Return Trip

26/27x2 122016

The last day of our resort stay, we had elected for the late checkout, which included lunch. We hung out till the 1400 boat was to take us back to the ferry terminal. We settled our bill, and sat down for lunch. after eating the main portion of the lunch, and while our dessert was being prepared, one of the staff approached us apologizing for having forgotten to include an item on our bill.

They claimed that we had to pay for the lunch. We said we didnt have any documentation telling us that and we thusly refused to pay. At this point we were pretty disappointed with the Telunas Resort.

http://www.telunasresorts.com/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1778353-d7155295-Reviews-Telunas_Resorts_Telunas_Private_Island-Sugi_Island_Riau_Archipelago_Riau_Islands_Prov.html

We were staying in the Private Island portion, because it wasnt the Family Friendly portion.

According to the website we were supposed to be getting 2 course lunches and 3 course dinners every day.

As seen on the website, they cater to couples and young families.

No where on the website does it state late checkout incurs an extra fee.

The website does not accurately portray our experience.

The entire thing was no where near the romantic/private getaway the website would lead you to believe it is. So we were pretty upset before they tried to tack on the extra lunch. That was the thing that turned it from a disappointment to outright discontent.

Anyways, the long boat got us to the ferry terminal, we got on a ferry that got is to Singapore.

Customs in Singapore took well over an hour and a half.

We hopped a cab to the airport, got through security fantastically easily (there was no security at the front, you can get into the airport with a boarding pass and an ID, no metal detectors no wands, just walk right in, the real security happens immediately prior to getting on the plane). Inside security we hung out in one of the lounges for a little while prior to our 6 hour flight to Shanghai.

Did i mention the flight was scheduled for 2300? This was the start of a very long day, if you are keeping track we left our resort at 1400, got on a plane at 2300 and showed up in Shanghai at 0400.

The airport was barely open, we got through customs there quick, and waited at ticketing as there was no one from American to issue us a ticket. After a few hours of waiting I spoke to another One World partner, and he recommended we print our own passes from the business center to get through security.

Thats exactly what we did, and then proceeded to hang out in lounges until our flight at 1820. Which was a solid 12.5 hours.

we landed in Dallas at 1720 the same day. as in we left in the evening of the 27th and landed an hour earlier, on the 27th.

Then cleared US customs, got our plane to Chicago, got picked up by a friend and our dog (Sicily was in the airport, she certainly wasnt allowed, but no one stopped her), and went home.

With all the timezone changes, our travel started on Monday, and went through Tuesday, and then went through most of Tuesday again. Totalling about 41 hours of travel time.

Glad to be home.

Tropical Escape

23122016

We woke up finished packing and checked out of our hotel. Starting our journey to Indonesia. We took the subway to the harborfront, the same place our cruise ship dropped us off.

We had a few minutes so we got some snacks at the 7-11. We had to go through customs to get out of Singapore, the line for which was quick and easy. We made our way onto th ferry. It really was just a big boat with a bunch of seats, it had air conditioning which is really the only amenity i needed.

after about 45 minutes we arrived in Sekupang Indonesia. Right after customs we were greeted by staff from our Telunas Resort. A handful of other guests of the hotel were also arriving. I noticed that they had children, and hoped they were going to stay at the Beach Resort side of the resort, rather than the Private Island side. After all of us gathered, they piled our bags in the van, and we walked a few hundred meters to the little pier that had the longboat to get us to the islands.

They gave us our bags to carry the last bit down the pier, then we handed the bag off once again as they piled the luggage onto the longboat, we then climbed in, and it took us the 90 minutes to get to the resort area.

we climbed off the longboat, and received our welcome drink, a fruity green thing that neither of us could identify, and sat down for lunch.

The lunch was fantastic, a grilled mackerel with rice and stir fried vegetables. I was very excited about the foods we were going to be eating over these next few days.

After lunch we made our way to our private villa, which is great

We enjoyed the villa and the views until dinner time, and this meal was even better. I had a stir fried chicken with rice and vegetables, and laura had a butter lemon salmon with the same sides. My chicken was so good, I felt bad that i had that meal, and laura had to settle on the one that was also good, but not as good.

After dinner we went back to our villa to watch some of the stashed TVs we had. Unfortunately we found our tablet had been damaged.

Damnit, it survived 10 weeks of our travelling, but it gets cracked in the last 3 days, the three days that we wanted it the most.

We got through one episode of season 5 American Horror Story, and the internal hardware damage kicked in and rendered it impossible to watch the rest of them.

We were able to watch Inside Out, the pixar movie. This film turned out to be much better than we expected. Afterwards we went to sleep, enjoying the sounds of the waves and bats (the bats are cool with us, cause they eat all the flying bugs).

User Error, not a Technical Error

22122016

Laura and I decided to forego the early morning activity our cruise friends had suggested, mainly to sleep more.

