We made our first overseas vacation in May 2007. We started small with the tried and tested South East Asia routine of easily accessible (and not so expensive) places at Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore- Bangkok, Pattaya, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. We have put up some snaps from the trip here.
Our unanimous stack ranking for these places was Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Pattaya and Singapore. This incidentally is exactly opposite to what the hype machinery and marketing propaganda led us to expect. Bangkok and KL surprised us with the charm of the city, and we really enjoyed traveling around both the cities, interacting with the locals and just hanging around some of the markets. Pattaya was along the expected lines of a tourist place. But Singapore was very disappointing- the city doesn't really have a soul in our opinion and almost works as an automaton. And all the so called attraction we pure hype with very little substance.
Prologue
We didn't want to go through a conducted tour, but wanted the peace of mind of having someone do all our travel arrangements at the same time. After a lot of phone calls and surfing, we decided to get our tour organized by Kesari Tours. They gave pretty competitive rates, and they are well reputed in Pune-Bombay area. The downside of this though was that we had to fly out of Bombay instead of Hyderabad.
The last part turned out to be much more than we had bargained for, as my Singapore visa was initially rejected for not having a leave letter from my company of all things! Net effect was that our passports and air tickets were still in Bombay at the Kesari office on the day of the journey :-0. It was a pretty disconcerting feeling to set out on an "international" vacation with neither passport nor tickets and to top it all no foreign exchange (as you need the first two to get the third :(). The Kesari guy landed up outside the Bombay domestic airport terminal, but the tricky part was the we couldn't leave the airport premises if we wanted to avail the internal shuttle to the international airport. I managed to sweet talk the security guy manning the gate to make an exception for me to go outside the premises and come back. The shuttle service was pretty good and uneventful. However, being forced to take foreign exchange at the international airport (only one option- Thomas Cook) was no fun as the rates were much worse than the ones I was getting at their Hyderabad office :(. Anyway, now that all the prerequisites for embarking on our journey were finally met, we tried to put all these hiccups in the "lessons to be learnt" section of our minds and focus on the good times ahead.
PS: On a side note, I caused some chaos at the conveyer belt by dropping our suitcase on none other than Aruna Irani herself!
Day 1: Bangkok
The first leg of the journey from Bombay to Bangkok by Thai Airways was pretty good - no delays, window and aisle (2 seats only in the side sections), decent food and pleasant crew. Sheetal picked up Sawadee from the crew big time, and would utter the word countless times over the next several weeks. The flight to Bangkok lasted around 3.5 hours. The Suvarnabhoomi airport at Bangkok is pretty impressive, especially on the size and looks front. Unfortunately, the immigration process was less than ideal. I had somehow managed in my sleep to tell the air hostess that I do not need to fill the arrival/departure form. So, when I landed up at the immigration counter, I was asked to get those forms and fill them up. Fair enough- but they were out of stock with the forms at that terminal, and I was asked to go to the next. And from there to the next... It was a pretty frustrating experience- I was running around for a good 20 minutes from one terminal to another and from one official to another before I was given two forms. And to rub it in, the queue was a good 200m long by the time I got back, so that took care of another 40 minutes of our time. Luckily, we had applied for the Thailand visa in Bombay itself, else that would have added another half an hour easily. The saving grace though were the pleasant immigration officials sitting at the counter.
We found a local tour operator waiting with a plaque having our names on it at the arrival lounge, giving us the first confirmation that the trip planning was indeed completed in spite of the issues with the visas. The lady accompanied us to Hotel Ambassador that is located in Sukhumvit, making the journey interesting for us as we spent all our energy in trying to decipher her English! The hotel was very well located with a BTS train station (Nana) less that 5 minutes walk away. There was a 7/11 across the road (we had been advised by friends to buy lots of water from the nearest 7/11 and carry the required amount wherever we go, and this was one tip that stood us in good stead right through the trip).
After freshening up, we took a BTS train to MBK Mall (Siam station is connected to the mall via sky bridge). The mall was way too big for us to even aspire to cover the whole of it, and we ended up doing only about 2 levels. Apart from decent lunch at the top level, the other noteworthy place was a toy store in one of the lower levels that had a great collection of innovate toys. They were almost entirely unbranded, but were really good and inexpensive (200-300 baht). After tiring ourselves with around 3 hours of roaming, we headed back to the hotel. One unfortunate side effect of getting so tired was that we didn't have the energy to make it to Wat Arun that evening, nor were we in a position to start early the next morning to be able to make it to the flower market. Dinner was street food for me, and an (over priced!) Indian dinner for Sheetal.
Day 2: Bangkok
We headed out for a conducted half day city tour, which focused (expectedly) on some very beautiful Buddhist temples- Golden Buddha (Wat Traimit), Reclining Buddha and Marble Temple. One common aspect to all these temples was the remarkable calmness in the temple, in spite of having hundreds of tourists buzzing around you. The reclining Buddha was much larger than I anticipated it to be, and it was good fun trying to capture its length on camera. Our favorite though was the Marble Temple- totally devoid of tourists, tranquil peace and an interesting collection of Buddha statues from various parts of Asia and from various time periods. We had a very good tour guide as well who patiently sat and explained the nuances and significance of each of the statues, from the posture of their hands to the length and curve of the ears. We went to the Grand Palace as well hoping to see the Emerald Buddha, but the temple was closed for the day as the Thai Princess was apparently praying there that day.
