This was the laziest trip to Taipei ever.
The first night, we were deciding where to go for dinner. Since I had been overloading on foreign food (American food), I thought we should continue the trend. I randomly asked James to google TGIFridays in Taipei, and it turns out there is one. We made our way there, only to find out that they were closed. We asked a waiter where else was open, and he directed us to a restaurant/bar called the Brass Monkey that was currently having a “Free beer with any burger” special, much to the delight of James. They also happened to have buffalo wings with ranch, much to the delight of myself, so I was not so upset about missing TGIFridays. We did plan to go another day, though.
The next day, we met up with James’ friend, Mike and Mike’s wife, Maggie. James and Mike went to school together in Vancouver, and now Mike works a very intense job right outside Taipei. He apparently gets very little time off, but luckily, he and Maggie were able to meet us for dinner. They were incredibly nice and generous, and it seems to be a thing in Taiwan to take care of your guests, and they bought us lunch and dinner. Thank you Maggie and Mike!
We met them in Taipei 101, a very large skyscraper that’s a sort of touristy place to go. The bottom of the building has a big shopping mall, and you can take an elevator all the way to the top and see really beautiful views of Taipei. It was overcast that day, but we could still see some views through the clouds. When we bought tickets to go up, we also got coupons for buy-one-get-one-free beer float. Yep. Beer float. Like a root beer float, only with Taiwanese beer and vanilla bean ice cream. They put the beer on ice, which somehow makes it cold enough for it to taste moderately okay for a few minutes and then it’s just beer and ice cream. Afterwards, we put in our name at a very famous dumpling restaurant in the same building. We had to wait for over an hour, but we agreed to sit at a table that was combined with another couple so we got a table faster. Mike ordered all the food, and we had several different types of dumplings: some with pork, some with shrimp, as well as gyoza, chicken soup, spicy noodles, and some kind of pickled cucumber. It was so much food, but soooooo good. Mike suggested that we go to the Palace Museum the next day. It was the same place that the guy from the hostel we stayed at before had suggested, so we realized it was sort of the thing to do in Taiwan. The museum is basically a museum of Chinese culture- a bunch of stuff that Taiwan sort of borrowed and forgot to bring back. Such is the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mike was incredibly knowledgeable about Taiwanese history, and he told us all kinds of stuff about the history and culture.
We did end up going to the museum. We saw a lot of art, calligraphy, ceramics, and jade carvings. It was all very beautiful, but James was disappointed in the lack of weapons and “manly things,” although he definitely appreciated the intricacy of the jade carvings and the brushwork in the paintings.
After we grew tired of looking at things, we went upstairs to a tea house on the top floor of the museum. It was tea time, so we couldn’t get any food, but that was fine because I just wanted tea. We sat in a table that had a really nice view, and I got whatever tea the waitress said was good, and we both got some pineapple cake, which is a specialty in Taiwan. It comes in little squares, about 2 inches by 2 inches, and about 1 inch high. It’s sort of a layer of dry, firm cake on the outside, with a pineapple filling on the inside. Earlier, we had sampled pineapple cake and bought some to bring back to Japan as omiyage. (Omiyage means souvenir in Japanese, and whenever someone goes on a trip, they are expected to bring back presents – usually food – for friends and coworkers.) It was delicious and very relaxing.
After we were ready to leave, we took the bus heading back towards the station, but got confused and stayed on the bus too long and ended up in some middle of nowhere bus station where all the busses go when they are finished their routes. The bus driver asked us why we hadn’t gotten off at a stop and he kind of laughed when we told him, but he pointed us to a bus stop where we could wait for the next bus to take us back where we needed to go. It came along shortly, and eventually we made it back to civilization.
That may have been the night we went to TGIFridays. Mmmmmm American foooood.
So the time came to catch our flight back to Japan. I was upset knowing the vacation was over and I would have to return to the real world the following day, but it was also nice to be going back to a country where I didn’t have to worry about being ripped off all the time.
