asia – Outdoor Travel Geek

korean market meals

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to wander around the local markets and sample as much food as I can. Korea in particular was an amazing market meal experience for me, partly because I know and love the food. Much of the stuff in these markets I can find in America, but I found that everything was so much tastier here.

In Seoul there’s the Namdaemun market. I spent the better part of a day eating my way through this market. The first thing I had there was the ddeokbokki, which is rice cakes stir fried in spicy sauce. The ddeokbokki was okay, but the best part of this meal was the bit of fish cake soup that came with it. All together it was super filling for less than $3. In hindsight though, I wish I had eaten less of it so that I would have room for other stuff later.

These kimchi dumplings were ten for 5000 won. I didn’t have room in my belly for ten of them, so I asked for one, and they charged me 1000 won. In hindsight I should’ve just bought the ten, and saved them for later because they were incredibly good. It was a revelation to me, how good these could be when fresh, because I’ve only had the frozen ones before.

Grandma’s pig feet stall, complete with a legit grandma. I’m a big fan of pig’s feet, and it’s been a while since I’ve had one, so this was really satisfying to me. Apparently it’s pretty popular in Seoul, since I saw a lot of pig’s feet restaurants and stalls in Seoul.

In the heart of the Namdaemun market there’s a tiny hole in the wall restaurant that specializes in kal-gook-su. Literally translated it means knife noodles. I eat these noodles from time to time in America, but I’m pretty sure the noodles are store bought and made by machine. This place still makes them and cuts them with a knife by hand. It was super tasty, for the equivalent of about $4 you get all this food, a huge bowl of kal-gook-su, a bowl of spicy naengmyun (cold noodles) and a bowl of barley rice.

In Busan I went to the famous Jagalchi market with my nephew to grab lunch. There are some foods there that I didn’t see in the Seoul markets. They had spicy pig skin, sunji soup (sunji is coagulated cow’s blood), and gamja-tang (literally translated this is potato soup, traditionally it’s made with pig spine). My nephew and I split a bowl of sunji soup. Typically I’m not a fan of food made with blood, but this was quite tasty. The lady was super nice too, she refilled our bowl for us, even though we were splitting a 3500 won bowl (equivalent of about $3). In hindsight I wish I had some of the gamja-tang too, since I like that stuff. I figure if something I don’t typically like tastes good here, stuff that I normally like should taste incredibly awesome. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough stomach space.

Jagalchi market is famous for seafood. There are literally seafood stalls as far as the eye can sea. It’s all super fresh, and much of it is still alive. Many of the stalls had little restaurants in the back, so you can pick out the seafood and they’ll make you a meal right on the spot. You could get the famous live octopus here. I was planning to eat it here, but I chickened out at the last minute when I saw how lively they were.

My nephew and spent some time just wandering through the Jagalchi market looking at the various fish for sale. We were pretty full, so we weren’t planning to eat anything. All of a sudden I heard this lady yelling (in Korean), “If it’s not good I won’t take the money.” So I stopped to take a look at the fish her husband was grilling. It certainly smelled good.

Before I knew it, this lady started dragging me and my nephew into the little restaurant behind the stall. So I’m thinking okay, I’ll order just one piece of fish, just to try it. But they said the minimum I could order was a meal for two people. So at this point I’m thinking, “Dammit I’m about to get ripped off, this is gonna be really expensive and probably isn’t gonna be very good.”

So we proceed to order the minimum for two people, which ended up being 20,000 won (about $18). At this point, I’m thinking “Shit, I just got ripped off really badly.” But then as my nephew and I start eating, we find that the fish is super tasty, and the meal came with a lot of side dishes and a bowl of miyuk gook (seaweed soup) that’s also quite good. And by the time we’re done eating, the little restaurant was completely full. Whether it’s from people that the lady dragged in, I’m not sure, but everyone in the place seemed very happy to be there. And in the end I was pretty happy too. I left with a smile on my face, so when I asked the lady if I could take a picture of her, she was all smiles too.