After our share of temples, we made the obligatory (and in our case thoroughly boring) visit to a Gems showroom before heading out on our own to the insanely dense and crowded Chatuchak weekend market. We must have spent a good 4 hours or so roaming around alley after alley of shops, containing stuff ranging from artifacts and showpieces to furniture and clothes. The shoppers were almost entirely locals, perhaps suggesting that it is the right place to be buying stuff for tourists as well:). As if we hadn't had our share of shopping for the day, we headed to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar from there :D (catching a MRT subway from Chatuchak Park to Lumphini). This was a more upmarket bazaar, and we could actually roam around the whole place in a couple of hours without ever getting lost or feeling claustrophobic. We ended up picking more stuff as well- traditional Chinese dresses for Ilisa and an imitation Rolex being the highlights. One salient feature of shopping at these night bazaars is the bargaining- almost everything was given at 30%-50% of the quoted price (at least that is all that we could manage). We had dinner at the bazaar itself, feasting on not too expensive seafood while live music was being played out on stage, before catching a train back to the hotel (MRT to Sukhumvit, walk to Asok and take a BTS to Nana).
Day 3: Pattaya
We headed for Pattaya after breakfast. It took us 2 hours to get there, most of which was spent catching up on some sleep. Our booking was at Hotel Pattaya Center, which was located just off the beach :). The rooms were decent, there was a 7/11 less than 100m down the road and we had a great view of the beach and the sea from our rooms on the 13th floor!
We grabbed a quick lunch before heading to Mini Siam, a collection of miniature replicas of famous structures from around the world. It is about 20 minutes drive from the hotel, and we ventured out in a Tuk-Tuk! We were not sure of what to expect at Mini Siam and were planning to be back in an hour or so. However, the place was pretty good and most of the replicas were very well done. After spending a good 3 hours there in hot sun, we were exhausted and in desperate need of a shower before the Alcazar show in the evening. Getting back to the hotel from Mini Siam proved to be a challenge though, as all the cabs there were charging exorbitant rates, and none of the Tuk-Tuk drivers could understand what we were saying. We tried our luck with a few bus drivers as well and were dreading the thought of walking back all the way. Luckily one of the Tuk Tuk drivers took a lot of pain to understand where we were going, and dropped us near a changing point for catching a second Tuk Tuk to the hotel.
So with a good hour of anxiety and heartburn behind us, we just about reached the hotel in time to freshen up and hit the road again for the Alcazar show. The show organizers had a pick up and drop facility, but it was a pretty crappy service where they picked up guests from all sorts of places, and to top it off dropped us at the venue a good 45 minutes before the show. Luckily, there was a shopping mall round the corner with a Toys 'R' Us to boot.
The Alcazar show itself was pretty good- and I swear I wouldn't have been able to make out the artists weren't really girls from the distance if I wasn't told beforehand. Some of the songs they danced to were particularly catchy- I even managed to grab some clips on my camcorder. After the show, the artistes were mixing with the crowds near the exit, and people were clicking photos with them. Sheetal joined them thinking that it was some sort of a complimentary service, but there was a pimp right around the corner harassing us to give us money since we clicked photos with the artist. I chose to delete the photo instead, not because of the money, but because the up close interaction with them changed the mood from admiring their beauty to wincing at their behavior. If you have ever had the 'pleasure' of encountering a group of eunuchs on Indian Railways, you know what I am talking about.
After the show, we headed back to the mall for some dinner and walked back to the hotel through some rather dicey looking 'clubs'. Till then I had only heard of Pattaya being a busy center for the flesh trade- the way hundreds of these pretty damsels go around the roads conducting their business in such a casual and matter of fact manner is truly remarkable.
Day 4: Pattaya
The mornings agenda was to have fun on the water as part of a group package. It was a very frustrating start, as we were the first of 4 or 5 groups to be picked up for the trip. We waited for almost 45 minutes at all sorts of hotels for other people to get in before finally reaching the starting point for the boats that was, hold your breath, across the road from our hotel! I vented my frustration at the driver only to get a blank look suggesting that his English skills were at par with my Thai skills :(.
The sea and islands are decent and clean, but paled in comparison to the sights we had a few months earlier in Andaman islands. You could see that the unwritten theme at all the activity joints was "fleece the tourist", but this is no different from all the haggling associated with any tourist center in India. I didn't go for the water scooters or speed boats, but opted for parasailing which was good fun (400 baht). Sheetal and I then went for the "underwater walk" (1200 baht pp), which was disappointing to say the least. The walk is limited in its reach as the oxygen supply is through pipes fixed to the docking station, and we ended up getting a show and tell session of intentionally placed urchins etc. instead of the peek into natural habitat that we expected. They put some bread crumbs on our hands (with netted gloves) in order to attract fish, but even those turned out to be of just one kind (rather boring looking to boot :(). And to top it all, I forgot to remove my watch before stepping into water and it...
On our way back, we found out that the sea was not as clean as I imagined it to be. The boat stopped around 50m from land, and we were asked to walk the rest of the way as the water was very shallow in low tide. This turned out to be a nightmare as the sea floor was full of garbage, including some broken glass pieces that left some of the tourists with deep cuts on their feet. We both were lucky to come through unhurt.
After lunch we braved yet another visit to a gem factory. This one turned out to be much more interesting than the Bangkok visit though, with a toy train that goes through a tunnel in which they have props describing the various activities involved in mining precious stones. The rest of the day was spent roaming around the streets and malls of Pattaya. They have cute shoes and great clothes for baby girls in one of the stores at TESCO Lotus mall. We tried out Cool House, one of the more popular restaurants for dinner, where I treated myself to a Red Snapper for a heavy but delicious (and cheap) dinner to conclude our visit to Thailand!
