs (Atlantis) this time more sober and focused on taking pictures of the beautiful girls. This time we didn't over drink and turned in around midnight. We knew that we had to check out the following day and try and make it to the Pampanga area to watch the crucifixions for Good Friday and we wouldn't feel like it if we partied too hard the night before.

The plan worked brilliantly as both Lisa and I woke up the next day feeling good, so we asked if we could keep our bags at the hotel lobby (after we checked out) so that we could take in the crucifixions. This was not a problem, so around noon we put our bags behind the reception counter and looked for a tricycle to take us to Pampanga. We asked the first guy "how much?" and he asked for 500 pesos. It is much wiser to say the price you want to pay, rather than asking how much, and using that strategy we got a ride out there for 150 pesos (which was still way too much).

The roads around the area were all blocked off for traffic but we got dropped off at the end of one road and showed which way to walk. Soon we were surrounded by tons of food stalls and local people that seemed to be in a festive mood. It didn't take long before a line of hooded men came down the middle of the road flogging themselves. We noticed people ducking for cover, but some we not getting far enough away to avoid the drops of blood that were flying around. We also noticed that all of these food vendors stalls were covered in drops of blood and made a note to try and keep our distance to avoid getting any blood on ourselves.

We spent about 30 minutes walking around soaking in the events, noting how different the Philippine way of celebrating Easter was so different than how we celebrated it in Canada. I got a frozen mango drink (12 pesos) and clicked pictures of the men walking through the street flogging themselves on their bloody backs. Lisa had heard that there was so much blood because they cut their backs open with a razor blade before the beatings even started. At designated stations (in front of chapels it seems), the blind-folded men would lie down and would get beaten across their backs by other large men. Sometimes these men would go easy on their victims but other times it seemed like they were using their full force.

We eventually found our way to a large open field where the main event was going to take place. There were advertisements stating that there would be a live recreation of Passion of the Christ and three large crosses were already on display on a small hill on the field with a fence around them. We were approached by some local people selling tickets to get inside this fenced off area (for 300 pesos), but we declined. I wasn't too sure that I wanted to see this happen but I knew that I definitely didn't want to get right underneath of these people as they were being crucified.

We waited around in the field which steadily filled up with more and more people. Most of the observers were local families, which brought their children to see the event, but there was also the odd tourist walking around with their cameras as well. It was seriously hot and dusty waiting around on this field and from 13:00 to 14:00, very little went on. We talked to some of the local people and drank some cold drinks to try and keep cool, but all the locals had umbrellas with them and I really wished that we had brought ours too. We found shade where we could though and shortly after 14:00 things started to happen.

First a man dressed up like a Roman soldier came in mounted on a horse and waited around by the crosses. It wasn't long before he was joined my plenty of other Roman soldiers, security officials and police, as well as several dozen tourists that had paid the 300 peso admission to get up close. Next, the three young men that were about to get nailed to the crosses got up on the platforms, seemingly to check if they were set to the right height, because after they posed in the crucified position they got back down again. It wasn't long after this that the officials brought down the first cross and tied one of the men to it. In addition to tying him to it, a large spike was driven through each of his palms and then the cross was raised again with him on it.

After the cross was raised again, two ladders were brought out and men with hammers climbed either side. They each hit the spikes to drive it even further into the wood and the crowd cheered loudly as this went on. This process was soon repeated for the second volunteer but the third man had a slightly different process to how he would be crucified that day. When his cross was erected, he was simply tied to the cross and the men with the ladders went up with spike and hammer in hand. From the top of the ladders they raised the hammer and spikes into the air, which again drew large cheers from the crowd. At this point, the spikes were driven through each of his hands, one-by-one. I watched his face and it seemed to me like the man didn't even flinch despite the obviously intense pain that he was enduring. I was surprised that I did not see any blood coming from his hand at all, which was a bit of a relief.

By now it was nearly 15:00 and Lisa and I decided to bolt for the exit. There were thousands of people that had gathered in that field and there was only a small break in the barbed wire to allow people out, so we did not want to get stuck with the crowd in that debilitating heat. It was hard for Lisa and I to hang out in the sun and take pictures, so I can only imagine what it was like for those poor souls that got nailed to the cross completely exposed to the sun. I am not sure how long they were going to be left up there but we had to make our way to Manila yet, so that was all of the event that we would see.

Shortly after walking out of the traffic-controlled area, we found a tricycle driver and asked him to drive us back to our hotel for 100 pesos. He agreed and didn't even try to ask for more money, so I suspect that we were still paying too much. From our hotel we washed up as much as we could (my feet were black from all the dust in that field), then grabbed our bags and left the Ramada hotel. The security guard out front called over the tricycle drivers that had earlier asked for 500 pesos to get us to Pampanga, but this time we asked if he'd take 70 pesos to drive us to the Dau bus terminal, which he accepted. I guess the lesson that we learned is to say the price you want to pay rather then ever asking "how much?"

The Dau bus terminal was nearly as far away as the Pampanga area, but within about 15 minutes we had arrived. We grabbed a few hamburgers from the Jollibee restaurant and then walked into the bus terminal area. There was nowhere to buy tickets here. You simply ask around to find the appropriate bus and then buy your ticket after the bus has already departed. We had a choice of a minivan that would take us to Rabbit terminal in Manila or a big air-conditioned bus that would take us to Pasay, both for the same price 132 pesos. There was also a taxi driver that offered to drive us for 500 pesos, but we had a feeling that would end up leaving us in the wrong part of town without paying more. Pasay was quite close to Melate, the neighborhood in Manila where we were going to be staying.

The bus was already quite full by the time we boarded it, but we managed to find two aisle seats near the back where we could be near each other. It was a pity that we didn't sit closer to the front because the bus had a TV that was playing a fantastic movie. I wasn't sure what the movie was at first, but asked and found out that it was a movie that I had tried to see in the theatres of Thailand and Malaysia earlier this trip: Ong Bak 2. The movie had Thai language sound track and English subtitles, but we were too far back to read them or hear much. Despite this, Ong Bak 2 looks to be one of the greatest martial arts films ever made and I cannot wait to find the DVD here.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238254200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238254200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238254200/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:23:59 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

The flight left on time and landed in Kuching 85 minutes later. As we were going through Sarawak's customs process, we noticed advertisements on the wall for Tune Hotel advertising rooms starting at 9.95 RM. As we started looking for a method to get from the airport to the downtown area of the city of Kuching, we noticed that Tune Hotels offered a shuttle service at 7.99 RM each. This was a better deal than the taxis for 25 RM, and since they leave every 30 minutes we didn't have to wait long before we got our ride.

The Tune Hotel (www.tunehotels.com) in Kuching has an excellent location (N1 33.513 E110 21.071), right across the street from the Hilton Hotel on the waterfront. The hotel is run in a no-frills system much like Air Asia. This means that if you can plan way ahead, you may actually get a room at 10 RM. However we only found out about this hotel chain as we showed up and paid substantially more to stay here. At first I asked for the price of a room to spend just one night there and was told it would be 60 RM. After hearing that, I enquired about a three-night stay and found that the price dropped to 40 RM the following day before returning to 60 RM for a 3rd night. We decided to stay for three nights, but by the time our order was entered into the computer, the price of the first night was raised to 80 RM.

These prices covered only a very small and basic room, but with a very comfortable bed and modern bathroom facilities. There are several add-ons that you can purchase with a room in Tune Hotels including air-conditioning. Although all rooms have ceiling fans, you can purchase air-conditioning services in blocks of 12 hours for 13.49 RM and it is actually billed only when being used. There are options for getting Wi-Fi Internet (12 RM for 24 hours), but they provide a computer in the lobby for free Internet access as well. Towels are extra and there will soon be additional services offered like laundry and TV.

Since our room was so small, we spent a great deal of time outside in Kuching. On our first night there, we first headed down to walk along Sungai Sarawak (the river going through the city.) It has been tastefully developed as a tourist attraction with lots of public seating and vendors selling all types of local foods and drinks. The meals here are reasonably priced for Western standards, but there are cheaper options right behind Tune Hotel where Lisa and I ate a great deal of our meals. There are over a dozen food vendors spread around an area that serve Mee Goreng (fried noodles), Nasi Goreng (fried rice) and plenty of other local specialties for around 3 or 4 RM a plate. Each cluster of restaurants seems to have a single vendor selling drinks and they are the only people that service the tables. Lisa and I simply followed our nose to an appealing scent and grabbed a dish from whichever food vendor we ended up in front of.

On our second day in Kuching, while we were walking along the river again, we met a young man named Frankie that we ended up spending quite a bit of time with. He was from a village called Lundu which is situated right on the edge of Smenggoh Wildlife Rehabilition Park, around two hours from Kuching. Frankie was in the city to try out for a provincial takraw team and mentioned that he would be playing later that day. If you have never seen the sport of takraw, it is a really fun event to watch. It is sort of like volleyball, only players are only allowed to hit the ball with their feet and heads. Good players are able to slam the ball over the net, which requires a great deal of acrobatic skill as they kick the ball from well above their heads. I asked Frankie if we could tag along to watch the game and he was happy to have us join him.

The game wasn't starting until 17:00, so I spent the rest of the day chilling out on the water front talking to Frankie. I found out that he was the oldest child in him family that included nine children. This may seem like a lot, but we met another local guy later that had ten children himself. He was proud that all of them had graduated from secondary school, but later he mentioned that his brother had eighteen children (that also all graduated from secondary school.) I figured that he was likely a Muslim, since they are allowed to have four wives in this area of the world, but he said that they were all from a single wife. I guess they start having children young here and now I understand how the population of Borneo has been exploding for the past 40 years or so.

Shortly before the game was starting, we were joined by another European couple and we walked out to the Muslim area of town where there was a takraw court. There were a number of players already there starting to warm up and I tried joining them for awhile to see if my years of playing hacky-sack would allow me to play. Unfortunately I was wearing sandals, which kept falling off and were far from ideal for this sport. All of the players had on rather simple canvas shoes; I presume they were official for the sport since every single player had them on. The balls were made of plastic, although they were the same size and looked like rotan balls that were used in the past. After passing the plastic ball around for awhile (and no stretching of any kind), the first game started.