It was basically an insane trip. By the end, I had 5 kinds of currency in my wallet, and was constantly trying to pay in the wrong one. During the trip, I would turn to James and say, “Hey, remember that time…” and it would turn out to be something that happened a few days before. Good times. I think my new rule, though, is only to visit “n+1” countries in “n” weeks. Because n+2 countries, where n=3, is a lot.
The van happened to drop us off in a location near our hostel. We were staying in the same one we had stayed in our first time in Bangkok, because we already knew where it was, which saved some time and frustration. The van drop-off point was actually quite random, and I think we were the only ones in our group who knew where we were.
We were only back in Thailand for a night so we could catch a flight back to Taiwan (there were no flights to anywhere useful out of Siem Reap). We had some intentions of revisiting some places we liked our first time around (I really wanted some more sour dough bread), but three straight weeks of running around and sightseeing was getting to us, and we ended up going straight to the airport the following morning.
The Bangkok airport was an adventure in itself.
We were running a bit late anyway due to traffic. We checked in and went through security, but the real insanity was in customs. What was supposed to be a 25 minute wait was probably going to be an hour or hour and a half, and we did not have that time. Customs only had four booths set up for foreigners and a HUGE line of people. There were the same amount for Thai citizens, but there were very few people in line. There was even a priority booth for handicapped, pregnant women and the elderly, but only a few people went through that line. After waiting for a very long time and realizing we were going to miss our flight, James jumped out of line to talk to someone about trying to go through one of the other lines. Some of the airlines that were currently boarding were sending people to retrieve passengers who were still waiting in line and get them through quickly. Our airline was not expensive enough for that, but we thought if it would work for them, then we might as well try. After a few minutes, James motioned for me to get out of line. I walked over to where he was standing with a woman who worked at the airport. He told me she had said we could go through the line for citizens. She added that we had to go through with actual citizens. It seemed weird, but I didn’t care, but after a few citizens had walked by and she hadn’t said anything, I asked again. She added a couple other details that would have been cool to know before I lost our place in line. That we had to go through with Thai citizens AND they should be our age and look like our friends AND they need to be on our flight. I resisted the urge to punch her and said that that was impossible and wasn’t there something else she could do? Couldn’t we go through the priority lane? We’re about to miss our flight- isn’t that priority?! She said it wasn’t possible and I got upset because her being an idiot had lost our place in line and possibly missed us our flight. She kept insisting if she helped us, she would have to help everybody, and I kept insisting that maybe she should help the people who were 10 minutes away from completely missing their flight. Finally, I think she realized that James and I weren’t going to leave her alone until she helped us, so with a noticeable attitude, she walked us to the front of the regular line (she couldn’t have done that 5 minutes ago, before I almost started to cry?!), and we were able to go through.
After we got through, we took off running, and it turns out that Bangkok is a large airport and our gate was not nearby. It also turned out that neither of us was in great shape, especially with 20-pound backpacks. We made it to the gate in time, and they hadn’t officially started boarding yet. We sat down for a breather and I nearly strangled James when he said, in typical James fashion, he was going to go for a walk to try to find a vending machine. Still frazzled from our experience in customs, I said, “If they start boarding while you’re gone, I’m getting on that plane and leaving you in Bangkok.” Realizing that was a bad idea, he stayed and 30 seconds later we boarded the plane and were off, once again, to Taipei.
::Still in progress. Pictures coming soon!::
From Singapore, we flew into Siem Reap. I was desperately trying to sleep on the plane, but a bunch of college girls sitting near me would not shut up. I was finally able to drift off to sleep for the second half of the flight with the help of Enya in my iPod.
