Welcome to a week full of posts to get you (and I) excited about my RTW. Today, we are talking about Sri Lanka but mostly about how I almost skipped Ceylon.
In my original plans, I wanted to visit India. It wasn’t because I was particularly enamoured with India. It was because India is a staple of a modern RTW and I wanted to be hip (but not a hippy).
Later, I crossed India off the list because I was required to pay 161.56 ringgit in visa fees. Yucks.
Luckily, AirAsia started promoting its Kuala Lumpur-Colombo (Sri Lanka) route. [This route was later cancelled, I’ll talk more about it later.] I figured that Sri Lanka is a good beginner’s guide to South Asia. I booked a dirt cheap ticket to Sri Lanka and planned to stay there for two weeks.
I didn’t do much planning for Sri Lanka. My usual travel buddy D also bought tickets to Sri Lanka and I planned to steal her itinerary. D happily planned her trip while I happily not plan my trip.
Then, we received bad news.
AirAsia cancels KUL-CMB
In February, AirAsia cancelled the Kuala Lumpur-Colombo route. It was a total WTF moment because I’ve seen AirAsia promote Sri Lanka like crazy. Every time I got my hands on its in-flight magazine, I had seen Sri Lanka featured.
What am I supposed to do?
Unfortunately, by that time, I’ve already booked my tickets from Colombo to Dubai. It would be too expensive for me to get a flight direct to Dubai from Malaysia.
I did worry a lot about my flight. I tried searching for cheaper tickets but all full service carriers were too expensive. The best ticket I could get was Tiger Air flight from Singapore but the 10pm arrival time was horrid.
Even if I wanted to make a booking from mid-February to early-March, I didn’t because of Mercury retrograde. Yes, I am very superstitious and did not want to make any bookings during the “horoscopely bad” period.
Things worked out in the end. By the tail-end of the Mercury retrograde period, I found out that Tiger Air changed their timing for the Sri Lanka flight to morning. I booked the 10am flight to Colombo and will reach at 11am in the morning. That’s a great timing.
Things to do in Sri Lanka
I still haven’t done a lot of research on Sri Lanka. I’ve heard only good things about the place from people who have visited: tea, curry, relaxation.
I do have vague plans such as taking the train, visiting Buddha’s tooth and avoid getting bitten by mosquitos.
By the way, I will be in Sri Lanka during their new year. My Sri Lankan friend, M, said most shops are closed then but the temples are open. It would be fun seeing how they celebrate new year there and how it differs from my Malaysian Chinese New Year.
I wonder how much I can wing it. Maybe I will do more reading once I head home on Tuesday.
Sri Lanka, here I come!
Do you have any travel tips for Sri Lanka? Share them in the comments below.
(Tomorrow I will be talking about my 15-night cruise that only costs about S$1,700 with tips.)
It’s rather strange being at home on a Wednesday afternoon, typing at my computer…
Oh ya, I am unemployed now. Anyway, I have a whole lot of things to pack in my room and should spend less time on the computer. (I’m only getting started with “things on the floor”. I’ve only managed 15 tiles and it seems that I’ve dug out more things than I’ve tossed.)
Anyway, not to bore you with my packing, I’ll share with you the route of my round-the-world trip (while I procrastinate packing).
My concrete route for now is:
Round the World route
Malaysia -> Sri Lanka -> Dubai-> [Stopping by Jordan and Egypt on a cruise ship] -> Italy -> Greece -> Turkey -> South America (most likely Argentina, Bolivia, Peru) -> El Salvador -> Hong Kong
While there are other places in the world which I want to go, not all of them are on the list. The reasons why they are not in the list are: money, time and out-of-wayness.
The plans that you see now have been distilled from a murky “These are the places I want to go if I am rich” to something that’s more possible.
What my previous goal was
When I was planning the trip, I had big dreams. I wanted to see India, Egypt, Greece, UK (for flight transfer), USA, Hawaii (and by budget airline to) Australia.
