Singapore 2007

Now with this visit I must start telling you about the food. I think personally this is the best place in the world to eat. In Singapore there are many local people that originate from Indonesia, India, Malaysia and China that influence the food, each with there own specialties. To give you an example: Chinese food is normally not spicy, but when it mixes up with other countries influences it taste absolutely fabulous. In my hotel, again for business, there was a Chinese Cantonese restaurant which I think is the best Chinese food that I have ever eaten in my entire live. Basically no Mather where you eat you will walk around for 1+ hours with that taste of fresh herbs and spices in your mouth (even when you are at work where they ordered sushi).

If you ever visit Singapore you must definitely visit the food market near to China town. This market is outside and provides all kinds of food which is prepared in front of you, like sate, fried rice, fresh fish and all kinds off seafood(to much variety to write down). You can either choose to visit the stands by your self or you sit down in a zone which belongs to certain waiters that bring you the food.

Singapore is very well organized and contains a lot of government rules that will make sure it stays that way. I must say that we should adapt some of those rules in our own country. The streets are clean and you feel somehow safe even at night. I picked up people saying that Singapore is Asia for beginners. There is a lot of western influence and a lot of money is invested. Let's hope that this will not influence the way the food is these days with respect to pricing and quality.

The temperature in Singapore is compared to living in a oven (actually this line with respect to the oven was used by someone, which is currently a good friend of mine, who lives in Singapore. I hope he doesn't mind that I borrowed his expression in my blog since I think that hits the spot. This visit was the first time I was over exposed to shopping facilities, especially electronics. We (me and a colleague) managed to see some nature in a park which was full of flowers and trees, which is actually pretty nice when you are in a city which normally only consist of buildings, shopping malls and hotels. Normally in my country when I walk in a park and there is a lake most of the time ducks start approaching me for bread, but in this park turtles came begging for food.

Bangkok 2007

My first visit to Asia, Thailand Bangkok.
The flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands took 10 1/2 hours combined with a local time difference of 6 hours (GT +1 versus GT +7).

With respect to the Time difference: did I have trouble adjusting? Let's put it this way, To Bangkok you loose and to Amsterdam you gain time. But nevertheless it is a strange experience and it takes some time to adjust. The best experience that I have is to immediately follow up to the local time of your destination with respect to your usual sleep behavior.

The first shock was the temperature which is around 30+ degrees, the airport was air-conditioned so when I finally walked out site after the long flight it felled like a big impact because the air is anything except dry.

Both times when I visited Bangkok had to do with my job. The first time I stayed for a week and was able to have one day off. This day me and a colleague from the project bought a round trip to visit as much as possible in one day.

The tour took us to some temples which was a nice experience but lets be honest if you have seen one you have seen them all.

After the temple visits the tour brought us to the canal for a long tail boat trip (these boats where used in the James Bond movie "The man with the golden gun". The engine on the back of the boat is huge and impressive. The so called captain uses a long stick, engine and rotor which seem to be all attached in one way to steer and throttle the boat. Now somehow, I don't know why (must be my own movie influenced mind) it looks like the engine that they displayed in the Star Wars movie Part I when young Darth Vader was doing his races.

After the Longtail boat trip we where asked to visit a tailored clothing shop and a Gemstone ruby shop. Now somehow this has nothing to do with Bangkok but it is in every country the same, trying to sell more :).Eventually this ended up positive because I bought a tailored suite, which I thought was no longer possible due to the remaining time we had in Bangkok. The tailored suite was measured at 12:30 midday and delivered to the hotel that evening 19:00 hr. And of course I bought a gemstone Sapphire ring after they guided and asked us a 1000 times to buy.

Until that last Friday I was only able to see some of the night life after work. One of the evenings a Thai colleague took us to a traditional Thai restaurant. I must admit that this was wonderful spicy food. One time I have eaten Thai food in the Netherlands but that is no where near to actually eating in Thailand. My favorite dishes are the coconut soup with chicken , chili and lemon grass, Thai omelet and the deep fried Fish which I can't remember the name. Overall I have not eaten anything that I didn't like. One Indian restaurant provided water pipe for smoking. Since I never had tried before I asked for one and tried which was an interesting experience

One evening we had a karaoke evening in the hotel. A private room was booked which enables groups of people to have their own singing party. Now where I come from they don't take this too seriously but we where there with people from different countries in Asia which actually do. I was really surprised of the singing quality which made me less confident to sing, but after some drinks and people convincing me I finally did. Especially people from the Philippines can sign up for Idols.


To be continued.......

Opening Blog

Hi, visitor

The main goal of this blog is to describe my traveling experience from the last couple of months. The majority of the country visits are located in Asia. Because of the richness of culture, people, languages and environment differences, I find it useful to write this blog and share this with others that are interested. For work I (have been / am visiting) the following countries which I will be telling you about in this blog: (Thailand Bangkok), Singapore, (China Shanghai), (Taiwan Taipei), (Japan Tokyo), (China Beijing) and (Korea Seoul)