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.

Cambodia: New Country, New Friends!

My driver from the Phnom Penh airport was a little standoff-ish at first, but as I asked him questions, he opened up. His English was pretty decent. From his point of view, the government is totally corrupt. No surprises there: I think you could ask a cab driver in any country of the world what they think about their government and they will say it's corrupt, if they know they're speaking in confidence. The ride was about 40 minutes. I was struck by how much more developed Cambodia felt compared to India. Clean, paved roads, for starters. Though it all felt slightly less... colorful. Everything seemed to be coated in a layer of gray. The roads, the sky, the sidewalk.

I arrived at my hostel around 10:00am. As soon as I walked through the doors, the staff gave me the most enthusiastic welcome of any hostel yet. I checked in and put my stuff down on my bed. Inside of the lobby area is a huge chalkboard with a bunch of activities and bus schedules. I was asking the staff about what to do around here and they tossed out a few suggestions. Royal palace: sounds pretty standard. S-21: no idea what that is but okay. The Killing Fields: wait, what? This place where you can go and fire rocket launchers and shoot big army guns: awesome! But way too expensive.

A few minutes later I met SR, a friendly English girl with a wonderful smile. She had been traveling for a while and was flying solo in Cambodia. We had both arrived that morning so we decided to go exploring together.

The Royal Palace is totally for the birds

Our hostel was located right next to the royal palace. So we walked down the road but the area around the palace was completely deserted. We found out later that there were supposed to be some anti-government demonstrations happening soon, so they closed it to tours. Womp womp. The palace is right along the river so we walked along the waterfront. Then we passed by a Dairy Queen! I got really excited, obviously for good reason, but SR didn't really understand why because she's never seen one before. Dairy Queen is one of my favorite ice cream places in the world. Literally in the world, because they have them here on the opposite side of the world! Obviously we had to go in and get some. SR chose to resist my peer pressuring and passed on ice cream, though she did say that she'd have to try it before she left. I'll take it.

It turns out the reason that ATM in the airport gave me a US$100 bill is because Cambodians actually prefer to transact in U.S. currency. The Cambodian Riel tends to suffer from instability and inflation. It's kind of crazy to be on the other side of the world an transacting in my own currency.

We continued to walk for a while and I was starting to get pretty hungry for real food because I hadn't eaten since that McDonald's in the Singapore airport at 6am, so we went to find an authentic Vietnamese restaurant. I ended up getting a duck curry. It was pretty decent. Turns out Cambodian food is pretty similar to Thai food. And I love Thai food.

Some other cool buildings we saw on our walk

As we were walking back I noticed... the cars were driving on the right-hand side of the road! What?! How did I not see that before? I drove in a car for 40 minutes to get to the hostel and didn't notice at all. I think because my driver still sat on the right-hand side of the car. SR and I made our way back to the hostel because we were both exhausted and it was definitely naptime. Which was totally the right call.

I got up an hour or two later, left a note with SR, and headed out to go exploring. I walked around for a couple of hours. This is a fairly touristy part of the city, but I did end up walking through some slightly sketchy back-alley area where a bunch of people lived. It was interesting to see that everything was a step up from India, but sort of basically the same. People making traditional food in the streets. Living quarters that were small, closely-packed, and mostly lacking of doors. People in the streets with seemingly nothing to do.

I imagine most Cambodians don't realize that
that's the Golden Gate Bridge

I was making my way back home when I passed by something that blew my mind. Back at home in San Francisco, there's a little ice cream shop called Swensen's in Russian Hill. The ice cream is amazing. Sticky Chewy Chocolate for the win. Anyway, I've never seen it any other city in the U.S. Or anywhere else in the world... until today! In CAMBODIA! Whaaaaat?! I wasn't sure if it was the same Swensen's or not, but then I saw the American flag and picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and there was no doubt in my mind.

I made it back to the hostel, collected SR, and we ventured out to check out this outdoor market the staff had told us about. It was pretty wet outside but we found the place. It was what you'd expect an outdoor Asian market to be. A lot of fresh(-ish) fish, other seafood, fruits, vegetables, all pretty standard fare. It was a lot smaller than I think either of us had expected, so we walked through it in about 15 minutes.

How could it love me,
it doesn't even know me!

After that we found a local spot to grab some authentic Cambodian food. My rice came shaped like a heart and I'm pretty sure most Cambodian foods come with an egg on top (note: based on a skewed, limited sample size).