Day 5: Kuala Lumpur
We started very early the next morning in order to catch a morning flight to Kuala Lumpur, just about catching a great view of Suvarnabhoomi airport at sunrise before dozing off in the plane. KLIA is another great airport and the visa & immigration process was smooth as well. We had opted to go for a visa on arrival, which cost 100RM per head. The airport is way out of town and it was a good hour's drive to the city. But the drive was very pleasant- smooth roads, lots of greenery and very interesting townships on and off. We were put up at Hotel Grand Continental on Jalan Belia/ Jalan Raja Laut. Once again this turned out to be a well located hotel, within walking distance of two stations (Sultan Ismail for LRT and Medan Tunku for Monorail) and a 7/11 round the corner.
Our first halt in KL was at Berjaya Times Square, where we were supposed to find some great toy shops. We caught a Monorail train from Medan Tunku to Imbi station, which is almost within the mall. The mall was large and even had a roller coaster inside it, but was surprisingly sparse on the shops front. We didn't find anything interesting in terms of toys or otherwise. One pleasant surprise was food though, and we got confirmation over the next 30 odd hours that food in KL has some very endearing properties: it is cheap, it is tasty and they serve very generous helpings of chicken.
Disappointed with the mall where had hoped to buy lots of goodies, we went to a mall where we hoped not to buy anything- Suria KLCC mall (Monorail from Imbi to Bukit Nanas, LRT from Dang Wangi to KLCC). This mall at the base of the Petronas Towers is a window shoppers paradise full of obscenely priced designer label shops. However, there were some very notable exceptions- a stall selling beautiful porcelain dolls, a store containing hundreds of Japanese jigsaw puzzles of beautiful paintings and a Bata showroom of all things!
Day 6: Kuala Lumpur
The next morning saw us join a rather disappointing conducted city tour. We landed up at Petronas tower with hopes of going up to the sky bridge connecting the two towers, only to be told that we need to come on our own a couple of hours earlier and stand in a queue if we want to get passes for the sky bridge. So we had to satisfy ourselves by looking at the towers from across the road :(. After that, the tour went to a Batik factory where they demonstrated the handicraft process. The attached outlet was on the expensive side, so we just stuck to a token dress for Ilisa. The King's Palace was a joke, as all one gets to do is click photos with the guards and see the palace from the gates! Around this time we lost interest in the tour, and decided to hop off it when they stopped at the National museum.
We walked down to KL Sentral train station from the museum and decided to go down to Sepang and visit the Formula 1 circuit. We caught the rather expensive KL Ekspres to KLIA. It was a great journey, zipping at high speed through the lush green scenery that we had encountered the previous day. We had an extremely delicious lunch at KLIA itself on the 2nd level, and still rate the Nasi Briyani we had there as amongst the best meals we have ever had. And yes, food is cheap even at the airport!
BTW, Ekspres, Sentral etc are not typos- they have done a great job of simplifying English in Malaysia as they spell words the way they pronounce them. They even use the English alphabet as the script for the local languages.
Getting to Sepang from KLIA was a non trivial task as public transport to the area is only available during race weekends. We ended up renting a taxi to take us to the track, wait for us while we look around and finally drop us off at Nilai station (KTM Komuter). I was afraid the security guy might turn us away as the track was closed, but the driver spoke to him and he let us in after keeping my license as ID proof. The F1 experience was awesome despite the circuit being empty and the afternoon sun roasting us, so I can only imagine how much fun attending a live race would have been. We walked around for an hour or so getting a good feel for the grandstand before grudgingly heading back towards the taxi. The souvenir shop was closed for lunch, so we couldn't get back any memorabilia apart from the great memory.
The return train journey from Nilai to KL Sentral was a total contrast to the onward journey, winding lazily through small villages and some less populated parts of KL and was a nice way to relax after the exertions of the afternoon. We were sufficiently recharged after that to head out to Menara KL, a high rise TV Tower in close vicinity of the Petronas towers. We took a monorail from KL Sentral to Bukit Nanas, the only issue being that the monorail station at Sentral was at a different location from the other stations. The walk from Bukit Nanas to Menara KL was remarkably steep and difficult, and left us both out of breath by the time we reached the entrance of the tower. The entry pass to the tower was a little bit on the expensive side. We got good views of the Petronas towers and KL as a whole from the top, and could even spot some of the more prominent builds of the distant Genting Highlands. The only put off was a rather noisy group of tourists from amchi Mumbai.
We took a cab back to the hotel from there as the walk back to the station looked too daunting. Even catching the cab turned out to be an embarrassing experience as we tried to flag them on the roadside. The cabs only stop at designated cab stations where you have to wait in a queue for your turn to hire a cab! We learnt this the hard way, when a gentleman angrily ticked us away for trying to break a queue we didn't realize existed in the first place :(. After taking some badly needed rest, we wound up our Malaysian leg with a particularly tasty Malaysian cuisine pizza at Pizza Hut round the corner.
Day 7: Singapore
We flew down to Singapore next morning, instead of the default but more boring train/road options. Changi airport lived up to our expectations of being amongst the worlds best airports, and everything was breeze from getting tourist information to immigration to baggage clearance. I think it took all of 15 minutes from disembarking the plane to finding ourselves in the cab. How I wish the rest of our Singapore visit was as good!