After waking up we decided to do a little shopping for ourselves before meeting up with one of Laura’s co-workers for drinks.

Laura’s company has offices all over the world, and infrequently brought them all to Chicago for their big events. As such Laura has made friends with people all over, to include this lady Kelise.

Laura emailed her weeks ago when we first left for our trip, giving her a heads up that we are headed to her part of the world, to good responses, and we would check in later. Then shot a message out before we started the cruise, warning that we would have no internet on the boat, Kalise was still eager to show us around some.

When we got to Singapore laura reached out again, to no response, and checked in frequently, until finally on our last full day, Laura realized she had been emailing the wrong email. So we finally got in touch with her, and she invited us to a happy hour at a hotel downtown.

So after wandering around and shopping some for ourselves, it started raining and we made our way to the hotel. Luckily, much like the rest of the enormous malls over here, we were able to walk quite a while without ever going outside.

We got a little turned around, showed up only 10 minutes late, and sat down to drink and chat with Kalise and her husband. The bar had snacks, to include free steak sandwiches. After a few hours of hanging out.

After the happy hour we went to Little India to take in the sights and get food.

Little India was pretty crazy, i imagine its what India is like. Still really hot, full of people speaking a language we dont understand, seeing script that we cant read and smelling somethings delicious, and others not so much.

We were looking for WiFi, to contact our cruise friends, only finding it in the Mustafa Market (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Centre).

They were already done eating and heading home, so we decided on a restaurant.

We chose an indian restaurant, because it had been mentioned in a blog somewheres, and it did not disappoint. The food was great and the staff was great, we started with some beers, and our waiter suggested we get something (which we didnt hear between the accent and the noise) as it goes good with beer, and it was great, it was basically Indian Nachos. Other than that we got a few dishes that were fantastic, their Gobi Manchurian was excellent, and has cemented Gobi Manchurian as one of my favorite foods, Spinach and Mint Tandoori Chicken, and then finally a yogurt sauce chicken dish.

After stuffing our faces we went home to begin preparing for the move to our resort time.

Food Heaven

21122016

We woke up at a decent time by our standards, but too late for our older Aussie friends, they had woken up plenty early to attend the Singapore Zoo. Having missed the zoo, we decided to hit up the South Ridges (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ridges). The South Ridges are essentially a series of interconnected parks, taking you through 10km of Singapore. We got there via the subway and a walk through the Science Park area, which is like an industrial park, but for tech development. The first park was Kent park, which had a little museum ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_at_Bukit_Chandu ) to commemorate the services of the Malay Soldiers during WWII, the Malay Soldiers led a heroic last stand defending the town of Singapore from the Japanese.

This led us to the Canopy walk, which is wandering through big hills and a few above ground walkways.

From here we hit the HortPark, which is a big Horticultural Park where there are gardens and learning, clearly geared towards teaching kids about plants. At this point in the day it was getting pretty warm, as in 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity. It was hot.

We left HortPark via the bridge over Alexandra Street, leading directly to the really tall above ground walkways. I dont remember what this part of the chain was called, but it was really cool. Walking at or above the tree tops was neat, Singapore, despite being a huge city, still has these green spots to escape to, I think that is a really important part of cities of the future.

The next link in the parks was The Waves, and it was the most spectacular.

After skipping breakfast, and walking a good 7km through near hundred degree temperatures, we were hungry. The first place we decided to stop at appeared to be a mall on the non-live google maps (we dont have service, though Singapore is totally cool with google), when we got there it seemed to be a rec center. We got some ice cream, and while enjoying my coffee/oreo ice cream i noticed there were pictures of soldiers all over the place.

Turns out this is a rec center for soldiers and their families, like the AAFES (army and air force exchange services) back home. Except way better. It kicks the shit out of all the exchanges ive been to in the US.

Now that we had enough food (and internet) in us to make a good decision on what to eat next. We settled on another food court in a mall. So we hopped on the bus, which took us directly to the necessary mall.

This was the downtown shopping area, Orchard Street. It was alot like the shopping arcades elsewhere in Asia, except, it was really hot. It was actually more like China than Japan/Korea/Hong Kong, because the malls were planned out by the city government, and they take up inside and outside space, unlike in Japan where half the mall is actually underground.

The food court had another wide selection of food, between the two of us we got three plates, some juices all for less than 25USD. From here we struggled to communicate with our friends and set up a meeting place.

We found them in the lobby of one of the malls, they were doing their own chasing of camera stuff, i guess that was their thing. So we wandered around the mall area, and ultimately it was decided to check out a certain outdoor food court that had the Chilicrab the Aussies had been wylin about.

The walk was a little longer than they were anticipating, it was prolly 1.2km away, i thought nothing of making that trek, i neglected to take into account that members of our party were missing their original joints (Maurine had both knees replaced, and everyone was over 60…). We finally got there, got a few beers, laura and i had already ate, so the beers were pretty much enough to keep us going. Laura went off to grab some fresh fruit to share with the table, and we chatted until it was “late”. We all went to the train station, and split our separate ways to go home.

