Tag: travel

Hungry Crocodiles, Thieving Monkeys, and Minimum Wage Laws: Singapore, Bali, and Australia

2023 was quite a year!  I got married in April, and I recently got back from a three-week honeymoon cruise through two oceans, two continents, and seven stops across three countries.  As always when traveling, I observed and learned a lot that I want to share.  Here are the highlights from each stop along the way.

Singapore

Our trip started with a 17-hour flight to Singapore.  This tiny country is a very unique place.  The first thing you see, obviously, is the airport.  Normally, that would not be worth mentioning, but the airport in Singapore is different.  They have what they call The Jewel, which is a giant, 5-story, indoor mall area built around a massive, man-made waterfall in the center.  We spent about 5 hours there!  I went through two mazes, a giant canopy of nets that you can walk through, high above the mall, three big slides, and a beautiful garden, among other things.  We also got ice cream at Swenson’s, which reminds me of celebrations with my grandma.  Swenson’s is no longer in the United States, so I had not been there in years!  I also tried a different flavor, Durian, which is known as the world’s smelliest fruit.  I was not a fan.  It tastes a little like gym socks and garlic.  Fortunately, we also got a scoop of Sticky, Chewy, Chocolate, a favorite from my youth.  We even called grandma from the table.

Before the trip, my wife made me watch the film Crazy, Rich Asians, which is set in Singapore.  We actually stayed at The Marina Bay Sands, the hotel featured in that movie.  It was extravagant.  In fact, the whole country is pretty fancy.  As one friend put it, “That whole place is like a big country club.”  The hotel itself was just like being in Las Vegas, complete with a giant casino.  Interestingly, tourists are able to enter the casino for free, but Singapore residents have to pay a membership fee to go in, because they prefer the locals not gamble away their money.  We also went to The Raffles Hotel, the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, a tasty cocktail invented by a bartender there because women were not allowed to drink alcohol at the time, so he made it look like juice.

It seemed like Singapore has about a 1 to 1, restaurant-to-person ratio.  Everywhere you walked there was food.  They have renowned hawker markets, with Michelin star-rated food stands.  The best things we ate there were souffle pancakes, which are large, fluffy pancakes that are soft like marshmallows, and croffles, which are waffles made with croissant dough.  The most exotic thing I tried was shark fin soup, which is outlawed in many places.  It tasted fine, but the bigger thrill is angering crazy activists who want to tell people what they can and can’t do.

My biggest political observation from Singapore is how much they are pushing the “climate change” agenda.  Multiple people that we talked to brought up their fear of global warming.  The government of Singapore is pushing the idea that ocean levels are going to rise and flood the country.  Many of their attractions are very centered around global warming propaganda.  One example is a giant, domed, Avatar-themed sky forest.  It is very cool, and visually impressive, just like the movie.  Also, like the movie, it pushes the false narrative that humans are evil, planet destroyers.  Singapore even brags that they have a “vehicle quota system” that caps new cars in the country and sets a zero-growth rate for cars and motorcycles.  I did not realize how widespread this propaganda has reached.

Bali, Indonesia

From Singapore, we got on the cruise ship, Celebrity Edge, and set sail for Bali, where we were in port for two days.  We had arranged for a driver, Putu Dedy, months in advance to take us around the island.  I highly recommend him.  The first day, we went to a giant swing, that swings out over a cliff above a riverbed far below.  It was a rush!  The place also had a menu with a full page of different coffees, including the most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak Coffee.  It is made by feeding coffee beans to an animal called a civet, which looked to me kind of like a possum.  When the civet poops out the beans, they pick them out of the feces, clean them, and make coffee out of them.  It costs $50 for a cup!  I did not try it, but I did try Luwak chocolate, which was made with the same beans, and actually tasted really good.  We brought a bunch home with us to give to friends and family.  We got some great reactions when we told them how it was made, after they had tried it.  Next, we went to a restaurant, Bebek Tebasari Resto, where our driver got us a table on a bamboo bungalow over a koi pond, with a great view overlooking rice paddies.  They even give us fish food for the koi.  Finally, we went to one of the many beautiful waterfalls on the island before heading back to the ship.

