Quik Thinking

Anita and I had wanted to ride to Ella from Kandy by train in 1st class but they were sold out by the time we tried to get tickets so we settled for 2nd class instead. Unfortunately, by the time we made it onto the train, there were no seats available in 2nd class so we had to stand. The journey lasted several hours and I quickly decided that I had no desire to stand for that long so I just squatted on the floor instead and Anita soon joined me. We did, however, take periodic breaks from sitting on the floor to hang out the side of the train and enjoy the gorgeous view as it rushed by. Eventually some seats freed up and a Spanish couple we'd befriended nabbed two of them but were kind enough to let us share one of the two seats for the rest of the ride while they shared the other.

Towards the end of the trip, we were approached by a man touting a hostel in Ella. Despite our misgivings about touts and the fact that we had already booked another hostel, his offer sounded tantalizingly good so we agreed to take a gamble and check it out. Incredibly, it proved to be as good as he'd claimed and we decided to stay there. After checking in we wandered around in search of dinner but I was put off by all the flies, although Anita seemed to almost revel having them around. In the end we ate at the hostel and their food turned out to be very good.

After dinner we stopped by a local bar for a bottle of coconut toddy and then went for a walk in the nearby hills. We ended up getting a bit lost as darkness settled, although we eventually found our way back. I was pretty hungry after our walk but discovered to my great dismay that the hostel shut down at 10pm and we were no longer allowed to order food or even to leave! After haranguing the hostel owner for a while, he gave me a complimentary snack so I wouldn't have to go to bed on an empty stomach.

In the morning we treated ourselves to delicious coconut and honey pancakes for brekki and then caught a bus to the nearby waterfall. There was supposed to be a historically interesting cave at the top of the waterfall so we tried to find it. Unfortunately, even my well-honed climbing skills were no match for the smooth rock of the waterfall and after several attempts at scaling it we were forced to give up. 

When we got back, I raised my tolerance for flies in order to inject some diversity into our cuisine and we were able to find a place that served brown rice. I had been craving brown rice for several weeks so was delighted to find some. After lunch we picked up a clay pot of buffalo curd as a snack and went off in search of a hill called Little Adam's Peak. Before we left, however, we stopped by the hostel to borrow spoons and the waiter gave us just one spoon, saying it would be better that way because then we could feed each other!

Along the way there we came across these steps carved into the rock and, being the curious creatures we are, simply had to walk up them. The moment we reached the top we were greeted (in English) by a really sweet Sri Lankan woman named Kanthi who invited us into her home. We accepted her invitation and she told us about the crafts she'd been working on. Anita shard her passion for them so they got along very well and she offered us some tea but we couldn't stay very long because we didn't want to get lost in the dark again. We did, however, promise to drop by again on our way back.

We hadn't gone much further when Anita spotted a little temple by the side of the road so we walked over to take a look and were greeted by the family who owned it. They were just as friendly as Kanthi had been and gave us a tour of their little vegetable plots as well as a brief history of the temple, which had been in their family for 3 generations. After leaving the temple we kept walking towards the peak but eventually realized that there was no way we'd get to it in time to find our way back before nightfall. Settling for a view of the peak from across a valley filled with tea bushes, we sat down and ate our buffalo curds with some honey that Anita had brought with her from India.

As promised, we stopped by Kanthi's home for tea on the way back. Her 2 kids seemed quite excited by our visit and her daughter even gave Anita a dance lesson after performing for us in their living room! Kanthi herself taught Anita how to tie a sari in the Sri Lankan style that had captured her fancy when she saw women sporting it on the buses. We had a lovely time chatting with Kanthi about life in Sri Lanka before heading back to the hostel.

Suresh, the hostel owner had ofered to give us a tour of his organic farm before we left so we took him up on it. In the morning we checked out and got into a tuk tuk that he drove to the farm. Apparently he had teamed up with a Canadian to run the farm and they had been planning to turn it into an eco-resort at prices that blew our minds.

The farm had an impressively diverse mixture of crops. I can't even remember all the stuff they had growing there! It was 30 hectares and bounded by a river on 3 sides with a functioning well on the property. As I asked Suresh about his life story I was amazed by how entrepreneurial he was. After spending a few years working for Toyota in Japan, he had returned to Sri Lanka to open the hostel and then gotten involved with the farm in addition to that! After giving us a thorough tour of the farm, he dropped us off at the nearest bus stop so we could head South to the coast.

