The 3 days in Singapore were my last stop of my Southeast Asia trip. I went there to visit my friends Kay and Emilia and I did not expect the city itself to be very interesting after all I have heard from other people. Accommodation is quite expensive, so I was happy that I could stay in Kay’s appartement. Unfortunately my friends were rather busy at that time, so I had to spend the daytime alone. But Singapore proved to have to have easily enough to offer to keep one entertained for much longer than a few days.

I started my days with breakfast together with Kay at a branch of a chain founded by the owner of one of the original old hawker stalls. Kaya Toast with Kopi has quickly become one of my favorite breakfast dishes. Kaya is kind of a coconut/egg jam and Kopi is a coffee brewed very strong and whitened with condensed milk. The coffee is so strong that the color after adding the milk is still dark brown. Sometimes sugar is added during the roasting of the beans, this gives the coffee a slight aroma of caramel.

After breakfast I went exploring the city on my own. I visited Chinatown with its Chinese temples and the South Indian Sri Mariamman Mandir, its small alleys stuffed with market stalls catering mainly for tourists. I took in the atmosphere of Little India, tasting Indian sweets and stocking up on Bollywood movies. A visit to the Mustafa shopping center was also on the program. This is an amazing place, in a way it feels more Indian than a shopping center in India! They claim to stock about 75000 different items and on weekends they have 15000 customers. I was there on a Sunday and the lanes were so packed with people (no need to say that the vast majority were Indians) that it was difficult to get through. I also visited the biggest mosque of Singapore, the Masjid Sultan, with its innovative donation machine, and of course I had to take some pictures of the Singaporean skyline. The picture at the top shows the financial district, it has been taken from the Esplanade bridge near the “Durian” (the Esplanade Theatres).

I am generally not a fan of museums, but I was genuinely impressed of the National Museum of Singapore. It is easily the best designed museum I ever visited. The main exhibition shows the history of the island of Singapore from ancient times (they show a fragment of the oldest found stone inscription made in a yet undeciphered script), to the sultanates, the arrival of the Europeans, the invasion of the Japanese, finally the independence. Several of the old professions are explained like the chinese street hawkers, the rickshaw drivers or the money lenders from India. The political tensions of the years before and after independence are explained, and the plans for industrialization and modernization that made Singapore to what it is today. The quality of the museum comes not only from the well chosen exhibits, but also from the clever use of technology there are many video presentations and the visitor gets an audio player which plays the audio track in his own language. There is a good balance between reading, looking at exhibits, and watching/listening to video presentations. This assures that the museum visit does not get boring even after hours.

I also visited some shopping malls and I used the opportunity to shop for electronic gadgets at the Sim Lim Square. I was able to resist the temptation to buy one of those nifty mpeg4 video players and got instead a Wifi Detector. It is actually a usb wifi adaptor, but can be used standalone (with integrated rechargeable battery and lcd display) to show all detected wlan signals with details as speed and encryption. I hope it will prove useful on my travels to find open wifi access points that I can use with my laptop.

In the evenings I met again with Kay and we went eating in one of the many food courts where you get dishes from all over the region for a low price.

So far Singapore would be my favorite city if I ever would want to work in Asia. There you can have all the western comforts, you can eat out cheaply. Very important for foreigners, I think one gets easily accepted. Thanks to the many ethnicies that compose the Singaporean population, tolerance for other people is very high.

After 3 days it was already time to say good bye again. When looking back I’d like to have had more time for Southeast Asia, but as I booked a low cost flight, it was not possible to change the date and I was forced to leave. I hope it was not the last time I visit that region.

Spotted inside the main entrance of Masjid Sultan (mosque) in Singapore.

What looks so much like an ATM , is in fact a machine to give donations to the masjid. I assume the money gets transferred directly from your banking account to the account of the masjid. And you get immediately a printed recipe which you can use for claiming income tax deductions.

How innovative, they should introduce such machines in our churches!

I found bills like this one sticked all over Melaka, Malaysia: Public Talk: Will Israel attack Iran?. I was a bit shocked by that title because the idea that Israel would do something like that seems to me to be quite absurd. First I wondered if the Malays were radical Muslims because the idea of Israel attacking seemed to be quite popular. But then I realized that I might be about to succumb to a common prejudices about Islam, about Muslims being aggressive and bloodthirsty, wanting to annihilate Israel and ultimately all the infidels. I don’t really now much about Islam in Malaysia, it could as well be of the moderate type. And I did not attend that talk, so as much as I know it could even have been more pro-Israel than it seems from the title…

Does anyone know some good articles summarizing the relation of Malaysia and Israel?

Yesterday I witnessed the arrival of the monsoon for the second time in the last fortnight, this time in Varanasi (aka Banaras|Kashi).

I was walking in a small lane, half way from my guesthouse to my tabla teacher, when I had to stop to take some pictures of the incoming clouds. You can see the result on the right. Shortly after that shot it started to pour down like crazy and despite my umbrella I got soaked from head to toe within seconds, the contents of my wallet and my travel notes suffered the most. Within minutes the lanes were transformed into torrents. Luckily my camera did survive, but I did not dare to take pictures during the downpour.
Today I saw a picture in the morning paper taken at the Dasaswamedh Ghat (also called Main Ghat). It showing massive amounts of water rushing down the steps of the ghat. It looks incredible.

When I was sitting there soaked to the skin, I thought at least the lanes will be clean afterwards. But it did not stay like that for long. Just a few hours after the rains stopped, the lane looked again like a garbage dump. This is one of the things in India I will never be able to understand, how can one do this to ones own living space? :roll:

found in the toilet of the Raggae Bar, Kuala Lumpur

After a couple of days in Bangkok (crazy place, and quite “dangerous” for single male travelers…) I moved on directly to the island Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand.

Here I started scuba diving again, after 7 years of forced abstinence because of insufficient funds. It feels absolutely phantastic to be under water again! So far I went diving every day (there is not much else to do here anyway besides diving and partying, and I am not that much into the latter). Tomorrow I will complete my 50th dive, would be nice to spot a whaleshark on that occasion to celebrate my scuba diving career

Now I really regret that I have only calculated one month for Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, I would love to stay longer and check the diving sites next to peninsular Malaysia at Pulau Perhentian or to make a trip to Borneo. I checked if I can change the flight date, but it is not possible with these ultra lowcost tickets. The only way to stay longer would be to let the tickets expire and book a new one way ticket. Lets see what I feel like when I reach Singapore…

btw that is me in the picture

There are quite a few activities on offer for the tourists in and around the Royal Chitwan National Park. By far the most fun of all is for sure bathing with the elephants.

Every day before noon the mahouts (‘elephant driver’) bring their elephants to the river to wash and scrub them. For a small tip you can join them, help them scrub, and frolic in the water together with the big grey. The elephants seem to enjoy it as much as the tourists do.

If you know some Hindi, you can even try to give “your” elephant commands like ‘ooper do’, and if you got it right he will splash you with water from his trunk

I had great fun and it was a good conclusion for my all to short Nepal adventure.

Last night I slept on a watchtower in the jungle. For dinner I had a fine Daal bhaat tarkari (lentil soup, rice, curried vegetables and pickles), the Nepali version of a Thali. The guide also offered me some delicious spiced and dried fish from the local river, and a big glass of Raksi (rice wine) which proved to be stronger than it appeared at first and made me go to bed early…

We got up early at dawn. I love the sound of the awakening jungle, with every single bird calling and twittering. It is the time when the forest seems to be alive the most. We then went for a short walk in the jungle and I was lucky to meet a big, male One Horned Indian Rhino at short distance (well I was taking refuge on a tree at that time )