SouthernMost Point

This morning started at its usual time with its typical hostel breakfast: toast/ PB and J along with tea or coffee. We got on our bathing suits and then took off for the MRT station. We took it all the way down to the last stop and it ended in a huge mall (one of the many here). I swear some people probably come to singapore JUST to shop! Anyways, from the mall a monorail ran over the water and to Sentosa Island. This place was absolutely stunning. It is a natural island but if I hadn't of known it I would have thought it was man made just for tourists and vacationers in general. We got off the tram and went to the left where the proclaimed southernmost point is. We walked across a suspension bridge and took a picture by the sign that said southernmost point and on a palm tree that hung out over the water! We went back across and saw a show starring some more pink-butted monkeys and decided we would swim/ lay out some. I don't know what was up though because after we swam for a little while and started to lay out, about 15 minutes into it we were both bored. It might have been because we were hungry, but we decided even if it wasn't, food sounded good anyways! However, it was the worst meal we have had on this trip. I had some kinda roasted chicken with rice and jen had spring roll with noodle soup. Doesn't sound too bad right? I don't know what it was, but it just tasted horrible. From there we decided we wanted to do this downhill luge option. We got to ride a skilift type thing up a small, but long hill, and then ride these go-kart/luge like things down to the bottom. It was short, but reallly fun. We both decided we want to try real lugeing sometime! At that point though the weather just started looking ugly so we decided to leave the island for a while and come back to see this aquatic/light show later on. We caught the monorail back to the giant mall and shopped around a while. We couldn't afford a thing but the place really was amazing. This one woman even asked us is we wanted to be actors for a day, she worked for the local tv station and they were looking for foreigners to act on monday. Sadly, we told her no since we would be gone but we thought it was cool to be asked! Wecould not have looked more foreign though, with Jen in a cover up and her chi-o sandslam hat, and me in my frat tank and boardshorts carrying a mat to lay out on the sand. We stood out plenty. We watched pirates of the carribean to pass time (which was GREAT by the way) and then went back to the island to watch the show. It was kinda corny but the effects were spectacular! From there we made it back to the mall, grabbed a bite to eat, then back to the hostel where we are watching sucker punch! Bedtime in a few. Since we are leaving tomorrow night, this will be the last post! Its been fun recounting every day, but if you want to know anything else, youll just have to ask us in person! See you all soon!

Daycare

Yet another great day has come and gone in this beautiful city. We woke up fairly early this morning, around 9 am, then went downstairs for the free breakfast provided by the hostel we are staying at. Once again, the breakfast consists of bread, jam, peanut butter, and stale cereal. However, there were many different choices of jam so I (being picky) made a piece of toast with Pineapple, Strawberry, and Orange jam and even ventured to put a little peanut butter on top and dare I say, it wasnt too bad! This place even provided fresh oranges and either tea or coffee so i was content. After breakfast, we got dressed, packed up our stuff, and checked out as we had to move rooms. We couldnt check back in until after two though so we left our bags in the staff closet downstairs and ventured into the city. We were told the fastest way to get to the zoo was to take the express bus a few blocks down straight to the zoo. The bus was supposed to be at the bus stop at 11:25 but after waiting 20 minutes, we decided just to take the MRT. Once there, they told us the bus schedule had been changed and the next bus didnt come until 1:25pm so we made the right decision to stop waiting. We bought our tickets (which ended up being even cheaper) and then got on the MRT and rode to the station where we would then take a bus the rest of the way to the zoo. Before we got on the bus, we decided to grab a quick bite to eat so we didnt have to pay for food at the zoo. We shared a footlong sub and cookies and then headed to the bus. After about 40 minutes, we arrived at the zoo. We decided to just purchase the zoo tickets as oppossed to a multiple park package deal and  finally entered the zoo around 2 PM. We made our way through the park to the first show on our list, something about animals saving the rainforest. We sat down and birds flew from every direction and monkeys and lemurs crawled on some rope directly above us onto the stage. Then a man dressed as an indian tribe dancer came up to Blake and asked him to follow him up to the stage. Blake did and they had him take off his shirt and do some tribal dancing. It was hilarious!!! Very much worth the price of getting in without even seeing the rest of the zoo! After Blake got embarrassed, we walked around to some of the exhibits on our way to the next show, Elephants of Asia. We saw monkeys, kangaroos, pygmy hippos, and some BIG butted babboons. Say that five times fast! Then we got front row seats for the elephant show, in what they call the "splash zone". They elephants immediately came out and sprayed us with their trunks, and then did a series of tricks such as balancing on a log, moving trees, and just following commands in general. It was amazing! After the show, we walked the rest of the park seeing snakes, Komodo dragons, small bears, giraffes, zebras, white rhinos, leopards, and many more. We capped off the day with a "Splash", one last show before we left. This time when the host asked for a volunteer, Blake raised my hand and he called me up. I guess we stand out because we are Americans in a sea of Asians/Indians. After the host flirted with me for a bit in the funny joking around way hosts do, I was asked to throw a frisbee to a sea lion and if I made it I had the priviledge of taking the first picture with it after the show. If not, I was to be "thrown in the water". Luckily, I made it on my first try. It was really fun and after the show, I got my first sea lion kiss! SOOOO cute :) I told Blake I'm never washing that cheek again. The park closed at 6 pm so after the show, we heaaded towards the gift shop. We looked around awhile and then left to head to Chinatown. Once in Chinatown, we walked up and down the different streets going into so many different shops that were all alike. We ended up buying a few things and then got back on the MRT to head back to the hostel. We checked in, moved our stuff back upstairs, and then walked to the bar down the street for a pizza and fries. The food was delicious but the entertainment was even better. About half way through dinner, a guy came in with a guitar and was taking requests. He could sings just about anything and was amazing! We stayed around listening for awhile after dinner and then came back to the hostel and made our beds up. We are now downstairs listening to a bunch of kids shriek with excitement over NOTHING. Hence, the name Daycare, which we have given to our hostel. There are at least twice as many kids as adults here and Blake is going crazy. Anyways, I guess we are going to bed soon. As of now, our plans for tomorrow are to go to Sentosa Island and just chill on the beach all day. That may change depending on the weather as it was rainy today. Last two days here! We miss you guys! Love you :)