I wanted to cross the Atlantic or Pacific oceans on a cargo ship. Even though this might sound like a good and cheap option to cross the sea, turns out it’s rather expensive and very time consuming.
I wanted to do so much but I knew my budget was limited. In the end, I narrowed down my destinations to a few continents while keeping to a few important places: Greece and South America.
Destinations such as Egypt and Hawaii were crossed out because it would be rather expensive to go solo (especially for only a few days). Since Hawaii was out, there was no point going by budget airlines to Australia which I’ve not found the wish to visit yet.
Where I’m going
I will be heading home to Sabah next Tuesday and spend about 2 weeks there. Then I’m heading to Sri Lanka for seven days which will coincide with the the local new year celebration. [Catch the Sri Lanka updates here.]
After Sri Lanka, I will be in Dubai for a few days before my cruise leaves for Italy. [Dubai posts here.] Yes, that’s right, I’m going on a cruise despite being on a backpacking trip. I’ve never been on a cruise but two people who have been on cruises told me it’s dead boring. Will I be bored to death? Stay tuned.
The cruise covers Jordan and three sites in Egypt so I might go on an excursion at those places.
While in Europe, I will only visit Italy, Greece and Turkey because I only have a month there. Mom will join me in Turkey! Yeah! We’ll be checking out exotic locations in Turkey.
After Turkey, I’m heading to South America for TWO MONTHS. Holy macarena! Two whole months in South America in winter. Actually, two months is not much if you consider how gigantic the continent is.
After SA, it’s a week in El Salvador. I know it’s a bit weird but I had a flight connection there and for an extra US$60, I could stop over for as long as I like. Great!
After El Salvador, I’m heading to Los Angeles for a transit to Hong Kong. I am not staying in the US because living expenses there is crazy compared to the other places I have on my plan. But I still need to pay US$160 for visa, even though it’s only a 4-hour transit. Boo hoo.
Finally, I will be heading to Hong Kong. I’ve only been to Macau so I look forward to the many dimsum feasts which I will have.
After Hong Kong, it’s back to Malaysia. I’ll take a mini break before I figure out the next step.
What will happen during RTW?
Of course my RTW isn’t a long vacation which some think it is.
I will continue blogging and share travel tips for the locations I go to. I will also jot notes for the book that I want to write after the trip.
During my journey, I also want to find “the next place I want to stay semi-permanently”.
I’ve been in Singapore for 7 years, which is about one-quarter of my life. I am not sure if I want to be in Singapore for the rest of my life so I want to find the next best place. What better way than to go to places and check out the place? (By the way, this doesn’t mean that I want to settle down in a place with “that special someone”.)
Do you have any recommendations for the countries I’m visiting? Share them in the comment!
It’s been more than a year since I made the promise to visit all 13 Malaysian states. Now, I have only two states to conquer.
Can you believe it? I didn’t really think it was possible when I made the goals but here we are with only Pahang and Terengganu left on the list.
Good news is, I’ll be crossing out these two states very soon. D and I have made plans to head to the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia and visit the towns in the two states.
Next Friday night, I’ll be taking a night bus to Kuantan. The rest of the plans have not been confirmed but our general plan is to head to Kuala Terrenganu and back to Kota Bahru.
From Kota Bahru, we will take a morning train back to Singapore. The train route is known as the Jungle Line and has a great view. I’m looking forward to the magnificent view but not the 14 hour train ride on a seat.
I haven’t discussed the itinerary with D but I’ll list a few interesting places which I hope to check out.
Pahang
Kuantan
When I was in primary school, I did a project on Kuantan but I still get it mixed up with Kelantan because the name sounds so similar.
Kuantan is famous for its nature stuff like beaches and waterfalls. I’m not sure how much nature we would be seeing but it’s a good-to-know.
When I first found out about Pekan, I was very amused by its name. In Malay, “pekan” means town. And this town’s name is Pekan. Imagine a town called town. Haha!
After I calmed down, I read a little more about Pekan (on Wikipedia). Turns out, it’s the royal town of Pahang and the hometown of our current prime minister (which means this place gets a lot of perks!)