The next day, we got up early and started with a trip to the GWK Statue.  It is a massive statue of the Hindu deity Vishnu riding on his mount, Garuda.  You can see the statue from many miles away and it is the first thing you notice when arriving from the sea.  The area around it is a cultural center, where they have a traditional Balinese show, with musicians and actors.  I got picked out of the crowd to be in the show, where I got to wear a monkey mask and act like a monkey on stage.  It was a blast!

From there, we went to our favorite place in Bali, the Uluwatu Temple.  It is a Hindu temple in a forest along a breathtaking cliff, overlooking the ocean hundreds of feet below.  What makes it extra fun is that there are monkeys who live at the temple.  We hired a guide to show us around because the monkeys are mischievous.  We were warned in advance not to wear hats or sunglasses, because the monkeys will steal them.  If they do, the guide is there to trade fruits or nuts to the monkey for your stuff back.  Our guide had a slingshot to keep the worst monkeys away, because he knew the ones to look out for.  We did, in fact, see two people who had not hired guides, get their glasses stolen by monkeys.  Then they had to pay extra for guides to trade for their stuff.  Our guide did let us hand-feed peanuts to the monkeys.  The funniest part was at the end.  We asked him, “Do the monkeys ever bite people?”  His response, “Yes.  All the time.”

After that, we went shopping and stopped at a place where they have fish pedicures.  Hundreds of tiny fish eat the dead skin off of your feet.  It tickled.  We finished the day by going to a resort along the Indian Ocean for some food, and a dip in the ocean. 

There were some things I learned from our driver that were pretty interesting.  We learned that while Indonesia is mostly a Muslim country, Bali is the only island that is not majority Muslim.  Most people in Bali are Hindu.  We also had a very interesting conversation about the Covid lockdowns in Indonesia.  He was angry about the lockdowns and the masks and the harm that it caused.  For someone who earns his living driving around tourists, he was crippled by the tyrannical edicts of the Indonesian government and had to sell all but one of his vehicles.  He barely made it through.  Then he told us that later he was pulled over by police because he was driving with somebody else in his car without a mask.  The other person was his wife.  Dishonest, stupid governments are a worldwide phenomenon.

Darwin, Australia

Our next stop was probably my favorite.  Darwin, Australia is at the very top of Australia, and was the most like I had envisioned Australia in my mind.  By that, I mean the most like the movie, Crocodile Dundee.  The city itself was small.  We went into multiple shops that had cool souvenirs, like boomerangs, hats with crocodile teeth, kangaroo testicle keychains, didgeridoos, and back scratchers with crocodile or kangaroo claws. 

Then, we got on a bus that took us to a boat on a river, where we got to see huge saltwater crocodiles in the wild.  Our bus driver told us that our tour guide on the boat used to swim in one of the lakes in the area as a kid.  They would just throw some rocks into the water, and if nothing moved, they would jump in.  Then one day, a schoolmate of his got eaten by a crocodile.  I looked it up.  It really happened. 

Once on the boat, the tour guide would tie a whole chicken to the end of a pole and hang it out over the water, where the croc would jump for it.  We saw a female, which we learned grow to about 3 ½ meters.  Then we saw a baby croc, which was cool because it could jump really high and get its entire body out of the water.  We learned that crocodiles are cannibals and that the females care for their young for about 6 weeks, and if they are not gone by then, they eat them.  Another interesting thing was that males sometimes bite off the arms of the female while mating, but crocs can turn off part of their heart so that blood stops pumping to that extremity and they survive.  They use their tail to get around, so the arms are unnecessary.  At the end, we saw a huge male crocodile.  Male crocs do not stop growing at 3 ½ meters like the females.  This one was about 4 ½ meters long, and scary!  We also got a nervous chuckle at the beginning, because they are required to show us where the life jackets are in case the boat sinks.  “I’m going down with the ship,” my wife said.