I enjoyed everything I ate at the Jagalchi market so much that I ended up returning to the market. My main mission at the market the second time around was to eat some raw fish. There’s a section of the market where there’s a ton of hwae-jib (raw fish houses) lined up one after another. How do you pick which one to go to in this situation? I ended up going into one that seemed to have a good number of customers and ordered hwae-dub-bap, which is basically the Korean version of chirashi, raw fish over rice. The fish is incredibly fresh, they chop it up right there in front of the stall, and it comes with a few other seafood side dishes.

Almost all of the meals that I ate alone in Korea was at the markets. There was so much tasty stuff, sadly I just didn’t have the stomach capacity to eat everything I wanted to try. And one thing I liked was that each market seemed to have its own regional specialties. If I ever get a chance to spend a good block of time in Korea, I’d like to just travel around the country and eat at a market in each town along the way.

blood in busan

My final stop on my crazy month of travel was to my hometown of Busan. For many reasons it was the place where I was most looking forward to visiting.

First and foremost, I have the most family in Busan, and I was looking forward to seeing all of them. We had dinner together, and its the first time I can remember three generations of my family all eating dinner together. I was looking forward to seeing my nephew too, I’m pretty close with him since he went to school in San Francisco and lived with my parents for about half a year. He was shorter than me when he left, but now he’s way taller than me.

My nephew only had one day to hang out with me, since he was going to a boarding school for a month. We hung out like old times, wandering around and eating food. He introduced me to sunji soup, which is a soup made of coagulated cow’s blood. I’m not usually a fan of food made with blood, but this was actually really tasty. And it was ridiculously cheap too! My nephew and I split a bowl for the equivalent of about $3.

After my nephew went off to boarding school I spent most of the rest of my time in Busan with his family. Even though I rarely see them, I felt like we were close. I guess being blood relatives makes it that way. Family is family, even after long periods of not seeing them or even meeting them for the first time, as in the case of my nieces in Busan.

Many of the tourist sites in Busan are near the ocean, including this Buddhist temple built on the ocean side cliffs.

There are several beaches, including Haeundae beach. In the summer time it would be crowded here. Since it’s the middle of winter I wasn’t expecting too many people, but there were a surprisingly large number of people wandering around the beach still.

The maritime academy that my dad graduated from is in Busan.

At one of the restaurants we went to there was a cage in the parking lot that held these two dogs. I felt a pang of sadness on account of them, partly because they were caged, but mostly because they remind me of Dannie and Annie, the two dogs I had growing up.

My time in Busan and Korea as a whole was sort of a journey of discovery for me. Part of me wonders what life would be like if my family never left Korea. It got me thinking about what part of us is caused by blood or genetics, and what part of us is because of environment? I wonder if I had lived in Korea, would I be the same guy that loves the outdoors and loves biking? Would I be the same guy in a different city, biking along the beach in Busan instead of biking along the river in Sacramento? Or would I be someone else completely different?

korea family TAG

Aside from my short solo stint in Seoul, my time in Korea was devoted to family. I have a cousin in Taegu (also spelled Daegu) and a cousin in Andong and together with my cousin’s son (my nephew?) we went to Gangwon to ski, hence the TAG in the title of this post.

My cousin in Taegu picked me up from my hotel in Seoul. It was nice of her, I could have just as easily taken the train from Seoul to Taegu, but she insisted on picking me up. After a night in Taegu we went to Andong, where her parents and brother live. From there we picked up her brother and went to the High1 ski resort in Gangwon where we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Her son is kind of a spoiled brat in my opinion, but he’s cute and lovable in his own way. He actually kind of reminds me and my bro when we were young. We were pretty much spoiled brats too, but I’d argue that we both turned out okay.

On our way back from Gangwon we stopped at a few of the tourist sites in the province. One of them was an old gold mine that was turned into some sort of tourist trap.