I am interested in the Chinatown. Terengganu is one of the muslim dominant states, I’m curious how the Chinese community lives. (This brings back memories of the kopitiam in Perlis where the shopowner was Chinese and the stalls owner was muslim. I couldn’t figure out their living arrangements.)
Genting Highlands is a hill resort located about an hour away from KL Sentral. It’s popular among gamblers who visit the casino and families who visit the theme park.
[Note to Singaporeans, Genting is not pronounced “jen-ting” like “generation”. It’s more like “guh-n-ting”. Here’s an audio clip here.]
Purchase Genting Go pass at major bus terminals
If you are heading to Genting for a day trip or for even for an overnight stay, do consider getting the Go Genting Golden package.
The package is sold at various important locations: KL Sentral, Pudu Sentral, 1Utama, Terminal Gombak and Hentian Kajang. (The package is RM58 for the first four departure locations and RM63 for the last.)
The package gives you same-day return bus transfer, same-day return cable car and either an Outdoor Theme Park ride pass or buffet lunch.
Considering that the 1-Day Unlimited Ride Pass for Outdoor Theme Park is RM54 for adults, the package is really bang for your buck (or ringgit, in this part of the world).
Plus the cable ride is amazing.
Be flexible with Go Genting pass
Even though there are various time slots, the Go Genting packages can be sold out for certain timings. (Most likely the early morning slots from popular departure points such as KL Sentral.)
This happened to us. We were at KL Sentral before 8am and there was a sign saying that the next bus will leave at 12.30pm because earlier tickets were sold out.
Instead of heeding the taxi drivers’ advice to take his car, I called up the Pudu Sentral ticket counter and checked that they have tickets for 8.30am. We bought a taxi coupon from the official point and zipped to Pudu, with plenty of time to spare for our ride.
Go early and get back before last bus
Queues at the theme park can get long on weekends. To be sure that you can test out all the rides before sundown, go as early as possible.
Similarly, you don’t want to be stranded up on the mountain with no bus back to KL. Check the bus timing!
Book a room on Saturday
If you are staying at the hotel for a night, choose Saturday because the park closes at 10pm then.
I didn’t know of this when I booked the room and found out only when we were there. It was a very pleasant surprise. We ended up leaving only after 9.30pm.
Check in early
IF you do book a room, you don’t have to wait until 3pm to check in for First World Hotel.
The self-check in kiosks allow you to check in rooms that are available. They even have a sign with the number of available rooms.
Bring your own food or instant noodles
Food at Genting is expensive. If you want to save money, bring your own food.
Consider bringing instant noodles. You can get hot water when you go up the hotel room floors.
Eat at food court
At First World Hotel, head to to 2B where there is a Kopitiam food court.
The claypot stall sells fairly reasonably-priced food that is quite tasty.
Do you have other tips for Genting? Share in the comments.
My weekend trip to Kuching from Sep. 15 to 16 wasn’t my most productive trip.
By productive, I mean having a planned itinerary packed with activities from the minute I set foot in the airport to the second I head into the boarding room.
You would think that as the author of 24 hours in Kuching, I would have everything planned out.
Nope, I didn’t.
Instead, I accidentally left my guidebook at home and didn’t really bothered doing much research.
So, here’s what really happened that weekend.
1:18 pm Walk out from Kuching airport
Kuching International Airport
I was adamant to find the public bus into the city, despite Lonely Planet saying it will be a difficult task. I walked from Kuching airport to the east (left) in search of the long-distance bus terminal.
D who took a cab some days before said it’s within walking distance from the airport with an umbrella or else it’s a RM17 ride. On the way to Kuching Sentral
So I walked on the side of the road, stepping on broken stones and grass. I don’t think the road builders were expecting anyone to walk on that trail so it was pedestrian unfriendly.
While I walked, trucks and cars zipped pass. Some in the truck would cheer (or cat call, depend on how you see it) me on. I considered hitchhiking.
