If you read any other travel blogs besides mine, I’m sure you’ve noticed the ‘Capture the Colour’ contest that’s been going around. It’s simple, really. You just have to pick a picture that highlights each of the following colors: blue, green, yellow, white, and red. Of course, choosing photos is not always easy… but anyway, if you write a blog post with those things in it, you have the chance to win an iPad and/or £2000! Here is my entry.

Blue

When I was walking through the Buddha’s Tooth Temple in Singapore, I noticed that the lights looked really blue and made the statues look a little blue too. I really liked the wall of Buddha statues in various poses. The tooth for which the temple was named was supposedly found in Myanmar, though the veracity of it is disputed.

Green

I visited a friend in the Peace Corps in the Alajuela province of Costa Rica. As part of his project he of course met all the local people, including the woman in the next village over with a bread oven. She invited us to come help on bread-making day. We joined her, her children, and her oldest daughter’s husband and children in baking bread and empanadas. The kids mostly played, sometimes with this bright green pet parrot. This woman has the only brick oven in this village of about 200 people, so when she bakes, she bakes a lot, and sells or trades a lot of it. The family was proud of the oven, of their newly born piglets, and of their little parakeets in a cage. I really loved my day of learning to make empanadas and gaining great insight into rural Costa Rican village life.

Yellow

The splash of yellow bearing the numbers contrasts well with the racehorses’ coats at Seoul Race Park, in Seoul, South Korea. These horses are all Thoroughbreds, typically weighing about 1200 pounds. The maximum weight for a jockey, including all their gear, is 126 pounds, so as you can imagine they are usually rather short.

White

At sunrise near Hyeongiram Hermitage in Yeosu, South Korea, a white neon cross stands against the sky. Neon crosses became popular somewhat recently on Korean churches – at first they were a tool to attract the most followers (South Korea is rather competitive), but now they are simply the standard. Typically, they are red, to signify the blood of Christ, but this one was white.

Red

At the Yeosu World Expo in Yeosu, South Korea, a small crab seems to stare at me. I loved the splash of red on this female crab contrasted with the brown mud of the habitat.

Now I’m supposed to nominate 5 other bloggers to participate, so I’m going to nominate some of my fellow Korea-based bloggers:

• World Walk About
• Lateral Movements
• Nomadic Samuel
• That Backpacker
• The Wanderlust Project
• Waegook Tom

Oops! That was six! Oh well. But seriously, don’t wait to be nominated – it’s not required, and this contest is just too great to pass up!

We were tagged by Lauren of Lateral Movements to do the HostelBookers 7 Super Shots thing.

I am always up for a good meme, but choosing photos is so difficult. I have done it to the best of my ability. Enjoy!

A Photo That…

Takes my breath away

In New Zealand, every corner you round has a good chance of providing a new breathtaking view. I was most impressed with the landscape in and around Wanaka on the South Island. This photo is of Lake Hawea which is not far from Wanaka. The incredible blue water and the reflection of the mountains just left me speechless.

Makes me laugh/smile

This picture shows Jeff arm wrestling a high school Korean girl – and losing. I love her surprised expression when she realized she was winning.

Makes me dream

I love the soft colors of this picture, and how the sunset is just a blend of colors. It looks like a painting to me. Also, this was taken at my grandmother’s vacation house. This scene – the sun setting over the water behind the tree in the front yard – was the inspiration for my family tattoo. So it makes me dream of the past and it also just seems really dreamy.

Makes me think

This photo makes me think about a few different things: ladies’ fashion in South Korea, the culture of wearing/using English words in South Korea, and, indeed, who does care? I have more to say on the first two, which I will write about in the future.

Makes my mouth water

We’ve talked about roti canai before. We don’t always agree in our tastes, or fall head over heels for the same food – but roti is different. I think it’s fair to say that we both have the same intense passion for it. Looking at this picture of roti telur (roti filled with egg, served with curry) makes my mouth water a whole bunch and makes me want to hop on a plane to Malaysia immediately!