Lisa and I had seen this game being played before in Thailand and although Thailand has the best takraw team of the world, we had only seen casual games that were nowhere near the level that these guys were playing at. A round would start when one member of a team threw the ball to another player on his team that kicked it over the net (to the other team.) The other team would dig the ball up before it hit the ground and then on the second hit, they'd try to set it up so that it could be spiked over the net. The coolest aspect of this sport (in my eyes) is how they spike it over the net on the third hit. They try to kick it from as high as possible, so that they can kick it very fast to the ground on the other side. Of course the other team tries to repeat this process and that is basically how the game is played.

As we were watching the game and trying to take pictures, Lisa started wandering around to the surrounding houses to take some more pictures. One of the ladies, who was an English teacher by profession, invited Lisa in to see her home and meet her children. Lisa went in with her video camera and spent five minutes touring the house (which was on stilts.) and meeting her family. Shortly after coming out of this home, she was invited to the home next door. This was the home of the manager of the takraw team and had ten people living in the house. The stilted home looked small on the outside, but once she was in it seemed quite large, cool and breezy. This was a rather affluent family as they had a brother that was a PhD in Mathematics.

Eventually Lisa and the other European couple were served a variety of local dessert dishes, which included deep-fried yam and banana chips (which were packaged in air tight plastic bags.) They kept encouraging me to join them, but I was engrossed in the takraw game and stayed outside. Eventually they brought me out a can of Coke and shared some of the desserts with me and the takraw players (which were sort of like seafood donuts.) While Lisa was in the house, the Muslim call-to-prayer started and Lisa was surprised that nobody stopped to pray. She asked about whether it was a recorded song and found out that it was sung live all of the time with the first prayer of the day being performed at 4:30 in the morning. Additionally, the man of the house was one of the people who performed it because he had a good voice. Even though the family was devout Muslims, they still did not pause to pray while they had foreign guests in their house.

After watching several rounds of takraw, it was starting to get dark outside and it was time to walk back to downtown Kuching. As we were leaving, somebody from the family of the second house Lisa visited ran to give her some more packaged banana chips. After being in Hanoi, where most people seemed interested only in how much money they could extract from us, this was almost unbelievable. I would have to say that Malaysia may have some of the most friendly and generous people in the world. As we were walking back, I shared that I had some bottles of Vietnamese vodka that I wanted to use up and we decided to sit down by the river and see if we could use up a few bottles.

Since Frankie was a Christian, he had no problem with drinking alcohol and after he tried some he noted on how it tasted quite similar to a drink that they made in his home village. Although I bought some orange soda to mix with the vodka, he drank a lot of his straight up which was pretty brazen for a man that weighed less than 50 kilograms. Since he was spending his night sleeping outside of the local Christian Church, I had a feeling that the vodka may help him get a good night's sleep. After we were almost through the second 350 mililiter bottle, we were joined by two tourist police officers that essentially just wanted to talk with us. They knew Frankie already and told us that he was a good and safe guy to hang out with and I don't think they noticed that we were all quite intoxicated. Once we were through the second bottle though, Lisa and I called it a night because we wanted to get up early the next day to see the orangutans being fed in the morning.

Frankie gave us some good advice on how to see the orangutans on our own without paying for an organized tour. We had to make our way to the bus station and catch a green #6 bus which would take us straight there in about an hour. We found out that the first bus left the station at 7:30 and after a quick McDonalds breakfast we caught the bus just in time. We were surprised to see Frankie already sitting on the bus; apparently he was going to join us for the day. This was great news because he had already been there on several occasions and he was a great guide. Frankie even knew that we could save a few RM by getting into a group of five, which qualified us for the "tour rate" of 2 RM instead of the regular 3 RM.

By 8:30 we arrived at the park and then we had to walk about a kilometer into the rain forest, where the orangutans lived. The previous night Frankie had mentioned how he missed the sound of the jungle that helped it him get to sleep. He described the sounds as an "orchestra" and it was easy to understand why. It was actually quite loud but also very peaceful and it made for a real rain-forest experience as we walked further into this 100,000,000 year old primary jungle. We made it to the feeding area a little before 9:00 and had to wait awhile for it to open. The sign in front of the feeding area stated that it was open from 9:00 to 10:00 and from 2:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. Shortly after 9:00, the waiting group of a few dozen people was let in and we walked about 200 meters to a platform where we could watch the feeding area (which was simply a platform surrounded by trees.

Shortly thereafter the park rangers placed bananas and coconuts out on the feeding platform and began calling the orangutans. We all stood about 10 m away from the feeding platform quietly and eagerly awaiting the appearance of the orangutans from the tree tops. After a half hour passed with no orangutans in site, Frankie told me that it would be better to go near the entrance, as that is the usual path the orangutans followed on their way to get food. About half way back, we saw a small group of people looking up into the trees and lots of "oooohs" and "awwws" could be heard. It took a lot of looking and pointing for me to finally see the reddish colored fur about 75m near the top of a very tall tree. The park rangers were banging on the trees, trying to coax the animals to move on and eventually the orangutans began making their way towards the feeding platform, throwing dead branches down at us along the way. After a further 5 minutes, there were around six orangutans who decided that it was time to eat and they made their way to the feeding platforms from all directions.

Included in this group was a female with her baby clutching to her mama's chest for dear life as mama swung through the treetops. While the mother and baby orangutans were directly above the viewing platform, the baby orangutan decided it was a good time to relieve its bladder and some tourists ended up getting a warm shower. A man that worked for the park said that this may happen before we were allowed into the feeding area and I thought this was somewhat of a joke. It makes me wonder if the timing was a coincidence, whether orangutans need to pee a lot, or whether they actually had a bit of a sick sense of humor. The orangutans were amazing, some of them hung around the platform and ate, while others grabbed their food and headed back up into the trees. A few of the animals grabbed coconuts and you could hear them cracking the coconuts against the trees to open them.

After about 20 minutes of observing the orangutans feeding, our Malaysian friend Frankie told us that he overheard the park rangers say there was a female orangutan near the park entrance over their radios. We rushed back down the jungle trail to the entrance area to find a large female (named Selina) with her very young baby, sitting on one of the benches staring back at us. I think this particular orangutan enjoyed attention, because she sat only 2 meters away from us, looking directly into our cameras for almost 30 minutes while she tore open a coconut with her teeth. She occasionally lifted her very hairy arms to show off her newborn baby who was dead asleep, but still clutched tightly to her side. We took some amazing photos of Selina and her baby and it made for a great end to a excellent morning. It was at that time that the park ranger announced that the park was closing for lunch, so we made our way back down the 1 km driveway to the main road.

We had missed the scheduled 10:30am return bus ride to Kuching, as by this time it was nearly 11:30. Our friend Frankie was able to flag down an open bed truck and arrange for a free ride to get us to the nearest town. From here we caught a city bus back to Kuching (2 RM) which took about 30 minutes.

After the 15 minute walk back from the bus station we decided to treat our host Frankie to a lunch at Pizza Hut, because he said he had never tried pizza before. Since pizza is one of my favorite foods we jumped at the opportunity to introduce him to a North American favorite. He liked the pizza and saved a slice to take to his auntie whom he said had also never tried pizza. After lunch we took the opportunity to shower and get cleaned up before meeting Frankie and a girl from KL at 2:00pm to visit Fort Margherita, on the north side of the river in downtown Kuching.

Fort Margherita was built by Charles Brookes in 1879 and he named it after his wife. The purpose of the Fort was to protect Kuching against invading pirates, as it is perched upon the banks of the Sungai Sarawak River. Admission to the fort is free, and it is easily reached from the other side of the river via a small rowboat style ferry for 0.40 RM per person. The fort is not very large, and it only took about 30 minutes to explore, however it did offer some nice views and picture taking opportunities. After taking a quick walk by the new Sarawak Government Office and the First Ministers house (a gigantic mansion), we took another 0.40 RM boat ride to the south side of the river again.

By the time we arrived back to our hotel we had spent the entire day in the hot sun and we were cooked and tired. We went back to our hotel rooms, grabbed a quick nap and then headed out of the food court downstairs for some Mee Goreng (3 RM/plate). We later went to a movie in the mall next door because it was "cheap day" and the movie "The International" only cost 5 RM each. Most of the movies at the theatre played in English language and just had Malay and Chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

The next day we switched hotels, and moved to the B & B Inn (at the corner of Jln. Mathie & Jln. Tabuan - N1 33.260 E110 20.914) which was located down the street and was much cheaper. It was a very nice hostel, complete with a TV room, free wifi, hot showers, self-service kitchen and a roof top patio. The kitchen was a nice touch because there is a large grocery store (Ting & Ting) just down Jln Tabuan that has lots of selection (and the cheapest water we had seen in Borneo - 1.5 liters for 0.90 RM0. The B&B Inn claims to be the only licensed hostel in town and had a special that advertised 3 Stella Artois (or Skol) for 10 RM. Although we would've preferred an A/C room for 40 RM, they were not available, so we paid 35 RM for a fan room with a shared bathroom and that included a basic breakfast. The hostel was very clean and the staff was very friendly, and they offered many tours that seemed reasonably priced and made us wish that we had discovered this place instead of staying at the Tune Hotel.

The rest of the two days we had left in Kuching were spent sipping beers on the riverfront and shopping for souvenirs. Frankie had shown me a grocery store on the eastern edge of the Main Bazaar that offered several different brands of beer (including Tsingtao) at a price of 4 for only 10 RM. This was by far the best deal that we had seen in Malaysia for beer, although Langkawi (the duty free port) had them much cheaper still. Frankie had told us that the traditional way to drink shots of alcohol in Sarawak was with a small bamboo shot glass, but we were unable to find some even with his help. Apparently the Sunday market vendors would've had these, but our plane was leaving on Saturday night. We settled for some ceramic shot glasses instead that we found for 4.50 RM/each. We also found a cool Borneo mask to add to our collection at home for 50 RM.

