Singapore

Two weeks ago we returned from a full week in Singapore.  Now that we've had some time to reflect, and
procrastinate, I felt it time to give an update on our trip there.

First of all, the cost to get there: flights from Hong Kong were very cheap, at $226 each for roundtrip tickets (the flight is a little over 3.5 hours, so it was a rather good deal).  We booked a private double room at a hostel for seven nights, which came out to SGD568, or about $460.  Not cheap for a hostel, but not bad, either, and it was two blocks from an MRT stop and a food hall.  All told, transportation and lodging came out to a little over $900 for two people for a week.  Not bad at all.

Singapore is an odd city in many respects.  Travel on the metro, by bus, or in a taxi is all fairly cheap--the MRT in Singapore was even cheaper than the MTR in Hong Kong, which is already one of the cheapest subway systems I've seen.  Food, depending on where one buys it, can be either absurdly cheap and delicious, or eye-rollingly expensive and delicious.  More on that later.

It's a very tourist-friendly city, with tons of museums, restaurants, events, and attractions (an opera, a casino, Universal Studios, dozens of museums and art galleries, food halls and celebrity restaurants, ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown and Little India... it goes on and on), and all fairly close together.  So it's a great place to be a tourist.  But it can also a very restrictive city.  You can't bring in chewing gum or tobacco products.  You can be fined for a number of things like spitting, littering, bringing the wrong fruit on the subway, eating or drinking on the subway, smoking in the wrong location (seriously, pay attention to the signs).  Americans worried about a "nanny state" should come here and realize how truly far from that the Democrats actually are; in singapore, people are required to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes.  By law.  Or be fined.  Also possession of even a small amount of illegal drugs is punishable by death.  So leave your pot brownies at home.

We walked our feet off nearly every day, and there were still a few things we didn't see (the Night Safari, Universal Studios, the new aquarium, a couple traditional villages...).  But we were happy with all the things we did get to see: Chinatown, Sentosa Island, Marina Bay, the Skypark, a river cruise, the amazing Singapore Zoo, the Museum of Asian Civilizations, a ton of other sights.  But I don't want to give the wrong impression; there's really one reason Nora and I wanted to go to Singapore so badly: the Food.

For food lovers, Singapore is one of those unbelievable, heavenly places that you thought only existed in dreams.  They have everything you ever wanted to eat here, and a whole lot of other things you never knew you wanted to eat before, but will leave wondering how you ever went your whole life without.

Singapore has a great natural harbor, and is positioned perfectly along the trade route between India and China, right on the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula.  This brought the British, and trade, and it became a wild mixture of cultures, mostly but not exclusively Asian cultures, who all brought their food with them.  There's Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Indonesian, and on and on and on.  And the best thing about Singapore is that most of those great culinary traditions evolved on the street; as Singapore modernized, the government sought to clear the clutter and centralize the food stalls, so they built what might be the greatest monuments to eating in the world: the famous Singapore food halls.  And not only is the food really good at the food halls, but it's cheap.  Really cheap.

For example, we bought chicken rice (at Tian Tian Hainan Chicken Rice, recommended by Anthony Bourdain), for about $3 a plate, and it was the best thing we ate our entire trip.  We also bought chili crab, the other very well known dish from Singapore, at Jumbo Seafood for a little over $80.  It was our second best meal there, but for all the work involved, not to mention the over-the-top mess, and the price tag, we were a little disappointed by it.  The chicken rice was much better.

We had soft boiled eggs with toast covered in coconut jam; ice cream in fun flavors like green tea chocolate chip and salted caramel, made with Hokkaido milk; fish ball soup (which sounds unappetizing, but is shockingly good, and a personal favorite of mine); dim sum; fresh baked buns stuffed with butter, cream cheese, coconut jam, or things like sausage, barbecued chicken, and pork; fresh fruit smoothies and milkshakes; noodle dishes, rice dishes, seafood dishes; and of course chicken rice (3 times).  We ate three times a day, and were sad that we just couldn't muster the appetite for more.  [I don't have many pictures of food; I was too busy stuffing it in my face.  For more, see Nora's Instagram. She has a good one of us prepping for the chili crab.]

