Malls and hawkers

We're now in Asia! Our first stop was Singapore, a little island located at the southern tip of Malaysia with a total area of 718 km2 and a population of only 5.4 million. We had 4 days to take in as much as Singapore had to offer.

Our first impression of Singapore was that it is extremely organized and a country where everything is very efficient (quite different from what we expected! - these guys could give Germany a run for their money). Everyone here is patient, are happy to wait in line-ups, and everyone follows the rules (which there are many, conveniently signposted on every corner). For example, it is not permitted to eat or drink in the train. Of course we didn't know this so the first thing we do after getting out of the airport is to pull out a granola bar and got told right away by another commuter that this was not allowed. We also learned about this website: www.stomp.sg which is basically a public shaming site, for those who decide to break the rules and are caught by cell-phone camera.

We also quickly realized that Singaporeans LOVE their shopping! There are massive malls on every corner, which, I admit, were convenient for two reasons: 1) easy to find a toilet and 2) air conditioning breaks. Singapore is HOT. So hot that our first day there we literally couldn't walk for more than a block before ducking into a mall where we would sit in the A/C until we cooled down. The forecast was about 34C but with the humidity felt like >40C!

Tom ended up buying a little hand towel which we refer to as his "dude rag".

Singapore has incredibly innovative architecture, with our favorite being the banana boat pearched atop three towers

The city also has hawker stalls everywhere which are basically outdoor food courts. Because Singapore is extremely multi cultural it is easy to find Chinese, Malay, Indian or even Vietnamese stalls. It was fun walking through them all trying to pick lunch; there was quite a variety (but also a lot of unknown!)

 

Unfortunately by day three we both got food poisoning.... but it was worth it!

Before that though we still packed a lot in including a great walking tour of the city which started in the heart of the central area down to the waterfront.

We visited the botanical gardens which contained an impressive orchid garden with >1000 different species and learnt that new orchid hybrids are actually developed each year.

We even went to the Night Safari, which is associated with the Singapore Zoo. On the night safari you get to hike through the jungle on several trails, and see all sorts of local animals. This turned out to be much more interesting than I thought! Most of the animals were actually very active at night (we assumed it was probably because of the heat!). The highlight was the "bat-cave" where you get to walk through a night-time jungle with bats flying everywhere - complete with gigantic fruit-bats. Just remember to duck - some of those bats were the size of flying puppies! (if puppies could fly)

We also went to the National museum where we learned about the history of Singapore (you can read some history from Wikipedia), and went on a great tour of Chinatown with our new friend Wei.

On our last night in Singapore we met up with an old friend from our Montreal days, Wen Tsern, who gave us a tour of Sentosa Island, his favourite hawker stalls where he treated us to an amazing spread of the best local food and then gave us a tour along Orchard road, where Hermes has not one, but TWO stores. (Interesting bit of info: the woman who owns the most Hermes Birkin handbags in the world is a Singaporean ex-flight attendant named Jamie Chua).

Unfortunately, I didn't get to take a cooking class because I got sick :( BUT I still did get a chance sample a lot of really great food!

Next: Hong Kong!

Click here for more photos.

 

Food in New Zealand

I love food. Part of travelling for me is experiencing countries and cultures through food; hence my goal to take some form of cooking class in every country I visit. We ended up cooking most of our meals here for two reasons: 1. Because New Zealand is a relatively expensive country to travel in (CDN is on par with the NZ dollar right now), and 2. When travelling for so long, it's nice to have some form of routine or "normal life" where we can make food that we are used to eating. Of course, when we came across good looking food though - we ate it!

My first Pavlova; see previous blog post here.

Tom's cinnamon buns

Tom's scones

Tom also made several loafs of bread but I forgot to take pictures of them.

Cafe food was REALLY good.

Fish pie

We also had a lot of venison pies and sausage rolls sold at cafe's but again forgot to take photos of these.

Green tipped mussels

Fish & chips served in old newspapers and paper

As mentioned in a previous post, we went to a Hangi where we had lamb & chicken cooked in a pit below ground.

We did eat alot of lamb too: steaks, sausages and burgers. No photos though because they were just too good.

Smoked mussels and clams

Feijoa. These are a very fragrant fruit. It tasts like a kiwi mixed with rose water and texture akin to a grape on the inside and an unripe pear on the outside.

We discovered hokey pokey ice cream, which is like a vanilla ice cream filled with little crunchy caramel bits.

Moro Gold chocolate bars (these are our new favourites!)