We left for the airport earlier than we needed to on the day of March 28th, 2009 because we did not have a room and were dying from the heat and humidity. This day seemed hotter than any other day of our trip so far and the humidex temperature must've surpassed 40 degrees by quite a bit. Our flight to Penang was scheduled for 8:15pm, so we took the same shuttle from Tune Hotel (7.99 RM per person) to the airport around 5:30pm so that we could sit in the air-conditioning for a while before our flight left. The Kuching airport is very modern and offered comfortable padded seats with available electrical outlets that let us watch some movies on the laptop while we waited. The airport also had lots of restaurants that were very reasonably priced.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238996640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238996640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238996640/tpod.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:22:20 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Tanah Rata, Malaysia

Ipoh is a fairly big Malaysian city that is set amongst jungle-clad limestone hills that jut out spectacularly to make some stunning scenery. The minibus did not stop here but soon after passing through Ipoh we turned off the main highway on to what may be the windiest stretch of road that I have ever been on. The scenery was stunning but hard to take in completely with the minibus driver pushing the limits on how fast these roads can be navigated. For 60 kilometers or so, the road winded its way up through the hills and the corners seemed to get more severe as we progressed. By the time we reached the Cameron Highlands, we were nearly 1,500 meters higher in elevation than when we started and there was a very noticeable change in climate.

We had found a few affordable places to stay in Tanah Rata, but when the driver asked us which hotel we'd like to be dropped off at, another girl spoke up first and mentioned Father's Guesthouse. We went there first and once we saw the place we decided that we would like to stay there instead. I had vaguely remembered another traveler mentioning this place when we were in Melaka four months earlier and she had spoken very highly of it. The property was certainly well taken care of and it was set on top of a hill that over looked the town itself. When we found out that room prices ranged from 10 RM for a dorm room to 80 RM for the best room, we were sold and everybody in the minibus ended up getting out at Father's Guesthouse.

The staff of Father's Guesthouse was amongst the most professional of any place that we have stayed at yet. They took us as a group to view the facilities (which included a restaurant, Internet lounge, TV room, shared hot showers, toilets, etc) and then to see the different categories of rooms. The main building had Wi-Fi access and rooms that ranged from 50 RM to 80 RM whereas a series of metal dome huts contained cheaper rooms and the dorms. Lisa and I decided to stay in one of the nicer rooms in the metal dome huts at a cost of 32 RM/night. It had a double bed, two desks and three chairs and windows on two sides of the room that could open up to let in fresh air. The room did not have a fan or any air-conditioning, but the climate of the area doesn't really require it.

The climate of the Cameron Highlands is much cooler than what the lowlands experience. It drops down as low as 10 degrees (Celsius) at night and rarely breaks 25 degrees during the day. It rains quite a bit, but only in the afternoon and night it seems. Every morning that we stayed in Tanah Rata it was bright and sunny out until the afternoon, when it would usually rain. The climate of the area makes it ideal to grow fruits, vegetables, tea and flowers, and it becomes evident on your drive into the area that a great deal of available land is devoted for this purpose.

The town of Tanah Rata is not a large place; there is only one main road (Jln. Basar) which is lined with restaurants, tour operators and other tourist shops. Although the Lonely Planet guide suggests that there is plenty of Malay and Chinese food stalls along this road, we found that most of the restaurants were actually south Indian establishments offering their traditional dishes. I have recently grown very fond of Indian food and have tried out four or five different banana-curry houses and find it hard to recommend any of them over another, they are all great. Nearly every day I have had a chicken tandoori set meal, which includes a large piece of chicken, vegetables, naan and several sauces for 7 RM. Other dishes that I have thoroughly enjoyed included chicken tikka (6 RM) and a vegetable and roti platter for only 4 RM. If you enjoy Indian food, you will certainly enjoy visiting Tanah Rata.

Fathers Guesthouse also has a very good restaurant, which is a busy and social place on every night, but I have only eaten breakfasts there. They provide a local coffee for 1.50 RM which is made in a process very similar to how we normally prepare tea. This is something that I have never seen before but I think is an excellent idea, especially for camping experiences because it is so easy and portable. Aside from that, I have either had a fruit-salad consisting of pineapple, oranges, bananas and watermelon (but not the famous local strawberries) for 5 RM, or a Western style bacon and eggs breakfast for 6 RM. Lisa lists bacon as one of her favorite foods of the world and has described the bacon here as the best she has ever had. Water in Tanah Rata costs around 2 or 3 RM for a 1.5 liter bottle, but we found a water refilling station that charged only .20 RM to nearly refill our bottles. We had noticed these refilling stations throughout Malaysia, but unfortunately didn't use them until now.

One of the biggest tourist draws of this region is hiking through a variety of scenic walks, many of which lead to waterfalls and mountain peaks. From Tanah Rata, there are at least 13 main marked paths for people to follow and Lisa and I followed two of them during our stay here. The first one we followed was #4, which was a short and very easy walk that we did on our first day in town. The path follows along a river and climaxes when you reach Parit Fall. According to the guidebook, the waterfall was polluted and not really worth a visit, but it didn't seem so polluted when we visited and was a great place to take pictures (especially portraits). Considering that this walk can be traversed in under a half hour, it was well worth the investment in time and energy.

The other trail that we followed was #9, but Lisa was the only one that did the path in its entirety. There are actually two related paths in the guidebooks and tourist information, 9 and 9A, and Lisa intended to do the easier path of 9A. The path splits at a gate, where you should take a left to stay on 9A, which Lisa did. For the next 15 minutes there is a reasonably well trodden path that slowly winds down a hill. However, then the path gets really muddy and there are plenty of trees blocking the path. Some are small enough to climb over, but others are too large and she had to climb under them even though they were covered with spiders and their webs.

At some point the paths of 9 and 9A merge due to a landslide that has recently taken out the 9A path. The trail gets continuously harder to follow as the plants have somewhat over taken the path. These plants also happened to be quite moist, so plan on getting wet and muddy by the time you are done. The trail eventually gets to the steep side of a cliff where another landslide had taken out the path altogether. For approximately 15 meters Lisa had to navigate over a very steep and muddy landslide where the path was gone completely. Considering that there is a steep cliff to fall down, this is probably not a good path for inexperienced hikers or children.

About ten minutes after this endeavor, Lisa ended up at s small farm where the trail ends but there is no bus to help return to town as indicated in the guide book. Instead Lisa greeted by a farmer and she learned how she had actually traversed the 9 path instead of the 9A path due to the impassible conditions of 9A. She had planned on hiking only the 2.5 kilometers of 9A, but instead had to navigate the 4.5 kilometers of trail 9. This is why she did not end up at a place where busses stopped but the farmer agreed to take Lisa back to the town of Tanah Rata for 10 RM. On the way back, they stopped at the Cameron Valley tea plantation, a place that Lisa and I would return to later.

Lisa and I did return to a place on Trail 9 called Robinson's Falls which is at the start of the trail only 15 minutes from town. This waterfall had at least six tiers and made for a great place to relax and soak up some sun in a semi-private place. On the date of our anniversary we spent the afternoon drinking Carsberg Special Brew & Anchor Strong beers and eating a few snacks and over the course of four hours we saw only a half dozen other hikers navigating the trail. It was a great place to take pictures, but after drinking a few of these beers (which have 8.8% alcohol content), the rocks were too slippery to mess around with and we put the cameras away. It still made for a memorable setting for our anniversary and I am glad we decided to spend some extra time in the Cameron Highlands rather then returning to Kuala Lumpur as we had earlier planned.

The Cameron Valley tea plantation was another pleasant place to spend some time and take some pictures. Many of the tours of the Cameron Highlands include this place as a stop, but Lisa and I decided to hike out there by foot. It was an easy enough walk getting down there; the entire 4kms winded gently downhill. Once we arrived, we were ready for some of their famous tea (3 RM a mug) and some snacks of carrot cake (4 RM) and a fudge brownie with ice-cream (6 RM.) After refreshing ourselves with these snacks, the three busloads of tourists had cleared out and we were able to take pictures and walk around the tea plantation all by ourselves.

I spent about an hour walking through the tea plants, taking pictures of the vast and hilly plantation. We ended up getting another small pot of tea (6 RM), mostly for the purpose of using the tea cups and pot as props for pictures. While I busy taking pictures, Lisa found a few tea mugs that she liked from the souvenir shop that we will be taking home with us. Although they also sold their tea there (either on its own or as part of a gift set with mugs and/or pots), we noticed that we could buy the same packages of tea in the town of Tanah Rata at cheaper prices. I found that kind of surprising considering that we were at the source of the tea, but we it was easy enough to buy tea later from the market in town.

On our long uphill walk back to the town of Tanah Rata, we were stopped about half way by a local man with a pickup truck. He had already picked up a number of other travelers from Germany that had completed Trail #9 and needed a ride back into town. I am not sure if they paid this man, but he was very friendly and didn't ask for any money. The friendliness and generosity of the Malaysian people seems to be quite typical throughout the country. I would have to say that the Malaysian people make their country more attractive as a tourist destination than any of the other countries we have visited, but perhaps I just feel this way because our experiences in Hanoi were so different (and that is where we were last before coming to Malaysia.)

We stayed at Fathers Guesthouse in Tanah Rata for five nights altogether. Once we had decided to include the Cameron Highlands as part of our tour of the Malaysian peninsula, we had only figured on spending two or three nights here, but the atmosphere and vibe of the area got us to stay here as long as we could. However by April 6th, 2009 we had to head onward to Kuala Lumpur because we had a flight the following morning from there at 7:20. From the bus station in Tanah Rata, there were two different classes of bus tickets to K.L.: standard for 22.50 RM or 28 RM for VIP seats. There were five or six departures a day, but we settled on a VIP bus that left at 13:00.

The ride to Kuala Lumpur starts out with 59 kilometers of the windiest road that I have ever traversed in my life. If you have a problem with motion sickness, it would be wise to take a pill before taking on this journey (I wish that I had.) Even though the bus driver went at a fairly fast pace, it still took nearly two hours to pass this stretch of road and get to the main highway. The scenery is rather stunning the whole way through this stretch and the comfortable seats of the VIP bus made it a pleasant ride, despite the mild motion sickness I had by the end of it. The VIP buses have only 3 wide and reclining seats per row which makes for a comfortable ride.