We stopped for lunch at one of the markets in Jungseon, a small town in Gangwon province. It’s interesting how the different markets in Korea have different food specialties. Here the specialty is rice cooked with a mountain vegetable called gonduhrae. We looked it up, apparently there’s no English translation for it, and apparently it’s related to thistle.

The market in Andong is famous for Andong steamed chicken. There are tons of stalls in the market that specialize in this dish.

The graves for many of my ancestors are in Andong, so my uncle took me to the hillside where they are buried so that I could pay my respects.

They told me to bring alcohol and newspaper. The alcohol I understood, since we pour alcohol on the graves (it’s not unlike pouring one for our homies here). The newspaper I didn’t understand until I got to the graves and found them surrounded by snow. It was for me to spread on the ground while I bowed with my knees on the newspaper to prevent my pants from getting wet.

My uncle took me to another hillside so I can get a view of the town. We brought along Turbo, my cousin’s dog.

One major regret is not taking a family photo in Andong. It’s been almost twenty years since I had last seen them. But even though it’s been twenty years, they haven’t changed much from how I remember them. To them apparently I’ve changed a lot though, from looking more like my little nephew to looking more like my dad looked before he left Andong. Hopefully it won’t be another twenty years before I see them again, I’ve resolved to try and go to Korea more often to see my family there, and for sure next time I’ll take a family photo.

seoul

Cambodia was the last stop for the rest of my travel companions, they flew back to California while I continued on to Korea to visit family. The first part of my time in Korea would be in Seoul though, where I didn’t have any family. I still wanted to explore Seoul, so I ended up getting a hotel room for a couple of nights in the Gangnam district (hotel Gangnam Style!!!) using my Marriott reward certificate and some points.

When I arrived at my hotel I was not feeling very good. My stomach was still hurting from something I had eaten in Cambodia, and I had just come off of an overnight flight. And to make things worse, it was seriously cold in Seoul, it had snowed recently and the temperature stayed below freezing for the entire time I was there, so the sidewalks were constantly covered in snow and ice. I ended up sleeping most of my first day in Seoul, and was on the toilet for most of the rest of that day. It was a pretty miserable way to start my time in Korea, but thankfully my hotel room was very comfortable.

After spending a day recovering, I went to see some of the sights in Seoul. It was almost unbearably cold for me, but I think these ducks had it even harder. They looked miserable on their frozen pond.

For a little while I was able to escape the cold inside the Seoul National Museum.

My stomach was starting to feel better, so I started to eat again. I was curious about McDonald’s bulgogi burger, so I stopped by and tried one.

McDonald’s bulgogi burger was kinda nasty in my opinion. The combination of mayonnaise and bulgogi sauce doesn’t work for me. On a friend’s advice I tried Lotteria’s rice bulgogi burger. That actually tasted pretty good. Instead of buns it had two patties made of rice smashed into a bun shape. I’ve eaten a lot of burgers that have fallen apart as I ate them, but this one literally disintegrated because the rice “bun” didn’t really hold together.

One of my favorite stops was to Namdaemun, not so much for the gate that’s there, but for the market that’s nearby. I spent a couple of hours eating my way through the market. I’ll probably devote an entire blog post just to market food in Korea.

Bukchon Hanok Village was one of my favorite spots. It’s a neighborhood of old style Korean homes, but there’s a nice view of downtown Seoul from the neighborhood, so you can take a picture here that shows both old and modern Korea. If I had more time in Seoul I’d probably spend a night here, since there are many hanok houses that serve as guest houses which have Korean cultural programs.

Seoul is incredibly huge, so it took me a long time to get to the few places I wanted to visit. That plus the fact that I wasted a day recovering meant that I didn’t get to see as much of the city as I wanted to. I definitely need to return and really explore and eat my way through the different parts of town.

angkor within the frame

When taking pictures at a place like Angkor Wat it’s very easy for all your pictures to start looking pretty similar. So to try and make things a little different from usual I took a lot of pictures that were framed by doorways or columns. Here are some of them.

Two towers of Angkor Wat framed by columns.