Tells a story

Our time in the tiny village of San Marcos, Costa Rica was incredible. Never have I felt so in touch with locals than when I visited my friend in the Peace Corps here. We also traveled to a neighboring village to help bake bread. This picture shows the family’s parrot perched on part of the main house, right next to the village’s only bread oven.You can tell a lot from this picture. The oven was made by hand, as nearly everything is in this rural community. The family lives in a very basic structure – the main house was wooden but the daughter lived in a small shack with metal siding and a dirt floor. The family has many pets and keeps pigs for food. We got a great glimpse into village life for the day.

I am most proud of (aka my worthy of National Geographic shot)

I took this picture in a garden section of the Singapore Zoo. When I pulled it up on my computer I couldn’t believe I had taken it! It’s actually straight out of the camera – no alteration. I love the crisp water droplets and the vibrant green on a darker background.

This was definitely a fun exercise, to go through a bunch of my photos and choose the best. It was difficult, though!

Tag

This is a really fun idea and you should do it! I especially want to see:

Andrea from World Walk About

Alex from Alex in Wanderland

Shannon from A Little Adrift

Jodi from Legal Nomads

Jessica and Dani from The Globetrotter Girls

When we were walking around Singapore, we stopped at a few sightseeing places in between eating lots of food. One of those places was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.

There is also a Buddhist Culture Museum in the temple, which we did not go to.

Luckily enough, pictures were allowed inside.

There was a room which showed you your personal Bodhisattva based on your Chinese zodiac animal.

Inside the temple are a lot of great statues.

The Buddha’s Tooth itself is on the fourth floor. I wish I had known when we went that there were so many floors to explore. We just saw the ground floor part, but there are a total of five floors you can see, and you can also go on the roof.

But with the weather like it was, I guess we wouldn’t have wanted to go on the roof anyway…

Details:

• Location: The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple is on South Bridge Road south of Chinatown MRT Station. It’s just down the street from Sri Mariamman Temple.
• Hours: The temple is open 7 AM – 7 PM every day.
• Admission: Free!
• Other Info: You need to wear appropriate clothes – mostly, make sure your shoulders are covered and that your pants or skirt cover your knees. There are ‘modesty sarongs’ available at each entrance, for no charge I believe. No non-vegetarian food or pets are allowed inside.

Singapore’s food is fairly similar to that of Malaysia. Generally the same groups of people live in Singapore as do in Malaysia. Some say the only things to do in Singapore are eat and shop. I don’t know about that, but I do know that if you stick with eating you won’t go wrong.

Food in Singapore is not as cheap as in Malaysia, but it is still affordable. If you stick to hawker centres, you will be getting delicious food as well as great deals (a meal can easily be had for under S$5). I went to Tekka Centre in Little India and Chinatown Complex in Chinatown, but there are lots more (the Wikipedia link to hawker centres lists notable hawker centres in Singapore – start there for ideas).

Another way to eat affordably is to go to food courts in malls. It won’t be as cheap as a hawker centre (S$5-10 for a meal) but it won’t break the bank, either. I also found that the food at mall food courts was not as good as the food at hawker centres.

Here are some of the foods I ate in Singapore.

Kaya Butter Toast

Kaya is a coconut jam popular in Malaysia and Singapore. Kaya butter toast is just what it sounds like – butter and kaya on some toast. The best specimens of it are lightly browned on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. This one we got from a random place in Chinatown heavily advertising kaya toast. It was delicious. Kaya toast is usually S$1-2. Here’s a guide to finding good kaya toast in Singapore.

Goreng Pisang

Goreng pisang is simply fried banana. It’s tasty. Sweet and crunchy, and the banana is a little firm. I found it at a vendor on Chinatown food street (so the sign said). Here’s a list of good places. Should be S$0.60-1.

Hong Kong-style Dim Sum

At Chinatown Complex, there were several stalls selling ‘Hong Kong-style Dim Sum’. We got char siew buns and chive dumplings – both tasty! About S$2-3 per plate, which is 3 pieces of dim sum, as you can see.