We followed the other passengers through customs, where we had to apply for a visa on arrival. We filled out the application and waited in line. It was $20 USD, and when I didn’t have any US dollars on me, they seemed shocked. They said, “What do you have?” and I said, “Thai baht, Singapore dollars, Malaysian ringgit, Taiwanese dollars, and Japanese yen.” They said, “Which do you want to use?” I said, “Which is your favorite?” and they said Thai baht, so that’s how I paid. I waited in line, and saw my passport being passed down a line of men behind a desk, each one examining papers and stamping and writing things where appropriate. At the end of the line, my name was called, and I got my passport back with a full page Cambodian visa.
Our next stop was currency exchange. I had read that it is better to use USD in Cambodia. Their own currency isn’t worth so much, so they prefer tourists to not use it. However, we asked the guy at the exchange desk if we should get USD, just to make sure, and he said Cambodian riel was okay. We shouldn’t have listened to him, but we did, and got 10s of 1,000s of riel (I think it was about 4,000 riel for $1USD).
We went outside the airport to find a taxi to take us to our hostel. We found one for $7, and put our bags in the trunk and headed to the hostel. The guy was extremely talkative, and kept telling us random stories about everything. He kept asking James all the questions, so I kind of assumed he didn’t want to talk to me. I was fine with that, because I was exhausted and did not want to pretend to be interested in small talk.
We had some trouble finding the hostel. It wasn’t extremely well marked from the street, and when we called the number we had, no one was picking up the phone. We drove up and down the street looking for it, and the taxi driver kept trying to convince us to go somewhere else. He kept calling the number with his cell and every time it didn’t pick up he kept saying “If you don’t believe me, you try!” and I got really sick of him telling me I didn’t believe him and I was starting NOT to believe him. We said we wanted to go to a net café and try to check the website again and email the owner again to get some better directions. The guy said he wanted another $7, and I didn’t want to because I knew that was a lot of money, but before I could say anything, James agreed to it. I didn’t argue 1) because I was exhausted and didn’t care anymore 2) I was worried the guy would drive away and leave us there and I had no idea where we were and I was exhausted 3) even though I knew we were getting ripped off, it was $7 and I was exhausted and just didn’t care. The guy proceeded to magically pull a lap top out of his trunk that he had portable internet for. I guess when he said he would drive us to a net café, he forgot he had one in his car. We checked the site again, and sent an email. While waiting, we decided to drive back to one place that looked promising before and as we drove past, the gates that had been closed before were now open. We walked in, and found out that the owner didn’t know that we were coming and there had been a mix up on the Hostelworld website. The taxi driver looked around and said “You’re staying HERE? I can take you some place better” but the place we were at was run by an English guy named John and we were happy to be in a place with somebody that wouldn’t rip us off, and to get rid of the shady taxi guy, who had only known us 30 minutes and had already ripped us off and was trying to rip us off again by offering his services to take us around the next day.
The place we were staying had a pool, and during the day John charged a $2 entry for people to hang out at the pool and drink at the bar. Most of the people were expats, and really nice to talk to. When we first got there, no one had arrived yet, as it was still pretty early in the morning. John offered us some tea and we sat at the bar and drank it while we talked to him about a whole bunch of stuff. He was a really chatty guy, but not in the annoying I-just-want-your-money way like the other guy. He had been in Cambodia awhile, and had been having trouble finding business partners for his hostel, which was in the process of being renovated. He said he had tried to hire Cambodian men in the past, but they usually ended up disappearing after awhile. The only people left on his staff were 2 really nice ladies, one of whom spoke English pretty well and was sort of the bar tender during the day when everyone came to the pool. It turns out he had been sort of accidentally married to another Khmer woman from a nearby village. She came to the hostel the following day, and she was really nice.
After talking for awhile, we were exhausted and decided to take a nap before going into town. There was no hot water, but there was no air conditioning either, and it turns out taking a freezing cold shower makes going outside in the mid-afternoon Cambodian heat bearable.
We got some advice from John before we went into town. We learned to only pay $1 for a tuk-tuk into town, and only pay about a quarter of what people originally ask you when you’re bartering. Also, expect to be ripped off constantly.