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On the day we had planned to leave Colombo for Kandy, we didn't need to catch our train until 3:30 in the afternoon. Wanting to make the most of our morning, we checked out of the hostel, left our luggage at the front desk and hopped on the local train into the city to visit the Natural History Museum. By the time we were crowded out of there by an unending stream of elementary school kids, we were both quite hungry so we had lunch in the city before catching the local train back to Mt. Lavinia to rescue our luggage. Unfortunately, while on the train, we realized that we probably wouldn't have enough time to take the local train back into the city to catch the intercity express to Kandy.

Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. For the first time, we decided to take a tuk-tuk to the hostel from the Mt. Lavinia station instead of walking. Upon getting there, we sought advice from the proprietress, who advised us to catch a city bus to the main train station, since those run much more frequently than the local train. When we got stuck in traffic on the bus, I wasn't sure if we'd make it after all but Anita remained remarkably optimistic about us catching the bus. Eventually the traffic cleared and we did make it into the city to catch our train. We even had a few minutes to spare!

The first-class seats we'd purchased were quite comfortable for the journey and we enjoyed the scenic beauty along the way, although it was dark by the time we finally arrived in Kandy. This time we hadn't booked a hostel room in advance because none of the cheap ones listed in the guide books or online seemed to have phone numbers! We'd hoped, therefore, to simply find one when we got there. Unfortunately, that proved to be an exercise in frustration. Both the places we had planned to check out were full and getting directions from the locals felt like dental extraction on large striped felines. Burned out from walking around with our backpacks in the dark, we caved in again and let a tuk-tuk driver take us to a random hostel that gave us a rather spartan room at a price that, while higher than we'd been hoping to pay, was not unreasonable.

On the morrow, refreshed from a good night's sleep and aided by daylight, we set off by bus to visit the Botanical Gardens. Like most other big attractions in the country, they had one price for locals and another one, 20 times higher, for tourists. Since I kept being mistaken for a local, we decided to try and sneak in as locals. The guy at the ticket booth didn't flinch when I handed him the amount for 2 locally-priced tickets. Unfortunately, when we tried to actually enter the park, the gatekeeper tried talking to me in Sinhalese and when I failed to reply, he requested to see our ID. We ended up having to pay full price after all but it was worth a shot.

Wandering around the gardens, we came upon a tree with a thick vine that looped down to form a natural swing. Unable to resist, we started hanging from it and Anita even sat in it. We'd been somewhat worried that the nearby gardener might object to us playing on the tree but he turned out to be remarkably cool and we even convinced him to sit in the loop himself! Not all the staff were like him, unfortunately, as I was thoroughly reprimanded for climbing up a giant Java fig tree in a different area of the park. In addition to climbing trees, we also found some odd fruits, one of which we dissected to identify as a type of almond.

After sitting out the afternoon heat in our hostel-room, we went for a walk around the lake. Despite having been warned by legions of tuk-tuk drivers that the perimeter was several kilometers, it turned out to be a fairly short (and very pleasant) walk. About halfway around, we discovered the famous Kandy cultural dance show was about to begin so, on a whim, we bought tickets and went inside. It was amusing to be amongst a scarce handful of brown people for a change as the audience was mostly foreign tourists. When the show was over, we continued our stroll around the lake with a stop in downtown Kandy for sketchy street food.

The next day we caught an intercity bus headed North and eventually ended up in the little town of Sigiriya, where we'd been told there was an ancient city built on a large rock. Finding lodging was much easier this time around but we quickly discovered that it cost $25 to see the ancient city. While that may sound relatively cheap by the standards of industrialized countries, both of us has been traveling around Asia for long enough that it seemed like a complete rip-off. Disgusted, we decided to rent bikes and see the countryside instead. The bikes we rented were in terrible condition but they worked. Eventually we dismounted and went hiking for a while, which was an amazing experience because the scenery was beautiful and there was virtually nobody around. We even found tamarind growing in the wild!

After returning to the hostel for dinner and a nap, we headed back out at dusk to look for wild elephants, taking our flashlights with us. To my dismay and Anita's relief, there were no wild elephants to be found. Instead we came across wild dogs. Well, they weren't actually wild but they sure acted like it. We had to use the beam of our flashlights to keep them at bay while we slowly retreated to the hostel.

We left Sigiriya the next morning and returned to Kandy. The bus ride this time swerved between exhilarating and terrifying as the driver awed us with his finely honed ability to pass in oncoming traffic. Our ride on the death bus ended shortly before it should have when the bus blew a tyre. We were all forced to disembark and board another bus for the last several minutes of the journey. On the bright side, it was early in the day when we returned to Kandy so we were able to scout around for hostels and found one closer to the lake for a slightly lower price. The place was being renovated so our room was surrounded by construction workers. We did our best to entertain them.