Pretty Woman, (saw it)
walking down the street

We also found the Pretty Woman bar that night. Yup, it's a thing.

When we got back to the hostel, there were four other people about my age hanging out in the lounge so I went to join them. Two of the guys were engineers from Germany, JN and BE, and then there was a couple from Finland, MK and IL. Funny you ask, why yes, MK and IL were both ridiculously attractive, how did you know? Everyone was really cool. The German guys were both hilarious. Also, JN used to work at an embassy in Bangladesh and went on this crazy hike for several days where you have to get special permission from the government to go. Everyone had been traveling for a little while, but the Germans were on the tail-end of their trip and this was one of their last night in this hostel before living it up big tomorrow night at a really fancy place. We talked for an hour or two and then I called it a night. New country, new friends!

CONTINUE ON to Phnom Penh Part 3: Genocide, What?

Worst. Flight. Ever.

Note: If you want to skip past my absolutely miserable flight experience and get right into my Cambodian adventure, you can continue on to Phnom Penh Part 2: Cambodia: New Country, New Friends!. But you'll be missing out...

I arrived at the Cochin airport and caught my flight to Cambodia. I am really excited to be checking out a new country. I spent my very last 100 rupees (~$1.75) on two bags of hard candy at the airport (strawberry creme and mango, in case you were wondering). I took my window seat next to an Indian couple on vacation. I offered them some of my candy and we had a nice chat before taking off.

That was basically the end of the pleasantness on my flight. This turned out to be one of the top three most miserable flying experiences of my life (and I've flown like... some 6-digit number of miles total in my life). I've come to discover that on occasion when I'm even the slightest bit sick heading onto a flight, I sometimes get a condition known as aerosinusitis. Basically what happens is one of my sinuses gets blocked so the pressure inside and outside of my head can't equalize. As the plane gets higher and higher, it's as if there's a little gremlin sitting behind my right eye that's growing bigger and bigger and is trying to escape from the inside of my head via my eye socket. It oddly enough also causes terrible toothaches. And wouldn't you know, this happened to be one of those lucky flights where my head felt like it was going to explode.

About 20 minutes after takeoff I asked the flight attendant if she had anything for sinus pain. She didn't, but she had some headache stuff, so she gave me that. It unfortunately wasn't working, so about 10 minutes later (which happened to be right after they served us food so all of the tray tables were down) I had to ask the very nice couple next to me if I could get up. I made my way to the bathroom and gave that toilet a wonderful gift of airline food, premixed with hydrochloric acid and baked in my very own 98.7 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Served warm. This was the first time I've ever thrown up because the pain from something was so bad. Doesn't seem like that's how one's body should work but... here I am.

I hung out in the bathroom for a few minutes, cleaned myself up and exited, only to take three steps and rush back for round two. After... oh I'd say round 4 I asked the flight attendant for something that might settle my stomach. I took about three sips of the soda she gave me, and after about another two minutes of hanging out by the bathrooms I went back for rounds 5-10-ish. Guess the soda didn't do the trick. All told, I spent the next roughly 3 hours in the bathroom. I tried leave a few more times, but each time my stomach was like "nu uh, not so fast buddy, your head still feels like it's going to explode, so let me give you something mildly more pleasant like uncontrollable vomiting to take your mind off it for a few seconds at a time."

I finally made my way back to my seat when it was time to start our descent into our connecting airport in Singapore. The couple next to me was like "..........are you okay???" with really concerned looks on their faces. At least the look of concern was about my health and not about the safety of this plane. That's kind of the nice thing about flying with a plane full of other brown people. Had that happened in the U.S., I'm sure we would have to make an emergency stop somewhere over the midwest and the FBI would have been there to greet me at the gate. I told the couple that I was fine, I was just feeling a little sick. Ha. A little.

Finally, FINALLY, I started to feel some relief as the plane inched closer and closer to the ground. Usually it goes away completely by the time we're just a few thousand feet up, but I think this time around I had been in pain for so long that I still had a headache by the time we reached the ground, but it was still so, so much better than when we were at cruising altitude.

I felt so miserable I couldn't even enjoy this scene
until posting this picture right now

At this point, it was around 6am local time and I had a roughly 1-hour layover. I'd never been to the Singapore airport before but WOW, it is incredible. Definitely the nicest airport I've even been to. It's huge. It's got tons of places to shop. And it's got this awesome indoor garden with these huge... glass? plastic? sculptures in it.