1:37 pm Reached Kuching Sentral
Finally! Kuching Sentral
It wasn’t long until I saw the two-storeyed Kuching Sentral. There were loads of shops inside the airconditioned building but I needed to find my bus.
A man working for the long distance bus companies asked where I was going. He pointed to the opposite side of the road and said I can find my bus there.
I asked if there’s a bus stop. He told me to wait at the side of the road which bends in.
1:44 pm Bus that never came
Waiting for the bus that never comes
I waited for about 20 minutes under the sun, with my umbrella. No bus came.
1:58 pm Had milky cold coffee
Ice coffee
I gave up and went to a coffeeshop nearby for a drink. The coffee was more milky than the usual ones I have in Singapore.
2:29pm Waited more for bus
Real bus stop but no bus
I walked around Kuching Sentral and saw a real bus stop. The bus didn’t come.
2:41 pm Got on cab
In a cabI gave up and took a cab. RM30. I should have saved myself the time and took a cab straight to the hotel.
The cab ride felt really far. I even passed many places I was sure was opposite the bank of where I was supposed to go. I did reach my hotel in the end.
3:10pm Reach hotel
Tune Hotel Kuching
I made a video of Tune Hotel Kuching before heading to the shower. I’ve included the video in my review of Kuching Waterfront Tune Hotel.
3:42pm Checking out Kuching city
Sarawak Regatta
I walked along the Kuching River. There was the Sarawak Regatta happening so it was really packed.
I checked out the Chinese temple which I didn’t manage to see during my last trip. Tuo Pek Gong temple, Kuching
As it was the last day of Ghost Month, people at the temple were busy preparing for the night’s event. Preparation
I walked among the shop houses, found two other nice temples. Fancy temple
I walked to Padang Merdeka but couldn’t find anything fun to do. St Thomas Cathedral
4:35pm Rain
It’s raining (men).
It suddenly started pouring. I had my S$2 umbrella with me so I braved the heavy rain and went to the open air food center nearby. kolo mee stall
Most of the stalls were closed. I ordered a kolo mee which was tasted slightly better than the regular “gan lao mian” I have back home. I am not sure why people are obsessed over it.
Kolo mee
When I finished my meal, it was still raining heavily. I stood at the sidewalk of the shops, listening to a mix versions of Adele’s “Someone like you” and Psy’s “Gangnam Style“.
4:47pm India Street
I head to India Street while it was slightly drizzling. Only the smell of incense shows that it’s India Street as the wares sold are seen on any other street.
Kid and mom on India Street
5:02pm Hide from rain by river
I walked to the river again. My umbrella was collapsing from the wind.
One of the rowers shouted from his boat about my umbrella. I waved. They hoot.
One of the stall owners told me to hide from the rain under the roof of the stalls. I was given a chair later. I chat with the people there. A kid was speaking pidgin Chinese but not directly at me. Angry Bird balloons
One of the man asked if I needed a ride tomorrow. RM300 for a day’s tour. I said, No thanks.
When it looked like the rain was slowing, I said my thanks and left the stall. “We do not want to be colonized.”
State Assembly Building
5:34pm Had bad cake watching Silent Hill
As I walked along the street, I saw a sign for Maria’s Cake House and headed in. Not so good cake
My coffee cake wasn’t terribly good. My coffee was so so. But I enjoyed watching Silent Hill.
During my teatime, J, who moved back home to Kuching, asked me if I was free during the night in a text message. I happily said: “Yes.”
I was in the shop for a long while before I went back to the hotel for a nap.
7:43pm Wake up from nap, play Pocket Planes
Woke up. Received a message from J that she was waiting for her friend to carpool.
Car came to pick me up. We went to a restaurant nearby for food and gossip. lamb chop #1
Night ended at 1 a.m.
Day 2 in Kuching
The last 6 hours of Kuching was filled with food which is a very good way to end a trip.
Woke up at 9:30 a.m.
Laid in the comfortable bed for a long long.
10:10am Check out and off to museum
Bye Tune Hotel
Very surprised that D & M were already at the museum before 10 a.m. I packed quickly and check out.