Travel

What originally was scheduled as a 5 hour trip turned into an entire day of travel. O well, not much to do about it, we just enjoyed reading our book the whole day (although jen is becoming less and less of a fan of it as it looks like the ending wont be happy). The day started out great. We woke up, facebooked a while, got ready, and left our hotel in chinatown around 945ish. The LRT which is a monorail was right near our place so we walked there in minutes and were at the GINORMOUS bus station by 1015. We bought tickets for the 11 o clock from KL to singapore, a 5 hour trip. So we grabbed some baked goods for breakfast and a midride snack, and then went to board the bus. All was going great on the trip, sunny day, good book to read, relaxing ride. We stopped at the same place we did when we came into malaysia for the first time, but instead of buying food this time we just got out and ate what we had already bought this morning. Once back on, things were still going smooth, until around 245 when it started raining. No big deal, a little bit of rain never hurt anyone, especially on a bus. Except apparently, i dont know if there was an accident or what, but the rain GREATLY affected traffic. We literally sat in the same spot for an entire hour, moved maybe 5 miles, and did the same again. Once we got to departure station for malysia, we stayed there a good 30 minutes longer than necessary because a lot of people had trouble getting through immigration and back on the bus, like the couple in front of us in line. That same couple held us up for another hour at the immigration IN to Singapore. So when we should have been at our bustop in singapore at 430, we instead got there at 8. We got off, tired from laying around on a bus all day, and started walking towards little india. We knew we wanted to stay 1. near shopping 2. near the MRT (monorail) and 3. near the north of the city, close to the zoo and botanical gardens. After about an hour of walking we finally found a nice place for a good price, settled in, and went down the street to a little thai restaurant. They were out of Pad Thai but the noodle-chicken and noodle-pork dishes we got were just as spicy and delicious! We then walked back to our hostel, and right next to it is a bar so we went in, i got a beer, and we watched the hockey game of the TB lightning v Boston Bruins. I got an Asahi beer and Jen didn't want anything, so we just chilled there for awhile. Eventually the owner introduced himself and started talking to us about his life, ours, and stuff in singapore. He even bought jen this fruity cocktail that she LOVED. We talked for a while and he offered to show us some of the nightlife tomorrow night so if we can afford it well probably take him up on that offer! We just got back to the hostel, and are getting ready for bed. Tomorrow, were going to see the zoo which is supposed to be AWESOME so we cant wait! Goodnight!

Hello again KL!

