Singapore

Day: 33

Countries: 4
Stops: 10


Arrived in Singapore at around 2pm and took the airport shuttle to the Hangout @ Mt Emily hotel. Checked out the lounge and the rooftop lookout, and decided to stay in and plan the next few days (with a quick trip for dinner at the food (hawker) centre at Tekka Centre in Little India. Essentially, there are all these stalls of various food items (or a selection of them), each for under $5 SGD, and you just pick one, line-up (if necessary) and get your food, find a table and eat, then when you're done someone comes and takes your food away. Drinks and dessert are usually separate from the mains...you have to get buy those from different stores. Really cheap lunch or dinner option, although they always try to talk to me in Chinese....

Yogyakarta, eastern Java, and Bali

Day: 29
Countries: 2
Stops: 9


OK, so I guess I'm a little (a lot?) behind. I'm actually in Singapore at the moment, taking shelter from the rain, but I want to save that for another post. Let's see if I can remember as far back as Day 14...

Jakarta and Pangandaran

Day: 13
Countries: 2
Stops: 4


OK, so I guess we're finally up to speed. My flight from Beijing to Jakarta was long...including a 4 hour stop over in Guangzhou, but otherwise smooth sailing. It was kind of interesting though, the flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was on this ridiculously large plane, with 2 decks and room for over 500 passengers. In contrast, the Guangzhou to Jakarta flight was on a small plane, the kind you'd be on from Calgary to Vancouver, but with the old school entertainment system. Anyway, Getting the visa on arrival in Indonesia was fairly painless, and so was getting the taxi to the hotel. Finally arrived at the hotel around 10pm, so I pretty much just crashed. 

China

Day: 10
Countries: 1
Stops: 2


Still cheating over here. By Day 10, I had finished the first leg of my trip: Mainland China. Spent some time with Emma, Brad, and the boys in Shanghai, which was quite nice, and somehow still managed to see some of the highlights of Shanghai, including Yuyuan Gardens, Tian Zi Fang, the Bund, Jing'an Temple, Jade Buddha Temple, Nanjing Dong Lu, and even shopping for Dan's LV bag at the fakes market in Pu Dong! But the highlight was really spending time with the kids and seeing how much they've grown, and how fast too!

Pudong skyline at night

with Richeille and Emma at the Bund

Asia Tour 2011

Day: 0
Countries: 0
Stops: 0


OK, so I'm cheating a bit. By the time I'm writing this, I'm actually a couple of weeks into my trip already, and it might be a day or two before I actually get to post it. But I wanted to start things off properly, so here you are: my itinerary.


Oct 12 leave Calgary
Oct 13 arrive Shanghai
Oct 17 Shanghai to Beijing
Oct 21 Beijing to Jakarta
Oct 22 Indonesia tour of Java and Bali
Nov 10 Bali to Singapore
Nov 13 Singapore, Malaysia and Southern Thailand tour
Nov 28 Cambodia and Vietnam tour
Dec 17 leave Hanoi
Dec 18 arrive Manila
Dec 19 Manila to Boracay
Dec 22 Boracay to Manila


And finally, in early January 2012: Manila to Brisbane!