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I met Anita at the airport in Colombo. She'd also quit her engineering job in California last year and had been traveling around India for a few months. Like me, she'd been part of the bicycling community in San Francisco and used to get her veggies from a local farm. Unlike me, she'd arrived in Sri Lanka with an enormous backpack containing most of the stuff she'd been lugging around the Himalayas all Winter. Neither of us had a concrete idea of what we wanted to see in Sri Lanka, aside from living in hostels, taking trains/buses and eating cheap local food. We were, it seemed, destined to be travel buddies.

As we left the airport in search of a bus to the city, we were harangued by a plague of tuk-tuk drivers. It was a herald of things to come. The bus ride into the city ended up taking over two hours, long enough for my hunger pangs to kick in. Fortunately Anita had brought with her a ripe guava from India. She gave it to me and it was delicious. I liked her already.

Upon reaching Colombo, we found a tourist information office and inquired about taking trains around the country. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves getting the hard sell for a fancy package tour from this alleged government official. Feeling uneasy about the whole situation, we insisted that we wanted to take buses instead of hiring a private driver and left, although we decided to roughly follow the itinerary he had suggested for us, since it sounded pretty compelling.

We also took his recommendation on a place for lunch. The staff there must have found us most entertaining because they stood by our table and watched us eat with giant grins plastered across their faces. Eventually, however, my slow pace of eating wore them down and they literally pleaded with us to leave so they could seat other customers! Acquiescing, we bought 1st class train tickets to Kandy and then caught a bus to a beach-side hostel in nearby Mt. Lavinia.

After checking into a triple room that we shared with a Japanese girl, we walked to the beach. First we splashed around in the salty waves, then we build castles on the beautiful sand. When the sun grew too hot, we lay down under a parasol and chatted, our conversation punctuated by the local train as it rumbled passed. Soon we grew hungry and bought some snacks, including a king coconut. King coconuts are different from the ones I'd been used to in Malaysia because they have only water and no flesh. Even so, they're cheaper than bottled water and far tastier.

As we devoured our snacks, a gang of young Sri Lankans, mostly guys, showed up on on the beach. They told us they were engineering students from a nearby university and had come to party on the beach. It was fun to watch them dancing and we spent some time talking to a few of them. One of them was shocked to hear that there were no coconuts grown in the US. Evidently he'd seen palm trees on CSI Miami and assumed that they were coconut palms!

At Anita's urging, we ended our night on the beach by dissecting the shell of a coconut. It was to be the first of many random things we dissected. A girl after my own heart indeed.

In the morning we walked down the tracks to the nearby train station and rode the local train into Colombo. We'd been hoping to lie on the grass in a park but the grass was withered from the heat so we strolled along the beach instead. Anita wasn't feeling too well that morning so we soon stopped to rest at a nearby Buddhist temple that had a large golden statue and an interesting pagoda with depictions of the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

After resting for a while, we headed back to the train station for lunch. The place we picked for lunch had a wonderful surprise in store for us: they served faluda, a delicious milky drink that I that despaired about ever finding again after I left Karachi. Anita had never tasted it before but after just one sip she had been won over. Although we were bowled over by the availability of faluda, we did have some trouble asking for a more mundane item: salt. Anita wanted some to help with her dehydration but we simply could not get across the concept of salt to the one waiter who spoke any English! After a long and frustrating struggle to communicate our desire for salt, another patron took pity on us and translated the word. I think the poor waiter was almost as relieved as we were.

When we returned to the beach, I spotted a bunch of guys playing cricket there. I was a little surprised that they were able to do so without constantly losing their ball to the waves. I actually wanted to join them but I was too tired and thirsty to bother. Instead we just relaxed at our hostel for a few hours before heading out for a bite.

There was a little restaurant on the main road near the hostel that appeared to have cheap local food. Inside it was a guy constantly chopping a mixture of veggies and meat with a pair of large metal implements. It sounded something like a drum beat and grabbed our attention as we walked by so we walked in and ordered the stuff he'd been making, which is called kutto. I was fascinated to discover that they served the food on a sheet of cling foil! Not only does this eliminate the need for washing plates but it makes for an instant doggie-bag at the end of the meal.

