wrapping up last year

Okay, only a little bit slack on the posts about Singapore... well maybe a little bit more than a little. I knew I was in trouble when I wrote "More on that soon" in the last post. Alarm bells went off in my head. Memories of "coming soon" websites with their little under-construction animated .gif came flooding forth. I forcefully ignored the warnings and wrote "More on that soon" anyway. Foolish!

Oh well. Now I have some time to write about Singapore. Why now? Well I've just arrived in Sweden! haha... I've got spare time on my hands. No tennis, no basketball, and thanks to Easter, no work either! :-)

So before I start writing about Sweden I'll wrap up last year, by putting a few words to paper (err... keyboard?) about my weekend in Singapore. Looking through the photos, I took some good ones (modest aren't I?), and I have some good memories of the place.

Singapore is a melting pot of races: Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Malay are the most prominent. Thank goodness for this too because after 3 weeks in Cambodia I can remember I was ready for a good curry! I spent most of the days visiting different cafés and restaurants in search of variety. On Friday night I had a cheap dumplings and noodles (and beer) at a hawker stall in the Malaysian red-light district. Saturday I went for a wander around town taking in sights like the incredible concert hall:

I had a western meal in town - cappuccinos etc. Singapore is known for its' shopping, and I could see why. I wasn't in the mood for shopping and just went to Borders for a couple of new books (I'd run out in Phnom Penh). Singapore has an awesome public transport system, and somewhat amusingly if you are less than 90cm tall, you can ride for free!

During World War 2, Singapore was invaded by the Japanese. I visited Changi prison which is where many Australian P.O.W.'s were held. It was great as it also included information about what it was like for the local Chinese and Malay population too. What interested me was that the Japanese spread propaganda that they would treat the Asian population well ("Asia is for Asians") - only to invade and treat them worse than the foreigners! Civilian deaths were quite high, and there is a memorial near the centre of town:

This simple and stark monument stands 70-metres tall. Other photos of it are in my Picasa album.

Saturday night I had some excellent Arabic kebabs, I liked them so much I went back the following lunch time for more. I had to visit Sim Lim on my last day in Singapore. It is a 6-story shopping centre with only computer stores in it! It's like a permanent swap-meet gone mad. It's also near Little India, so I could get a decent curry :-)

In no specific order because my memory has faded a bit, I also visited the Australian pub, the "Prince of Wales", to make sure it lives up to the reputation of the St. Kilda name-sake. It's not as large of course, but they do host quite a bit of live music. Singapore has a very sensible way of running its' zoo: at night. Most animals are nocturnal right? Right. So why not run the zoo at night? Very good idea. The night safari zoo was good thing to do, I'd recommend visiting it. Watch out for the "free" bus scam however: free on the way there, not so free on the way back. Finally I also visited the Swissôtel hotel in town:

It's big, very big. I had a meal up on the observation deck. Unfortunately Singapore's weather for the weekend had a pattern to it: sunny in the morning, tropical down pours in the afternoon; and so the view wasn't great. It didn't matter though, I could still survey the middle of town and see where I had been over the weekend. And it had been a good relaxing weekend at that. Now, I can say with certainty, there will be posts on Sweden very, very, soon.

cat-fish for lunch

Trivia about Siem Reap: it's name literally means "Siamese Defeated". It's a bit boastful really, since then the Thais have been far more dominant than the Cambodians. Thailand even controlled Siem Reap for a hundred or so years until the French took it off them.

Anyway, near Siem Reap there is a small village called Chong Kneas. The village is made of houses on stilts and boats. During the dry season, half the village has to move in to the middle of Lake Tonlé Sap as the lake dries up and drops as much as 8 meters in depth. This is actually quite useful to the villagers as the exposed land can then be used to grow rice. In addition to floating houses, the town also has floating churches, schools, businesses and even a floating basketball court!

The lake provides one of the worlds largest fresh-water fish catches, but the unfortunate downside to this is the size of the fish being caught is dropping. Cat-fish used to be around 6kg, but now it's rare to catch anything over 1.5kg out of the lake. Working around this the locals have started fish farming. We went to one of the farms and were able to have a freshly caught (and killed) 3.5kg cat-fish for lunch. Yum!
I like the Cambodians attitude to food - if it's edible, then eat it. Frogs, beatles, crickets, spiders, and crocodiles are all on the menu somewhere in the country. The fish farm also farmed crocodiles. These were out of our price range though. A full crocodile sets you back around $400.
Yup, you can even buy snakes for eating at your convenience on the lake.

eating locally

Despite not being overseas, I emulated an overseas trip this week by eating at not one, not two, but three Spanish restaurants. It turned out I was staying in the "Spanish Quarter" of Sydney. All three of these restaurants were within 50 metres of my hotel! If I was staying longer, I believe there were more just around the corner too.

Monday night: Don Quixote. A huge meal! Roast suckling pig - awesome stuff. A clear path to my heart via my stomach. This was a traditional meal from the Madrid region in the middle of Spain. It was followed up with a "Spanish Coffee", which was a strong espresso with some kind of liquor and cream.

Tuesday night: My non-Spanish night. Counter meal at a pub with Mark. Tandoori Pizza - a dish of confused origins!!

Wednesday night: Miro Tapas Bar. I thought I might have a few dishes, but after two I was full! Firstly, fried white bait, followed by chilli mushrooms. They served some beer from Barcelona called Estrella Damm; it was really nice. I had to consume two : )

Thursday night: Captain Torres. Named after Torres who was the first European to sail thought the straits between PNG & Australia - hence Torres Straits. Anyway, this was a restaurant upstairs and tapas bar downstairs. I was going to have tapas again, and sat at the bar. The barman however convinced me to have a meal at the bar, he told me the fried flounder was way better than the baby octopus that was on my mind. I suspect he was right too, the flounder was excellent! This place also served Spanish beers. I didn't recognise (and can't remember now anyway) the towns in which they were brewed. First I had an Ambar, which could be the brand, or the type of brew - it did taste like an amber ale. The second one was Estrella Cerveza Especial, which wasn't as good as Esrtella Damm from the previous night.

Hence this caps off my week of Spanish culinary delights. Work went well too! We were able to finish 2 days ahead of schedule, even after fixing a few problems along the way. My phone died during some testing which is annoying. I took some photos of beers for the beer challenge, but now they are stuck on my broken phone. *grumbles*

I've started mapping my travels on travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm. It's not too interesting yet, but it'll grow!