After getting on the North-South highway, the ride is much quicker and easier on the stomach. In the city of Tapah the bus stopped and the driver told us that we had to switch buses and get a ride with the one next to us. Not a problem; this bus had the same comfortable seats as the first bus and within 10 minutes we were on our way again. After around 3.5 hours of driving and only about an hour away from Kuala Lumpur, the bus stopped at a restaurant that was filled with other busses. The prices here were on par with other restaurants in Malaysia, but Lisa and I were not hungry and decided to wait for Kuala Lumpur. After the 20 minute meal break, everybody boarded the bus and by 18:00 we were in the city.

We went to an A&W Restaurant and had a rather awful burger meal. It served us right for not eating at one of Kuala Lumpur's many great local restaurants which would've been cheaper and almost surely more delicious. After the quick meal we jumped on the Putra Light Rail Transit (1.40 RM each) and made our way to the KL Sentral stop. From here we made our way to the Air Asia bus for a ride to Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) airport. Kuala Lumpur has two main airports, but we were flying out of LCCT the following morning, so these shuttle busses make for a very affordable way to get there. We actually rode with a competing bus company, since Air Asia charges 9 RM for the ride, but the competition gives you a similar service for 8 RM (and it was leaving first anyhow).

The ride to the LCCT is quite a bargain considering how far out of town the airport is. The ride took around an hour, maybe a bit longer because we had to drive around the airport in a different path from the previous times we used this service. The Kuala Lumpur Grand Prix was just held in this area, so I have a feeling this added a little complication to our journey. Once we arrived at the airport, it was just a short 500 meter walk to the hotel we had reserved while we were in Kuching: Tune Hotel. If you are flying in or out of this airport at an inconvenient hour, Tune Hotel is a great option. It is also a very affordable option if you can plan way in advance, as they have rooms as low as 10 RM if you are lucky. We did not find out about Tune Hotels until quite recently though, so we ended up paying about 70 RM for a small and basic room with a very comfortable bed.
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Pinang, Malaysia

The flight from Kuching left on time and took approximately 2 hours to reach Penang. Unfortunately it was not the smoothest flight because we had to descend through a thunderstorm on our approach to Penang. We arrived in Penang around 10:20 pm and discovered that a taxi to Georgetown would cost 38 RM (not 25 RM as stated in Lonely Planet). We arrived in downtown Georgetown and got dropped off in the Love Lane backpackers' area at around 11:00 pm on a rainy night. We didn't spend much time looking for a place to stay, and grabbed the first cheap room (35 RM) that we found (air conditioning and shared bathroom) at the Day and Night Hotel. This hostel turned out to be very dirty and grubby and our bed reeked of tobacco smoke. We decided that we would check out first thing the next morning and located a better room. We found one down Love Lane called SD Guesthouse (Love Lane) for the same price. This hostel was much more community space, bigger and cleaner rooms, and offered free wifi as well.

Our first day in Penang was very hot and we spent a fair amount of time in the shelter of our air-conditioned room. Since it was Sunday, many of the stores and restaurants were closed. This city shut down on Sundays to a greater extent than any other major city that we have visited in Asia so far. One thing that did remain open was the Prangin Mall, a major shopping mall located right next to the 65-floored tower that is the tallest structure in Penang. This mall had five floors and took up an entire city block and was where everybody seemed to be shopping on Sundays. The mall seemed to be doing well as it appeared to have a 100% occupancy level. It was not really designed for tourists though; most of the shoppers were domestic and the goods were targeted for their consumption. It was a decent place to grab a meal though when nearly everything else seemed to be closed.

There are lots of street food vendors in the Love Lane area, but they didn't really get going until it was dinner time. However once they were open for business, they were a great place to grab a meal, as the food was both delicious and very affordable. For example, Lisa and I had a large plate of Mee Goreng for 3 RM, but there was a wide variety of other dishes around the same price. I also had a variety of fruit juices, that came served in bags with ice cubes, for 1.50 RM. There were a few fruits on the menu that I had not yet tried, but I guess they were not very popular because nobody seemed to have them in stock. Penang is a city that is primarily composed of Chinese people that emigrated from the Cantonese and Hokkien areas of China and a lot of the food that is available is of their culture.

Our favorite place to eat in Penang was located in the Little India district of Penang (which is centered in the Lebuh Pasar area). From here we found a restaurant called Restaurant Mutiara Sdn Bhd (on the corner of Lebuh Chulia & Lebuh Queen) that had a tandoori oven in front of it. We first tried a set meal which consisted of tandoori chicken and naan bread, with mint, curry and dhall sauces for 6.50 RM. I think it is safe to say that this is the best tasting chicken that I have had in my life, so we came back and had that same meal every day that we were in Penang. There were plenty of other restaurants in the area serving the same thing, but I never got around to trying any of them. My only complaint would be that the serving size was a little on the small side, but at that price I had no trouble ordering two dinners when I was really hungry. The restaurant staff seemed amazed that I could eat so much, but their chicken and naan (and sauces) were really that good.

On our second full day in the city, Lisa and I walked around and toured the colonial district of Penang, which has been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. This area was one founded by the British in the year of 1786, which made it the first major English port of the area (before Singapore and Melaka.) Penang got bombed during World War II, but fortunately many of the old building survived and now the whole area has been beautifully restored.

We started with a site very close to the SD Guesthouse, the double-spired Cathedral of the Assumption which is named after the feast day on which its Catholic founders landed here from Kedah. Walking down Lebuh Farquar, the next major site is the Penang Museum which itself was built over 100 years ago and it had several old cars parked outside of it (including a Rolls Royce). Continuing down the street is St George's Church, which was built with convict labor in the year of 1818 which makes it the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia. In front of this building is a pavilion and plaque honoring Sir Francis Light, the founder of Penang.

Next we walked to the Town Hall and the City Hall, which stand next to each other on Jln Padang Kota Lama very close to the waters of the North Channel. These old buildings are grandiose in scale and are lined with trishaws (bicycle taxis) which made for some nice pictures. If we were tired, this would've been an easy place to get a ride for the rest of our tour because there was literally dozens of them waiting around for business. From here I bought some fresh papaya for 1 RM from a street vendor and we chilled out in the shade provided by a small park on the sea-front. The park had a World War I monument that was in listed in the guidebooks but was not anything special. However from here we could see one of the neighboring beaches with towering apartments in the distance and casual fishermen in between. We sat in this park on the waterfront for about an hour and didn't see a single fisherman achieve any success, but I think they were here to relax more than to catch their dinner anyhow.

After leaving the park, we continued walking along the sea-front until we came across Fort Cornwallis. This fort was built by convict labor where Sir Francis Light first stepped ashore to the island in 1786 and has been restored to look much like it did around 200 years ago. There are guards wearing traditional garments of the time standing before the entrance, where they collect 3 RM for admission. Inside the fort a few of the original buildings still stand, including a chapel and a gunpowder magazine, but most of the interior is now a park. There was also originally a 27 foot wide moat surrounding the fort, but it was filled in nearly a century ago due to its contribution to the spread of malaria.

The edge of the fort is lined with many cannons including one named the Seri Rambai cannon which was originally granted to the Sultan of Johor by the Dutch in 1603 before the English seized it and relocated it to this fort centuries later (with many stops in between). The northern edge of the fort was lined with rooms which originally served as prison cells but now contain artifacts and document the history of the island, the fort, Sir Francis Light and the British East India Company. I found it interesting that this island was unoccupied when Europeans first discovered it in the 16th century, but by the time the British colonized it in the late 18th century, Malay tribes had already moved in before them

The next major site we ran across on our journey through Georgetown was the Victorian Memorial Clock Tower. It was donated by a local Chinese millionaire to honour Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and stands 60 feet tall - one foot for each year in her reign. I think that the clock tower was best photographed from Fort Cornwallis, so we didn't stop here long and continued on the way to Chinatown. This area has twisted streets of old buildings, temples, mosques and businesses and is filled with the regular smells, sights and sounds of Chinese culture.

Chinatown has many tourist attractions of historic significance and the first one we ran across was Khoo Konsgsi. A kongsi is a clan house that is partly a temple and partly a meeting hall for Chinese of the same clan or surname. The Khoo Kongsi is the finest of Penang, although it is not as extravagant as originally intended. The original building was completed in 1901 and caught fire on the same night that it was completed. It was widely believed that the fire was caused by divine jealousy, so it was rebuilt slightly less beautiful to avoid future misfortunes. The current building was completed in 1906 and is known as Dragon Mountain Hall because of the colorful dragons painted on to it.

Strolling down further into Chinatown, Lisa and I came across a 19th century town house that was formerly occupied by Dr Sun Yat Sen. This house looked very similar to surrounding buildings but is famous because this is where the Penang Conference was organized which led to the Canton Uprising of 1911 which ended thousands of years Chinese dynastic imperial rule. Dr. Sun Yat Sen is credited with being the founder of modern China because of the activities that took place in this house during his stay in Penang. As we continued walking back to our guesthouse on Love Lane, we passed by the Acheen St Mosque, which was built in 1808 and is the oldest mosque in Penang. Only Muslims can enter this mosque, but the Egyptian style minarets make it worthy of photographing from the outside.

There are many more historic sites to visit in Penang, but after this tour we had walked quite a few kilometers and passed away six hours. It was hot, humid and sunny all day long so we were tired and hung out in the Love Lane district for the rest of the night. The next day we had planned on going to the beach resort area of Batu Ferringhi (which is easily accessed by public bus), but unfortunately the weather did not co-operate. Our third day in Penang it rained nearly all day long, so we just spent the day shopping, eating and drinking. We were still working on finishing up the vodka that we brought with us from Vietnam.

Although our original plan was to travel from Penang to Kuala Lumpur, we decided instead to visit Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highllands district of Malaysia first. The unplanned week-long stay in Kuala Lumpur (caused by the Bangkok airport protest-occupation of December 2008) gave us enough time to see the major sites of K.L., plus we had met many travelers that described the Cameron Highlands as the highlight of their vacation in Malaysia, so we figured we would spend a few nights there. We went to the Komtar bus station (which is located under the Prangin Mall) to find out that we would need to get to the Sungei Nibong Bus station in order to catch a bus to Tanah Rata. Although they offered a shuttle bus from Komtar to Sungei Nibong for 5 RM (an hour before the bus would leave), the total cost of the ticket was going to be 42 RM, and so we declined. Instead we went to the Banana Guesthouse which offered a ride by air-conditioned minibus from our hotel door to any hotel in Tanah Rata for 50 RM.