Upon getting back to our hotel, laura and i fiddled around with the internets and watched a shitty harry-potter-knock-off movie before falling asleep.

The outside, is inside

(To keep you all interested I will attempt to post as we go similar to how i was before the the cruise, i will also post some of the cruise stuff retroactively Ive got about 5 more posts stacked up that need minor editing, and another 5 posts that need to be written, so keep checking in)

20122016

Last wake up on the cruise, everything was alive as the vast majority of the passengers were getting off the ship and everything needed to get cleaned and turned over.

We chesed down our cabin stewards to give them a tip. As i stated yesterday we elected to drastically diminish the pre-determined automatic tip and tip our service directly.

After finding our towel-animal-making-duo and slipping them the tip, we went back to the cabin to wait out some of the madness. We certainly didnt want to add ourselves to the nonesense of the people trying to get off.

When our disembark time was called we exited the boat, and waited in the immigration lines in Singapore. The port immigration office was quick enough considering both our boat and another was disgorging its tourists.

We then found our way to the subway to get over to our hotel. Of course it was only 1030, so the room wasnt ready, we handed our bags over and hopped on the wifi in the lobby.

Both of us binged on some internet.

We then left to meet our new friends from the ship, the Australian couple of couples, Chris and Lisa, Henry and Heather, and an American couple Maurine and Patrick. We had agreed to meet at the Chinatown subway stop exit A. Laura and i arrived first, then stumbled into Maurine and Patrick showed up, and just as we started to worry about the Aussies (or ozzies as it sounds when they say it), the popped out of the subway exit.

the 8 of us wandered only a few feet before stopped for some food. We settled on an Asian seafood restaurant, ordered some beers, and some food, Laura and i got Chicken Satay and the stir fried green beans we had had elsewhere in Asia, the rest got various bits of their own preference, that i dont particularly remember. All of it was tasty, it was a little pricey, with our 2 beers and plates coming to 41SGD.

We then wandered around Chinatown, shopping a little bit, mostly the other couples were doing the shopping, Laura and I have pretty much covered all of our bases when it comes to purchases over here, but the people watching is always prime.

After a bit of shopping we stopped for coffee, at an italian coffee shop, luckily Lisa speaks Italian fluently, which helped with the service. The group elected to go check out the domed gardens, the Gardens By the Bay here in Singapore ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_by_the_Bay ). This required a subway ride, and incedently took us to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

This is the iconic hotel in Singapore that everyone sees in the pictures, the one with the island on top of the building with an infinity pool that looks over the bay.

Apologies for the not great pics, google it for professional picture.

We wandered through the parks making our way to the actual domes.

these domes were pretty spectacular. While they kick the shit out of the Mitchell Park Domes that i grew up with ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Park_Horticultural_Conservatory ), they make me appreciate the Mitchell Domes, and the fact that they are in Milwaukee, they arent in Chicago, or New York, more commonly thought of as world-class cities, they are in Milwaukee.

Anyways, they were beautiful. The first one is a cloud forest horticultural dome. It is an emulation of the ecosystem that you would find in Central America and Indonesia/Malaysia ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_forest ).

other than little plaquards about all the plants themselves there was little to appreciate other than the views, which as i said we astounding. The dome started with a large manmade waterfall, and then wound around to an elevator to take you to the top. At the top is some great views of the city around you, and then you slowly descend the "mountain" on various catwalks and gantries.

The second dome was more temperate, a mediterranean climate. it wasnt nearly as interesting as the cloud forest manmade mountain. There were the kinds of plants one would find in a mediterranean climate, which by its very nature is less colorful and less exotic to me than the mountain tropics.

We then were quite pekish, electing to hit one of the food courts "hawker confederacies" as i have come to describe them. You have heard me earlier describe the idea that mall foodcourts are not to be scoffed at on this side of the Pacific, Singaporean foodcourts are a step above that.

We went back to the Marina Sands Hotel and Entertainment complex, for their basement foodcourt. This place was great, most of the countries on this side of the Pacific were represented at least partially in this food court, to name a few; Hong Kong Dim Sum, Thai fried rices, Japanse Noodles of various types, Indonesean, Singaporean, Hotpot, and korean wings. Between Laura and i we had three plates, some Singapore wings, i had a plate of Singapore noodles, and (im learning this right now) Laura also had a different styled plate of Singapore noodles.

After everyone ate their food, we resolved to meet up the next day at the zoo for another venture through Singapore.

We all broke for our specific homes, when Laura and i got back to our hotel, I updated the blog some, and we researched the zoo. Turns out its a little pricey, and really far away. We decided to sleep in, and bailed on the zoo, shooting them emails with this info and headed to bed.