Butter Chicken

Of course, Singapore has Indian food. I stayed in Little India and went to Tekka Centre twice in the two days I was staying there. I got some butter chicken the first night. It was pretty tasty. I don’t remember the exact price, but I’d say about S$3.

The best juice of my life

There’s this blended juice stall right next to Chinatown MRT Station. It’s got a bunch of options. There are single juice varieties, and mixes. If you’re looking for the best juice ever, order yourself a dragonfruit soursop juice. It is more than you might want to pay for juice, at S$4, but isn’t that nothing to pay for the best juice of your life? I thought so.

Wonton Noodles

Singapore-style wonton noodles are very similar to the Malaysian style. I got some at a Food Republic food court on Orchard Road. It is served dry or in soup (I got it in soup), and has noodles, bok choy, char siew (barbecued pork), and wonton. It was about S$5. It was tasty, though a little too sweet for me.

Ginger chicken rice, aka worst meal of the trip

On the way to the zoo, we stopped at a food court next to Ang Mo Kio MRT Station. I got ginger chicken rice. It was mediocre, and cost S$5. Even though it wasn’t terrible, just not very exciting, it was the worst food of the trip. Really, I think that just says something about the quality of the food in Malaysia and Singapore.

Fettucine Alfredo

On our last night in Singapore, we decided to splurge on a nice meal. It was at a place called The Pizza Place in Raffles City. I got fettucine alfredo, potato skins, and an IBC root beer. Yes, it was indulgent. It was about S$20. The fettucine was creamy and cheesy and I loved it, especially because that sort of thing is difficult to find and incredibly expensive in Korea.

Singapore is a delicious place to go. I know a lot of backpackers skip it, because it’s more expensive than many other places in Southeast Asia. But I think it’s absolutely worth a visit, and you can easily eat there on a budget!

While the “world’s best zoo” is not a title that graces any particular zoo, there are 5 or 10 zoos that are often considered the best in the world. The Singapore Zoo is one of them. After visiting on my recent trip, I can absolutely agree.

The zoo is located in a lush rainforest area next to the Upper Seletar Reservoir, so the setting is rather beautiful.

But the thing that makes this zoo so excellent (besides the top-notch care the animals are clearly getting) is the ‘open’ or ‘cageless’ exhibit plan. Of course, there are barriers. But they are mostly hidden or very low. You feel like you can get right up next to the animals. It’s also way better than a typical zoo for pictures, because there’s no bars in the way!

I also noticed very little of the behaviors that are associated with boredom – the animals all looked very happy. Without further ado, here are some of my pictures from the zoo.

Details:

• Location: The zoo is at 80 Mandai Road. There are two best ways to get there – take a shuttle from Orchard Road, Little India, Beach Road, or Chinatown. Ask your hotel or hostel for info and booking you a ticket (about S$4). The other way is to take the MRT then take a bus. You can get off at Ang Mo Kio Station and take bus 138, or get off at Choa Chu Kang Station and take bus 927. Bus 138 was S$1.80 and you need exact change. The MRT will be around S$2.
• Hours: 8:30 AM to 6 PM daily.
• Admission: Just a ticket to the zoo is S$20 for adults. You can add unlimited tram rides for S$5 (it’s a big zoo) and there are a few other packages available as well.
• Other info: There are a few shows and animal feedings. There are also times you can feed various animals for S$5. The Singapore Zoo website is very well done, so check it out for all the info you need.

Chess pieces for sale in Singapore’s Chinatown.

The food is excellent in Malaysia and Singapore. One thing you will probably notice is the abundance of fresh tropical fruit. It’s sold whole and sliced, and as fresh juice. Here is my alphabetical list of fruits in Malaysia and Singapore, and what I do and don’t like (note: no, this is not every fruit available! There are too many.)

Ciku

Ciku (pronounced like cheekoo) is the Malay word for what is sometimes better known as sapodilla. The fruit grows on an evergreen tree which is native to Latin America. It is a brown oval-shaped fruit that varies in size from the length of your pointer finger to the length of your hand. It’s brown inside with 2 large seeds. Depending on how ripe it is, it can taste a little like brown sugar or it can taste very strongly of brown sugar (and maybe a bit of a rum flavor). I like ciku but it wasn’t one of my favorites.

