Singapore - check; Malaysia - check, check

So yes... this is 2 blogs in only a couple weeks time. But don't get used to it! :)

I thought I'd go ahead and try to get this one done before I forget about everything. Well this is basically just about my recent visa run to Singapore and Malaysia.

For those of you who are still confused and ask me, "So how's China?" or "do you like living in Taiwan?", etc... here's a map of southeast Asia so you can see where Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia all are! :)

(I won't lie... I didn't know where any of this stuff was either until I moved here)

So anyways... we flew from Bangkok to Singapore all together:

Quick notes about Singapore: It's one of the 4 city-states left in the world. It's just an island off the tip of Malaysia that is now just one big city. It's a huge seaport/airport gateway between SE Asia and Australia, etc. It's a pretty rich country due to this and all the financial instututions set up there. (Which is also why things are so ridiculously expensive!)

The coolest airport I've ever been in:

(the waiting area for the gates... cascading waterfalls, palm trees, glass walls, natural lighting)

This is Singapore. Super- CLEAN! (It's illegal to chew gum.)

Our massive hostel. Yes my back is on the wall. 2 sets of bunks and... well... that's it. For $88 Singapore dollars a night (about $60 US)... this is the cheapest thing you can find here.

"Value life"... a.k.a. - "Don't be a fool and jump on the tracks."




Their subway (MRT) is super-efficient and modern. And of course clean. (No food or drink allowed.)




"Them" - - haha

"Mummy! I'm taller than 0.9 meters!" -- it's the little things that make travel fun.




LaSalle School of the Arts - really cool-looking building.

On the inside atrium area they had this artificial little park-type thing with students napping on the little hills. Strange.

Double bus.


It would be kinda odd to be that model and see a huge picture of yourself on a bus spraying on deo.

Nothing uniquely Singapore... I just really liked this picture for some reason. :)

This was the closest thing I've had to buffalo wings since I've been here. Some kinda Indian curry chicken. Good stuff.

As you can imagine, land is terribly expensive in a city-state island. So most people (even the fairly wealthy) live in high-rises like these in tiny apartments.

This was a pretty sweet area of the city. Tons of really crazy restaurants and bars by the river all covered by this huge roof with the blue lights shining on it. Super touristy=super expensive :(

This was a bar under that big blue roof thing where you sit on hospital beds and wheelchairs, and they bring you drinks in IV bags... all kinds of unique concept bars like this around here. (anything to make a buck)

At The Raffles: (super nice, swanky hotel where the "Singapore Sling" was invented)

yea... I felt a bit low-class hanging out here.

One Singapore Sling and out...

The blackcurrant stuff is actually pretty good.

"No, thank you!"

Then we went to the zoo one day: (Not too many pictures here because I don't think it's all that great to get good pictures of animals in captivity... kinda feels like cheating)

Now THAT's a camera.

Biggest snake I've ever seen. Bigger than the anaconda they had there. His head sticking out of the water there is about the size of a frisbee. Ugh! Sorry about the focus.

I'd never seen a komodo dragon before, so that was pretty cool.

Inside one of the huge shopping malls.

Chinatown -- a.k.a. - counterfeit city. (There's also these's markets in Malaysia and Thailand, too) If you're into fake Gucci, Rayban, Rolex, ANYTHING you can imagine... this is your place. Dirt cheap (in both senses of the word). Unfortunately, designer brands don't do much for me... much less fake designer brands so people will think I'm actually rich and might be worth robbing. No, thank you!

Singapore's brew.

$1US = about 1.5 Sinapore dollars

If any of you were hoping I'd bring home tons of foreign money... sorry! A picture will have to do because money saved is money that can be exchanged and spent. :)




Then we all took the night train from Singapore up to Kuala Lampur: (the capital of Malaysia)

My take on Kuala Lampur: Muslim city that's recently come into oil money. The downtown area with all the towers and nice restaurants is super nice (for now) and expensive. The rest of the city was dirty, in disrepair, and overly unimpressive. I also got sick the first day I was there(for the first time since I've been in Asia), so that probably affected my attitude on the whole thing.

No making out in the Malaysian taxi, I guess. Aww, shucks!

If someone asks you what you'd like to drink, don't reply with "Anything is fine."

I thought this was picture-worthy. A meat-lovers pizza that I could actually eat! I guess that's one good thing about a city full of Muslims. I still chuckle at the irony. Because of my Sabbath-keeping, non-pork-eating ways, I used to get the not-so-rare Jew joke from friends back home. "The Jew" had to go to a Muslim city to feel welcome dietary-wise.

We went to a butterfly farm. This was essentially just play-time for me with my camera trying to get good shots of butterflies... pretty challenging actually.

It's not like they were shy of humans or anything, though.

My maturity shining through once again. :)

Some Chinese celebrities showed up at the market and were filming some TV show or movie or something. Everybody around thought it was a big deal so I guess it's worth a picture.