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If you ever end up visiting Siem Reap, make sure you know what the capital of Madagascar is. Outside every temple are a gaggle of impressively multilingual and endearingly cute kids whose extracurricular activities seem to consist of selling trinkets to tourists. Some of these are even worth buying. As always, however, you need to bargain hard. And these kids employ a unique angle in their bargaining tactics. After you make a counteroffer to their initial wildly inflated price, they will lay down a challenge. If you can name the capital of Madagasar, they'll sell you the trinket at your asking price but if not and they can name the capital of a country you choose then you must buy it at their price. And, believe you me, they've spent far more time than you have memorizing capital cities.

At one point we were leaving a temple after being wheedled by these kids when our tuk-tuk suddenly encountered a parade of elephants walking down the street. It took us a while to pass them and while doing so we could see random people feeding bananas to the elephants as they went. And then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, the elephants vanished behind us as we sped away.

Another random cool thing we got to see required taking a different form of transport. We piled into a motor boat and went down a river into a lake to see what is known as the floating village, a collection of houseboats stationed some distance from the shore. In the midst of these was a fish and crocodile farm. Apparently he crocodile farm used to be a cash cow a few years ago, fetching $100 per croc, but in recent years the value of a croc has dropped to just $20.

One evening we visited the famous night market in Siem Reap. As far as I could tell, it just had even more of the same stuff we'd seen already. But May fell in love with a t-shirt that had a picture of a chicken on it. Sadly, the shirt was too small even for her. Not one to let such minor hiccups get in her way, May bought the shirt anyway and even put it on. I took a photo for posterity. Speaking of inappropriate, we found a place that serves do-it-yourself barbeque, via one of those little cooking devices at your table. In the heat of Cambodia, that turned out to be the worst way to eat a meal. But I guess that's why they can offer a buffet: nobody can put up with the heat long enough to eat very much.

We kept seeing these places that offered to let us soak our feet in a tub of fishes that would eat away our dead skin. Intrigued, we decided to give it a shot. They normally charge $3 for 15 minutes but we got them to let us have 2 people in for 5 min each for a total of $2 instead. The fish were quite ticklish but they did work and our feet looked considerably better at the end. While we were sitting there, they guy running the joint realized that having us laughing as we sat there in full view of the street was good for drumming up business so he let us stay for a lot longer than we'd paid.

For most of our time in Cambodia we shied away from the really sketchy food for fear of getting sick. But on the last day we decided that we should go for it. That turned out to be a great idea as the sketchy resaurants has delicious food that was much cheaper than the stuff geared towards tourists. Some of it was similar to what I'd had in Malaysia and other things, like eating raw flowers, were entirely new. And nobody got food poisoning out of it.

The other thing we'd been meaning to do before we left was get a massage in the traditional Khmer style. May opted out but Kim and I found a place that offered an hour of full body massage for just $4. It proved to be an excellent use of our money as both of us emerged feeling relaxed and refreshed. Right after our massages, we met up with May and set of for a buffet and traditional Khmer dance performance. Unlike the barbecue, this buffet was incredibly good and easily worth the $7 it cost us. The dancing was a treat as well and an amazing way to end the trip.

One of our few regrets about this trip to Cambodia was that we did not shop around for the best price when hiring a tuk-tuk driver for the 3 days we spent visiting temples. Our driver cost us $25 apiece while we were able to find others offering the same service for as little as $40 regardless of how many people we had. 

In the airport on our way out, I was pleasantly surrised to discover that they offerend free wifi at the boarding area. They also had a suggestion/complaint box for people to leave feedback about their airport experiences. The box was made of clear plastic so I tried reading some of the notes. One of them complained that a Customs official had tried to exract a bribe at night! We never encountered any such issues ourselves, fortunately.

In fact, my only beef with the Cambodian airport system was that they made us all get off the place for 15 minutes when we made a brief stop at Phnom Penh and then put everybody through a security check as we got off the plane. Of all the times to put people through a security check, that has got to be the most pointless one! Clearly if we'd boarded the plane already then we must have cleared security. I cannot fathom what they were they expecting to find. Worse still, by the time we cleared security, it was aleady time to reboard the plane and we didn't really have time to even use the toilet!

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On our 2nd day in Cambodia we woke up at 5am to watch the sun rise at Angkor Wot. By the time we reached it, there was already a substantial crowd of tourists gathered there in lawn chairs. On a whim, May thought it might be a good time to visit the temple itself without being bothered by anybody else. That turned out to be a stroke of genius that would prove useful for the rest of the trip. By starting very early, we found ourselves with nearly two hours of relatively uncrowded time at Angkor Wot.