Stop #1 was to try to find something to help me with my next flight, which I was completely dreading as you can imagine. I found a pharmacy, talked to the pharmacist for a few minutes and found some sinus medication. I wasn't sure if food was a good idea or not at this point, but I decided to chance it and found a McDonald's. (I had a chicken breakfast sandwich, in case you were wondering. It exists in Singapore and it's good.) I popped a couple of those sinus pills at breakfast and found my next gate.

My next flight was two hours. The medicine didn't help, but I think at this point I must have just worn out the pain receptors in my head because it was ever so slightly more bearable this time around. I was at least able to spend the entire flight in my seat.

At last, I arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia! Wooooo! I survived! Who has a cookie for me?

Remember how I said I didn't know anything about Cambodia? Luckily I had done some modicum of research to make sure I could get into Cambodia. After we deplaned, I went to get my visa-on-arrival and was prepared with my passport photos, money, and a pen to fill out those forms. The process was pretty quick and painless, in and out in about 10 minutes.

Before I exited the airport I figured I should probably get some cash, and there happened to be an ATM right there. Perfect. In India, the exchange rate was roughly 60 rupees to 1 U.S. dollar. I took out cash in $100 increments so I could a sort of mental track of how quickly I was spending money. But it also meant having to remember to take out 6,000 rupees each time. The exchange rate in Cambodia was 4,000 Cambodian riels to 1 U.S. dollar and I knew inevitably I was going to screw this up and end up taking out either $10 or $1000 worth of riels. So I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the ATM and it asked me how much I wanted to take out in USD! Awesome. So I punched in $100 and a few seconds later it spit out a nice shiny new U.S. hundred-dollar bill. What?! No! Seriously?! Frustrated, I collected my cash and walked outside. I changed some of my money at the currency exchange booth at the typical usurous airport rate. I also purchased a Cambodian sim card and put a few dollars onto it. Which was surprisingly cheap! The sim card was $1 and I put $3 worth of minutes onto my phone which would have lasted I think for hours of local talk time.

I finally made it out of the airport, caught a cab, and was on my way to my hostel. I don't care how terrible the journey was to get here, I'm in Cambodia!

CONTINUE ON to Phnom Pehn Part 2: Cambodia: New Country, New Friends!

My First Hostel Friend!

On my way out this morning, I met BM who was checking in. I asked her if she had any plans for the day and then invited her to come join me in exploring New Delhi. Thankfully she said yes because today turned out to be so much better with company. She's a couple years older than me and from England. She's been traveling for a little while through Nepal and India so she's slightly more seasoned than I am at this (though... who isn't, amirite?).

Jama Masjid, New Delhi

We walked a few kilometers to to Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India (it can hold up to 25,000 people!), which was built in the mid-1600s. It was a beautiful mosque and I said my afternoon prayers while we were there. Being white and obviously a foreigner, BM had to pay a Rs. 200 entry fee but I didn't say anything (so they wouldn't hear my accent) and just walked inside without being bothered. I'm pretty sure everyone there thought I was her guide, which is fine by me.

Red Fort, New Delhi

After that we walked down the road to the Red Fort, which was also enormous. This time, I wasn't able to get away with pretending I was a local and had to pay for a foreigner ticket. In fact, I was even plucked out of line and told to go to the foreigner ticket line. How did they know??? The Red Fort was originally constructed as a palace and it showed: the place kept going on and on, it was enormous.

Chicken Maharaja Mac Meal

After the Red Fort, we started making our way back to the hostel. We both hadn't eaten yet that day and earlier we had been talking about McDonald's and out of nowhere, these iconic golden arches appeared! Naturally, we HAD to eat there and of course, I had the Maharaja Mac. It's was actually pretty good - it's like a big mac in structure, but made with chicken and Indian spices. Also, the fries taste the same. Also, the ketchup taste the same! I've finally found good ketchup on this continent, and of course it's at a McDonald's.

View from Club India Rooftop Restaurant

Later that night we went out to dinner at a place called Club India, which... let's be honest, when you find a place called Club India, you have to eat there. It also turned out to be surprisingly nice. We ate on the roof and the food was surprisingly good. I had chicken tikka masala, but BM had a Japanese dish, which I was skeptical about at first but when I tasted it, it really did taste like Japanese food! Well done, chefs.

Today was definitely the most enjoyable day I've had in India yet.