It was an extremely hot day, so when we returned to shore the tour bus took us to the world-famous Humpty Doo Tavern for a drink.  The bar is famous because, as the story goes, the Humpty Doo Tavern sold a giant, 2-liter bottle of beer called Darwin Stubby.  They would have a drinking contest to see who could finish a Stubby the fastest.  The Humpty Doo Tavern also used to allow animals inside, so people would bring all sorts of pets with them to the bar.  The most well-known was a cow named Norman, who would drink the Darwin Stubbies in record time.  People would come from far and wide to try to beat Norman, but nobody ever could.  Animals are no longer allowed into the bar, but it was still a fun place to stop.

Cairns, Australia, and the Whitsunday Islands

The next two stops were snorkeling trips.  The first day was near Cairns, Australia on the Great Barrier Reef.  The most interesting thing we saw there was a large sea turtle, snacking on jellyfish right next to us.  The next day was in the waterways between the Whitsunday Islands, which is a quaint, vacation spot for Australians.  There, we saw a massive stingray that was probably 5 feet across, with a huge barb at the end of his tail.  Crikey!  We also saw a small shark swim by us.  I may or may not have hidden behind my wife when it passed.

Sydney, Australia

The cruise ended in Sydney.  We only spent a day there, and it was plenty of time.  It is just like many other big cities around the world.  We did hit the two main tourist sights that people think of when they picture Sydney:  The Sydney Opera House and Bondi Beach.  We found a really good gelato place in Bondi called Anita Gelato.  I just looked it up and it turns out there is one in Los Angeles, too.

Melbourne, Australia

We took a short flight down to Melbourne on Quantas.  Quantas never crashed, you know?  We stayed with my wife’s friend, who moved there a few years ago.  He works in the restaurant industry, so he knew some good places to eat, like the best place we ate on the trip, Dumpling Palace. 

Our host, Brian, was also able to explain a phenomenon that many Americans do not understand, with the most clear, real-world example that I have ever seen.  Back in a restaurant in Sydney, I saw a sign promoting a drink special that I was curious about.  It had a picture of the drink and the special price, and then it had a higher price for Sundays and holidays.  I wondered why that was, but didn’t give it much thought.  Then in Melbourne, Brian told us that his restaurant closes pretty early in the evening.  In fact, he explained that there are almost no restaurants open late in Australia because they have what they call “penalty rates.”  Basically, the minimum wage goes up after a certain time at night.  Can you guess when else there are penalty rates?  Yep.  Sundays and holidays.  It made perfect sense.  The businesses were forced to raise their prices to pay for the government-mandated, artificially high wages.  In other words, raising the minimum wage causes inflated prices.  Either that, or it forces businesses to make up their costs in other ways, like closing down when the wages are higher.  Government interference in the economy should be the scariest thing you learn about from this article, even more than the crocodiles.

We also went to a cricket match between the Melbourne Renegades and the Perth Scorchers.  I do not know much about cricket, but it was a fun experience.  The match ended in controversy because they stopped it early due to bad field conditions.

Of course, when you think of Australia, you think of kangaroos, so we went to Gumbaya World.  It is a combination zoo, amusement park, and waterpark.  We bought some animal feed and walked around the zoo section, where we saw tropical Australian birds, koalas, wallabies, dingos, kangaroos, and emus, among other animals.  The kangaroos were super lazy, and if you tossed food to them, they didn’t even move.  We had to walk right up and hold it in front of their face before they would even show interest.  The emus, on the other hand, ran over to the fence and were very aggressively going after the little pellets of food.  Had there not been a fence between us, they would have attacked.

The Captain The last interesting story was from the final day on the cruise ship.  The captain did a question-and-answer session with the passengers, and one question stood out.  Many of the passengers had been on the ship since it left Rome, 52 days earlier.  They had gone from Rome, through the Suez Canal to Singapore, with many stops along the way.  One of the stops was supposed to be in Petra, Jordan.  After the Hamas attack on Israel and the instability in the region, that port had to be skipped.  One of the passengers who had been on the whole trip asked the captain, “Were the three American warships that were in the locks with us through the Suez Canal there because of what was happening in Israel?”  The captain’s response, “I can’t say much, but it was not a coincidence that the U.S. warships were with us in the locks.”