The temple is extremely large and is currently under renovation by groups from a variety of countries: Japan, Italy and Germany; the entire axis from the 2nd world war, interestingly! Despite its size, even the surfaces of walls are covered with intricate designs. Some of them have scenes from the Mahabharata, which is not even part of the local culture any longer!

When we were done with the temple, I was quite hungry and decided to eat a young coconut, only to discover that, unlike in KL, not all coconuts in Cambodia have flesh in them. Meanwhile we were besieged by a horde of children hawking postcards. At 10 for a dollar, they seemed like a pretty good deal so we all bought some. Only later did we discover the subtle scam behind this seemingly innocuous enterprise. But the kids were fun to talk to and seemed to know a surprising number of languages!

Our next stop was a 1500m hike up a hill to see stone carvings near a stream that date back to the 10th century. There were also many butterflies at the top, drinking salt from the moist earth. After descending and eating lunch, we headed to another temple that had awesome statues of monkeys and then finally we went to yet another temple to watch the sun set. 

Hitting the temple circuit early had worked out so well that we did it again the next day to see Angkor Thom. Although we were the first ones there, our idea wasn't unique as a few other tourists did show up shortly after us. Even before entering the temple we could see the giant stone heads for which the temple is famous. Upon walking inside and up to the top, we found many more such heads, some better preserved than others. There were also a multitude of stone lions scattered around the temple. Somewhat removed from the giant stone heads were a collection of small temples buiult in honour of the king's 12 wives. They're nowhere as interesting as the heads and I would't have visited them if they hadn't been near the toilet.

Also nearby is an enormous stone statue of a reclining Buddha. It's currently under rennovation following centuries of neglect and wear but it's still possible to discern the outline of the face in the wall. Interestingly, this is the second time it is being rennovated; it was previously rennovated in the 16th century, when it was four hundred years old. Perhaps it will need to be rennovated again in four centuries...

A little further up is the elephant terrace, which was built as atonement by the losers of a war in which all the Cambodian king's elephants perished. The terrace has a few different types of elephant statues but it also includes a maze containing a five-headed horse and a seven-headed naga.

We began our final day with a visit to the jungle temple, so called because it has become overrun by large trees that dominate the stone structures as they slowly desroy them. The sight of centuries old trees crushing even older temples is so remarkable that the Fench restoration authorities decided to avoid restoring this particular site to its original state. Apparently the trees are the result of birds droping seeds on the roofs of abandoned temples. The seeds slowly grew into trees with their roots growing downward around the walls and enveloping the structures.

After that we went to see the hall of dancers, whose ruins depict dozens of dancing figures, both carved into walls and as frestanding statues. Kim took her cue to strike up some awesome dance poses before we ended our temple tour with the oldest building we'd seen yet. This one was constructed in the 10th century with brick instead of stone and has stood up to the ravages of time far better than any of the more recent temples, although it's also far less interesting as it lacks the cornucoia of stone carvings that add character to the other ruins.

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While Singapore may have the best airport in the world, Siem Reap certainly has one of the prettiest ones I've seen. And they have a quaint assembly-line Immigration system that is rather amusing to watch; you give them your paperwork (passport, arrival form, photo and money) at one end and then watch the package make its way down the line until you get a stamped passport back at the other end. They don't actually ask any questions of tourists, much like Malaysia. Confusingly, nobody actually looked at the customs form we handed them and nobody even asked us for the health form we filled out.

We were all set to find a tuk tuk and take it to our hostel but I had evidently asked for an airport pickup because there was a guy with my name on a placard waiting for us. Pleasant surprise! He told us his name was Moon and he would be taking us to the hostel, which he did, giving us a chance to observe traffic in Siem Reap. It's a bit crazy, despite not being particularly congested, because people frequently drive the wrong way down the street but nobody seems to mind! On the other hand, their intersections are pretty impressive; they have a countdown for vehicles during both green and red lights plus a crossing guard and a traffic cop.

Our hostel was large and spacious and, although we had to go up two flights of stairs to reach our room, it had a fascinating view of a crocodile farm. The sole downside was that the bathroom had no separation between the shower and everything else so it took skill to avoid soaking our clothes while showering. Come to think of it, the bathroom I had while growing up was like that too...