Dragonfruit

Dragonfruit, also known as pitaya, is a cactus fruit native to Central and South America. They are usually pink with small green leaf-like things on the outside. The inside can be pink or white depending on variety, and has many small edible seeds much like a kiwifruit. It’s juicy and mildly sweet; it’s not strong but it is refreshing. I absolutely love dragonfruit, and I think the kind that’s pink inside is more delicious. It makes an amazing juice when combined with soursop (below). Just cut it open and cut off the skin and enjoy!

Durian

Durian, often called the King of Fruits, is absolutely unmistakable. It’s native to Southeast Asia. It is usually a bit smaller than a soccer ball and is covered in spikes. It also has a very strong smell, and you will learn to recognize it while traveling in Malaysia. Because of this it is occasionally banned from public places, such as Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit and the hostel we stayed at in Penang. The flesh is yellow. It was not durian season while we were there and so we didn’t have any fresh durian. I did try a durian egg crème and I’ve had frozen durian before. The taste is reminiscent of a cantaloupe, but then the smell kicks in and I honestly can’t take it. Sorry folks, no durian fans here.

Honey Mango

I mentioned that the honey mango was my favorite fruit in Malaysia. I’m sure you all know mangoes well, but you should also know that you should choose a yellow one if possible. I don’t like the green ones. The skin of the mango as well as the flesh close to it can be very astringent (you don’t eat the skin and sometimes you won’t want to eat the bit around the skin). I highly recommend eating a mango or five in Malaysia.

Jackfruit

Jackfruit is a large (it can get up to 80 pounds!) fruit native to India. It does not have a strong smell so if you see something that looks like jackfruit but smells like durian, it is probably cempedak (which we did not get to try). Inside the fruit looks stringy and fibrous. Usually you’ll buy it cut up, since you probably don’t want an entire jackfruit. The flavor is not strong, but it is sweet, though dry. I like it but I don’t think it’s amazing; however you should definitely try it.

Jambu Air

Jambu is in the bottom left corner.

Jambu air or water apple is a native Malaysian fruit. It looks like a small bell pepper and can be red or green. As the name suggests the texture is similar to an apple, and it is mostly juicy with a bit of sweetness. The red kind is sweeter than the green kind. You can eat the skin.

Mangosteen

Mangosteen is a strong contender for most delicious fruit of the trip. Native to Indonesia, it is a round hard purple fruit with a few leaves usually left at the top. Inside the flesh is white and sectioned. Some sections have large seeds which you shouldn’t eat. It tastes very sweet and really nice. The US apparently lifted its ban on imported mangosteens in 2007 but they are nearly unfindable in basically any form. So go somewhere like Malaysia and eat up!

Papaya

Papaya is a very familiar fruit to most people and is native to Mexico.  You can buy papaya slices throughout Malaysia (if you get a whole one, remove the skin and seeds before eating). I am honestly not a fan of papaya (the flavor is disagreeable to me) but I hear that the papaya in Malaysia is especially good, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Soursop

Soursop (which is durian belanda in Malay and guanabana in Spanish) is a green, slightly spiky fruit native to Mexico, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. The flesh is white and pulpy and has inedible seeds throughout it. I have yet to actually eat whole soursop; the one above was not, in fact, ripe. However it tastes fantastic as juice or made into ice cream. As you can imagine it is pretty tangy but also a bit sweet.

Other Fruits

Like I said, this list is not even close to being all-inclusive. It leaves out such things as bananas, pineapple, starfruit, apples, longan, rambutan, and guava, among other things. But I don’t have good pictures of those, or they are coming in an upcoming post about the Penang Tropical Fruit Farm. I do apologize if I left out your favorite.

What’s your favorite tropical fruit?

While on the trip, Jeff thought of a fantastic idea, and that is to have trip awards for my recent two-week trip to Malaysia and Singapore. I went to four cities – KL, Melaka, Singapore, and George Town, Penang (hereafter referred to simply as Penang because, while the city is actually George Town, people recognize and use the name of the island more often). Here is how they measured up in various categories.