Seriously: food mecca.

There is one downside to Singapore, however: Alcohol is very expensive (for the first time in my life, I paid $15 for a pint of draft beer).  We like to sample local beers wherever we go, but we cut back a lot here due to the expense.  Still, we managed to visit three microbreweries on our tour: Level33, a novelty kind of place on the 33rd floor of a financial tower in the business district; Red Dot, a cool, outdoorsy kind of place in a quiet, wooded area (with a really good oatmeal stout); and Brewerkz, Singapore's first and biggest microbrewery, right on the riverfront (and with a world gold medal winner in its XIPA).  Our favorite was Red Dot for the location, but in my opinion the beers at Brewerkz were a bit better.  They also had staggered (and staggering) pricing, so if you arrived between noon and 2pm you paid less than half the cost ($7) for the same beer as you would during peak hours ($16).  Needless to say, after visiting for the first time at night, we went back the next day for lunch to finish tasting all their offerings.

I've tallied up our all our charges and withdrawals throughout the week, and aside from lodging and flights, we spent approximately $1,220.  That puts the grand total--flights, lodging, food, drinks, souvenirs, sights, everything--for the entire week at just over $2,100 for two people.  Not bad at all.


Before we came to Singapore, we had several people tell us that it was a good place for a weekend trip, or just a few days, but that it would not be fun for anything longer than that. Certainly not a week, they claimed, and very knowledgeably we thought.


They were all wrong.  Singapore is awesome, and we wouldn't have regretted a few more days there to catch a few more sights and plates.

This one definitely gets our seal of approval.

The Costs of Living in Hong Kong

We've been here for 2 1/2 months now, and have had an established weekly budget for the last 8 weeks, so I thought it time I shared how much it costs for the two of us to live in Hong Kong in a typical month.

First, here are the last four weeks of expenses in HK dollars:

This includes groceries, meals out, household items, snacks, etc.  It includes HK250 each for our monthly gym memberships.  It also includes several hundred dollars topping up our Octopus cards (used for the subway, buses, trolleys, and star ferry), as well as another hundred topping up Nora's prepaid phone.  It does not include utilities, our three day trip to Macau, or our rent.

On week 3, we went over our budget (HK1800), and I carried over the 293 to week 4.  With that in mind, you can see that our four week total is HK7,363, which is about US $950.  Or, to round up, about $250 per week for two people, including transportation costs, mobile phone bills, and gym memberships.  Considering how well we eat, and how often we go out to eat (usually twice during the work week, and then 4 or 5 times on weekends), I'd say that's pretty fantastic.

On to the next part: utilities.  Our monthly internet bill is HK168 (another fantastic price; for about US $22, we get 100MB service.  For comparison, 10MB service with Comcast back home is $60.).  Our water bill this month was HK45.  Our electric bill was HK434 (the government subsidizes electricity, and took HK120 off our bill). Our gas bill was HK61.  All told, our utilities come out to HK708, or ~US $92.

Last item of consideration, our rent.  We live in a nice place, with a balcony, a harbor view, and an in-house gym.  As such, our rent is a bit higher than most of our friends here in HK (for comparison, our friend K shares a two bedroom place with a roommate, and their total rent is about 15% cheaper than our 1 bedroom flat). Our monthly rent comes out to HK15,000, or a bit under US $2k.

Grand total for all expenses over the past month: just over HK23,000, or about US $3,000.

This is more than we were paying when we lived in Tennessee (our monthly expenses there were between $2,000 and $2,250).  On the other hand, we almost never went out to eat back home.  In addition, while I was making about $20k more a year there, Nora was unemployed and taking out student loans.  I'm making a lot less here, but we're no longer borrowing money, and Nora's job leaves us with about HK10k a month, or a bit less than a third of her salary, after all expenses.