I See London, I See France

Hello and bonjour!  As many of you who follow me on social media know, I recently took my first trip to Europe, and I promised to share my observations from overseas.  It actually started in an Italian restaurant on a baseball trip to Scottsdale, Arizona, in October.  After some wine, my girlfriend (now fiancé) asked me if I like the 80s band, The Cure, and if we should go see them in concert.  I said, “yeah,” and she preceded to go on her phone and get us tickets.  After she bought the tickets, she told me that the show was on December 12 in LONDON! 

When booking flights, she decided that we should go across the channel to Paris for a few days after the concert.  Here are highlights from the trip, with some observations, pictures, and recommendations!

  • We arrived in London on Friday afternoon after a redeye flight from LAX.  We stayed at the “Grand Royale London Hyde Park,” which was built by King Edward VII for his mistress, actress Lillie Langtry.  My favorite part about the hotel was the full English breakfast each morning, which ranged from normal stuff like eggs, bacon, and sausage, to things like sauteed mushrooms, marmalade, baked beans, and of course, many kinds of English teas. 
  • We went on a Paddington Bear-themed double-decker bus tour of the city, which included English high tea with sandwiches, scones, cookies, cheeses, and marmalade. 
  • After getting mulled wine in Trafalgar Square, we wandered the wrong direction back to the hotel, leading to a six-mile walking tour through the streets of London.
  • Saturday night was the World Cup soccer match between England and France.  While I am not a soccer fan, I thought it would be a fun atmosphere to sit in a pub and watch with the English fans.  Unfortunately, the pubs were so crowded that many of them would not let anybody else in, and the ones that did were so packed that we could not even move.
  • Since we were there on a Sunday, we decided it would be cool to attend the church service at Westminster Abbey.  The service had a solemn feel to it, with an organ and a boys choir that sounded eerie and echoey because of the giant building and very high ceiling, combined with being otherwise quiet.  The most interesting part was the markers for all of the people buried in Westminster Abbey, from kings and queens, to scientists like Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, to writers like Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens, to politicians like Neville Chamberlain, who is off to a side, and Winston Churchill, who is actually buried elsewhere, but has a large memorial marker right in the middle near the entrance.  I would like to go back when services are not going to read the markers.
  • The Tower of London was recommended by a friend and I also highly recommend it.  I know a ton about U.S. history, but my European history is a little lacking, so I learned a lot.  The tower is a castle that was built in 1078 and has been vital to the defense of the city for centuries because of its location along the Thames River.  It has been used as a royal residence, an armory, a mint, and a prison, among other things.  It now houses the Crown Jewels of England, which you can look at.  There are old weapons and armor on display in the White Tower, which is the oldest section of the castle.  There are also old torture devices, like the rack, that look horribly painful.   You can also see ravens that are kept at the tower because as legend has it, if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the Crown will fall and Britain will be lost.
  • It snowed!  We were inside a pub when it started, so we went outside and played in the falling snow, making snowballs and taking plenty of pictures.  It was beautiful!  For a guy from near the beach in California, it was definitely quite a memorable experience.

  • One of the other recommendations given to me was the Churchill War Rooms, and it may be my favorite thing we saw on the trip.  During World War II, Winston Churchill had a complex of rooms and tunnels built and reinforced under a building in London.  Since the Germans were dropping bombs on the city, the allied war effort was orchestrated from the bunker, which included meeting rooms, sleeping quarters, a room for the typists and secretaries, and the map room, which has been preserved in the condition it was in 1945 when they left it, with the original maps up on the walls.  It now also includes the Winston Churchill Museum, where you can get a very good look at one of the greatest men in history.
  • The concert was at Wembley Arena.  The Cure frontman, Robert Smith, was quite an interesting looking guy in the ‘80s, and he still dresses in the same style, making him look a little like if my dad dressed in Goth.  The set list was strange, because although The Cure has enough hits to spread them around, they saved almost all of them until the very end.  In fact, they left, came back for an encore, still did not play hits, left again, and came back for a second encore where they played a bunch of hits in a row.  They sounded good, and when they finally did play Just Like Heaven and Boys Don’t Cry, the crowd ate it up and sang along.
  • Abbey Road!  As a huge Beatles fan, I had to go see Abbey Road and get a picture in the famous crosswalk from the cover of The Beatles final album.  As Paul McCartney found out, you have to be careful, because you have to dodge traffic to snap your picture!