The view from the top of Angkor Wat.

Steep steps to the top of the temple.

Many of the temples had a Buddha shrine in the center.

One of the many faces of Ta Prohm.

There are many parts of the temple where the roots of a tree grow over the stone wall. Ta Prohm is especially famous for this.

Sometimes an entire tree will grow into the stone roof.

One of many monkey guard statues at Banteay Srei. The door frames are very intricately carved at Banteay Srei, they’re actually more detailed than the statues.

Frames within frames.

Many sections of the temples within the Angkor Wat complex had caved in. What’s amazing is that they’re still open to the public. In America something like this would probably be closed to the public.

When I opened up my pictures from Cambodia in Lightroom, I found that I had almost 500 images. Many of them look pretty similar to each other. Framing my shots with a frame in the image helped to alleviate the monotony a bit. I found that shooting like that made it hard to get an acceptable exposure, because typically one side of the frame would be indoors and the other would be outdoors. It shows in these pictures that my camera’s dynamic range was stretched. My little Olympus OM-D camera gives up almost two stops of dynamic range to my previous Pentax K-5 camera. In most instances I don’t miss those two stops (and don’t miss lugging around an SLR), but in situations like this I sometimes miss having a camera with a larger sensor.

My dream camera at this point would be the recently announced Sony A7 II (I know my dream camera seems to change on a daily basis…) That Sony mirrorless camera seems to be the best of both worlds, a large sensor with great image quality, but still fairly compact, the only downside is the price. The lens and camera combination I’d want would be almost $2500. That’s more than I spent on my entire month of traveling, so yeah, I’ll probably stick with my OM-D for now.

candid cambodia

One thing that’s great about travel is that it takes you out of you comfort zone. Physically you’re out of your comfort zone, but also photographically travel takes me out of my comfort zone. I would say I’m more of a landscape/outdoor photographer, but traveling lets me take photos that I wouldn’t normally take. I’m not usually much of a people photographer, but something about travelling makes me more of a people watcher, so I decided to try my hand at people photography.

One thing that impressed me about Cambodia was all the artists. Every market in Cambodia had artwork for sale, and a lot of it was very impressive.

There’s also a lot of artisans, and they seem to start at a very young age, like this boy working with leather.

Sadly there are many people who were injured from land mines. At several places around the Angkor temple complex you can hear bands formed from people handicapped by mines.

Sometimes you take a picture that you think tells one story, but find later that the story is completely different. I took this picture of what I thought was a guy relaxing alone with his guide book at the top of the temple steps. It wasn’t until I got home and saw the picture on my computer monitor that I saw the crutches.

I’m not sure what the story is behind these kids. At several of the temples I saw kids playing alone. I didn’t see any parents, and they weren’t begging for money, they were oblivious to all the tourists around them.

There were also many kids selling souvenirs. They were obviously not oblivious to tourists. They would literally follow you all the way back to your tuk tuk. I felt bad for this one (partly cuz I took her picture while she was following me) so I bought some post cards from her. Later on at our hotel I saw a flyer that explained why we shouldn’t buy from these kids.

Possibly because many of the Angkor temples are Buddhist there seemed to be a lot of monks around. To me it’s a bit strange to see a monk with a tablet and a cellphone is in his hand. Buddhist asceticism isn’t what it used to be.

At the night markets there are a lot of fruit shake stalls that will blend you a shake for a $1. They have Jamba Juice beat on price and taste, and it was especially refreshing in the warm and humid climate in Cambodia.

We saw a lot of interesting sights from the back seat of our tuk tuk. The families on motorcycles especially amazed me. Back home a 250cc motorcycle would be considered under-powered, but here we could see entire families no one 125cc motorcycle.