Well, almost all expenses.  We do have this nasty habit of travelling.  Our 3 day weekend in Macau was very expensive--we went crazy and got this insanely nice room at at posh casino hotel.  In a week from now we'll be travelling to Singapore, where our lodging will be cheaper (a week in a hostel), but we won't be holding back on food and drinks--they're our favorite part of travelling.  Then in December we're going to Taiwan for 12 days, and in February we're going to Malaysia for a week.  There's another two week period in April that we haven't decided on yet, and a 6 week period in June and July that we'll be visiting the US.  All things considered, between what we're saving from Nora's salary and my online work, we don't anticipate to save a whole lot over the next year.  Perhaps US $5k.

But we will be paying off our student loans, eating some of the best food the world has to offer, and doing a lot of travelling.  More frugally minded people who don't have such a nice apartment or travel as frequently could easily save a lot more than $5k.  And couples who both work in HK would save even more still (an HK salary would be 3-5x what I'm making online, but we're forgoing that additional income for a year so I can concentrate on my writing).

So even though Nora's school doesn't pay for our housing, as our school in South Korea did, in the end Hong Kong offers an equivalent--or greater--opportunity to make and save money, enjoy life in Asia, and travel.  The biggest difference for us is that in SK we only got two weeks off the entire year, and the weeks couldn't occur back-to-back.  Here, between government holidays and school breaks, Nora has eleven weeks off throughout the year, during which she continues to receive a salary, making even the stresses of her job seem well worthwhile.

In other words, we couldn't be happier.

Living in Hong Kong

We've been here three weeks now, so I thought I'd share a few things.

First, you're perhaps wondering why we came.  We visited HK a few years ago during vacation from our teaching gigs in Seoul, South Korea.  While it was very hot and humid, pretty much everything else about Hong Kong excited us, and we pledged then that if we ever could live and work here we would.  Fast forward a few years.  Nora returned to school to get her teaching certification, realized that she wasn't all that jazzed about being a teacher halfway through, and settled on being a school librarian (these days they need teacher's certifications and a Masters in library science).  Nora took on both programs at the same time, which was a pretty astounding workload; I continued working online, and took on a lecturing position at MTSU because we were living about a mile away and it seemed like a good idea.  Long story short: we moved out of our apartment, I left my lecture position after three semesters, we went to India, Sri Lanka, and Ecuador, and meanwhile Nora applied to a lot of positions around the world.  Two in Hong Kong called her back, and a lot of paperwork later, we were all set to go.

(us at the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island in 2010)

So we sold our car, our desktop computer, our Xbox, and my bicycle (the bicycle was the hardest to let go) and bought flights to Hong Kong.  We arrived the night of August 1st, got to our hotel, and slept.  When we woke up, it was my birthday, which I thought was a pretty good sign.  And aside from still very slowly recovering from the ankle I sprained in India, just about everything else has been a very positive experience.

(milk tea and Pearl dumplings in spicy sauce)

We gave ourselves 3 days to find an apartment, but thanks to Nora's research and emails in advance, we signed a lease on the first day and paid the deposit and rent on the 2nd and got the keys.  The building is relatively new, in a quieter (for HK) neighborhood, and has a gym on the 5th floor.  Across the street are two more buildings of the same complex, and they have a larger gym and a pool.  It's a 4 block walk to Nora's work, and so far I've visited four bakeries and six grocery stores within a ten minute walk.  Several major bus lines stop on the corner, from whence we can go downtown, to the subway station, or to the other side of HK island.

(rush hour at the Central subway station)

Within a 5 minute walk of us there are several cafes and bars, a public library, as well as restaurants specializing in Chinese (obviously), Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Spanish, Italian, French, American, and English pub foods.  We got a ridiculous amount of furniture delivered from Ikea and assembled for less than $200, and any of the above restaurants offer free delivery.  I've recently discovered that the grocery stores do, too, but to be honest grocery shopping is one of my favorite activities, so I'm not cutting it out anytime soon.