John helped us get a ride from the hostel. We rode in a tuk-tuk, which is a guy on a motorbike that pulls a covered trailer with two benches for passengers. It was my first time in a tuk-tuk, and I think I liked it. We were in town for no more than 10 seconds before people started to offer us stuff. No, we do not want another tuk-tuk, we just got here. No, seriously, we just want to walk. No, we do not want to stick our feet in a bit tank of fish so they can nibble away the dead skin. No, no Dr. Fish. No fish massage. No regular massage, either. No, we don’t want to buy whatever miscellaneous article of clothing you are selling. No. No. No. No. No.
We did want some water, though, so we went into a nearby food store and bought some water for the night, and some other snacks and more water for breakfast and the next day, when we would be going to Angkor Wat.
We found a street with a bunch of restaurants. There are actually a lot of streets with restaurants, but we found a specific one called Pub Street that is popular with expats and tourists. John had told us that not too long ago, there were very few nice bars and restaurants, but Cambodia has recently become quite popular, and now there are many places to choose from.
We walked up and down Pub Street trying to decide where to eat. We decided to be silly tourists again and eat at the Red Piano, a restaurant/bar famous because Angelina Jolie had a drink there while she was filming tomb raider. We sat on the 2nd floor and could see the whole street from where we were. We watched a huge group of Japanese tourists yell “sugoii!” and point and take pictures as they walked by. As we finished dinner, we discovered that I had left the majority of my money in the hostel and didn’t have enough for dinner, so I ordered something random while James ran back to the hostel to get money, and change some of our riel into dollars.
After dinner, we did a little more shopping for our trip to Angkor Wat the next day. I bought a cute floppy sun hat, and on impulse bought a dress. James bought a silly hat as well. We decided to head back a little earlier, because we had hired a tuk-tuk guy to pick us up at 4am and take us to Angkor Wat the next day. We got back to the hostel, and John was cleaning up in the bar area with the disco lights on, so we decided to talk to him for a little bit. He left after a bit to go to sleep because he was waking up at 4 am as well, only he was waking up to watch a soccer game.
Fast forward to 4am. The water decided to not work so we had to brush our teeth and wash our faces with the bottled water we had bought for the day. Probably for the best.
The driver had clearly slept in the backseat of his vehicle, because we had to wake him up when we came out of the gates. It was actually kind of chilly out without the sun, and I had dressed for the heat of the day, but brought my sarong with me to use as a light blanket. I needed it on the tuk-tuk ride, which was FREEZING. Even James, the Canadian, was getting chilly. It took a little while to get to the entrance to the park. We had to wait until it officially opened (around 5am or so) to pay our entrance fees and get our passes, but we didn’t have to wait too long. After we got our passes, we went in and our driver dropped us off in a parking area. We had no idea where to go, but he pointed us in a general direction and made sure we recognized his hat so we could find him again when we were ready.
We followed a small group of people off into the dark. We hadn’t thought to bring flashlights, which would have been smart, because it was pitch dark. There were no lights anywhere, but we could see all kinds of stars, which were very beautiful. The road was paved in stones, which were very uneven, and James used the light from his camera to keep us from falling on our faces. We walked through some kind of building. At the time it was basically a big shadow with really high ceilings. Walking through it felt like being in the middle of some horror/adventure movie. After walking for a little while, we came to the edge of a small body of water. I couldn’t see at the time, but I knew from seeing pictures that Angkor Wat, the most famous temple in the park, was probably opposite us, and that was where we were going to see the sunrise. We had gotten there quite early, and were able to get a decent spot right on the water with no one standing in front of us. A couple guys who came later tried to set up tripods right in front of us, but some other guy who had gotten there earlier and set up his tripod yelled at them and kept the area in front of us clear. Thank you to that guy, wherever you are.