These candid photos are a bit different from my usual photos. Something I realized is that I missed focus on a lot of these pictures, I should’ve taken my time and focused on the subjects’ eyes. But then in taking my time I’d probably lose the candid feel of the photos. So I think I just need to continue to practice at getting faster at focusing but at the same time staying less noticeable.

siem reap

The last stop for us in southeast Asia was Siem Reap in Cambodia. From here everyone else would travel back home to California, while I would continue on to Korea to visit relatives. Siem Reap served as a great finale to a trip that had been full of incredible experiences.

For some reason I had expected Siem Reap to be pretty undeveloped, with dirt roads everywhere. But when we arrived I was surprised to find that everywhere we went there were paved roads. Well, everywhere except for the street that our guest house was on. For some reason the street that we were staying at was still a dirt road, with chickens and stray dogs roaming around. When we rounded the corner to our guesthouse for the first time I was thinking, “Really?! What just happened? This does not look promising…We literally went from first world to third world when we turned onto the street our guesthouse was on…” The guesthouse turned out to be really nice though, with comfortable air conditioned rooms, and super friendly staff. There even was a nice swimming pool.

Just about everyone who visits Siem Reap is there to view Angkor Wat, so the day after our arrival in Siem Reap we took a tuk-tuk to the Angkor Wat complex. A tuk-tuk is a carriage attached to the back of a motorcycle. Riding in one takes some getting used to, because there are of course no seat belts, and the streets can be chaotic.

This is the famed Angkor Wat. Apparently many people wake up super early to take a picture of the sunrise here, but we were too lazy to wake up that early. We heard it was overrated anyways, because the bazillion other people there trying to take the same sunrise picture at the same time kinda ruins the experience.

The temple complex definitely was crowded, especially with Asian tourists. Apparently (and surprisingly) Koreans are the biggest tourist group in Siem Reap, followed closely by the Chinese.

There are mobs of people at all the famous tourist sites, but the biggest crowd was at the steps to the top of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is the temple that most people have heard of, but there are actually quite a lot of temples in the Angkor Wat complex. My favorite within the complex was this one, the Bayon.

The Bayon is interesting because all of the four sided towers have faces carved into each of the sides.

You can get nose to nose with the faces of the Bayon. Okay not really, but our guide pointed out a bunch of interesting spots to take photos, like this one where it does sorta look like you’re nose to nose.

Another of my favorite temples was Banteay Srei. This one actually wasn’t in the Angkor Wat complex, it actually was a fairly long tuk-tuk ride away from where most of the rest of the temples are. It’s worth making the trek out there though, because it’s a bit different from the rest in that the sandstone is a brighter pink color, and the carvings in the sandstone are much more intricate.

The temples are the main attraction in Siem Reap, but the markets are pretty interesting too. These markets have a lot of stuff that is unique to Siem Reap, such as beautiful oil paintings of the Angkor Wat temples, or paintings of the floating villages on the lake outside of Siem Reap.

The night markets were especially interesting to me, because you can get a lot of food for cheap, and there’s some really interesting and exotic foods. I tried this snake on a stick, and it only cost me one dollar. I also had frog and cricket, though I wasn’t brave enough to try the tarantula. It was all pretty cheap too, though I ended up paying for it later in toilet time because I ended up with some pretty bad diarrhea by the time I left Siem Reap.

Siem Reap was a great finale to an amazing journey, I really enjoyed my stay there. Exploring the temples was amazing, the food was cheap and good, the night life seemed fun (and not at all sleazy like it can be in certain parts of Asia), the only thing that put a damper on the enjoyment was the stomach aches and diarrhea I had. If I’m here again I think I’ll stay away from the snake and frogs and insects.

ah phuket, lets go diving

Landing in Phuket was a bit of a culture shock for me. I knew Thailand was not going to be as developed as Singapore or Europe, but I wasn’t prepared for how different it would be. In Europe and in Singapore transit was pretty easy, there were subway stations or trains for the most part to get us where we wanted to go. For the most part it was a matter of just looking up subway lines on Google maps.