After London, we got on the Eurostar train under the channel to Paris.  My guess was that I would like London better, mostly because they speak English there.  I had also heard from quite a few people that Paris is overrated and dangerous.  Besides that, I had many assumptions about France being full of rude, snooty people, and of course that the French are wimps and ultra-woke leftists.   Here are the highlights from the City of Light.

  • Pay to pee?  When I got off the train, I went to the restroom.  There were turnstiles at the entrance and it cost a Euro to go in!  How does the whole city not smell like urine?
  • Here is where my assumptions started to fall apart.  We took an Uber to our hotel.  The driver seemed like a standoffish grump at first, but then he started using a translation app on his phone.  He was a really nice guy, who pointed out sights and gave us some recommendations for places to go.  In fact, none of the people we met were rude to us.
  • Statues!  The next assumption that turned out to be incorrect was that the French would be ultra-woke whiners.  Sadly, Americans are in many ways far worse.  One example is that Paris is blanketed in monuments commemorating their history and the men who were a part of it.  Nearly every block has a memorial to Napoleon, de Gaulle, or some other French historical figure.  In the United States, we tear down our statues.  Point for France!
  • Street cafes!  When I thought about going to Paris, I wanted to sit in a street café, eat, and drink wine.  We walked from our hotel to “Le Campanella,” and had a fantastic meal of French stew and a lot of wine.  Magnifique!
  • Museums.  I am not a big art museum guy, but everybody who goes to France wants to see the Louvre.  The most famous art museum in the world holds many renowned paintings and sculptures, including the most well-known painting of them all, the Mona Lisa.  While I enjoyed the Louvre, I surprisingly was more impressed with another art museum in Paris, The Musee d’Orsay.  This museum holds paintings by Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, and many more.  It was interesting to see how different each artist’s style was. 
  • My last assumption that was shattered was that the French are wimpier than Americans.  When we went to the Champs-Elysees on the night of the World Cup soccer match between France and Morocco, there were literally thousands of armed police officers, police cars, and armored vehicles lining the street and blocking shop windows.  Apparently, Moroccan fans had gotten out of control the last time they played, so the French put out such a police presence that nobody would dare cause any trouble.  In America, we let lawless BLM thugs run amok in our cities for much of 2020, breaking windows, burning buildings, and looting.  France for the win!
  • The Eiffel Tower is obviously a must-see.  We had tickets to the top of the tower, but because of weather, the highest platform was closed.  We were able to go up to the second observation deck, which is still quite impressive.  My girlfriend was a little disappointed because she had hopes of a proposal.  That seemed too obvious, though.  My proposal came two weeks later and was a complete surprise!
  • We took a riverboat tour on the Seine, which was beautiful, although very cold!
  • Moulin Rouge!  We got tickets to the famous cabaret theatre where the can-can was born.  The show was very entertaining, with strong-man acts, acrobats on roller skates, gymnasts, and a girl who swam with very large pythons.

  • On our last night, we decided to get a closer look at the Arc de Triomphe.  We did not realize that it closes, and we also did not realize that there is an underground tunnel that takes you across the 6-lane, busy traffic circle to get there.  We, of course, ran across the road like crazy people.  Once we were there, we looked around and read the inscriptions, until a French police officer came out from said underground tunnel and asked what we were doing there after closing.  We told him that we didn’t know it closed, and asked if we could use the tunnel to get back across.  He said the tunnel is closed, too, and when my girlfriend asked how to get back, he smiled and said, “run.”