We were put up at Hotel Golden Landmark on Arab street, which probably has the most pathetic reception I have seen. The guy kept us waiting for 2 hours before handing us our room keys, and there was no place to even freshen up till then :(. Sheetal was worried all along about this hotel as all the reviews cribbed about the reception, but gave good ratings for the rooms. Luckily the second aspect held true for us too, as the room was pretty good. And it was well located again, within walking distance of a train station (Bugis Junction), eateries and 7/11 :D.
We set out for the Night Safari at Singapore zoo after grabbing quick lunch at one of the roadside eateries. The train route is pretty convoluted, having to catch a train from Bugis to Jurong East (MRT East West Line), and from there to Choa Chu Kang (MRT North South Line) before catching a bus (927) to the Zoo. While train tickets were easy to buy, the bus tickets were a pain as we need to carry the exact fare :(. We had some time to kill before the Night Safari, which was spent buying cute animal soft toys at the Zoo store.
The 'safari' was disappointing (to put it mildly) as almost all the 'interesting' animals were in in captivity (either enclosures or dug outs). It was more a bus ride around the zoo in the dark than a safari. The saving grace was the "Creatures of the Night" show, which was well conducted and very entertaining.
The first day gave us a rather unpleasant taste of Singapore - extremely expensive to the point of fleecing and high on hype but low in content. Trains are expensive, people are not really friendly and food is expensive. Even McDonald's was expensive!
Day 8: Singapore
We headed out first to the Orchid Garden contained within the National Botanical Gardens, getting there using a combination of train and cab. While the gardens were calm and not crowded, the same cannot be said of the orchid garden within it. The orchid collection was great and drew lots of visitors, most of them photographers with foot long camera lenses and other equipment that made me eye them with pure jealousy :). We tried our hand at capturing some of the orchids with our poor little iXUS as well, just in case they thought they have a monopoly :P. It was good value for money, and even the store outside the orchid gardens had some nice stuff including a good collection of silk umbrellas and Singaporean dolls.
The weather was hot, and the humidity within the garden was particularly high, so we were pretty tired after a couple of hours of walking around. And it got more tiring as we exited the Botanical gardens onto one of the side roads with no hint of a taxi :(. It was a good kilometer and half of walking before we could see traffic and a taxi. We took a cab to Mount Faber in order to catch a cable car ride to Sentosa Island. The "mountain" tag was a bit of an exaggeration, and it was more of a hillock. At the cable car station, we were subject to a couple of marketing gimmicks:
Our unanimous stack ranking for these places was Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Pattaya and Singapore. This incidentally is exactly opposite to what the hype machinery and marketing propaganda led us to expect. Bangkok and KL surprised us with the charm of the city, and we really enjoyed traveling around both the cities, interacting with the locals and just hanging around some of the markets. Pattaya was along the expected lines of a tourist place. But Singapore was very disappointing- the city doesn't really have a soul in our opinion and almost works as an automaton. And all the so called attraction we pure hype with very little substance.
Prologue
We didn't want to go through a conducted tour, but wanted the peace of mind of having someone do all our travel arrangements at the same time. After a lot of phone calls and surfing, we decided to get our tour organized by Kesari Tours. They gave pretty competitive rates, and they are well reputed in Pune-Bombay area. The downside of this though was that we had to fly out of Bombay instead of Hyderabad.
The last part turned out to be much more than we had bargained for, as my Singapore visa was initially rejected for not having a leave letter from my company of all things! Net effect was that our passports and air tickets were still in Bombay at the Kesari office on the day of the journey :-0. It was a pretty disconcerting feeling to set out on an "international" vacation with neither passport nor tickets and to top it all no foreign exchange (as you need the first two to get the third :(). The Kesari guy landed up outside the Bombay domestic airport terminal, but the tricky part was the we couldn't leave the airport premises if we wanted to avail the internal shuttle to the international airport. I managed to sweet talk the security guy manning the gate to make an exception for me to go outside the premises and come back. The shuttle service was pretty good and uneventful. However, being forced to take foreign exchange at the international airport (only one option- Thomas Cook) was no fun as the rates were much worse than the ones I was getting at their Hyderabad office :(. Anyway, now that all the prerequisites for embarking on our journey were finally met, we tried to put all these hiccups in the "lessons to be learnt" section of our minds and focus on the good times ahead.
PS: On a side note, I caused some chaos at the conveyer belt by dropping our suitcase on none other than Aruna Irani herself!
Day 1: Bangkok
The first leg of the journey from Bombay to Bangkok by Thai Airways was pretty good - no delays, window and aisle (2 seats only in the side sections), decent food and pleasant crew. Sheetal picked up Sawadee from the crew big time, and would utter the word countless times over the next several weeks. The flight to Bangkok lasted around 3.5 hours. The Suvarnabhoomi airport at Bangkok is pretty impressive, especially on the size and looks front. Unfortunately, the immigration process was less than ideal. I had somehow managed in my sleep to tell the air hostess that I do not need to fill the arrival/departure form. So, when I landed up at the immigration counter, I was asked to get those forms and fill them up. Fair enough- but they were out of stock with the forms at that terminal, and I was asked to go to the next. And from there to the next... It was a pretty frustrating experience- I was running around for a good 20 minutes from one terminal to another and from one official to another before I was given two forms. And to rub it in, the queue was a good 200m long by the time I got back, so that took care of another 40 minutes of our time. Luckily, we had applied for the Thailand visa in Bombay itself, else that would have added another half an hour easily. The saving grace though were the pleasant immigration officials sitting at the counter.