Landing in Phuket immediately felt different. When we landed at the small airport in Phuket, we had no clue how to get to our hotel. There’s no train or subway. What they did have were these minivans and taxis. We decided to go with a minivan, mainly because it was much more cheaper than the taxi, but also because it seemed like everyone else was picking the minivan as well. So we went with the minivan, and found that it wouldn’t leave until it was completely full. And then before the minivan would drop off any of its passengers at their respective hotels, it would make a stop at a tour agency to try and sell us tour packages. We had already planned out our days in Thailand, so thankfully it wasn’t too hard a sell. We really only had two full days in Thailand, the first of which was dedicated to scuba diving.

This might be the first selfie I’ve ever posted on this site, me and my dive buddy Tim. Unfortunately for us the one time I post a selfie is the one time it’s impossible to not look like a dork. Being underwater makes for an automatic bad hair day, and having a scuba regulator in your mouth causes extreme duck face.

My first impression of our divemaster wasn’t too great. He introduced himself as Philippe. He barely said anything to us in the beginning, and on the boat ride to our dive site he basically went off by himself and chain smoked. But he actually turned out to be pretty cool. He was a diver for the French navy, and had served a tour in Iraq. (I didn’t know that the French navy had any part in the Iraq war– you learn something new every day.) When our boat started to get close to the dive site, he started to get friendlier and went over the safety protocols and dive site information with us. And at the end of the trip he talked about his life as a divemaster in Phuket, which actually sounded like a pretty sweet life.

Philippe had a little pointer with him that he would use to point out stuff to us from time to time. Unfortunately for the most part I didn’t really understand what he was pointing at. He did point at some cool stuff that I did see though, we saw a little string ray that was camouflaged in the sand, and we saw a little parasitic fish that was latched onto a larger host fish. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of that stuff, for some reason every time I pulled my GoPro camera out of my buoyancy control jacket while he was pointing I got nothing.

This dive trip resulted in a number of firsts for me. It was my first time diving from a boat. It was a bit scary at first, taking that big first step off the back of the boat. And dropping down to the bottom was a bit scary at first too, since it was my first dive in a couple of years. When we got to the sandy bottom our divemaster had us practice regulator recovery and mask clearing, which eased my mind, and as we started swimming around the bottom I began to relax a bit. Getting back on the boat was a learning experience too. We had to hang onto the ladder and pull off our fins, meanwhile the boat is rocking back and forth and there’s a heavy tank on your back making things a bit more challenging.

Another first for me, swimming through an obstacle.

Being underwater all day made us crave fish for dinner. We found a little outdoor seafood restaurant that seemed fairly popular, we stopped there and ordered some fish. It turned out to be pretty awesome, it was covered with aromatics, lime, chili, garlic and cilantro and steamed to perfection.

Our second day in Phuket was spent doing an elephant tour. I’m not usually big on organized tours, but the high five with the elephant at the start of the tour made me think that this would be pretty awesome.

The tour started with an elephant ride. During the ride there was a beautiful view of the bay. I think one of the islands at the far end of the bay was where we had gone diving the day before.

The tour wasn’t all just elephants, it was a cultural tour of Thailand. They had Thai cooking demonstrations with amazing fresh made curry powder, along with coconut oil making, rice farming, and rubber harvesting demonstrations.

They even had a water buffalo tuk-tuk to ride.

The tour ended with a buffet on a boat ride in the bay.

After the tour we walked around a bit to work off the buffet. We explored the touristy areas of Patong (the town in Phuket we were staying in) and walked on Patong beach. There are a ton of tourists from all over the place, but it seemed like the majority of tourists were European.

My first impression of Phuket wasn’t too great, but by the end of my time there I was enjoying it. I can see myself coming back. The food is awesome and cheap, and the scenery is beautiful. There’s not too much of the shady go-go bars and massage places that I heard other parts of Thailand has, it’s definitely more family friendly, especially if you stay away from the center of Patong. And apparently the diving is pretty good, our divemaster was telling us that the Similan islands which we could reach by liveaboard boat from Phuket has some world class diving.

singapore

Apparently Singapore is a pretty expensive city to stay in. We looked hard to find an affordable yet convenient rental on AirBnb, but gave up and ended up reserving a few nights at a backpackers’ hostel. When we arrived at the hostel, we were drenched in sweat. We found that the hostel wasn’t air conditioned, and we found that the room we were staying in had five bunk beds, so there were possibly going to be ten people trying to sleep in the humid heat.