The only problem with the deal from the Banana Guesthouse was that we were going to be picked up at 6:00, which is way too early for a night-owl like me. I had trouble sleeping on our final night in Penang and only managed two hours of sleep before it was time to get up and catch our ride to the Cameron Highlands. When we got to the lobby of SD Guesthouse at 5:59, the owner explained that the minibus had just came and left without us. I immediately went outside and ran down the street toward Banana Guesthouse but before I got there I was relieved to see a minibus turning down the street toward me. I ran back to our guesthouse and sure enough this was our ride.

We were the first people to board the minibus and after we picked up four more people from surrounding the area, we set off for the Cameron Highlands. It was nearly 6:30 by the time and it was still dark out ten minutes later when we crossed the Penang Bridge back to the mainland. The Penang Bridge is around 13.5 kilometres long and is reported to be the longest in all of Southeast Asia, but is nothing remarkable to see when it is still dark outside. Shortly after crossing this bridge, I fell asleep and didn't wake up again until we were approaching the city of Ipoh.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238241000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238241000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1238241000/tpod.html Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:53:32 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

The flight left on time and landed in Kuching 85 minutes later. As we were going through Sarawak's customs process, we noticed advertisements on the wall for Tune Hotel advertising rooms starting at 9.95 RM. As we started looking for a method to get from the airport to the downtown area of the city of Kuching, we noticed that Tune Hotels offered a shuttle service at 7.99 RM each. This was a better deal than the taxis for 25 RM, and since they leave every 30 minutes we didn't have to wait long before we got our ride.
The Tune Hotel (www.tunehotels.com) in Kuching has an excellent location (N1 33.513 E110 21.071), right across the street from the Hilton Hotel on the waterfront. The hotel is run in a no-frills system much like Air Asia. This means that if you can plan way ahead, you may actually get a room at 10 RM. However we only found out about this hotel chain as we showed up and paid substantially more to stay here. At first I asked for the price of a room to spend just one night there and was told it would be 60 RM. After hearing that, I enquired about a three-night stay and found that the price dropped to 40 RM the following day before returning to 60 RM for a 3rd night. We decided to stay for three nights, but by the time our order was entered into the computer, the price of the first night was raised to 80 RM.
These prices covered only a very small and basic room, but with a very comfortable bed and modern bathroom facilities. There are several add-ons that you can purchase with a room in Tune Hotels including air-conditioning. Although all rooms have ceiling fans, you can purchase air-conditioning services in blocks of 12 hours for 13.49 RM and it is actually billed only when being used. There are options for getting Wi-Fi Internet (12 RM for 24 hours), but they provide a computer in the lobby for free Internet access as well. Towels are extra and there will soon be additional services offered like laundry and TV.
Since our room was so small, we spent a great deal of time outside in Kuching. On our first night there, we first headed down to walk along Sungai Sarawak (the river going through the city.) It has been tastefully developed as a tourist attraction with lots of public seating and vendors selling all types of local foods and drinks. The meals here are reasonably priced for Western standards, but there are cheaper options right behind Tune Hotel where Lisa and I ate a great deal of our meals. There are over a dozen food vendors spread around an area that serve Mee Goreng (fried noodles), Nasi Goreng (fried rice) and plenty of other local specialties for around 3 or 4 RM a plate. Each cluster of restaurants seems to have a single vendor selling drinks and they are the only people that service the tables. Lisa and I simply followed our nose to an appealing scent and grabbed a dish from whichever food vendor we ended up in front of.
On our second day in Kuching, while we were walking along the river again, we met a young man named Frankie that we ended up spending quite a bit of time with. He was from a village called Lundu which is situated right on the edge of Smenggoh Wildlife Rehabilition Park, around two hours from Kuching. Frankie was in the city to try out for a provincial takraw team and mentioned that he would be playing later that day. If you have never seen the sport of takraw, it is a really fun event to watch. It is sort of like volleyball, only players are only allowed to hit the ball with their feet and heads. Good players are able to slam the ball over the net, which requires a great deal of acrobatic skill as they kick the ball from well above their heads. I asked Frankie if we could tag along to watch the game and he was happy to have us join him.
The game wasn't starting until 17:00, so I spent the rest of the day chilling out on the water front talking to Frankie. I found out that he was the oldest child in him family that included nine children. This may seem like a lot, but we met another local guy later that had ten children himself. He was proud that all of them had graduated from secondary school, but later he mentioned that his brother had eighteen children (that also all graduated from secondary school.) I figured that he was likely a Muslim, since they are allowed to have four wives in this area of the world, but he said that they were all from a single wife. I guess they start having children young here and now I understand how the population of Borneo has been exploding for the past 40 years or so.
Shortly before the game was starting, we were joined by another European couple and we walked out to the Muslim area of town where there was a takraw court. There were a number of players already there starting to warm up and I tried joining them for awhile to see if my years of playing hacky-sack would allow me to play. Unfortunately I was wearing sandals, which kept falling off and were far from ideal for this sport. All of the players had on rather simple canvas shoes; I presume they were official for the sport since every single player had them on. The balls were made of plastic, although they were the same size and looked like rotan balls that were used in the past. After passing the plastic ball around for awhile (and no stretching of any kind), the first game started.
Lisa and I had seen this game being played before in Thailand and although Thailand has the best takraw team of the world, we had only seen casual games that were nowhere near the level that these guys were playing at. A round would start when one member of a team threw the ball to another player on his team that kicked it over the net (to the other team.) The other team would dig the ball up before it hit the ground and then on the second hit, they'd try to set it up so that it could be spiked over the net. The coolest aspect of this sport (in my eyes) is how they spike it over the net on the third hit. They try to kick it from as high as possible, so that they can kick it very fast to the ground on the other side. Of course the other team tries to repeat this process and that is basically how the game is played.
As we were watching the game and trying to take pictures, Lisa started wandering around to the surrounding houses to take some more pictures. One of the ladies, who was an English teacher by profession, invited Lisa in to see her home and meet her children. Lisa went in with her video camera and spent five minutes touring the house (which was on stilts.) and meeting her family. Shortly after coming out of this home, she was invited to the home next door. This was the home of the manager of the takraw team and had ten people living in the house. The stilted home looked small on the outside, but once she was in it seemed quite large, cool and breezy. This was a rather affluent family as they had a brother that was a PhD in Mathematics.
Eventually Lisa and the other European couple were served a variety of local dessert dishes, which included deep-fried yam and banana chips (which were packaged in air tight plastic bags.) They kept encouraging me to join them, but I was engrossed in the takraw game and stayed outside. Eventually they brought me out a can of Coke and shared some of the desserts with me and the takraw players (which were sort of like seafood donuts.) While Lisa was in the house, the Muslim call-to-prayer started and Lisa was surprised that nobody stopped to pray. She asked about whether it was a recorded song and found out that it was sung live all of the time with the first prayer of the day being performed at 4:30 in the morning. Additionally, the man of the house was one of the people who performed it because he had a good voice. Even though the family was devout Muslims, they still did not pause to pray while they had foreign guests in their house.
After watching several rounds of takraw, it was starting to get dark outside and it was time to walk back to downtown Kuching. As we were leaving, somebody from the family of the second house Lisa visited ran to give her some more packaged banana chips. After being in Hanoi, where most people seemed interested only in how much money they could extract from us, this was almost unbelievable. I would have to say that Malaysia may have some of the most friendly and generous people in the world. As we were walking back, I shared that I had some bottles of Vietnamese vodka that I wanted to use up and we decided to sit down by the river and see if we could use up a few bottles.
Since Frankie was a Christian, he had no problem with drinking alcohol and after he tried some he noted on how it tasted quite similar to a drink that they made in his home village. Although I bought some orange soda to mix with the vodka, he drank a lot of his straight up which was pretty brazen for a man that weighed less than 50 kilograms. Since he was spending his night sleeping outside of the local Christian Church, I had a feeling that the vodka may help him get a good night's sleep. After we were almost through the second 350 mililiter bottle, we were joined by two tourist police officers that essentially just wanted to talk with us. They knew Frankie already and told us that he was a good and safe guy to hang out with and I don't think they noticed that we were all quite intoxicated. Once we were through the second bottle though, Lisa and I called it a night because we wanted to get up early the next day to see the orangutans being fed in the morning.
Frankie gave us some good advice on how to see the orangutans on our own without paying for an organized tour. We had to make our way to the bus station and catch a green #6 bus which would take us straight there in about an hour. We found out that the first bus left the station at 7:30 and after a quick McDonalds breakfast we caught the bus just in time. We were surprised to see Frankie already sitting on the bus; apparently he was going to join us for the day. This was great news because he had already been there on several occasions and he was a great guide. Frankie even knew that we could save a few RM by getting into a group of five, which qualified us for the "tour rate" of 2 RM instead of the regular 3 RM.
By 8:30 we arrived at the park and then we had to walk about a kilometer into the rain forest, where the orangutans lived. The previous night Frankie had mentioned how he missed the sound of the jungle that helped it him get to sleep. He described the sounds as an "orchestra" and it was easy to understand why. It was actually quite loud but also very peaceful and it made for a real rain-forest experience as we walked further into this 100,000,000 year old primary jungle. We made it to the feeding area a little before 9:00 and had to wait awhile for it to open. The sign in front of the feeding area stated that it was open from 9L00 to 10:00 and from 2:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon. Shortly after 9:00, the waiting group of a few dozen people was let in and we walked about 200 meters to a platform where we could watch the feeding area (which was simply a platform surrounded by trees.
Shortly thereafter the park rangers placed bananas and coconuts out on the feeding platform and began calling the orangutans. We all stood about 10 m away from the feeding platform quietly and eagerly awaiting the appearance of the orangutans from the tree tops. After a half hour passed with no orangutans in site, Frankie told me that it would be better to go near the entrance, as that is the usual path the orangutans followed on their way to get food. About half way back, we saw a small group of people looking up into the trees and lots of "oooohs" and "awwws" could be heard. It took a lot of looking and pointing for me to finally see the reddish colored fur about 75m near the top of a very tall tree. The park rangers were banging on the trees, trying to coax the animals to move on and eventually the orangutans began making their way towards the feeding platform, throwing dead branches down at us along the way. After a further 5 minutes, there were around six orangutans who decided that it was time to eat and they made their way to the feeding platforms from all directions.
Included in this group was a female with her baby clutching to her mama's chest for dear life as mama swung through the treetops. While the mother and baby orangutans were directly above the viewing platform, the baby orangutan decided it was a good time to relieve its bladder and some tourists ended up getting a warm shower. A man that worked for the park said that this may happen before we were allowed into the feeding area and I thought this was somewhat of a joke. It makes me wonder if the timing was a coincidence, whether orangutans need to pee a lot, or whether they actually had a bit of a sick sense of humor. The orangutans were amazing, some of them hung around the platform and ate, while others grabbed their food and headed back up into the trees. A few of the animals grabbed coconuts and you could hear them cracking the coconuts against the trees to open them.
After about 20 minutes of observing the orangutans feeding, our Malaysian friend Frankie told us that he overheard the park rangers say there was a female orangutan near the park entrance over their radios. We rushed back down the jungle trail to the entrance area to find a large female (named Selina) with her very young baby, sitting on one of the benches staring back at us. I think this particular orangutan enjoyed attention, because she sat only 2 meters away from us, looking directly into our cameras for almost 30 minutes while she tore open a coconut with her teeth. She occasionally lifted her very hairy arms to show off her newborn baby who was dead asleep, but still clutched tightly to her side. We took some amazing photos of Selina and her baby and it made for a great end to a excellent morning. It was at that time that the park ranger announced that the park was closing for lunch, so we made our way back down the 1 km driveway to the main road.
We had missed the scheduled 10:30am return bus ride to Kuching, as by this time it was nearly 11:30. Our friend Frankie was able to flag down an open bed truck and arrange for a free ride to get us to the nearest town. From here we caught a city bus back to Kuching (2 RM) which took about 30 minutes.
After the 15 minute walk back from the bus station we decided to treat our host Frankie to a lunch at Pizza Hut, because he said he had never tried pizza before. Since pizza is one of my favorite foods we jumped at the opportunity to introduce him to a North American favorite. He liked the pizza and saved a slice to take to his auntie whom he said had also never tried pizza. After lunch we took the opportunity to shower and get cleaned up before meeting Frankie and a girl from KL at 2:00pm to visit Fort Margherita, on the north side of the river in downtown Kuching.
Fort Margherita was built by Charles Brookes in 1879 and he named it after his wife. The purpose of the Fort was to protect Kuching against invading pirates, as it is perched upon the banks of the Sungai Sarawak River. Admission to the fort is free, and it is easily reached from the other side of the river via a small rowboat style ferry for 0.40 RM per person. The fort is not very large, and it only took about 30 minutes to explore, however it did offer some nice views and picture taking opportunities. After taking a quick walk by the new Sarawak Government Office and the First Ministers house (a gigantic mansion), we took another 0.40 RM boat ride to the south side of the river again.
By the time we arrived back to our hotel we had spent the entire day in the hot sun and we were cooked and tired. We went back to our hotel rooms, grabbed a quick nap and then headed out of the food court downstairs for some Mee Goreng (3 RM/plate). We later went to a movie in the mall next door because it was "cheap day" and the movie "The International" only cost 5 RM each. Most of the movies at the theatre played in English language and just had Malay and Chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
The next day we switched hotels, and moved to the B & B Inn (at the corner of Jln. Mathie & Jln. Tabuan - N1 33.260 E110 20.914) which was located down the street and was much cheaper. It was a very nice hostel, complete with a TV room, free wifi, hot showers, self-service kitchen and a roof top patio. The kitchen was a nice touch because there is a large grocery store (Ting & Ting) just down Jln Tabuan that has lots of selection (and the cheapest water we had seen in Borneo - 1.5 liters for 0.90 RM0. The B&B Inn claims to be the only licensed hostel in town and had a special that advertised 3 Stella Artois (or Skol) for 10 RM. Although we would've preferred an A/C room for 40 RM, they were not available, so we paid 35 RM for a fan room with a shared bathroom and that included a basic breakfast. The hostel was very clean and the staff was very friendly, and they offered many tours that seemed reasonably priced and made us wish that we had discovered this place instead of staying at the Tune Hotel.
The rest of the two days we had left in Kuching were spent sipping beers on the riverfront and shopping for souvenirs. Frankie had shown me a grocery store on the eastern edge of the Main Bazaar that offered several different brands of beer (including Tsingtao) at a price of 4 for only 10 RM. This was by far the best deal that we had seen in Malaysia for beer, although Langkawi (the duty free port) had them much cheaper still. Frankie had told us that the traditional way to drink shots of alcohol in Sarawak was with a small bamboo shot glass, but we were unable to find some even with his help. Apparently the Sunday market vendors would've had these, but our plane was leaving on Saturday night. We settled for some ceramic shot glasses instead that we found for 4.50 RM/each. We also found a cool Borneo mask to add to our collection at home for 50 RM.
We left for the airport earlier than we needed to on the day of March 28th, 2009 because we did not have a room and were dying from the heat and humidity. This day seemed hotter than any other day of our trip so far and the humidex temperature must've surpassed 40 degrees by quite a bit. Our flight to Penang was scheduled for 8:15pm, so we took the same shuttle from Tune Hotel (7.99 RM per person) to the airport around 5:30pm so that we could sit in the air-conditioning for a while before our flight left. The Kuching airport is very modern and offered comfortable padded seats with available electrical outlets that let us watch some movies on the laptop while we waited. The airport also had lots of restaurants that were very reasonably priced.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237809600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237809600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237809600/tpod.html Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:16:10 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