So we waited. And waited. And waited and waited. And at least three different guys tried to sell us coffee. Eventually the sky started to lighten and we could see the silhouette of the temple and I took about a billion pictures as the sky became brighter and brighter and we were gradually able to see the temple and the surroundings. It was amazingly beautiful, and certainly worth waking up so early and waiting forever in the cold. We were lucky that the weather was so beautiful that day, and there were just enough clouds in the sky.
Gradually, people began to wander off in other directions, and after taking a few more pictures as the sun itself came up over the temple, we followed. We wanted to go into the temple, but I wanted to find a bathroom first. The journey to the restroom was a slightly epic one. There were multiple signs reading, “Bathroom this way à” or “Bathroom not this way” or “This is not a toilet”. The last one was my favorite, because it was written in both English and Korean on the side of a dirty, rundown shed. That they had to explicitly say that such a place is not a bathroom is a clue to what the actual one looked like. I had to pay to use the horrendous facilities, which were very similar to the hole in the floor ones from Thailand, only these had broken down doors that didn’t close all the way, and a back window that overlooked a bunch of monks hanging out in the woods.
After that mini adventure, I was ready to enter Angkor Wat.
::pictures::
After looking around for awhile, we found our guy in the checkered hat and went to the next temple. It was not one of the more famous ones, but it was my favorite because of all the levels and all the faces carved into the sides that made it look like it came straight out of the old Nickelodeon network show “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” It was also where both James’ and my cameras started to die because we had already taken an ungodly amount of pictures that day.
::pictures::
The next place on our list was another famous place, where parts of Tomb Raider were filmed. The majority of the temple is in ruins, and there are these huge trees with roots twice as tall and as big around as a full grown adult.
::pictures::
We went to a few lesser known places, which were equally as beautiful and not as crowded. They were also equally full of people trying to sell us stuff. By that time, we were starting to get a little templed-out, and it was around noon so we had already had an 8-hour day and we were getting kind of tired. We both decided we were happy with the amount of stuff we had seen and we went back to the hostel. We paid our awesome tuk-tuk guy, who it turns out is in school studying tourism and hospitality, said hello to John, and had every intention of going into town to get lunch, but only made it as far as “laying down for a couple minutes.” Several hours later, I woke up from my nap and wandered out to the pool to find James and he and I sat around for a little bit, talking to some of the people who live in the area.
It was dinner time by the time we finally made it out, and we went to Pub Street again, and had dinner. It was our last night in Siem Reap, so we wandered around to some of the shops in a slightly nicer part of town. We found a bar called Picasso that had a special on sangria, so we sat there for a little while. While we were there, the water stopped working in the restaurant just like it did at the hostel, so that seems to be a common problem in that area. After a little more shopping and a little more bar hopping, we went back. It was the first time we had trouble finding someone to take us back for $1. I kind of felt dumb arguing for only a dollar, but the drivers kept telling us it was so far and the roads were so bad and blah blah blah, but we had no trouble finding someone to agree before so I thought it was silly that no one would do it this time. One guy even tried to rip me off. I told him I only had riel on me (I was trying to get rid of what I had left) and he said okay, “$8000 riel is $1, I’ll take you.” I told him I just exchanged money yesterday, so I know what the rates are, and he just said, “oh”. We eventually got someone to agree, and we got our $1 tuk-tuk.
The next morning was our trip across the Thai border. We had to catch a bus around 7 am, which proved difficult due to a combination of not sleeping very much for several days, and staying up late the night before and having a bit too much sangria. We took a tuk-tuk from the hostel and he dropped us off behind the bus, which left just as we started walking toward it. Our driver took us to the next stop, and we caught it there. Luckily, the bus wasn’t full, so James and I each had a row of seats to ourselves and slept for the entire 4-hour ride to the border.
Crossing the border consisted of a lot of waiting in lines and following people from our bus into buildings and filling out things they told us to fill out and waiting in more lines and getting stamps and waiting in more lines and being sleepy.