Overall, today was another great day! It started off kind of slow. We woke up around 8am to head down to the dock to wait for the boat to take us into town.  We got to the dock/resturant with more than 30 minutes to spare so we had fruit and eggs for breakfast. We thought taking the boat would be more scenic than the bus since we did that on the way up. However, while the boat ride started off fun, it soon grew annoying and then painfully long. Having a bladder the size of a dime, I had to pee more than half of the two hour boat ride which was managable until the last 10 minutes when I thought I was just going to jump in the river and go. We FINALLY got to the release dock and I RAn up the stairs to the tanda (toilet) while Blake got the backpacks. After that, the day got better :) We took a short bus from the boat dock into town and got dropped off at the bus station that would take us into KL. We only had to wait about 30 minutes at the bus station before the bus left so we got KFC to go and waited to leave. The jourmey to KL was only about 3 hours long. We read and slept most of the time. It started pouring about 30 minutes before we got off the bus amd continued until we got on the metro to take us into Chinatown. Once we got off the metro, we were only about a block away from Chinatown. We soon found a place to stay, dropped off our backpacks, and went back to the bus station to purchase our tickets for Singapore (for tomorrow). The bus station near Chinatown is VERY nice and only about a month old. However, for being the biggest bus station in the nations capital, it didnt have a single bus going to Singapore so we just decided to wait till tomorrow to buy the tickets. We then went in search for food. We went back to the street of vendors and road side resturants we found the first time we were here and finally decided on a place to eat. It is amazing how many menus we looked at before we fianlly picking one. Every single resturant has a person dedicated to standing in the road to bring people in to get them to eat so we were pestered into looking at a LOT of different places. After everything started to blend together (and we realized the fish head curry was to expensive to waste our money on- maybe in Singapore), we decided on a place that had springrolls because that is what I was in the mood for. We shared chicken egg rolls, beef and chicken satay, and a large beer (the second of the whole trip). It was delicious! Then, finally, we went to Chinatown. Once again, we got great deals! I was on a shopping high and bought lots of goodies. Blake did pretty good himself :) After about 2 hours or so, when we were content with our purchases, we walked to McDonalds to get an ice cream cone. Across the street, we stumbled upon a Malay parade. All of the floats were beautifully decorated with flowers and lights, the music was very oriental and pretty, and occasionally some of the floats would splash water on you. We have no idea what it was in honor of but it was certainly fun to watch. Now we are back in the room watching desperate housewives and about to read the last book of the trilogy we have been reading. Tomorrow, we are heading to back to Singapore. Sad this trip is coming to an end but we cant wait to see everyone when we get home! :)

Beginning of the End

Today was our last day in a new place. From here on, we will be backtracking, making our way back to Singapore and the airport. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end. But for now, I will recount today. We woke up around 9 as we usually do and we took our time heading down to the city from our guesthouse (I'd say we're around 300 meters away). Once down we went straight to the travel people's floating building so we wouldn't forget/spend too much money and not have enough to get out of this place! There is no ATM so I really don't know what would happen if we ran out of cash, but this has kinda been how the last 4 places we've visited so we're becoming pros at planning ahead. Once we booked our boat ticket out of here, we went to a floating restaurant next door and grabbed a little breakfast to start the day. Jen had a fried egg and a banana+chocolate+ice cream pancake...interesting combination of orders, I know! I had a vegetable omelet, so whoever bet that I would be healthier on this trip, congratulations you've been winning (surprisingly lol). The way they cook things over here is the same for everything they cook though. So the fried egg isn't fried on a griddle like back home, but it must be simmered in grease in a wok because the whole thing comes out crispy. Same with my omelet. It isn't half bad, however, and we pay a ringgit each to get a ferry across the river to explore the park. Once there, we began a trail to the canopy walk. The walk is the largest canopy walk in the world but almost half was closed for renovation so that was a little disappointing. We still did it, however, and it was still amazing. A little scary as it was quite wobbly, but fun nonetheless. From there we took a trail up to a vantage point at the top of a mountain-hill (I don't know what to call these things, I feel like I'm overestimating if I say mountain, but a hill doesn't come close to describing it). It was long and very steep, and both of us were exhausted by the top. Little did we know the path down on the other side was even steeper. I couldn't imagine going up it because going down it was hard enough. It also got quite hard to follow as it began to level out.Right when we thought we were lost (after JUST telling our parents not to worry we would be fine over here lol), the trail connected to another larger, more defined trail with a sign showing it led back to the beginning. On the way back though, we ran into a place to swim in the river so we jumped in, clothes and all, to cool off a bit. We finally made it back to the beginning of all the trails and thought we were dead. Our legs will definitely feel that mountain tomorrow. We rode back across the river, grabbed a VERY light lunch (since it was already 3, we knew we would eat dinner in not too long), and right when we finished it began to downpour. Luckily we had cards so we played an epic game of war for at least an hour so Jen could finally prove I was legitimately a lucky person, war being a game of pure luck. Sadly, I won. By then the rain had stopped so we looked around town for someone who would give us the password for their wifi even though we weren't staying with them so we could download a book on kindle. Finally someone did so we downloaded it, went back to our place, and read for the rest of the dreary afternoon. Sadly I couldn't find the blow gun I wanted to get Bryce anywhere in town while we had walked around, so he'll just have to settle for something else.  We eventually came back into town for dinner, which we will admit wasn't our best since being here. Afterward we came right to the internet cafe to catch up and for me to update the blog. Now, we will go back, read some more, and get ready for another day of travel. Tomorrow, Kuala Lumpur. The next day, back to Singapore until we depart. It truly is the beginning of the end.

