The Singapore Airport is Awesome

My layover between Siem Reap, Cambodia and Phuket, Thailand took me back to the magical place that is the Changi International Airport in Singapore. As you may recall, my last adventure here was after an excruciatingly painful flight, so I didn't really stop to smell the proverbial roses while I was here. This time around, however, I had plenty of time to explore all of the wonders that Changi had to offer.

Jargony marketing speak: yes. Still delicious: YES. And in
case you were wondering, yes, this is me showing
self-restraint when it comes to my ketchup intake.

It turns out Maslow really did know a thing or two about priorities, so my first stop was the food court. In my quest to eat at a McDonald's in every country I visit (even for just a layover), I was pleased to find one in the food court. Whenever possible, I like to try out the local flavors McDonald's has to offer, so naturally I ordered the Samurai burger with seaweed fries. (Side note, "Samurai": way harder to spell than you think.) Which ended up just a normal burger but with teriyaki sauce, and normal fries but instead of salt, they give you seaweed flakes. Which turns out to be really awesome, actually.

With that taken care of, I decided to take a stroll around the airport. This place is ridiculous. It should be a tourist destination in and of itself. As I continued to walk around, I came upon the Sunflower Garden, an outdoor garden that is everything it promises to be:

If only there was sun

Back inside the airport, I found... the coy pond?!

Note: Fish in pond may be larger than they appear.

Next on the agenda... the indoor butterfly park!

Apparently butterflies like pineapple. Unfortunately, evolution didn't
bestow them with any semblance of a natural ability to actually eat
pineapple on their own. How they survived all these millennia is a mystery
that still baffles entomologists to this day.

...with a built-in waterfall?!

I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to.
Ok, I probably could, I'm a pretty good storyteller.
But you get the point.

And last but not least, the world's largest golf ball / control tower:

I'm pretty sure Zeus is still looking for his ball somewhere
near the Arabian Sea. Poor fool doesn't even know his
own strength.

Needless to say, this time around, Changi was a far better experience. No wonder it's won a heap of awards. Thanks, Singapore! Maybe I'll come back and see what else you have to offer someday.

Introducing KFC Chicken Strings

I met an adviser to the prime minister's cabinet today. His name is H. T. Imam. And he rolled into the butterfly park with a HUGE entourage, maybe five or six cars, police escorts, the works. He was meeting with the family of MRA, just because. Officially he was there to check out the butterfly park. Unofficially, unclear.

After that we spent the day in Chittagong touring some other businesses. First we went to a cement plant. At this point, I've been to so many random businesses that I have no interest in that I was kind of like "ok cool, you make cement, that's cool I guess, let's move on." After that, we went to a towel factory. Which I thought was also going to be more of the same but it turned out to be way more interesting than I expected (more on this in my next post).


In the evening we went to a replica park, which kind of sounds like it's out of a scifi movie, but basically it's a park with replicas of all the major monuments in Bangladesh. Who needs to tour the country when you can just come here? Dad wanted me to taste what KFC was like in Bangladesh, so that's where we ate for dinner. The chicken strips I had would have been more accurately called chicken strings. Dad claims the chicken here tastes better because it's all raised organically, etc. but I can't tell the difference. Maybe that's because we have good chicken in San Francisco too.

That night we stayed at the Agrabad Hotel, one of the best hotels in Chittagong, and owned by MHA. Something I'm coming to realize is that top-of-the-line in the 3rd world is roughly equal to "pretty good" by American standards. The rooms still don't feel quite as clean or in general as nice as you would find at home.

Bonus anecdote: Tonight, traffic was so bad that our driver literally started driving on the opposite side of the road directly into oncoming traffic. This actually happened. As in, the road has a divider between the two sides, and my driver crossed onto the wrong side of the road when there was a break in the divider. Not just in a "I'm gonna pass this car and get back onto the correct side of the road" kind of way but in a "oncoming cars, I hope you are paying attention because you need to dodge me as much as I need to dodge you" kind of way.

Have You Ever Been to Jail?

Today we started a trip to Chittagong, the other big city in Bangladesh. It's normally a 6-hour drive but we ended up taking around 14 hours with all of the stops we made. This was my favorite day here so far because it's the first time I felt like I've seen real Bangladesh. We left at 6am and we've got a tour guide with us for the next few days. His name is NNG, and he's an executive at MRA's company who speaks probably the best English I've heard of any Bangladeshi so far. He's also a relatively young guy so I finally had someone to ask questions to!

Major insight from the car ride: "Laws are just for paper. If you have money, you are the law." - NNG
At some point during hte ride, I was talking to NNG about the criminal justice system in Bangladesh and in an attempt to know what prison conditions are like, I'm pretty sure I accidentally asked him if he'd ever been to jail. Whoops!

Our first tourist stop was at this big river junction where the Dhakatia River is formed. The junction is so big it looks more like a lake than a river. It was the first time I've been outside when it's raining so I finally got to wear my rain jacket!

We also stopped by a place called Moinamoti, the site of an ancient civilization. You can just... walk around the ruins, it's crazy.

We finally arrived at our destination in Chittagong: the Butterfly Park of Bangladesh, also owned by MRA. It's pretty much the Bangladeshi version of San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers, where live butterflies fly all around you. Except in Bangladesh, this is a one-of-a-kind place. Being a guest of MRA's meant that even though the place was closed, they turned on the lights for me and let me walk around the place by myself.

My hotel room had a lizard crawling around on the walls. I have nothing else to say about that.