We'd been thinking of taking a nap to make up for waking up at 3am but the hostel owner, Mr. Bun Kao, offered to show us a rice padi at no charge so we took him up on it since none of us had seen one before. After a substantial tuk-tuk ride, we ended up in a fairly secluded village and the driver brought us to his parents' home so we could meet a real Cambodian family. His mom is a schoolteacher and his sister was using a laptop to do her homework. It had a Japanese keyboard but she was writing in a Khmer typeface. She later told us that she was studying to be an acountant, although she had originally wanted to be a nurse but had to abandon that dream because nursing school was too expensive for her parents to afford as they had other children in university too. The family let us pet their oxen, one of whom was a very friendly calf that loved having his neck scratched.

During this time, our tuk-tuk driver's dad had been yoking a pair of oxen and when he finished he had us get on the cart and began heading toward the rice padi. Kim had a bit of an adventure getting onto the ox-cart because it took off before she was ready and then she had to chase after it. I think that ox-cart ride was her favourite part of the entire trip.

The rice padi was exceedingly bumpy because the soil had formed into hard clumps and we lacked pneumatic tyres, let alone shock absorbers. It was better than a wooden roller coaster. During the ride, our tuk-tuk driver explained to us that, unlike most people, his family kept a resovoir of water that allowed them to have 3 rice growing seasons instead of the tradional single season. He did admit, however, that the two irrigated by water from the reservoir did not produce rice that was anywhere near as good as that grown in the main season. He also told us that a day labourer typically earns $3 per day for harvesting. But apparently everybody owns land in Cambodia, although some people have more than others, so nobody goes hungry because they always have their own rice to fall back on. And people usually help each other harvest their padi fields as well.

As we rode along we spotted some birds fishing in the scant remnants of what had once been an enormous field of water but had now been reduced to a tine stream and some muddy patches. At one point, the ox-cart driver stopped in the middle of the stream and proceeded to splash water on the rumps of his oxen, who had recently become in need of such a wash. Kim, sitting right behind the oxen at the time, was treated to an experience that I am sure she wil treasure forever. I even got her a little bronze ox as a momento of the occasion.

On the way back from the rice padi, we stopped by another villager's place, where a bunch of people had gathered to hang out for the afternoon. They were drinking rice wine and were delighted when May and I agreed to try some. They also offered us pickled cucumbers, which May and Kim enjoyed, but I had to decline on account of my Invisalign, the purpose of which bewildered them. Some of them were salting snake-fish for future meals and let us watch the process. Overall, it was a lovely experience because they were no less curious about us than we were about them and nobody was trying to sell us anything.

One of the villagers was an English teacher and he was explaining to me why they grew little other than rice for sale. Apparently they grow a few fruits and veggies but only for substenance because the prices offered for them on the market are too low. But he also told me that when people want to <em>but</em> fruits or veggies from the market, they are quite expensive. Sounds like the traders are profiteering! Another interesting insight from this discussion was that, although only Cambodian nationals are allowed to own propery, Koreans have increasingly been buying up property by putting it in the name of a Cambodian girl whom they marry. At least it gives her leverage if they mistreat her because she's always the legal owner of the property.

Our driver's family had us over for lunch while some random dogs looked on. The food was not too spicy, except for one dish they called cheese, which is actually made out of fish. I asked whether they sold any white rice and was told that here was no market for it, probably because it doesn't keep well. After lunch I go a haircut at the village barber, who offered to give me a shave as well for just 5000 riels ($1.20). What he hadn't realized was that my hair is so stiff it required him to use a second razor blade halfway through the process!

So far we had discovered the locals used US dollars for most transactions but switched to Cambodian riels for smaller values instead of using US coins! When I used an ATM, I disovered that it only dispensed US dollars. I guess the locals don't use them!

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When the train I was on from Malaysia entered Singapore, everybody on board had to alight and go through Singapore immigration before getting back on. Aside from a modicum of skepticism that it was my first trip to Singapore, the immigration officer didn't give me any trouble, although she did suggest that I include my middle name on the entry card in future, even if there wasn't enough space allocated for it.

When I disembarked at the station in downtown Singapore, I tried to use the toilet but ran into a wee snag. As usual, they wanted me to pay a minuscule fee for using it. While I don't generally have any objection to these usage fees for public toilets, this time I did not have any local currency and there wasn't an ATM handy. In the end I cajoled the attendant into letting me pay with Malaysian Ringitts. Having dispensed with the immediate necessity, I set about finding the MRT station. It wasn't particularly close and there were absolutely no signs directing people towards it but fortunately virtually all Singaporeans speak English and use the MRT so getting there was not a problem.