I was surprised that our passports got stamped on entry to Kota Kinabalu, but apparently the province of Sabah is semi-antonymous within Malaysia and has their own customs controls. We had made arrangements with our hotel in Kota Kinabalu (Borneo Global Backpackers) for a free pickup from the airport. This offer was only valid until 22:00 though and because our flight was 1.5 hours late, it was actually 22:20 by the time we got our bags and exited the airport. Fortunately I had used the free Wi-Fi in the Kuala Lumpur to notify the hotel of our late flight though, and they did not charge us the regular 25 ringgit fee for the lift to their hotel.

We had tried to reserve a two person, air-conditioned bunk,-bed room at Borneo Global Backpackers at ca cost of 50 ringgits per night, but once we showed the cost of the bunk-bed room was 58 ringgits a night. Since this was the same as getting a larger two twin bed room, we switched to one of these rooms. The price included Wi-Fi Internet and breakfast, so it seemed like a good deal for Borneo. Since they had picked us up for free, I told them that we'd be spending six nights and they asked us to pay the full price up front, which we did. Normally I try to only commit to a couple of nights via a reservation so that there is no problem moving later if we find the room unsatisfactory and in hindsight, I wish I had followed that practice here.

It turns out that breakfast is simply a loaf of bread, with no butter, jam or anything to put on the bread. Fortunately there is a community fridge though, so we went to the supermarket and bought some cheap jam to help make breakfast more appealing. So far only our full large jug of water has been stolen from the refrigerator and the jam has been safe. The Wi-Fi Internet was problematic at first, but I was able to fix it (since they had not changed the password on their router from the default.) The problems didn't really start until our first morning at the hostel when we were woken up around 6:30 by the noisy employees shouting, singing, playing tag and whatever else they doing. Without even asking, one of the employees kindly asked us if we would like to move to a less noisy room for the rest of our stay, but unfortunately the Wi-Fi Internet didn't work from our new room, so we moved back and decided to use ear-plugs instead.

This turned out to be a mistake because the Wi-Fi Internet stopped working for me altogether after the first day. I am unable to connect to the router sort of like I have the password wrong, although of course I double checked with them on what it is supposed to be. Their computers were shutdown from the Internet the second night as well, but since their computers started working again they showed absolutely no interest in trying to help me fix my connection. The fact that I have over ten years in network administration means little to them and they figure the problem is entirely on my side, but I did not put up much of a fight and can live without Internet access for a week. The good news is that many of the local restaurants and bars (including McDonalds and KFC) offer free Wi-Fi anyhow and of course I have no problems using their service.

Our biggest problem with Borneo Global Backpackers occurred on the second night after midnight when people started returning to their room to find nobody at reception and the front door locked. Approximately every 30 minutes between midnight and 4:00 somebody would come to the door and bang as loud as they could for five to ten minutes until they managed to wake somebody up to let them in. This had to be staff because a key was required to open the door and they were the only ones that had keys. Around 2:00 the staff stopped coming all together and several people were locked out for the night! As annoyed as Lisa and I were with getting woken up constantly throughout the night, at least we were not one of these poor souls that were locked out all night. Lisa got up and tried to locate somebody, but nobody could be found. They advertised 24-hour reception, so I believe the fault lays entirely on the shoulders of Borneo Global Backpackers and a large portion of their guests checked out after this night.

When you look on the Internet for Borneo Global Backpackers, it looks like quite a nice backpackers place, but now that we are here this place is anything but a typical hostel. There is a common TV lounge area that is occupied around the clock by the staff. I am guessing that this is a family run place and that nearly everybody in the extended family works here because there are way too many employees to keep busy throughout the day and they sit around and watch TV most of the time. They are usually watching soap operas in Malay and never offer to change the channel when you sit down. This is really more of an employee lounge than an area for the guests as I have yet to see any foreigners get to watch the TV (only the single computer for Internet at 2 ringgit per hour.)

The city of Kota Kinabulu is nothing like what I expected a city of Borneo to look like. It is very developed with very little green space, but tons of concrete and glass buildings everywhere. Many luxury cars on the road show that this area has done quite well with tourism as do the satellite dishes attached to nearly every single dwelling in the area. The city itself has very few attractions for tourists and although there are lots of tourist attractions outside of the city, they have been cornered by companies and are not very accessible to independent travelers like Lisa and I. For example, there doesn't seem to be a single place to rent a bike or motorcycle in the whole city. If you want to climb Mount Kinabulu, you need permits which are all bought up by tour operators who sell 2-day packages for almost $500 per person.