We found a local tour operator waiting with a plaque having our names on it at the arrival lounge, giving us the first confirmation that the trip planning was indeed completed in spite of the issues with the visas. The lady accompanied us to Hotel Ambassador that is located in Sukhumvit, making the journey interesting for us as we spent all our energy in trying to decipher her English! The hotel was very well located with a BTS train station (Nana) less that 5 minutes walk away. There was a 7/11 across the road (we had been advised by friends to buy lots of water from the nearest 7/11 and carry the required amount wherever we go, and this was one tip that stood us in good stead right through the trip).
After freshening up, we took a BTS train to MBK Mall (Siam station is connected to the mall via sky bridge). The mall was way too big for us to even aspire to cover the whole of it, and we ended up doing only about 2 levels. Apart from decent lunch at the top level, the other noteworthy place was a toy store in one of the lower levels that had a great collection of innovate toys. They were almost entirely unbranded, but were really good and inexpensive (200-300 baht). After tiring ourselves with around 3 hours of roaming, we headed back to the hotel. One unfortunate side effect of getting so tired was that we didn't have the energy to make it to Wat Arun that evening, nor were we in a position to start early the next morning to be able to make it to the flower market. Dinner was street food for me, and an (over priced!) Indian dinner for Sheetal.
Day 2: Bangkok
We headed out for a conducted half day city tour, which focused (expectedly) on some very beautiful Buddhist temples- Golden Buddha (Wat Traimit), Reclining Buddha and Marble Temple. One common aspect to all these temples was the remarkable calmness in the temple, in spite of having hundreds of tourists buzzing around you. The reclining Buddha was much larger than I anticipated it to be, and it was good fun trying to capture its length on camera. Our favorite though was the Marble Temple- totally devoid of tourists, tranquil peace and an interesting collection of Buddha statues from various parts of Asia and from various time periods. We had a very good tour guide as well who patiently sat and explained the nuances and significance of each of the statues, from the posture of their hands to the length and curve of the ears. We went to the Grand Palace as well hoping to see the Emerald Buddha, but the temple was closed for the day as the Thai Princess was apparently praying there that day.
After our share of temples, we made the obligatory (and in our case thoroughly boring) visit to a Gems showroom before heading out on our own to the insanely dense and crowded Chatuchak weekend market. We must have spent a good 4 hours or so roaming around alley after alley of shops, containing stuff ranging from artifacts and showpieces to furniture and clothes. The shoppers were almost entirely locals, perhaps suggesting that it is the right place to be buying stuff for tourists as well:). As if we hadn't had our share of shopping for the day, we headed to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar from there :D (catching a MRT subway from Chatuchak Park to Lumphini). This was a more upmarket bazaar, and we could actually roam around the whole place in a couple of hours without ever getting lost or feeling claustrophobic. We ended up picking more stuff as well- traditional Chinese dresses for Ilisa and an imitation Rolex being the highlights. One salient feature of shopping at these night bazaars is the bargaining- almost everything was given at 30%-50% of the quoted price (at least that is all that we could manage). We had dinner at the bazaar itself, feasting on not too expensive seafood while live music was being played out on stage, before catching a train back to the hotel (MRT to Sukhumvit, walk to Asok and take a BTS to Nana).
Day 3: Pattaya
We headed for Pattaya after breakfast. It took us 2 hours to get there, most of which was spent catching up on some sleep. Our booking was at Hotel Pattaya Center, which was located just off the beach :). The rooms were decent, there was a 7/11 less than 100m down the road and we had a great view of the beach and the sea from our rooms on the 13th floor!
We grabbed a quick lunch before heading to Mini Siam, a collection of miniature replicas of famous structures from around the world. It is about 20 minutes drive from the hotel, and we ventured out in a Tuk-Tuk! We were not sure of what to expect at Mini Siam and were planning to be back in an hour or so. However, the place was pretty good and most of the replicas were very well done. After spending a good 3 hours there in hot sun, we were exhausted and in desperate need of a shower before the Alcazar show in the evening. Getting back to the hotel from Mini Siam proved to be a challenge though, as all the cabs there were charging exorbitant rates, and none of the Tuk-Tuk drivers could understand what we were saying. We tried our luck with a few bus drivers as well and were dreading the thought of walking back all the way. Luckily one of the Tuk Tuk drivers took a lot of pain to understand where we were going, and dropped us near a changing point for catching a second Tuk Tuk to the hotel.
So with a good hour of anxiety and heartburn behind us, we just about reached the hotel in time to freshen up and hit the road again for the Alcazar show. The show organizers had a pick up and drop facility, but it was a pretty crappy service where they picked up guests from all sorts of places, and to top it off dropped us at the venue a good 45 minutes before the show. Luckily, there was a shopping mall round the corner with a Toys 'R' Us to boot.
The Alcazar show itself was pretty good- and I swear I wouldn't have been able to make out the artists weren't really girls from the distance if I wasn't told beforehand. Some of the songs they danced to were particularly catchy- I even managed to grab some clips on my camcorder. After the show, the artistes were mixing with the crowds near the exit, and people were clicking photos with them. Sheetal joined them thinking that it was some sort of a complimentary service, but there was a pimp right around the corner harassing us to give us money since we clicked photos with the artist. I chose to delete the photo instead, not because of the money, but because the up close interaction with them changed the mood from admiring their beauty to wincing at their behavior. If you have ever had the 'pleasure' of encountering a group of eunuchs on Indian Railways, you know what I am talking about.