Our super high-class hostel.

Petronas Twin Towers. (2nd and 3rd tallest buildings in the world) They were pretty impressive to see. We went to go do the skybridge tour thing, but apparently you have to get there really early to get the free tickets, so we just saw it from the outside. :( Really pretty at night, though.

Between the bases of the two towers there was a huge mall, so we kinda hung out there for a while instead:

Not sure what was going on here... some kind of Asian fashion something.

Yes... Muslims drink coffee at Starbucks and type away at laptops looking very important, too.

Armani, Prada... you name it... this mall had it. I really wanted to go into Armani and try on suits just to see what they felt like. Maybe I will next time. It's so funny how people assume you're rich if you're white and in Asia. (Boy do I have them fooled!)

Malaysian street food. White rice, lots of chicken and mutton in spicy sauces, and tons of veggies.

At the top of the 4th tallest telecommunications tower in the world. It was our great fortune that as soon as we got up there it was really cloudy and raining. :) oh well!

After it stopped raining we went out on town downtown for a little while.

The next day Elainea and Erika flew back to Chiang Mai. Ben and I opted to take the cheaper train back to Bangkok and stop for a couple days in Penang.

Penang: an island off the west coast of Malaysia. It's a night-train ride north from Kuala Lampur, then a ferry across. In the 70's it was a really popular beach vacation destination. Like happens everywhere, tourism exploded, high-rises shot up, and pollution took over. Now the water's not exactly pristine, but it was still much better than being in the concrete jungles we'd been in up to this point.

Not sure what this girl's thinking or what the sign says. I thought it was a bit odd for a huge banner ad at the train station, though.

Anand must REALLY love Bhara because that's a huge rock. Somebody had to climb that and rappel down to carve that in the rock.

This is me thinking, "Man I really want to swim out there and climb that rock, too. If Anand can do it, I can too!"

So after taking pictures of crabs fighting on the rocks, I talked Ben into swimming out to the island with me and climbing, but...

Ben got about 2 meters into the water when he swam into a rock with a bunch of sharp spiny things growing on it and tore his chest/stomach up. We decided it probably wasn't best to be bleeding all over swimming in the polluted water. (Plus Malaysia may have sharks... who knows) So I never got to swim out to that little island. I must say I'll always think of that rock as the one that got away.

After bumming around and sleeping most of the first day, we rented motorbikes the next day and drove around the whole island stopping to swim in waterfalls, etc. This was probably my most fun part of the trip.

Drinking from a bag takes on a new meaning. Mine kinda tasted like salty gatorade.

Ants go marching.

This was my favorite little spot. We had to climb a bunch of rocks and stuff to get back here, but the water was clean and felt great with two waterfalls pouring into it.

Ben's beach. You wouldn't believe the hassle we had to go through and steepness to climb down to get to this little dirty strip of sand off the side of the road. But Ben was intent on going there... so... here's Ben's beach.

Then we got stuck in Butterworth (the big city on the island) for a while because it was pouring rain. We were sitting in a coffee shop killing time and this girl walked by. I'd say one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen. I didn't want to look creepy and just obviously take a picture of her, so I tried to do it quick and sly as she was leaving. It didn't work out. Blurry and from the back through a window... but here it is anyways! :)

The longest bridge in Asia.

The ringit. (Malaysian money) about 4 ringit = 1 dollar.

After Penang we had a 19-hour train ride ahead of us back to Bangkok...

We read, then played chess, then read some more, ate some, then read some more, then looked at each other, talked some, read a little more, took turns blowing our noses (we'd both gotten sick by that time), then read a little more, watched the countryside go by, then read some more. Finally it got late and they made up the beds and we slept the rest of the way. Then read some more.

Back in Bangkok for an afternoon:

I hadn't really seen any of the famous stuff in Bangkok so we walked around and saw this main temple and the palace, etc.

Here's a view of downtown Bangkok from the top of that temple.

The REAL Bangkok -- watch your step over the power lines that're just laying in the walkway on the walking overpass.

The most tall-person-friendly bus I've ever been on. Front row... check out the leg room! Except for they had the A/C set on "arctic tundra" so I could hardly sleep the whole ride back to Chiang Mai due to shivering.

Then back to Chiang Mai at 6 in the morning! Back to the grind!

Oh yea... for my ladies:

Well there's not a whole lot of news since my last post. Aj. Leon and Aj. Gloria are back from Bangkok and he's still recovering. Thanks to all for your continued prayers for them (and all of us) as we try to help with God's work here in SE Asia.

On that regard, I'm planning on taking a trip into one of the refugee border-camps in December during the school break to visit some families there. I'm really excited about this and hopefully going into Burma before too long to do the same. I probably won't blog anymore before then so I'll post details about that next time. Until then... God be with you all and I look forward to seeing you in April!

much love to all of ya,

Nathan - Chiang Mai, Thailand