Although drinking alcohol can be quite expensive in Kota Kinabulu (more expensive then in Canada anyhow), the quality and price of food is great. There are many Indian, Malay, Chinese, Pilipino, Indonesian and Western restaurants to sample and it is easy to have a meal for two at a lower cost than a single beer. The main place that Lisa and I ate at was called Restaurant Indah (on Lg. Katamunsing), which was a 24-hour establishment run by a Muslim family. They served various types of Mee Goreng and Nasi Goreng and my favorite was a dish called Nasi Goreng Pataya (which was fried rice, chicken and veggies mixed together and covered by a fried egg with chili sauce on it). The family was very friendly and I guess they were not to restricted by traditions as one 20-something girls removed her headscarf because it was too hot outside).

Very close to Restaurant Indah, at the corner of Lg. Katamunsing and Jln. Kemajuan, is a parking lot that is used nightly by food vendors. They offer typical Borneo dishes, such as satays, fried noodles and rice, soups, etc. for very good prices (3.00 to 4.50 RM). We discovered this area on our first night in Kota Kinabalu, because they were still open at 23:00, and went back nearly every night of our stay in the city. The real highlight of these restaurants is the fresh fruit drinks that they serve. There are two sizes that are offered and the large ones were absolutely huge (around 1 liter) and a real bargain at 4 RM. Since the small ones were only around 300 mls, they were not really a good deal at 3 RM. They had several kinds of fruit listed that I could not translate to English, but the ones we did try were: mango, honeydew melon, pineapple, apple and orange. One night, Lisa and I snuck a small bottle of vodka and mixed it in with these drinks, which worked out very well.

With all the tours in Kota Kinabalu being rather expensive and time consuming (7 hours each way to get to the orangutan rehabilition centre), our typical day involved walking around the city looking for pictures and other things to do. The weather was quite consistent. It was always very hot and humid and days would start off sunny but in the early afternoon clouds would roll in and it would rain for a few hours until the evening. The evenings were usually still cloudy but the rain would usually stop and let us go on a stroll for dinner. I am not sure if the cold weather in Hanoi has influenced me, but I feel that Borneo may have the hottest and most humid weather of anywhere that we have been on this trip.

Fortunately while walking around the city, there are quite a few malls that offer an air-conditioned retreat. We would often cart around the laptop and duck into a mall or McDonalds in order to get away from the constant heat and humidity outside. Without Internet in our room, we would simply order a sundae from McDonalds and catch up on the world's events while we ate it. The city of Kota Kinabalu has very few benches or areas to relax other than these malls and McDonalds. There is only one very small park within the downtown area and it is rather dull and boring for a park in a rich tourist city of the tropics. The waterfront area has a nice view of nearby islands, but again there is nowhere for the public to sit and enjoy it, other than overpriced restaurants and outdoor massage parlours.

One of the reasons that Kota Kinabalu is so modern looking is because it was leveled twice during World War 2. First the British destroyed it on their retreat from the approaching Japanese and then again by the Allied forces to get rid of the occupying Japanese forces. This onslaught left only three buildings in the entire city standing. One of these structures is called the Atkinson Clock Tower and is a square 15.7 meter high wooden structure that was completed in 1905. It is only a few square meters at its base, so it is easy to understand how this structure could've survived such devastation.

Not far from the clock tower is a stairway leading to a viewpoint on a hill facing the South China Sea. There is a sign saying that there are 245 stairs to the top, but the condition of the stairway means that there are actually around 230. Some of the stairs are hardly attached to anything which makes sandals far from the ideal footwear for climbing to this viewpoint. Once we got to the top however, we were slightly higher that the surrounding hotels and office complexes, which allowed me to take a decent panoramic photograph of the city of Kota Kinabalu. We were not on the hill's summit for long though before the afternoon rain started to trickle down and with the stairway being in such poor shape, we hurried down before everything got slippery and wet.

One of the main tourist attractions in the city itself is the Sunday market which takes over Jln. Gaya. The market is used mostly by local residents but there are also some tourist souvenirs that can be found. The goods here ranged from fresh produce, to hardware supplies, clothing and even pets (on top of the tourist souvenirs). We didn't find anything to be much of a bargain, but the prices were about as good as it gets in Kota Kinabalu. We decided to hold off on the tourist souvenirs until we were in Kuching, but still bought a large bag of peanuts for only 5 RM. This market starts quite early in the day and people were starting to pack up shortly after noon.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237276260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237276260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/aaronpolarbear/1/1237276260/tpod.html Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:54:16 -0400 Pan SE Asia 2008-2009