After everyone from our group had gone through, some Thai guy from the bus company led us to the parking area where we would catch our next bus, and by bus it turns out they meant van, which of course needs to be filled to capacity. James and I got lucky and were in seats toward the front with leg room, and spent most of that 4-hour bus ride to Bangkok sleeping.
::Still in progress. Pictures coming soon!::
Our time in Singapore was basically a very long layover. We flew in early, and left early the next morning, so we were only there for about 24 hours. We got up around 4 am to catch a 7 am flight from Kuala Lumpur. The flight was extremely short – in less than an hour we were in Singapore.
In case anyone wants to spend any time hanging out in an airport, Singapore airport is where you want to go. The place is huge and has numerous hotels, lounges, shops, restaurants, sitting/relaxation areas, and even a butterfly garden and movie theater. We stopped at the rainforest lounge to have a quick nap before heading out into the city. We each rented a little closed off sleeping area with the most comfortable beds ever. They also had showers and a spa area, as well as a small buffet with drinks. By the time we woke up and were ready to go, it had started to rain, so we had some coffee to kill some time and wait for the rain to stop. Before we left, we dropped our bags off at a baggage holding place and enjoyed not walking around with huge backpacks.
Off we went.
Our first mission was to find a certain hotel (I think it was the Ritz) that is known for having a really nice collection of modern art. It’s free to walk around the hotel and see everything, and since Singapore is a very expensive city, it was nice to find stuff to do that wouldn’t cost us anything. On the way to the hotel, we stopped at a 7-eleven to get some food, and I decided to try a 7-eleven mini chicken pot pie that turned out to be not as bad as one would think.
We got to the hotel, and the way we were greeted when we walked in the door made us wish we could afford to stay in places like that for our entire vacation. Money may not buy happiness, but it buys a bunch of people being REALLY nice to you. We went to the front desk and asked about the art, and at first they seemed confused, but invited us to wander around and see what we could find. After a minute, somebody ran up to us with a pamphlet they had found which detailed all the pieces including biographies of the artists and maps of the hotel showing where each piece was located. We looked around for a while, and then decided to move on to our next mission: food.
The only thing I really wanted to do in Singapore was to eat chili crab, a Singapore specialty. I had found some names of famous restaurants that serve it, and we went off in search of a place called “Jumbo Seafood” that is located in Clark Quay, an area that happens to be a must-see touristy place so we ended up killing two birds with one stone. To get there, we took a bus. When we boarded the bus, we wanted to make sure we were on the correct bus, so we asked the bus driver and later, he was super nice and reminded us when it was our stop (otherwise we would have missed it- we’re silly tourists like that). Clark Quay is just an area on the water with a bunch of restaurants and shopping. We took some pictures and then went on to find Jumbo Seafood.
We must have gotten there before the dinner rush (luckily J ). We asked about the chili crab, and they told us it was about $40 per kilo. I asked how big an average crab is and they said the smallest ones they had were a little over 1 kg. It was pretty expensive, but it was the one thing I wanted, so we decided to go for it. We sat in the outside portion of the restaurant, because even though it was a bit overcast, it was still a nice warm day. I looked through the menu for something to go with the crab. Everything was take-out-a-loan prices, but we got some rice for a price that didn’t take up my budget for the day. I asked about vegetables, because I couldn’t find them on the menu (I knew they were there somewhere, I just couldn’t find them), and I think I confused a trainee because he ran off and got his trainer and she came back and just said “whatever’s on the menu is what we have” and I kind of wished I could have talked that way to customers at Cheesecake Factory. I don’t think she was trying to be rude, though. I finally found a $12 side of broccoli and we got that, too.
The broccoli and rice came out first, and we got some complimentary tea and peanuts as well. The broccoli turned out to be the most delicious side of broccoli I have ever eaten in my life, and totally worth the cost.
Then came the chili crab.