After the show, we headed back to the mall for some dinner and walked back to the hotel through some rather dicey looking 'clubs'. Till then I had only heard of Pattaya being a busy center for the flesh trade- the way hundreds of these pretty damsels go around the roads conducting their business in such a casual and matter of fact manner is truly remarkable.
Day 4: Pattaya
The mornings agenda was to have fun on the water as part of a group package. It was a very frustrating start, as we were the first of 4 or 5 groups to be picked up for the trip. We waited for almost 45 minutes at all sorts of hotels for other people to get in before finally reaching the starting point for the boats that was, hold your breath, across the road from our hotel! I vented my frustration at the driver only to get a blank look suggesting that his English skills were at par with my Thai skills :(.
The sea and islands are decent and clean, but paled in comparison to the sights we had a few months earlier in Andaman islands. You could see that the unwritten theme at all the activity joints was "fleece the tourist", but this is no different from all the haggling associated with any tourist center in India. I didn't go for the water scooters or speed boats, but opted for parasailing which was good fun (400 baht). Sheetal and I then went for the "underwater walk" (1200 baht pp), which was disappointing to say the least. The walk is limited in its reach as the oxygen supply is through pipes fixed to the docking station, and we ended up getting a show and tell session of intentionally placed urchins etc. instead of the peek into natural habitat that we expected. They put some bread crumbs on our hands (with netted gloves) in order to attract fish, but even those turned out to be of just one kind (rather boring looking to boot :(). And to top it all, I forgot to remove my watch before stepping into water and it...
On our way back, we found out that the sea was not as clean as I imagined it to be. The boat stopped around 50m from land, and we were asked to walk the rest of the way as the water was very shallow in low tide. This turned out to be a nightmare as the sea floor was full of garbage, including some broken glass pieces that left some of the tourists with deep cuts on their feet. We both were lucky to come through unhurt.
After lunch we braved yet another visit to a gem factory. This one turned out to be much more interesting than the Bangkok visit though, with a toy train that goes through a tunnel in which they have props describing the various activities involved in mining precious stones. The rest of the day was spent roaming around the streets and malls of Pattaya. They have cute shoes and great clothes for baby girls in one of the stores at TESCO Lotus mall. We tried out Cool House, one of the more popular restaurants for dinner, where I treated myself to a Red Snapper for a heavy but delicious (and cheap) dinner to conclude our visit to Thailand!
Day 5: Kuala Lumpur
We started very early the next morning in order to catch a morning flight to Kuala Lumpur, just about catching a great view of Suvarnabhoomi airport at sunrise before dozing off in the plane. KLIA is another great airport and the visa & immigration process was smooth as well. We had opted to go for a visa on arrival, which cost 100RM per head. The airport is way out of town and it was a good hour's drive to the city. But the drive was very pleasant- smooth roads, lots of greenery and very interesting townships on and off. We were put up at Hotel Grand Continental on Jalan Belia/ Jalan Raja Laut. Once again this turned out to be a well located hotel, within walking distance of two stations (Sultan Ismail for LRT and Medan Tunku for Monorail) and a 7/11 round the corner.
Our first halt in KL was at Berjaya Times Square, where we were supposed to find some great toy shops. We caught a Monorail train from Medan Tunku to Imbi station, which is almost within the mall. The mall was large and even had a roller coaster inside it, but was surprisingly sparse on the shops front. We didn't find anything interesting in terms of toys or otherwise. One pleasant surprise was food though, and we got confirmation over the next 30 odd hours that food in KL has some very endearing properties: it is cheap, it is tasty and they serve very generous helpings of chicken.
Disappointed with the mall where had hoped to buy lots of goodies, we went to a mall where we hoped not to buy anything- Suria KLCC mall (Monorail from Imbi to Bukit Nanas, LRT from Dang Wangi to KLCC). This mall at the base of the Petronas Towers is a window shoppers paradise full of obscenely priced designer label shops. However, there were some very notable exceptions- a stall selling beautiful porcelain dolls, a store containing hundreds of Japanese jigsaw puzzles of beautiful paintings and a Bata showroom of all things!
Day 6: Kuala Lumpur
The next morning saw us join a rather disappointing conducted city tour. We landed up at Petronas tower with hopes of going up to the sky bridge connecting the two towers, only to be told that we need to come on our own a couple of hours earlier and stand in a queue if we want to get passes for the sky bridge. So we had to satisfy ourselves by looking at the towers from across the road :(. After that, the tour went to a Batik factory where they demonstrated the handicraft process. The attached outlet was on the expensive side, so we just stuck to a token dress for Ilisa. The King's Palace was a joke, as all one gets to do is click photos with the guards and see the palace from the gates! Around this time we lost interest in the tour, and decided to hop off it when they stopped at the National museum.
We walked down to KL Sentral train station from the museum and decided to go down to Sepang and visit the Formula 1 circuit. We caught the rather expensive KL Ekspres to KLIA. It was a great journey, zipping at high speed through the lush green scenery that we had encountered the previous day. We had an extremely delicious lunch at KLIA itself on the 2nd level, and still rate the Nasi Briyani we had there as amongst the best meals we have ever had. And yes, food is cheap even at the airport!
BTW, Ekspres, Sentral etc are not typos- they have done a great job of simplifying English in Malaysia as they spell words the way they pronounce them. They even use the English alphabet as the script for the local languages.