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Hanoi, Vietnam

By 19:30 we were all back on the bus and we didn't stop again until we were in Hanoi. Since we were sitting in adjacent reclining seats, Lisa and I put the laptop in between us and watched a couple of movies before finally getting tired enough to sleep. Once I fell asleep, I actually rested quite well and only woke up when Lisa shook me to let me know we had arrived in Hanoi. As soon as we were off the bus, we were again surrounded by hotel owners that all wanted to show us their rooms. We followed one guy for about a ten minute walk into the Old Quarter of Hanoi, where he had to wait for a half-hour to see the room. We were served coffee and some bananas, and told that breakfast was included in the room price of $10. The hotel was called Star Old Quarters (29 Bat Dan Street).
When we went to see the room, it was very small and had the scent of deodorizer in the air. Although the room was small, it had a double bed, TV, fridge, and hot water showers. The only obvious problem with this room was that there was no window, but for $10 that was fair enough. Lisa and I fell asleep soon after booking the room and when we woke up a few hours later, the scent of deodorizer had been replaced by the smell of mold and the room must've been very close to 100% humidity. Although this didn't bother us too much initially, the smell was very strong when left our room and came back. The next morning our towels hadn't dried from the day before either and we started to get concerned that everything we had would begin to take on the ugly aroma of the room.
We quickly located a few of the Bia Hoi joints of the many that are distributed throughout Hanoi. Our first stop was at the famous "Bia Hoi Corner" in the Old Quarter of town (the corner where streets P. Luong Ngoc Quyen & P. Ta Hien intersect, north of Hoan Kiem Lake), which has a Bia Hoi shop on each of the four corners. There were only chairs available at one Bia Hoi so we took a seat and had a glass of beer for 3000 Dong. Unfortunately we seemed to have chosen the worst Bia Hoi place in town as the beer tasted like vinegar, needless to say we only stayed for one drink. On our walk back to our hotel we found a Bia Hoi shop close to our hotel which was filled with locals. They served Bia Hanoi draught beer which tasted very good but cost twice as much at 6000 D per glass. After having four mugs each, we walked back to our hotel and spent a quiet night in our stinky and very damp room.
The next day, after eating our free breakfast, Lisa enquired about changing our room to a room which was less damp. This inquiry proved to be an exercise in frustration as the "manager" did not speak English and was not interested in helping her since he was engrossed in playing a video game. Eventually he handed Lisa a phone and said something to a women on the other end of the line in Vietnamese. The woman Lisa got to speak to was of little more help than the first guy, since she also did not speak English very well and could not understand what Lisa was asking for.
After standing in the lobby for 5 minutes wondering what was going on with her request, she spoke with a Swedish man who stated he also had trouble with his room being very damp and smelly. He said he was able to switch rooms for the same price and gave Lisa the room number he switched to saying the room was "dry and decent" and cost him $10 a night. He also commented on how rude the people in Hanoi had been with him during his visit and that he had changed his plans to leave Vietnam and visit Laos instead.
In the middle of Lisa's conversation with the Swede, a very unhappy looking hotel attendant came in the front doors and asked what the problem with the room was (apparently he is the only one who spoke any English). Lisa explained that our room was smelled bad and was wet, then asked if there was another room to change us to for the following day. He became even more indignant and asked Lisa which room we were in so that she could show him the problem. When she took him upstairs he walked into the room and declared it was not wet, and also disagreed that it smelled. It was very obvious that they realized there was a problem with this room based on the amount of deodorizer they used prior to our check-in.
At first he said that he would not move us because there were no other rooms available. Lisa explained to him that she had just had a conversation with a Swedish man downstairs who had just checked out of a room for $10 per night and said it was dry and odorless. On top of that, we noticed that there were lots of keys hung up in the reception area and plenty of rooms seemed unoccupied. The Vietnamese man rudely said that there were no $10 rooms available, just some for $14 a night. By this time, Lisa was getting upset and we explained that we would be checking out the next morning.
After eating one of our staple foods in Hanoi later that night, the Donair Kebob for 15,000 dong, we began walking around and searching for a new room. On our first try we located a hotel on the street behind our current hotel called Wing Café Hotel (23 Hang Non St.) that offered us a room for the next day for $10 USD which included hot showers, A/C, TV and was a much larger and drier room that at our current hotel. This hotel (Minh Toan Hotel) was run by a friendly family and we paid a $5 deposit for her to hold the room for us the next day.
The next day we ate our free breakfast at the Star Old Quarter Hotel and the same Vietnamese man from the day before asked if we were checking out today. I responded "yes, you said you had no available rooms", and he asked "where you going?" I told him that we had found a new hotel nearby with larger rooms and a fresher smell for the same price we had been paying him. He then replied very rudely "Check out very soon", he looked at his watch (it was 10:40 am) and said "check out by 11:00am". It was obvious this man was perturbed we were leaving his hotel and wanted us out ASAP, but this was not a problem to us since we had already packed our bags. We quickly gathered our belongings, paid the hotel and walked over to our new hotel without any further difficulty.
We were quite surprised at the weather in Hanoi as the average temperatures were between 15-22C and it rained 4 out of our 6 day visit. Given that the rest of our holiday was in very tropical temperatures we were ill prepared for the dampness. Lisa packed only 1 pair of pants and 1 long sleeved shirt and I didn't bring any long sleeved shirts other than a weather-proof jacket. We had originally planned on going to either the Halong Bay or Sapa regions, while in the north of Vietnam, but due to the cold and rainy weather, we decided that they were not worth the hassle and expense.
We did walk around Hanoi quite a bit and were able to see some of the famous sites on foot. There is a large lake in the middle of the Old Quarter named Hoan Kien Lake that has two islands on it and pleasant park lands and restaurants surrounding it. The two islands both have buildings on them: one has Thap Ria (tortoise tower), and the other has the Ngoc Son Temple which was founded in the 18th century and is accessible to tourists via a bridge for a small fee. Walking around this area is a great way to relax and get away from the hectic pace that seems to be everywhere else in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. Some other sites we saw during our stay in Hanoi in include the "Hanoi Hilton" prison where John McCain and other war prisoners were detained, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (which doesn't seem to follow any schedule for being open and was closed when Lisa visited) and Ho Chi Minh's house on stilts (a preserved house where Ho Chi Minh used to live).
Most of the restaurants serving food in Hanoi (with the exception of the donairs and some other street foods) were overpriced and much more expensive than in the south. The vendors were constantly trying to rip us off and we always had to watch our change. One perfect example is a shop keeper who tried to charge us 72,000D for 3 cans of Coke which were marked at 8,000 Dong each. They get out their calculators and start to add numbers and more numbers, like Westerners cannot figure out 8 X 3,000 in their heads.
Most stores, restaurants and souvenir shops did not have marked prices, and when we inquired about the price they would start with an exorbitant amount at least 200-500% higher than they started in the south. Unless you really like the bargaining process (which I do not), this does not make for a pleasurable shopping experience and I was glad that we bought lots of souvenirs already. I would say the best souvenir shopping in Vietnam was in Saigon and Hoi An, but Hanoi was definitely the worst. One exception to this was the Saturday night walking street shopping on P. Hang Ngang, where most prices were labeled and were very reasonable. The market was frequented mostly by locals and we discovered it only by accident; it does not seem to be listed in any of the tourist reading materials that we had.
There is a common scam in Hanoi to bring you food that you did not order and then charge you for it, at a greatly inflated rate of course. We met one couple who stated their hotel did this to them and when they refused to pay for it, she became very nasty and moved them to a room at the top of 5 flights of stairs. We met another couple who were charged over 200,000 dong for 2 bowls of Pho soup and 2 bottles of beer. Fortunately they refused that price but still had to pay 100,000 dong which was still more than it should've been. These types of scams frequently occur in Karaoke bars all over Vietnam, but in Hanoi it seems that everybody has a story like this from just about any hotel or restaurant in the city. I have never been to a place and heard so many stories about the locals trying to rip off Western foreigners.
Another scam we came across while walking the streets of the Old Quarter started with a young Vietnamese girl riding with a man on a motorbike that spotted us and quickly tried to engage us in conversation. After asking the common scam starting question of "Where are you from?", she proceed to pull a laminated piece of paper from her purse that stated Red Cross and then tried to get us to donate money to her cause. We knew this was a scam right away as she did not have any official identification, and didn't even bother to use the Red Cross's logo on the paper. I am quite sure that all the "donations" went directly into her clothing and high heeled shoe fund. We quickly brushed her off, but she approached us a second time at a later date and then we told her directly that she was a fraud. She quickly got on her motorbike (driven by the same guy as before) and drove away.
We had to make a stop at the Post Office in Hanoi (located near the lake on P. Dinh Tien Hoang) to send a parcel home with all our accumulated souvenirs from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. This proved to be a tedious experience and the postal employee had to personally inspect each and every item that went into the box. This meant unwrapping anything that was packed and writing the items in Vietnamese on a customs slip. After everything was listed, we had to come up with prices for everything, which wasn't easy considering that we couldn't read her Vietnamese filled form. The process took almost an hour and we had to pay 10% export duty on the estimated value of the souvenirs. However nobody questioned the values we used and in the end, our parcel ended up being on par with the price of the parcels we sent home from Thailand and Indonesia. Our package was 7 kg and cost us 408,000 Dong for sea mail which should take approximately 2 months to reach Canada.
Most of the rest of our time in Hanoi was spent at Bia Hoi corner, as we found a better tasting beer on the opposing corner of our first Bia Hoi stop. We ended up meeting many friendly foreigners and locals at this place. At 3000 Dong per glass of bia hoi (which is only 3% alcohol at most) or 10,000 dong for a large bottle of Tiger beer, it was an easy and cheap way to spend the afternoons and evenings drinking beer and talking. There were many English teachers who frequented this establishment and we spent a few nights out at the late-night bars on P. Ta Hien with them (after the Bia Hoi joints closed around 22:30).
A curious fact about Hanoi is that all the bars are supposed to close at midnight. I say supposed to, because at midnight the police come and all the bars close their doors with the guests trapped inside. Everyone is stuck there until 1:00 after which the owner pays a cash bribe to the police and is then allowed to open the doors until 4:00 or so (depending on the amount of the bribe I suppose). This police bribe means that the drinks in these bars are significantly more expensive after midnight than before - often costing 25-40,000 D for one beer. The crowd that had lived there awhile seemed to prefer a place called Half Man Half Noodle that served Larue beers for 20,000 late at night.
For all the crazy traffic in Hanoi (and Vietnam in general), people driving the wrong way down the street, or driving on the sidewalks, or causing traffic jams etc. the only thing we ever saw the police doing was collecting illegal tables and chairs from restaurants in the tourist areas. On one occasion we did see the police collect illegally parked motorbikes, although they would collect one bike and leave 3 others so it wasn't obvious why they chose one bike over another. My guess would be that they bikes they collected had more value and therefore they could collect more cash from the owner to release it. The folks that had lived in Hanoi for awhile joked about the corruption level of the police, but for the most part they left Westerns alone. I read that this is because Hanoi police officers are fired on their first offence if they are found to be extorting money from tourists illegally (but not locals unfortunately.)
Overall we found the people in the tourist area of Hanoi very unfriendly and were always looking for a way to get more money from our pockets. This was very different from what we found with the people of the South, who were much friendlier and easier to deal with in general. If I had to redo the month long trip through Vietnam again, I would've liked to have spent more time in Nha Trang and spend some time in the Mekong Delta area. We spent a week in Hanoi and found that to be the worst week of our month in Vietnam. The weather was cold and damp which reflects the way that people working in the tourist trade of Hanoi treated us. This wasn't always the case, as the people of Minh Toan Hotel showed us, but seemed to be the rule rather than the exception.
Getting a taxi to the airport on our last morning in Vietnam followed these expectations. Some long-term expats had told us about how they purchased a used motorcycle for $100 and that the regular rate for a taxi to the airport should be $8 or $9 (around 150,000 dong). Rather than paying the $15 through our hotel, we decided that we could probably find a better deal on the street. The first taxi we approached agreed to take us for 200,000 dong and we thought we had made the right decision. However he only drove a few blocks away, then stopped and told us the price was now 300,000 dong. Of course we refused and he drove another few blocks before we got out of his car.
A second taxi wanted 250,000 dong for the ride and we decided to keep on walking. Eventually he drove up to us and agreed to take us for 200,000 dong. This second taxi driver had been talking to the first driver, so we were a little suspicious of him, but we had left the hotel earlier than we needed to in anticipation of these types of problems and decided to give him a chance. This time things worked out and he drove us straight to the airport without any further issues. The airport is about 40 kilometers away from where we were and the drive took nearly an hour.
The airport was not very busy when we arrived and we got through the check-in process within a half hour. Knowing that alcohol prices were quite high in Malaysia, Lisa and I packed a liter of vodka each and this caused our bags to be a few kilograms over the 15 kilogram/person limit. The nice Air Asia employee advised us that we could save $6/kilogram by cramming some more stuff into our carry-on luggage, which we did in a hurry. Bringing the 2 liters of alcohol into Malaysia from Vietnam turned out to be a smart move because a bottle that was only $3 or $4 in Vietnam would be $20 in Malaysia and customs gave us no hassles when we declared the 1 liter each.
Since we had not eaten yet this morning, I took a look around the airport to see what food could be had. Pringles were $4 and if you wanted to pay in dong it was 80,000 for a single 160 gram package. The restaurants pricing was no better and considerably more expensive then the same meal would cost in the Toronto airport. Before I came to Hanoi I would've guessed that their airport would have better pricing than back home, but after being in Hanoi for a week this all made sense. Fortunately we had paid for an in-flight meal with Air Asia, so we just held on to our hunger until we boarded the plane. Even if we had to buy a meal on the plane, it would've been much cheaper (and probably even tastier) then what was offered at the Hanoi airport.
Our flight left Hanoi on schedule (9:15, March 17th, 2009) and we were on our way to Kuala Lumpur again. The Air Asia flights are quite Spartan in nature, but for the price we paid there is no way we could complain. There was no on-flight entertainment of any sort, nor any complimentary food or drinks, but at least the plane was reasonably new and comfortable. One oddity is that they did not seat Lisa and I next to each other, but instead on window seats in subsequent rows, even though we checked in two hours in advance. I figured that this meant the plane would be filled to capacity, but was surprised to see that there were a few empty rows as we took off. This worked out well as Lisa and I moved to an empty row and had a seat between us with nobody in it for the entire flight.
We had purchased the Air Asia tickets over six months in advance and in doing so, we managed to get the flights for free. In reality, although the ticket prices were free, we still had to pay fuel surcharges and taxes which amounted to $49 each for this 3.25 hour journey. We had booked plenty of tickets like this but up until this point, we had not had achieved much luck or success in actually taking advantage of the deals. The first "free" flight that we had booked was from Jakarta to Bangkok, but that was cancelled (and refunded) due to the protests that had the Bangkok airport closed. The second "free" flight was between Bangkok and Chaing Mai, but was cancelled and refunded for the same reason. The third "free" flight was from Surat Thani to Bangkok and we missed that one because of a tardy ferry from Koh Phangan to Surat Thani. This was our fourth "free" flight and we finally caught this one.
After spending an afternoon in the comfortable Kuala Lumpur airport, eating at McDonalds and enjoying the free Wi-Fi Internet, our next "free" flight was from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo later that day. Although this one left about 90 minutes late, we were again successful in catching it (although I am still not proud of our 40% success rate). This "free" flight cost us around $24 each, so again it was difficult to complain about the no-frills 2.5 hour ride that we received from Air Asia. The only real problem with this flight was some serious turbulence that we hit about 15 minutes before landing. The plane must've dropped around 100 meters or more, two times within a 10 second span, which left the flight crew hitting the floor for safety, but quickly laughing it off once we all realized it was only turbulence.
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