Taman Negara

Today was a long one. Nothing special though. In fact, probably the ONLY blah day we've had so far. The guy at our guest house knocked on our door at the late hour of 7:15AM this morning to make sure we were awake to catch the boat at 8! Of course, we weren't so we were thankful for the wake up call. We stumbled out of bed, lazily got our stuff together, and headed out the door. We walked down the beach to the pier and waited for the boat. At 8 am sharp, the boat left the dock to start making its rounds around the island. It started off with only three people on the boat, including Blake and me, but after a few stops, the boat was loaded down with people and luggage. Although it was early, the boat ride was probably the most exciting part of the day, which is saying something. Once we got off the boat, we purchased tickets to Taman Negara and had some breakfast while we waited for the bus. We had fried rice pattaya and a chocolate, banana pancake. Yummy! After shopping around for a bit for a few "touristy memorabilia", we got on the bus (which was a van... and we were the only two passengers). It took us FOREVER to get to our final destination. We first stopped after about 2 hours and had lunch at a semi- fancy restaurant and then hit the road again. We tried to read in the van but the roads and drivers in this country are awful so we soon gave that up! 10 hours after we left the island, we pulled in to the bus stop here in a town outside of Taman Negara. It's a National Park (literally translated) so there's no staying in it, but its a RM1, 5 second ferry ride across the river into it. We found a place to stay shortly after being dropped off. Its is not far from the little town, that includes floating restaurants and that's about it. After settling in, we walked to the tourist office to get some ideas for tomorrow but ended up just deciding we would do our own treks and canopy walk. Then we found a place to eat and had an apple shake, fried rice paprik, and fried beef with rice. There's nothing at all to do at night here, besides jungle treks that we've heard are a waste of money, so were now just perusing the internet and then going back to our place to read. We'll update you soon :)

Final Day in Paradise

Today was a sad day. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful, relaxing, filling, everything weve grown to expect it to be. However, it is our last day on this island. This place is absolutely perfect we definitely want to visit again. Perfect water, perfect people, perfect animals, and definitely perfect price! We pay RM50 for beachfront property per night. Yes, that comes out to less than $20 a night, split between the two of us, to stay ON the beach. Winning (credit for this expression goes to our Australian friend Maddy, not Charlie Sheen). Today we woke up around 9ish. Since the electricity goes off at 830, in the 15 minutes the fan is completely stopped it gets warm enough to wake you up! We sauntered down to the cafe at the reception desk, right on the beach, and had some eggs and toast to wake up. We then dropped off our laundry for a much needed cleaning, rented some snorkels, and took off. We went the opposite direction than we went the first day (south this time) and saw some beautiful coral and wildlife. Nothing we hadn't seen already, and no turtles or sharks, but still it never gets old. Plus it was nice little bit of exercise! When we got back, we rinsed off, put on some dry clothes, and went down to get a light lunch. We planned on a big dinner later so we both just split a chicken sandwich and fries, but even the chicken sandwich here doesnt taste like a normal chicken sandwich. It has an island flare that our palates couldnt place their finger on. After settling up the bill, we splurged and got a big coke to last us through dinner (buying drinks at every meal, including water, is the most annoying part). We then went back to our room, grabbed some cards, and played egyptian war, speed, etc while clouds blew over (weather was still NICE it just wasn't sunny enough to lay out. After I got tired of Jen winning, we went down to layout and read on the beach. We were there for probably about an hour and a half before we got hot and jumped in the water. We sat there talking and throwing bits of dead coral that had washed up for a while until we felt we might be getting burned, so we went inside once again to rinse off. At around 630 we walked down to a restaurant just a hop skip and a jump down the beach to have the infamous BBQ that is so good on this island. It didn't start until 7 though so we walked down the peir to watch the sun sink a little lower, then walked back to eat. We first split a fried noodle pataya, which is fried noodles with chicken and a little veg wrapped in an egg basket. I dont know how they actually cook it but its delicious! We finished that and it was a little while before our lobster dinner came out. We loved it so much the night before we had to have it again for a whopping $5 American dollars (once again, split between the two of us!). We walked back down to our place's restaurant and got a fried snickers and watched some of the Man Utd-Blackburn game (soccer for those who don't know). The fried snickers isnt fried in funnel cake batter like at home but in something along the lines of that stufff inside butterfingers. Amazing! We were so full but to get free internet at this one place you had to order something, so we went back to the room, let our food settle a little, then went to the restaurant with free wifi. We are currently there, updating yall while sucking down a snickers milkshake! Tomorrow, well head off to the rainforest/jungle of Taman Negara! If we don't update dont freak (parents), it just means we dont have internet! Well update in Kuala Lumpur in a few days worst come to worst! As for now, were going to enjoy this milkshake! Goodnight/Goodmorning!