Sooooooo delicious. Maryland steamed crabs are, of course, still at the top of my list, but Singapore chili crab might be dangerously close to tying for number 1. It came in this huge iron pot covered in chili sauce, the texture and consistency of which reminded me of a thick egg drop soup from Chinese restaurants back home. They had cut the crab in half and sort of pre-cracked the claws and stuff.
The people around us some how managed to eat the thing with chopsticks and only got a little bit of sauce on their fingers that they used one napkin to clean off. Being raised in Maryland, I can’t imagine how one eats crabs and doesn’t get covered in mess, and that’s more or less exactly what I did. I tried so hard at the beginning to be neat and clean and dignified, but eventually, I gave up and James laughed at me as I got messier and messier and finally had to ask a waiter for some extra napkins (but I laughed at James, because he had no idea how to get crab meat out of a shell). Luckily I was wearing a bib, so my clothes were safe. The table cloth was not. However, it was a paper table cloth, so I think they expected messy foreigners like myself, and they may have laughed at me, but I don’t care. It was delicious.
After late lunch/early dinner, we headed off to China town. The China town in Singapore is supposed to be super awesome, but it turned out to be like most China towns we’ve been to. We just walked up and down the streets looking at the shops, while people kept yelling at us to come eat in their restaurant. We kept saying we were full, but they didn’t believe us. I think we did end up going to Starbucks. We were getting kind of tired from lack of sleep the night before, and needed some caffeine. I was delighted to discover that they had the Peppermint Mocha, which is my favorite Christmastime Starbucks drink in the US, but they don’t carry at Starbucks in Japan because, sadly, Japan is not a fan of peppermint, for some reason.
After China town, we went to another shopping area of Singapore called Orchard Road, a big road that runs through the city and has most of the high-end, as well as regular people, shopping centers.
It was a really pretty road to walk down. It was all decorated with lights and of course all the store fronts were all lit up. We wandered around a few shopping centers, one of which had Ben and Jerrys, but I was unfortunately still stuffed at this point, and couldn’t have any L. I wanted to walk to a botanical garden nearby, but James thought it was too far away. It turned out not to be, but whatever. We ended up sitting in a Burger King in a mall drinking water for a little while. We walked around a little longer and then decided it was about time to catch the last bus to the airport.
There were some other touristy things that I had kind of wanted to do that I didn’t get to while we were there. Most things were really expensive, though, so I’m not too sad that we missed out. I had chili crab, and that’s all that matters. At this point in the vacation, we were also getting a little tired of running all over the place, and I don’t think either of us minded a day of not doing much.
We got to the airport, and although our flight was several hours from boarding time, we managed to find a very nice person from another airline that would check us in so we could get through security. After we went through, the first thing we wanted to do was to find the movie theater. We watched the end of an extremely crappy movie starring Clive Owen, and while waiting for the next crappy movie to start (Brothers, with Natalie Portman. If you haven’t seen it, DON’T), we found a shop that sold *gasp* Cool Ranch Doritos and *double gasp* Snapple. I bought both and they were both glorious.
After the movies were over, there was a sort of intermission before the next round of horrible movies came on. They were playing some kind of report-ish thing where some woman was wandering around the airport interviewing employees about airport safety. I think the point of the whole thing was “Singapore airport is safe” but it was lost in all the stories about engine malfunctions and plane crashes into water and planes catching on fire and lots of people making mistakes that resulted in lots of people dying. All of the woman’s interviews involved questions/comments like “So how much pain would that cause?” and “Wow! That must be an absolutely terrifying and horrible way to die!”
So right after that, we realized (with feelings of impending doom) it was time to head towards our terminal (we were in the opposite side of the airport, and the shuttles weren’t running so it would take about 30 minutes to walk over there). On the way, we stopped in the butterfly garden, but since it was dark, most of them were asleep so we only saw a few.
I slept a little longer on the floor of the waiting area and then we boarded the flight for Cambodia.