Coffee. Kiwi's take their coffee very seriously. Generally we found the coffee to be better here than in most cafe's in Vancouver. You could be in some small town with a population of 1000 people and the one and only cafe had great coffee, although I found that the South Island had better coffee than the North Island. Our usual: Tom would have a flat white (like a latte but the milk has a dense velvety texture) and I had a long black (a.k.a. Americano but with less water which means it was stronger and just the way I like it!)

Next food post: Singapore!

 

Sweet-as

For the final leg of our New Zealand tour, we decided to head to the Coromandel peninsula. Known for its remote beaches and supposed off-the-beaten-track feel, we thought it would be a good place to unwind before heading to the big city of Auckland.

Our first couple of nights were spent at a campground near "Hot Water Beach" which was central to some of the more popular sights on the east coast of the peninsula. It was a very nice area surrounded by sub-tropical forest, but remote it was not. This beach is very much on the standard tourist track of the north island, and was extremely popular - unfortunately we soon realized that having a remote beach experience was a bit out of the question. Hot water beach is a place where a thermal spring percolates up through the sand and meets the ocean tides. If you time it right (at low tide only), you can dig a hole at the edge of the beach which will actually fill up with hot water.

Sounded fantastic - so we rented a shovel, and headed down to the beach trying to target low-tide. Turns out, about a hundred other people also had the same idea and the actual area on the beach where the water comes up is fairly small. There were SO many people on the beach that there was standing room only.

We did manage to dig a hole and wiggle our feet into the sand and it was definately HOT - hot enough that I couldn't keep my feet buried in the sand for more than a few minutes. It was definately interesting, but the number of people really took away from the experience. In hindsight, a better choice would have been to wake up in the middle of the night and go down to the beach for low-tide in the dark - which would have been a bit quieter.

From the same campground we also took a day trip out to Cathedral Cove - an eroded sandstone arch. Reached by a 40min hike, the highlight for me was actually stopping at the two smaller beaches on the way. A small detour off the hiking trail leads to Gemstone bay, and also Stingray bay. I heard that the snorkeling was pretty good here so I rented a wetsuit and gear from a local dive shop before we walked in. Snorkeling was great and I got some up close views of the local sea-life.

I even saw a whole "school"?? of squid - They were only about 30cm long, but I didn't know that they hung out in gangs. Water clarity wasn't that great, and this wasn't a coral reef, but it still gave a good tour of what the native rocky shoreline is like.

Next we stopped in Stingray bay, which turns out not to be just a name. The entire bay was teeming with stingrays. I didn't have to even put on a snorkel as they were swimming around in the sandy wash of the incoming waves. I spent most of my time trying not to actually step on them as they swam around in less than a foot of water! Unfortuntely I didn't get any good pictures since the water was so cloudy.

Cathedral cove, was as it was described - a big arch worn away in the sandstone In the end, I thought that the Cathedral Cove arch was a bit of a "meh", with the real cool stuff being at the beaches which everyone seemed to just rush by! Definately worth the stop.

The next couple of nights we ventured farther north up the peninsula to the west side and kept driving north, luntil we ran out of (sealed) road at Colville. Here we stayed at an active cattle/sheep farm with a really long history - the owners are sixth generation farmers working their 1200 hectare (=huge) family farm. It was so large that Marie and I took a 3 hour hike to the far reaches of their property which actually extended all the way back into the spine of mountains running down the middle of the penninsula.

Hiking to the top we crossed lush pasture, rocky rolling hills, and even an abandoned mine. The owners supplied a hand-drawn map at the cabin we were staying in giving directions to the abandoned mine in the forest on their property, with the main attraction being glow-worms in one of the corners inside the mine. What could be safer than tramping through the jungle to an old mine, and then poking around inside? Directions: hike down the road for about an hour, stay left, then make a left at the handwritten sign that says "mine", follow the fence into the forest, cross a river and then tramp through the jungle until you stumble upon the mine entrance. It was a bit of an adventure but we eventually found the mine (which was supposedly safe).

We also found the glow-worms in a side tunnel - no problem: enter mine, take the first left, walk down the tunnel and then take the first right. Glow-worms!

Finishing the hike we headed up to the "best viewpoint" - being about dead center in the middle of the peninsula it gave good views of both the east and west coasts with great views to the lush sub-tropical forests made up of beech, nikau and cabbage trees.

This area was much more off the beaten track and well worth the visit.

We spent the last few days in Auckland, at an amazing 100 year old house we found on Airbnb. David, the owner of house, was a great host and room was amazing complete with french doors opening onto a native sub-tropical garden. It even included a preying mantis going after Marie...

Sitting in the airport we are now awaiting our flight to Singapore, our next stop. We both had a great time in NZ and will definately be back one day. It was SWEET-AS!