Best Food – Melaka. I have to admit this one may be biased. We hit Melaka on our third day and therefore the food we were trying was all stuff we were very interested in trying. By the time we got to Penang we were on the bottom of our list, trying stuff just because we were told to. However, there’s no denying that food in Melaka is outstanding. There’s plenty of Indian, Chinese, Malay, and Nyonya food, as well as a small Portuguese settlement which I didn’t make it to but I hear has great Malay-Portuguese fusion cuisine and seafood. I had the best mango lassi of my life here.

Best Fruit – Hard to say. Everywhere except Melaka had abundant and easily findable fruit (not that you can’t find it in Melaka, it’s just not as ubiquitous). Jeff thinks, and I have to agree, that the best individual kind of fruit available was the honey mango. If you haven’t had a really sweet and juicy honey mango, you’re missing out.

Best Hotel/Hostel - Conrad Centennial, Singapore. There’s really no contest here; thanks to HHonors points we got to stay in an incredibly fancy place. It was the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen. I only wish I had had more time to enjoy it (and to use the pool).

Best Weather – Singapore. We went in monsoon season so of course it rained just about every day of the trip. Somehow we were never caught outside in it. However Singapore, while still rainy, was the coolest and least humid of the places we visited. Penang, on the other hand, was nearly unbearably scorching.

Most Vibrant – Kuala Lumpur. Maybe it’s just a result of its size, but Kuala Lumpur is absolutely bustling. It’s bursting with colors and smells and textures. The people are diverse and interesting. The city, to me, feels more vibrant and alive than many places, and I really enjoyed it because of that.

Best Museum – Royal Malaysian Customs Museum, Melaka. It was a hot day and the Customs Museum was in front of us, air-conditioned, and free. Upon entering we discovered this museum which covers more mundane aspects of Malaysian history is way more interesting than it should seemingly have a right to be. All I know is I was totally fascinated.

Best Zoo – Singapore Zoo, Singapore. This was the only zoo we visited on the trip, but I think it deserves a mention as it is regularly ranked among the top zoos in the world. I can see why. With a “cage-less” design and in its rainforest setting, it’s beautiful. You feel like you’re getting much closer to the animals and it’s a much better view. Best of all, all the animals we saw looked very happy.

Best Building – Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur. While the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore is a very close contender, I just couldn’t get enough of the Petronas Twin Towers. There’s something almost magnetic about them. Go there and I think you’ll get it.

Best Skyline – Singapore. Just look at this picture of the CBD at night if you need convincing.

Place I’d Most Want to Live – Penang or Singapore. Honestly I would love to live in Singapore. It’s clean and in many ways very much like a Western city except it happens to be in Southeast Asia. The food can still be pretty cheap. I imagine though that housing comes at a premium (though a quick Craigslist search found a one bedroom for SGD900 a month including utilities, so maybe I’m wrong!). Anyway I told Jeff we should live there if we’re rich. Penang also seems quite livable and almost certainly more affordable. At first I liked it less than other Malaysian cities but I think that it’s just a city that’s a little slower to love. Which is just fine by me – there’s a lot to discover there.

This concludes my trip awards. Can you think of important categories I missed? Do you agree or disagree with my assessment of any of these places?

For week 8 of the Indie Travel Challenge, the prompt is about budgets. As I recently went on a trip during which I recorded everything I spent, I can talk about this well.

Here is a summary of how much my trip cost. All prices are in US dollars.

Trip length: 15 days, with 12 days in Malaysia and 3 days in Singapore
Total spent (includes airfare): $1073.95
Airfare: $476.48 (44%)
Food: $215.55 (20%)
Lodging: $171.25 (15.9%)
Transportation (does not include airfare): $83.38 (7.8%)
Attractions: $75.47 (7%)
Shopping: $64.79 (6%)
Bottled Water: $4.78 (0.45%)
Other (this includes things like toothpaste, and laundry): $9.30 (0.86%)

My daily costs ran to $71.60 a day if you include airfare. Malaysia was $34.15 a day (not including airfare), while Singapore was $62.54 a day.