(Chinese breakfast: eggs, bun, noodles and soup, and milk tea)

Our apartment is on the 20th floor, and has a balcony with harbor views. We've got a kitchen with fridge, decent counter space, 2 sinks, 3 gas burners, and a washing machine.  We've got a table with two chairs, a chest of drawers, and a couch and coffee table in our living room.  the bedroom has a double bed and wardrobe.

(our apartment before we got furniture)

Potential downsides: we've got 410 square feet in our apartment, including the balcony. So it seems pretty small.  The weird thing is, after getting all our furniture moved in and our things stored properly, it actually seems larger.  It's plenty of space for us, though the shower could be a little larger.  It's difficult to turn around in for someone with arms as long as mine.  The washer is supposed to also be a dryer, but I can't get the drying function to work, and I broke the latch that opens it on the first day.  So I'm using a pair of scissors to open the washer, and we have to hang dry our clothes on the balcony, but these are minor inconveniences, and we hung all our clothes to dry the year we lived in Korea, too.

(light show from Kowloon)

Imagine, if you will, a city that is caught somewhere between the future and the past, a place where light shows illuminate skyscrapers to the sound of a symphony orchestra, and where bamboo scaffolding surrounds construction work on a traditional herbal dispensary.  Where you can buy 1 Gigabit internet service for the same price as 10Mb service in the States, and within a short walk also by dried shark fins.  Where ferries cruising above the waves on hydrofoils jostle for space with sampans, junks, and cargo vessels. There are tree everywhere, and from afar the buildings seem to rise up as if out of a forest.  The harbor on one side and the mountains on the other are omnipresent; no matter where you are, you can always orient yourself.  This, to me, is Hong Kong.

(walking along the harbor in Kennedy Town)

It's fast, loud, hot, and always humid.  It's a polyglot, gastronomical wonderland that encompasses the best of what big cities have to offer. The only thing it's missing is you.

(sunset over the harbor from our balcony)

Hong Kong

We've been lax in keeping up with the blog, but here's the long and short of it:

We returned to India from Sri Lanka, still did not enjoy ourselves, and so flew home early.

We spent a lovely 4 weeks in Ecuador.

We moved to Hong Kong, arriving just over a week ago.  We have a tiny, wonderful apartment in Kennedy Town overlooking the harbor, there are supermarkets and bakeries within walking distance, and we are very pleased with our decision to relocate here.

More details to follow in the coming days.  And pictures, naturally.

Hope your summer was as great as ours.

Early Impressions of Sri Lanka

It is nice here in the "undiscovered kingdom."

Lodging is comparably priced to India, but food is about twice as expensive.  Taxis and tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws) are slightly more expensive as well.  The food is very good, but they're keen on over-sized portions, which usually ends in us ordering two menu items for $5 each and then lamenting that we could have just split one.  Yet we never learn.

(Colombo seaside)

Colombo is a nice city.  It probably wouldn't be very fun to stay as a tourist for more than a couple nights, but it is a very livable city--the air is fresh and the sea breeze very nice, it has a beautiful, long coastline, a very nice sea walk, good roads, clean streets, lots of restaurants, etc.

(Colombo sea walk and pier, with the Sri Lankan flag flying above)

Another big factor in its favor is that the people are extremely nice.  We were helped by any number of people who went out of their way to assist us, without any thought of recompense.  (One woman in particular, an employee at a travel agency that we had not booked with and were not interested in booking with, spent 20 minutes making phone calls for us so we could find where we needed to go to validate a train ticket. She then made another employee accompany us to the place so we didn't get lost.  And not once did she try to sell a flight or bus pass or tour.  She just smiled and said she hoped we had a wonderful journey.)