The Sarawak National Museum was only so-so. There were a lot of stuffed dead animals, if you’re into that kind of thing.
The special exhibition on funeral rites was a lot more interesting.
11:33pm Breakfast of Sarawak Laksa
After the museum, we head to a random kopitiam for breakfast. My Sarawak laksa was great. Sarawak Laksa
We walked around the area and to India Street. It was market day so the narrow corridors were cramped with stalls and customers.
12:17 noon Drink at Little Lebanon
Found the Lonely Planet-famous Little Lebanon where we stopped for non-alcoholic drinks. My mint tea was quite good. Mint Tea
We walked along the river, among the crowd. Nothing much to do and it was hot. Regatta day 2 Kuching Waterfront Kuching waterfront
We went to hide in a shopping mall for the airconditioning. Most of the shops were closed.
1:33pm Lunch
Found a lunch place. Service was very very slow. I had cheap lamb chop. Lamb chop, again
2:00 p.m. Cab back to airport
Hailed a cab to the airport. RM27.
Have you been to Kuching? Was your trip productive?
FlightLover is an Apple iOS app that checks for cheap air tickets of budget airlines. It’s available for different countries of origin–Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
There’s one thing you need to know about me. I am very stingy and it is very rare that I will pay for an app unless it is really useful.
I downloaded the app a long long time ago, hoping it would help me score cheap flights. Unfortunately, I haven’t bought any cheap flights using the app but I do have other purposes for it.
I use it mainly to check how low flights can go. I also use it to help friends double check if there are cheap flights around the period they want to travel.
The app will be useful for the casual bargain air ticket hunter (I’m among a semi-hardcore bargain hunter while a friend of mine is Level-999 in cheap airticket hunting.)
How it’s like
When you open the app, it gives a list of the destinations in its database as well as the cheapest flights. I love how the cover photos are changed from time to time, for example, the highlighted destination today is Sydney.
For this demo, I chose Kuala Lumpur as my destination as it’s one of the cheapest destinations.
I’m able to slide the slider (duh) to indicate how many days I want to travel. Please note that it includes the day you fly. For example, if a flight leaves the airport at 11pm, it counts as a day.
The return time is actually the hour you return to your country of origin. That is helpful for those who don’t want to guess when they reach home. For me, I would prefer the timing of the flight back instead so I can see how many hours I can still have fun.
You can also select the date range you want which is helpful to zoom in the long weekend dates. The little red triangle on the upper right of the price shows that the trip involves a weekend–super!
After you’ve selected the best price, head into the date and it’ll show you the details of the flight as well as the checkin time (so considerate of them!)
The “Book” button only helps you call the airline while the “Share with friends” lets you tweet/Facebook/e-mail others about the cheap price.
The app also has a neat “Beep” mode which will alert you of deals that have dropped below the price you’ve indicated.
Everyday, around 9am, it will deliver a message alert if the tickets have fallen below the price you like.
Even thought I’ve switched this function on, I always feel annoyed when it reminds me of a cheap flight because I can’t go on a holiday now
The design of the interface is really clean and beautiful. There is an airplane flying in circles when it loads a page. A sad emoticon appears when there is no connection.
The companion Web site has the same functionality but with limited travel dates. The app can be found on the App Store.
Ratings
“Borrowing”148apps.com’s review format:
FlightLover Singapore Developer: Handstand (The folks who brought you gothere.sg) Price: S$2.99 Version Reviewed: 1.27 Device Reviewed On: iPhone 4 iPhone Integration Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (Not integrated into Twitter–iOS 5 functionality) User Interface Rating: 4 out of 5 Re-use Value Rating: 5 out of 5
I went to cover a tech event today and the main theme was about the personal cloud and how it would become the center of our digital lives.
It got me thinking about my personal cloud apps and how it allowed me to be free of a USB and forwarding all documents to my e-mail.
I have many cloud apps I love but for travelling, I adore TripIt (and Google Docs’ Speadsheet).