I feel like this trip was not especially budget friendly. However, I wasn’t attempting to make it as cheap as possible – I wanted to spend less than $1000, but I didn’t quite make that. I didn’t travel with a mindset of sticking to a budget or spending less. It was vacation, and a paid one at that (during the two weeks I made just about as much as I spent). So that is part of the high cost. The other part was some unusual expenses: I bought a camera bag and UV lens filter in Singapore ($60), I ate at one of the best Italian restaurants in Kuala Lumpur and paid for half of a local friend’s meal ($35), and I paid for Jeff’s entry to the Singapore Zoo as a birthday present ($20). I took advantage of the cheap food in both countries to eat a whole ton, and I got juice or tea with every meal instead of just drinking water. Also, sometimes I paid for Jeff or he paid for me, so the totals are a bit skewed (although I did subtract the money Jeff owes me).

We stayed in hostels and all but 3 nights we got private rooms. I chose a more expensive hostel in KL the first night for AC and location, and then decided to stay there on our last night too. The extra 3 nights were 2 nights in a dorm in Singapore (the most expensive accommodations of the trip) and one night in the Conrad Centennial in Marina Bay, Singapore which we got for free with Hilton rewards points (a $350 value!).

Of course you can travel for much cheaper in the area. You can stay in dorms or CouchSurf to save on accommodations. You can do a longer trip and move around less (we took 5 long distance buses which were $3-10 but that adds up). You can skip or find discounts on the more expensive attractions (I was just sort of lazy about it). You can eat less roti (but would you want to?) or generally not eat constantly. You could save $3 and not buy an amazing peacock t-shirt.

The area I plan to cut out in future travels is buying bottled water. I know, I spent barely $5 on water for two weeks, or about 40 cents a day (I bought no water in Singapore for various reasons so I’m not counting those days). But at that rate (assuming water is as cheap wherever else I go, which I can almost guarantee it won’t be in some places) bottled water will cost you $146 a year. Not to mention the negative environmental impact since many countries, like for instance Malaysia, have no recycling. What I plan to do instead is buy a filtered water bottle, like this one. That’s kind of a pricey one but it’s nice and is supposed to last 6 months. So if I went for that, it would cost about 22 cents a day or $80 a year. Cheaper filter bottles could be only 16 cents a day or $60 a year. This is a small but easy way you can save $60-80 over a year of travel, which will allow you to spend more on food or things to do!

After two weeks in tropical weather I am back to cold Incheon (it’s a bit above freezing today). We arrived back on Saturday night. There was another English teacher we knew on the flight and we were able to stand and chat for a couple of hours which made the time go fast. The flight got in at 9:30 but the lines for immigration were absolutely terrible. We were ready to leave at about 11:15. Of course the last Incheon buses left at 11. We barely got the 11:30 airport train (the last one), then made the last Incheon line 1 train. Our luck ran out at Bupyeong though, and we had to taxi home. Ah well.

It was an excellent vacation, which I’ll be writing about in detail over the coming weeks. We spent a lot of time eating, walking, and sleeping. I ate a lot of fresh fruit and roti/prata. The food in Malaysia is amazing, varied, and cheap. Singapore was less cheap and the food wasn’t quite as good. But still, tasty. We toured a fruit farm, went to some museums, and went to the Singapore Zoo. We were pretty lazy which is appropriate for a vacation.

There wasn’t time enough to see everything. I think I got my fill of Melaka, but Penang, KL, and Singapore hold so much more that I want to do. We didn’t make it to Langkawi, instead choosing to spend extra time in Penang and allowing us to skip taking an overnight bus (I don’t sleep well on buses and my new habit of getting motion sick on them doesn’t bode well either).

Here’s a teaser photo of a cool thing I saw.

What’s strange is that though before the trip we had a million plans, we hadn’t planned a single thing beyond it. So now we’ve got nothing going on. I’ll have to remedy that, and start planning my next big adventure too.