(Lani's Place, a seaside restaurant in Dehiwala, Colombo)

In our experience, this kind of thing does not happen elsewhere in the world (and certainly not in India, where any request for assistance is either ignored or followed by an immediate appeal to a quorum of passersby until a small crowd has collected to discuss; the crowd will usually decide that it is unimportant, but occasionally they will provide conflicting instructions).

As it turns out, that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen elsewhere in Sri Lanka, either, for that matter.

Kandy is a lovely, hilly town overlooking a lake. It has a great climate, and even better views.  It also has one of the most sacred sights in all of Buddhism, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth.  But it is clearly a town that has grown accustomed to moneyed tourists. Every person we've run into who has wanted to talk to us has tried to convince us to go to a different hotel, or a different restaurant, or to a cultural show, or to buy something. 

For example, we met on the sidewalk a toothless old man who recommended we go see a cultural show (fire dancers, baby elephants, the President of Sri Lanka would be in attendance!).  It was $5 a piece, and we walked away thinking about it.  He caught up to us, told us if we bought tickets early we could get very good seats, and weren't we lucky the president would be there today of all days?  We followed him to a school (was it a school for teaching dancing?  a school for children?  a workhouse for children?  it might have been all of the above).  The man claimed to be a firedancing instructor, showed us an album of photos featuring a man who looked nothing like himself.  He saw Nora had allergies and found some green menthol stuff the consistency of glue (think of a really potent, soupy Vicks rub) and massaged it into her temples. For good measure, he put some on his fingertips and stuck it into her ears.  This, he claimed, would cure her allergies.  After all, his hand was very lucky, he assured us.  Then he began a 30 minute sell of the dyed wall hangings covering his office (made by schoolchildren, half the price of the tourist places, all the money goes back into the school, he can give us a very good price, how are Nora's allergies and would she like him to rub some more green stuff?).  He was very disappointed when we told him we just wanted the tickets to the cultural show and did not buy any $30 wall hangings.  Needless to say, the president was not in attendance at the show (nor were there any baby elephants).  

Many of the people who we pass by on the streets have the familiar staring/pointing/laughing complex we remember all too well from India. It's not as ubiquitous, and it's not as aggressive, but it's still uncomfortable and completely unnecessary. From what we have observed, older white people don't get this treatment here, either (they do attract the touts in droves, though).

Our hotel in Kandy is great, however.  It's outside of town, across the lake, on the hillside, and has a balcony that looks over the town.  The room is large, the hot water in the shower actually hot (too hot, as it turns out, but that's a small problem compared to the icy showers of India).  It gets noisy early, and we have to be up by 7:30 to get our included breakfast, but it is a large breakfast (plate of fruit each, choice of style of eggs, toast, a pot of Ceylon tea to share), and it is pleasantly cool on the terrace.  Walking down into town and around the lake is nice, but walking back up the hill is not very enjoyable.  Then there is the unfortunate problem that Nora is allergic to something in the room (we suspect dust; there is a horizontal concrete support beam that, when I stood on the bed to get a look, displayed several years worth of accumulated dust).

We have discovered there are two pubs in town (100,000 people live here) and both close at 11.  There is also one shop to buy beer/wine/liquor to take home.  Apparently a few restaurants also serve beer, but that's about it for nightlife.  We're not big drinkers, but after a long, hot day of walking up hills, a nice, cold lager can really hit the spot--it's just a rather difficult to actually find one.  It is the little things that count, as they say, and the difficulty to find a drink has joined the touts and the stairs and the midday sun in a cloudless sky to knock Kandy down from our list of must-visit places.  

We'll be here a few more days, then we're heading higher into the hills to a smaller town where, hopefully, there will be fewer people preying on tourists, less traffic, less noise, and a little more peace.  If we want to be really hopeful, there might even be a terrace with a frosted mug containing an ice-cold lager.  Keep your fingers crossed.