What Day Is It and Where Am I?

I have officially lost track of time. I now measure it by the number of days we stay in a city and only know the day of the week by looking at my trusty watch. Since it has been 4 or 5 cities since my last update I know that it has been a long time! Here's what we have been up to:

May 11 - Singapore

The night before leaving for Hong Kong we went to Clarke Quay, one of our old haunts. Things have changed a lot since 2003. The area is situated on the river and is lined with restaurants and bars. They have upgraded and redone all of the restaurant facades. There is now a Haagan Daz cart where the cool independent ice cream guy used to be. He was great - did all kinds of crazy tricks with your cone while he scooped the ice cream. I guess he is a victim of the "out with the old, in with the new posh" philosophy they seem to have employed when they renovated. After dinner we had drinks at Cafe Iguana, but at Singapore prices you can only have so many margaritas before you break the budget!

There are a lot of other changes in Singapore too. There is a new MRT (subway) line. They are building huge new apartments in front of our old place and some swanky ones have gone in behind it. They have renovated the mall where we used to shop for groceries. Our little grocery store has been replaced by a nice new Carrefour. While things have changed much of the city remains the same. And some of those things that used to drive me crazy are still there.....but that's a whole different blog post.

May 12 - Singapore to Hong Kong

Another torrential downpour to start the day and another flight on Singapore Airlines. SQ is one thing about Singapore that I won't complain about - it is the best airline and here's why: NINTENDO. I can occupy myself for hours with Dr. Mario and Tetris. And movies on demand isn't such a bad thing either. And they always start the flight off right by passing out piping hot towels. When you combine that with flying out of Singapore's Changi Airport it makes for a good flying experience. The airport is phenomenol...when you land you can get through immigaration and collect your luggage within 10 minutes. And there is free internet all over the airport, an orchid garden and decent food. It's pretty impressive. They are building a new terminal to accomodate the new Airbus 380 and I am sure it will be spectacular. Anyway, thanks to Dr. Mario the flight went by quickly and we had no problem catching our shuttle to our hotel in Hong Kong.

That night we met up with Matt's former boss from Austin, Rob, and his family. They are living in the Phillipines and it worked out well for us to all meet up in HK.

May 13-14 - Hong Hong

We spent the weekend checking out HK, hanging out at the pool and catching up with Rob. We took the tram to Victoria's Peak to check out the views of the harbor and skyscrapers. We took a long ride on the trolley on HK island - it was a great way to take in the sights and you could ride for as long as you wanted for only 25 cents! We walked around Kowloon and checked out the Peninsula Hotel (nice bathrooms). We walked around the waterfront to take in the skyline as it lit up for the night. On Sunday we saw maids out on there day off - there were so many women congregated in open areas, sidewalks, and underpasses it was crazy. Sunday night we took a harbor cruise on the Star Ferry and had great views of both skylines and were able to take in the nightly light show. In a lot of ways HK is similar to Singapore with the huge emphasis on shopping and big brands. People were a lot more fashion conscious than in mainland China and there were man purses everywhere (still can't convince Matt to get one though).

It was a good weekend and we really enjoyed catching up with Rob, Cindy and the kids. It was interesting to hear about life in the Phillipines and we could relate to a lot of what they are experiencing. We also enjoyed seeing HK, especially at night. Though it was beautiful Shanghai still rates higher for us though.

May 15 - HK to Singapore

We took a mid-morning flight back to Singapore and then spent the evening hanging out around Orchard Road, which is the prime shopping street there. It's packed with Gucci and Cartier-type stores and there is a Starbuck's on literally every block. We had dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant and I realized that we had really lowered our standards back then...the food was marginal.

May 16-18 - Bintan, Indonesia

The next morning we had to head to the embassy to get extra pages put into our passports. I am on my second set of extra pages and my passport now resembles a novel. Our passports have definitely become our coolest souvenier and we have lots of stamps and visas to show for the last five years of travel. We found out that Americans get to cut in the front of the line at the embassy so that was a nice perk - all those tax dollars are good for something!

After the trip to the embassy we headed over to the old apartment to do some more reminiscing. It looks pretty much the same on the outside, although we can tell it has been renovated because it no longer has a balcony - that has been enclosed to enlarge the living room. It's a really good thing they did some remodeling because when we left it there were no working lights in the bathroom (leaky ceiling shorted them out) and the guest bedroom was so "soggy" everything in there was molding. It was a real dump. They also went and got fancy on us as they now have a secure gate at the entry to the stairs. Anyway, it still looks like a place we wouldn't want to live....

After that we were off to our 2 1/2 days of relaxation at the beach in Bintan. We hitched a ride on the ferry and were there in less than an hour. We arrived at the hotel to fanfare that Asia is known for - men and women in traditional dress playing music and some nice cold drinks. Good stuff. We spent the next two days hanging out poolside, at the beach and wandering amongst the different hotel properties. It was nice to be lazy (yeah, yeah, I know what my friends at Dell are thinking right now...we've been lazy for the last 5 months!) and I was able to finish a couple books. We had good weather most of the time so that was a nice treat. The resort was pretty quiet since we were there during the week and we had a couple really nice dinners at the open-air beachside restaurant.