Unlike KL, the MRT has a unified payment system that uses a stored value card called ez-Link, so I acquired one and used it to catch a train to Holland Village, where May lives. When I got there I noticed that my phone had service so I tried to cal her but the call wouldn't go through. Fortunately, I had her address and a map of the neighbourhood so I set off on foot to find her place. Getting to the spot on the map turned out to be very easy but, having arrived there, actually locating her address proved to be frustrating. None of the buildings or stores had their street addresses posted outside and nobody around had a clue where her address was! Eventually, I gambled that she was located behind the construction area on the corner, since she'd mentioned that it kept her up at night, and decided to walk on the main road against traffic to circumvent it. That did the trick and I finally found my way to her place.

May took me out to a nearby cafe for French toast and then we caught a bus to check out the crazy malls. How crazy? Well, one of them included a multi-storey rock-climbing wall. As we wandered around the subterranean passages that connected the malls to each other, I noticed that many of the escalators were out of order. That struck me as odd because in other respects the city seemed to function like a well-oiled machine.

After checking out the malls, we drove to the airport to pick Kim up, since she had massive amounts of luggage after her long stay in Thailand. On the way back, May decided to swing by her sailing club to show us where she spends most of her time. Of course, once there, she simply had to go windsurfing so Kim and hung out at the beach and swapped travel stories for a couple of hours. I spotted what looked like a jungle-gym for adults and wanted to play on it when May returned but then I totally forgot about it.

All that sailboarding had worked up quite an appetite in May so she took us to a nearby enclave of hawker stalls for dinner. Bizarrely, the prices of coconuts there was all over the place instead of being in line with each other, as you might have expected. But there was only a single stall selling rice porridge so I had to wait in line for a bowl. Wanting to try something new, I ordered mine with something called century eggs. They were delicious and I could have happily gone on with my life without the knowledge, delightfully volunteered by May, that century eggs are soaked in horse urine.

Armed with that appetizing nugget in my mind, I blithely followed May and Kim back to the car so we could check out the shoreline at night. Walking along the waterfront was a very pleasant experience with all the pretty lights everywhere. We even stumbled upon a free outdoor concert! Eventually we arrived at the famous Merlion statue and took some entertaining photographs with it before May drove us back home.

That night I slept at an Aussie hostel in Little India. It was a pretty happening joint; a little too much so for my needs, actually, and in the morning the place was deserted when I needed to leave. Since I had already paid and didn't have a key to return, I decided to just head out. Unfortunately, they had barricaded up the place and I ended up having to scale a metal fence to escape! To make matters worse, I then proceeded to miss a bus because I was waiting at a taxi stand instead of a bus stop. Who would have guessed the two would be so hard to distinguish...

On the upside, May had been taking her time getting ready too so I wasn't holding anything up and we made it to the zoo at a reasonable time. The zoo was a lot of fun, although I did manage to find one animal in a cage, giving the lie to their claim of being cageless. After a long day at the zoo I hit the sack earlyish because we needed to be up around 3:30 in the morning to catch our flight. May's dad was super nice and drove us to the airport. Speaking of the airport, it blew me away. I think the Singapore airport is far and away the nicest airport I've ever been in. And I've been in many airports! Not only do they have a plethora of free Internet terminals and free wifi, they also have free massaging chairs!

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Ever since I moved to KL I'd been curious about the etymology behind the names of some of the LRT and monorail stations, like Dang Wangi. Last Thursday I visited the historical centre of Malaysia and discovered all sorts of interesting things, including the story behind Dang Wangi. I'd been planning to visit Melaka (also spelt Malacca by those who don't know better) for a few weeks because it is the oldest part of the country and has a rich history going back about 6 centuries and encompassing 5 different empires. I'd also been planning to visit my friend May in Singapore and, since Melaka is between KL and Singapore, I decided to stop off in Melaka on my way to Singapore.

Unfortunately, the train from KL to Singapore doesn't actually go through Melaka but instead goes through a larger city called Tampin that is further inland. There used to be a train running between Tampin and Melaka but the Japanese dismantled it during the 2nd world war to build the Burma death railway (made infamous by The Bridge on the River Kwai). Consequently, the only way to reach Melaka from KL now is via interstate coach so I bought a bus ticket to Melaka and figured I could catch a bus to Tampin when I was done with Melaka in order to catch the train to Singapore there. For bizarre historical reasons, it's cheaper to buy a round-trip train ticket from KL to Singapore than to buy a one-way ticket from Singapore to KL. So I got the round-trip from KL and figured that I could just board the train at Tampin instead. After all, I'd have an assigned seat and nobody in their right mind could fault me for overpaying.