Our recently met travel companions Sophia and Suzy had smartly booked a room in a hotel, and they found that there were rooms still available in their hotel, so we ended up cancelling our reservation at the hostel and booking a room at their hotel. It ended up being about $120 a night, which is close to double the next most expensive place we’d stayed at during this trip, but we decided it was a fair price to pay to be able to sleep at night. We lost the deposit that we paid for our hostel reservation, though in hindsight it wasn’t too bad because we got to store our bags there for the first day, and a locker at the train station would’ve probably cost the same as the deposit.

We didn’t have too much of an itinerary for Singapore, more than anything it was a foodie destination for all of us. Our first stop was to Clarke Quay to visit Jumbo seafood for chili crab. Clarke Quay seemed to have a cool night life with various bars with bands playing live music, we would stop at one of them later on our trip where we discovered a cool local cover band called 3AM.

One food I was really looking forward to trying in Singapore was the chili crab. It was pretty good, spicy and sweet and savory at the same time. Since I love crab so much I may try to make this at home sometime.

I’d heard much about the hawker center experience and was looking forward to visiting one to see what all the fuss is about. It’s kind of overwhelming, there are a ridiculous number of food stalls packed in a small area, so it’s hard to decide what to eat. Being a hawker center noob we just gravitated to the stalls with long lines of people ordering.

Hainanese chicken and rice was another dish that I was really looking forward to trying. We found a stall at the hawker center that had a long line of people waiting for it. It didn’t disappoint– the chicken was very moist, and the rice had soaked up a lot of the chicken flavor. I actually eat this at a restaurant back at home from time to time, but it’s much better in Singapore.

The Marina Bay Sands is pretty cool, even from just an architectural standpoint. There’s a swimming pool and a park on the suspended roof, to me it boggles the mind that they can have that kind of structural load suspended in the air like that.

There’s a bar at the top of the Marina Bay Sands called Ku De Ta. We went to the top so that we could get a view of the pool and of the skyline. The drinks were seriously expensive. This is the most expensive cocktail I’ve ever had. You’d think if you’re spending more than $20 for a drink it’d be strong at least, but no, this tasted pretty watered down.

Another architectural marvel is the Cloud Forest, which happened to be next to the architectural marvel that is the Marina Bay Sands. In fact you can see the Marina Bay Sands through the glass.

The Cloud Forest is a humongous indoor arboretum that’s large enough to house a 35 meter tall waterfall.

We spent a good amount of time in Chinatown shopping for souvenirs, but they also had a pretty good and cheap hawker center.

The hawker center in Chinatown was where I had my cheapest meal in Singapore. It came to about $3 USD, and came with dry noodles, a bowl of soup, and even came with an iced lemon jello dessert (not pictured.)

This ended up being one of my favorite pictures from the trip. There’s a pretty big Buddhist temple at Chinatown, this was taken near the entrance.

We went to the night safari. I kinda wish we had gotten there a little earlier so we could walk around more because I really enjoyed it. In concept I guess it’s not all that special, it’s basically not much different from a zoo. But it was cool because it’s open at night when the animals are most active. If I go back I think I’d want to take a camera that’s really good in the dark, maybe a Nikon D750 or Sony a7. My camera was pretty much pushed to the limits by the darkness there.

Singapore is a place I’ve been wanting to visit for a while. I would have to say it’s a nice place to visit, the city is clean, the food is great, and except for the night safari it’s easy to get around by subway. But I think for me, once is enough. It was too hot and humid for me, and this was in the winter. I’d probably die or at the very least be an incredibly uncomfortable sweaty mess if I ever went in the summertime.