I wrote a semi-review of TripIt last September on my now-dead tech blog. Since then, I’ve used the app for many more months and have grown really fond of it. I basically use it as my carrot–whip out my phone, see my upcoming trips before getting back to real life.
I admit. I was one of the nasty people who scoffed at the premise of Eat, Pray, Love when I first heard about it.
What? Rich lady travels the world to eat, pray and love? I immediately filed it under Stuff Other People Read, right next to Twilight.
Guess what, I read Twilight last month and I just finished Eat, Pray, Love (one hour ago, to be exact).
First off, I should have never put Eat, Pray, Love next to Twilight in my mind. Twilight needs to be thrown in a fire, along with the movie franchise and shirtless boys. Continue reading “Read: Eat, Pray, Love”→
Slept at 11pm but was waken by cat at 12 midnight. What on earth!!! Thought I would have to live in fear of the cat coming in my room to disturb my sleep. But then I remembered the clothes hanging thing I have in the room. I took it down and adjusted it so it would hold the door. FInally, I will have peace during my sleep.
Okaasan drove me to the train station because she needed the bicycle. I was in time to catch the 8:31am train and reached the school’s station 2 minutes before 9am. But the walk from the station to the library was 8 minutes so in the end I only had little time to use the internet.
I brought my bottle of sunblock to school. It only has 15 SPF so I better reapply it often. The scent was a bit overpowering in class though. So sorry!
At lunch, I used the chopsticks I bought at DAISO. They use those wooden “hygenic” chopsticks and I don’t think these things are recyclable.
At 1pm, it was History class exam. I wrote really really lousy stuff. Well, the worse will be I can’t map it. Nevermind, I only need one module anyway.
Then when class was over, Wawa’s tutor took me and her to her apartment where we’ll be having a takoyaki party. Tako is octopus and yaki means the way of cooking it by cooking it on a hot plate. In Chinese, we call it “zhangyu shao.”
The party, there was Wawa tutor’s Skk, M, Syk and my tutor Nm. They seem to have these party every once in a while. So fun.
How to make takoyaki.
There’s takoyaki mix where you add in two eggs, 800ml of water and mix. Interesting!
Then there’s the DIY takoyaki plate. :D
And here are in ingredients: octopus and chicken.
After mixing, pour the mix onto the hot plate.
Then you put whatever filling you like: chicken, octopus and cheese shown here
Wait a while before you prick at the sides of the takoyaki to flip it. I did ugly takoyaki. ha ha
Then when the how takoyaki is a nice brown colour, take them out and put on takoyaki sauce, mayonaise, seaweed and fish flakes.
The fun of having takoyaki at home is everyone gets to flip it
Apart from the normal octopus, we had chicken and also chocolate with cheese. Choc and cheese are desserts
Sounds gross but it tastes OK.
After takoyaki, it was ice cream. The ice cream has tiny chunks of filling which are heart shaped if you spoon ot correctly. (ha ha)
The girls walked us to the subway station after dinner. I took the subway (one stop) to my train station because it was quite dangerous to walk at night. Seems like their version of samseng is called Yankee, I wonder if it’s related to Americans
The train ride wasn’t expensive as they had a special fair for one stop rides. 100 yen
Okaasan fetched me from the station when I got there at 9pm.
After showering, I did my homework. The night passed peacefully with no intruding cat.
I will be going to Fukuoka and the people there use the Hakata dialect.
I want to learn Hakata-ben. Imagine how funny it will be when I use it elsewhere in Japan.
It’s like when I was in China on student exchange and a girl there spoke English with (what I think is) a Texan accent. It was amazing, hearing a Chinese girl speak like a cowboy. How’dy!
The Hakata-ben was featured in CHANGE as whatshisname (played by Kimura) was from Fukuoka. But it was illogical that he spoke standard Japanese when his mom speaks in Hakata-ben with him. The script writers should have bothered to change his lines.
The other time I’ve heard Hakata-ben was in a movie. The mom talked a lot in Hakata-ben while her daughter replied in mmm… Very good lines, script writer, or were you on strike too?
YQtravelling 