Chinese Gardens and Dempsey Hill

On Saturday in the late afternoon, Niles, Ethan, and I took the green line farther west than any of us have ever ridden before.  Our destination was the Chinese (and Japanese) Gardens.  Of course once we got off the MRT it was starting to drizzle and none of us had an umbrella.  It wasn’t raining too hard to we continued our walk through the gardens.  On our way to the entrance we saw 3 games of cricket being played.  Bonus points to whoever can tell me the point of the game and how it all works!

Food Friday 6 - Singapore classic

It's that time of the week again, food Friday!  Ok so I need to get more on top of this because technically its Saturday morning in Singapore and for my viewers in the US I've only got 2 more hours left of your Friday.  Time to type fast!

So this past week wasn't full of too many exciting dishes so this week I'm going to stick with just a couple new foods I tried.

                                          

 

Hopefully you've read my Bali posts and saw some of the cool foods I tried there.  I don't want to re-hash  my love of the volcano cooked banana sandwiches or the smooth Luwak coffee so I'll let you all go to those posts on your own.

Let's talk snakeskin fruit!  This fruit grows near the bottom of the tree and is nestled in some pockets of the tree.  Why is it called snakeskin?  Because its outer shell has the same shiny, scaly feeling as actual snakeskin!  For those of you who fear snakes like this blogger, it's a creepy but great way to feel a snake minus the whole venom/constricting stuff to worry about.

Weekend in Bali - Part Three Luwak Coffee

Have I made you fall in love with the sunrise yet?

It was 8am when we finished our hike and had you asked any of us at the time we would have told you it was well into the afternoon.

Our driver guided our tired group into the car where we took a 40 minute drive to a Bali Coffee Plantation.  Though I was tired and did end up taking a few snoozes, it was light out on our car ride so there was so much more to see.  The roads were still bumpy but didn’t bother my stomach.  I learned in the days of early Saturday practice in college that exercise is the greatest medicine.  Niles and Ethan would disagree, though they both made it all the way back to our resort without getting sick.  Driving in Bali is something that will never make my bucket list.  The narrow 2 lane streets have bumps that require cars to come to a complete stop every so often and steep hills that I still am not sure how trucks make it up.  It is definitely a place that “anything goes” as long as  you stay on the left side of the road (most of the time).  Luckily Ardi was a safe, reliable driver and we were in a nice car.

Weekend in Bali Part Two - Volcano Trek

Our big (and only) excursion for our weekend was to do the sunrise trek up Mount Batur.  There are many companies who do this trek but after a bit of research, Bali TrekkingTours.com has the best reviews and so we decided to book with them.  They were extremely accommodating with our last minute booking.  Disclaimer: all these thoughts are my own and I did not receive any compensation for this post or my experience.   

We were picked up at our resort at 1:40AM.  Our driver, Ardi, informed us that it would take 2 hours to get to the starting point of our trek so I figured it’d be a great opportunity to get some more rest.  Well with my unsteady stomach and headache from all the fruity cocktails mixed with winding, bumpy roads of Bali, I didn’t get much sleep and instead wasn’t feeling too excited for this trek.  Luckily the 3 of us made it through the entire trek without getting sick (though I thoroughly suggest not drinking alcohol the night before and getting more sleep than we did).  With not much street lights it was very dark and I couldn’t see much on the drive which was probably a good thing because had I seen the size of what we were climbing I probably would have crawled into a ball and cried hah!

Weekend in Bali - Part 1

Well hello my dear readers!  We are back from our first trip a tad sunburned, but had a great long weekend.

  

Where do I start?  A 4 day weekend in Bali, Indonesia means either one longgggg post or a couple broken out posts.  While I’d love to have your opinions I think it would only prolong me getting out my review of the weekend so I’ve gone ahead and chosen for us.  The verdict- you will get a few different posts recapping various aspects of my Bali weekend.

Getting to Bali

Friday morning our crew headed to Changi Airport and arrived with plenty of time to grab a coffee and find our gate.  Well unfortunately our flight was delayed by an hour, which turned into us not actually leaving the ground until an hour and 30+ minutes after our initial departure time.  But no worries, we were headed for paradise!  We took a budget airline which means no drink service or snacks.  Not a huge deal as our flight was only 2.5 hours.  Upon landing in Bali (make note it looks like you’re going to land in the ocean but you don’t), we were greeted with a 45 minute wait to get through customs!  Once through customs and getting our visitor visa, we started the hunt for our driver.  We were greeted by TONS of other resort driver services and I immediately became overwhelmed with the amount of people around shouting at us, pointing, trying to get our attention.  Due to our flight being delayed our driver was not waiting for us.  We found our way to the information booth where they would call our for our hotel to get our drivers attention.  While we were waiting taxi drivers kept coming up to us and offering to drive.  Most got the point and walked away, but one was INCREDIBLY pushy.  Uncomfortable, annoyed Laura + persistent taxi driver = MAD, rude, you’re messing with the wrong person Laura.  I repeatedly told this guy to leave us alone and tried to ignore him but he just didn’t get it.  Thankfully our resort driver showed up, an hour later, and took us to our resort.