Don’t Be Shy

Have you ever taken one of those Myers-Briggs Personality tests?  It asks you a bunch of questions and gives you a four-letter categorization of your personality based on four different characteristics.  The first trait it attempts to evaluate is whether you are an introvert (I) or an extrovert (E). The letters are not supposed to mean that one or the other is necessarily better or worse.  It is just supposed to tell people which way their personality leans.  There is, by the way, some difference between introverted and shy.  A shy person fears negative judgment by others and feels anxious in social situations, so they tend to avoid them.  An introvert is usually introspective and feels overstimulated by social situations.  They often prefer quiet, alone time to think instead of being around people.  While they are not the same, there is some overlap between shy and introverted, namely, that both will often avoid social situations.  For this reason, I believe that one possibility actually is better than the other.  I encourage you to act like an extrovert.

If you are shy, or an introvert (which I will use interchangeably from now on), please do not get defensive.  This is not an attack or even a criticism of you.  In fact, when I take the Myers-Briggs test, I am an INTP.  There is nothing wrong with being introverted.  By that, I mean that there is nothing immoral about being shy.  Someone is not a bad person because they are shy.  This is entirely a qualitative assessment, not a moral one.  I want all of us to have a higher quality of life.

What led me to this thought was a friend on social media.  You probably have some friends online whose posts make you think.  This particular friend of mine often posts stories and memes about being an introvert and trying to avoid going out and spending time with others.  They are amusing and good-natured posts, but whenever I see them, it makes me feel bad for her.  She is missing out on so much in life!

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes spending a night alone at home watching TV is great.  That being said, almost all of the most memorable moments in life are spent with other people.  Let’s be honest, people are interesting, and the only way to meet them is by putting yourself in a position to.  My suggestion is to seek out opportunities to go interact with people.  Join a club.  Join a team or go to sporting events.  Go to parties.  Travel and mingle with the locals.  Sing karaoke.  Don’t worry about what people might think.  Most people are too worried about what others think of them to be too critical of you.

Another great idea is to get a social job.  Many of the articles about introverts suggest that they get jobs that do not require much interaction with other people, like computer jobs or cubicle jobs.  Those articles imply that these jobs are a good idea because it fits the personality of the introvert.  The better idea is to do the opposite.  I once dated a girl who was bartending when I met her, but I soon realized was pretty shy.  She said that she got the bartending job to force herself out of her comfort zone and meet new people.  It worked, and her life was richer for doing it.  Heck, she met me.

As I said, I lean towards introversion.  It is all right if you think quietly at times.  Occasionally, someone will notice I am not being talkative and will ask what is wrong.  Most of the time, nothing is wrong and I am contemplating some deep issue of life, or some idea for an article for this blog.  Being contemplative is perfectly fine.  I am not suggesting you have to constantly be the loud, crazy, life of the party.  Thinking before you speak or act is usually a good idea.  People see the strong, silent type in a positive way for good reason.  That being said, never let your feelings stop you from fully experiencing life.

The movie Yes Man with Jim Carrey is a fun, silly film, but it helped me to this realization.  In the movie, Jim Carrey hears a motivational speaker who tells him to say “yes” to every opportunity that presents itself.  When he does, he begins to thrive and succeed in many areas of life because he is putting himself in the position to do so, when previously he never would have had those chances.  Of course, you can’t say “yes” to everything, and eventually, he figures that out, but the principle of being open to more opportunities is a good one. 

My general rule is that if somebody suggests that we do something or go somewhere, as long as it is not immoral, I will say yes.  If a friend calls and wants to go out, say yes.  If somebody invites you on a trip, go.  If you don’t feel like going, ignore that feeling!  It will make your life fuller.

Now, I am going to follow my own advice.  Instead of watching the rest of the baseball playoff games here in my hotel room, I am going to head out to a sports bar in Phoenix to watch.  Maybe I will meet some new people and some fun adventures will ensue!