On Thursday morning I caught the coach to Melaka from the main bus station near Chinatown. Good thing I hadn't bought a durian there because they aren't allowed on the bus. Upon arrival at Melaka I discovered that the last bus to Tampin leaves at 8pm daily, which meant I'd have a few hours to kill in Tampin as the train wouldn't get there until around midnight. Delighted to find a bag check service for only 2 ringitts (less than a dollar), I left my backpack there and headed into town for the day.

My first stop was the Portuguese settlement where the descendants of Portuguese colonists from nearly half a millennium ago still live. While this is a well-regarded historical site in general, it held particular interest for me because my ancestors are from a different Portuguese colony and I wanted to see if there were any similarities between the subculture of my ethnic group and the people in this settlement. When I first arrived I noticed that there was a convent school with girls in uniform that certainly jogged memories of the one my sister attended as a child. And the streets had names, like Sequeira, that were distinctly Portuguese. But I hadn't yet met any of the inhabitants.

That's when I was hailed by an old man at a restaurant. Since it was lunch-time anyway, I sat down and looked at the menu, which was heavily Malaysian. I have to admit I was a trifle disappointed at not seeing familiar dishes on it. Presently, however, a few locals showed up to eat as well and I eavesdropped on their conversation, which yielded a linguistic truffle: these people end their sentences in "no", much like I recall many of my Goan and Mangalorean neighbours once doing. After lunch I wandered off and soon came to a little hawker stall where young coconuts were being sold. When the proprietor wanted to know if I wanted one, he ended his question with "or what?", which made me grin as I remembered all the times I'd heard people doing that as a child. I also noticed that the low-rise residential buildings behind the stall were labelled "blok A" and "blok B", just like the one in which I once lived for nearly a decade. Having satisfied my inner anthropologist, I caught a bus to the town square.

Immediately upon alighting from the bus at the cloak tower, I found myself facing the History & Ethnography Museum. What with my love of history, ethnography and museums, I simply had to take a look. The absurdly low cost of entry didn't hurt either. I ended up wandering around the museum for over 2 hours before they kicked me out to shut down for the day. The museum is divided into a different section for each period in Melaka's fascinating history and I had barely started on the 2nd one before I had to leave. But not before I learned that Dang Wangi was the widow of a famous Malayan hero called Hang Jebat and was herself highly regarded as a warrior.

After leaving the museum I walked along the river until dusk fell, marvelling at historical artifacts on public display, such as the 15th century water wheel, a windmill and a couple of ships. Finally I had dinner at a Dutch cafe run by Filipinos, where I had a nice view of the monitors that live in the river. Then I caught the bus to Tampin, where I walked in the dark for 20 minutes through an extremely desolate part of town before I reached the train station. On the plus side, I had been putting off taking the passport-size photo I needed for my Cambodian visa and I happened to pass by a photo studio while looking for the train station so, since I had copious amounts of time to kill, I got my photo taken.

Of course, after that I still had nearly 4 hours of waiting ahead of me, alone and in the dark, with no power outlets, let alone Internet access. I spent the last of my ringitts on a crappy meal, then read a book until I was too sleepy to continue and just lay on a bench for over an hour feeling zonked until the train finally arrived to put me out of my misery.

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When I was in the SF bay area, I was fond of a drink known as Malaysian Iced Tea, which was similar to the Thai version. Naturally, when I came to Malaysia, I began looking around for it. To my great bewilderment, nobody seemed to serve it! I started to suspect that perhaps it was one of those recipes that was actually invented in the US (presumably by Malaysia immigrants) and didn't really exist in Malaysia. This was a disappointing hypothesis because I had been eagerly looking forward to having some while here.

Today, however, I discovered that it does exist and is known locally as teh c peng or 3 layer tea. And the reason I had so much trouble finding it is that it's from East Malaysia (on the island of Borneo) while I've been in West Malaysia (on the peninsula South of Thailand).

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Nokia has long been pushing QT as the UI toolkit of choice on Symbian and plans to continue doing so. But Nokia has also been keeping one foot in another boat by using GTK as the UI toolkit on Maemo, it's other platform. Now, however, it seems that this schism is about to end as Nokia has combined forces with Chipzilla to merge Maemo with their MobLin and form MeeGo, which officially positions QT as the officially blessed UI toolkit. I've never used QT before but I imagine it can't be all that different from Gtkmm, in which I was immersed for 3 years. And it'll be the only major mobile platform to encourage app development in C++ (Unless the newly reborn WinMo 7 decides to follow suit).

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