Getting to Sepang from KLIA was a non trivial task as public transport to the area is only available during race weekends. We ended up renting a taxi to take us to the track, wait for us while we look around and finally drop us off at Nilai station (KTM Komuter). I was afraid the security guy might turn us away as the track was closed, but the driver spoke to him and he let us in after keeping my license as ID proof. The F1 experience was awesome despite the circuit being empty and the afternoon sun roasting us, so I can only imagine how much fun attending a live race would have been. We walked around for an hour or so getting a good feel for the grandstand before grudgingly heading back towards the taxi. The souvenir shop was closed for lunch, so we couldn't get back any memorabilia apart from the great memory.
The return train journey from Nilai to KL Sentral was a total contrast to the onward journey, winding lazily through small villages and some less populated parts of KL and was a nice way to relax after the exertions of the afternoon. We were sufficiently recharged after that to head out to Menara KL, a high rise TV Tower in close vicinity of the Petronas towers. We took a monorail from KL Sentral to Bukit Nanas, the only issue being that the monorail station at Sentral was at a different location from the other stations. The walk from Bukit Nanas to Menara KL was remarkably steep and difficult, and left us both out of breath by the time we reached the entrance of the tower. The entry pass to the tower was a little bit on the expensive side. We got good views of the Petronas towers and KL as a whole from the top, and could even spot some of the more prominent builds of the distant Genting Highlands. The only put off was a rather noisy group of tourists from amchi Mumbai.
We took a cab back to the hotel from there as the walk back to the station looked too daunting. Even catching the cab turned out to be an embarrassing experience as we tried to flag them on the roadside. The cabs only stop at designated cab stations where you have to wait in a queue for your turn to hire a cab! We learnt this the hard way, when a gentleman angrily ticked us away for trying to break a queue we didn't realize existed in the first place :(. After taking some badly needed rest, we wound up our Malaysian leg with a particularly tasty Malaysian cuisine pizza at Pizza Hut round the corner.
Day 7: Singapore
We flew down to Singapore next morning, instead of the default but more boring train/road options. Changi airport lived up to our expectations of being amongst the worlds best airports, and everything was breeze from getting tourist information to immigration to baggage clearance. I think it took all of 15 minutes from disembarking the plane to finding ourselves in the cab. How I wish the rest of our Singapore visit was as good!
We were put up at Hotel Golden Landmark on Arab street, which probably has the most pathetic reception I have seen. The guy kept us waiting for 2 hours before handing us our room keys, and there was no place to even freshen up till then :(. Sheetal was worried all along about this hotel as all the reviews cribbed about the reception, but gave good ratings for the rooms. Luckily the second aspect held true for us too, as the room was pretty good. And it was well located again, within walking distance of a train station (Bugis Junction), eateries and 7/11 :D.
We set out for the Night Safari at Singapore zoo after grabbing quick lunch at one of the roadside eateries. The train route is pretty convoluted, having to catch a train from Bugis to Jurong East (MRT East West Line), and from there to Choa Chu Kang (MRT North South Line) before catching a bus (927) to the Zoo. While train tickets were easy to buy, the bus tickets were a pain as we need to carry the exact fare :(. We had some time to kill before the Night Safari, which was spent buying cute animal soft toys at the Zoo store.
The 'safari' was disappointing (to put it mildly) as almost all the 'interesting' animals were in in captivity (either enclosures or dug outs). It was more a bus ride around the zoo in the dark than a safari. The saving grace was the "Creatures of the Night" show, which was well conducted and very entertaining.
The first day gave us a rather unpleasant taste of Singapore - extremely expensive to the point of fleecing and high on hype but low in content. Trains are expensive, people are not really friendly and food is expensive. Even McDonald's was expensive!
Day 8: Singapore
We headed out first to the Orchid Garden contained within the National Botanical Gardens, getting there using a combination of train and cab. While the gardens were calm and not crowded, the same cannot be said of the orchid garden within it. The orchid collection was great and drew lots of visitors, most of them photographers with foot long camera lenses and other equipment that made me eye them with pure jealousy :). We tried our hand at capturing some of the orchids with our poor little iXUS as well, just in case they thought they have a monopoly :P. It was good value for money, and even the store outside the orchid gardens had some nice stuff including a good collection of silk umbrellas and Singaporean dolls.
The weather was hot, and the humidity within the garden was particularly high, so we were pretty tired after a couple of hours of walking around. And it got more tiring as we exited the Botanical gardens onto one of the side roads with no hint of a taxi :(. It was a good kilometer and half of walking before we could see traffic and a taxi. We took a cab to Mount Faber in order to catch a cable car ride to Sentosa Island. The "mountain" tag was a bit of an exaggeration, and it was more of a hillock. At the cable car station, we were subject to a couple of marketing gimmicks:
- Click and tempt. There is a tendency to click your pictures everywhere, and then they present the pictures on all sorts of things to tempt you into buying exorbitantly priced photos. We survived this in Thailand and Malaysia, but would eventually succumb the next day :(.
- Packages. They offer packages for buying passes to multiple places at the same time. So, in this case, they offered a "deal" for the cable car ride, Sentosa Island and some of the activities within Sentosa. I got suckered by this and took it up, only to find that this "deal" was in fact marginally more expensive than buying all those tickets separately! The only (tiny) saving grace for me was that I didn't have to wait in ticketing queues at other places.
The cable car ride was worth doing once, though not necessarily in the value for money category. Within Sentosa, we had a fixed set of activities we wanted to try out. First noteworthy activity was a visit to the Butterfly Park. This was a reasonably good experience, and we saw some beautiful specimens. One put off though was the extremely noisy crowd that did a good job of scaring away the butterflies as soon as they settled in a position near the walking path :(. The other fun activity was a visit to the Dolphin Lagoon, where they have 3 pink trained dolphins perform all sorts of tricks. It was the first time we had seen dolphins, so we enjoyed the experience in spite of the searing heat and having to make do with a take away lunch. We didn't enjoy the aquarium visit (Underwater world) that much as the place was over crowded with noisy and rather poor tourists. We also good a good look from the outside of the Merlion at Sentosa. Travel within the island was facilitated by buses that were run by the Island authorities, and the AC in the buses was often the only respite from the heat. All in all, we both were disappointed with Sentosa island and felt it was over hyped. And we couldn't think of anything to do beyond 3-4 hours, and even dropped the evening light and sound show as we were tired of the place.
On the way back, we got down from the cable car at HarbourFront station itself and caught a train to Farrer Park station- the mission being to explore Mustafa's, Singapore's famous mall. It turned out to be a very big departmental store with the primary attractions being a well stocked watches section and cheap chocolates :). The electronics were cheaper than in India, but only marginally so. I found the car accessories section pretty well stocked too, but wasn't keen on lugging any of this stuff all the way back to Hyderabad. After a couple of hours spent in roaming the alleys and a heated argument with a very ill behaved native, we had dinner at one of the Indian restaurants across the road (in the company of a couple of girls from Pune working in Singapore). While we were aware all along that there are a lot of Indians in Singapore (primarily from Tamil Nadu), the number of Bangladeshis there took us by surprise.
Day 9: Singapore
The Singapore halt was beginning to feel long by now. We set out early in the morning to reach Singapore Zoo in time for the so called "Jungle Breakfast" which promised an up close encounter with some of the wildlife. It was a pricey breakfast that turned out to be huge rip-off consisting of nothing more than sitting and watching a trained orangutan and cobra pose for the cameras on cue from their trainers. And it got worse when we succumbed finally to the click and tempt phenomenon for the snaps they clicked :(.
The Zoo itself was average with only the facilities standing out, but almost everything had to be paid for on top of the entrance fees. To make it worse, there was a huge downpour that made things very uncomfortable. I was delighted to see they were giving out raincoats and was all set to ask for one when the inevitable overpriced tag came out. We planned to wait for the rain to stop, but our patience eventually ran out and we shelled out the cash, only for the rain gods to relent 2 minutes after we bought the coats :(.
Fed up with the Zoo, we left for the upmarket Orchard Road (Choa Chu Kang to Orchard station on the NS MRT). It was a huge exhibition of wealth, with one highlight being a hotel with an attractive parking lot having quite a few Lamborghini's, Ferrari's and even a Alfa Romeo. The BMW's and Mercedes's next to them were looking so pedestrian by comparison :D. It was a pretty strange experience, sitting on the road side and watching these designer cars zoom from signal to signal, each out doing the other in terms of looks, speed, noise and price :).
Having completed our share of day dreaming with the cars, we headed to Merlion Park (Raffles Place station). This has the original Merlion status that is almost the symbol of Singapore now. We spent some time watching the statue, the river and the people before strolling back to the station along the Singapore riverfront. We unexpectedly ran into the 'The First Generation' statue of boys leaping in for a swim as well on the way.
Day 10: Singapore
The only agenda of the last day of our vacation was a visit to the Jurong Bird Park (EW MRT to Boon Lay station, and a connecting bus from there). It turned out to be the best part of the Singapore leg and we thoroughly enjoyed the 7 hours or so that we spent roaming around the park. While it was as expensive as the other places we had been so far, it was much more value for money and the crowds were lesser too. The highlights for us were penguins, the 'Birds & Buddies' show, herons, Waterfall Aviary and Lory Loft. The Waterfall Aviary contains an artificial waterfall (called, you guessed it right, Jurong Falls) within a large enclosure and were particularly pleasant- we spent more than an hour looking at all sorts of colorful birds and butterflies. Lory Loft had some very beautiful parrots, and there is even an option of feeding the birds (at a price naturally). We took a train ticket that helped us in some of the travel, but it was overall an exhausting experience and we headed right back to the hotel after the park closed at 5PM. We had some unplanned action too as I left my camera bag at one of the enclosures and only remembered a good 2 hours later! Luckily for us, it was picked up by one of the staff members and was waiting for us at the reception :).
Epilogue
The next morning saw us bid a none too emotional farewell to Singapore and head back to Hyderabad via Mumbai. While the first two legs on Thai Airlines (Singapore-Bangkok, Bangkok-Mumbai) were alright, the last leg by Air India flight got delayed significantly (and excruciatingly considering it was past midnight) after we boarded the plane. However, all in all it was an uneventful end to a great vacation.
We couldn't resist stack ranking the places we had visited in the weeks following the trip, and our rating by complete consensus was Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Pattaya and Singapore. I don't know if we will get a chance to visit these countries again, but if we do:
- Bangkok is a place we would gladly go again. Perhaps even stay for a week and go through all the temples at leisure and try and make it to Phuket. And of course, shop a lot :D!
- Malaysia is a beautiful and lovable country. Langkawi and Penang are high on our wish list, and maybe even catch a race at Sepang. And yes, eat lots of chicken and Nasi Briyani:).
- Singapore begins and ends at Changi airport :P.
-Phani
