Mr. Ben goes to Chinatown

Ben's birthday was Friday, so on Saturday night we headed into the city to Chinatown to a little noodle restaurant that came highly recommend (Thanks Kate & Lehi!).

Dustin and Deborah joined us and we all enjoyed watching Mr. Wong make the noodles. It's a process that takes years to learn and is passed down from generation to generation. We each got a different noodle dish and they were very tasty and fresh.

We also had some yummy yummy dumplings. We've been wanting to check out this place for a while and were glad to finally make it there. The other reason we decided on Chinatown for our night out was because we'd been there the week before for the start of the mid-autumn festival, which is one the three most important Chinese festivals.

Here is a description I found online: "Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month among Chinese communities worldwide. This auspicious occasion is a time of gathering and reunion for families and friends, many of whom come together to enjoy mooncakes, Chinese tea and appreciate the moon at its fullest."

We are hoping to make it next week to a lantern walk at the chinese gardens where the kids get a lantern and mooncake when the moon is full. So another post may be coming.

We had a great time with some wonderful friends. It makes it feel more like home here having fabulous people to mingle with.

These two kept resting there heads on their dads heads and looking at each other and I thought it was so sweet.

Some lanterns. They sell them all over Chinatown--from more traditional ones like these to hello kitty and spiderman. It's always interesting to see how the west influences the east.

A street in Chinatown adorned with lanterns.

A dragon from the little light-up procession/parade.

The little parade. If it weren't for the big heads in the way this would be a great photo but it at least gives you an idea of what it looks like. Next year I'm pushing my way to the front row and taking a tripod!

Someone please help me!!

Samara has never been good at just setting something down by herself. When she was an infant and would be sitting in her car seat, she'd fuss and fuss if she wanted to get rid of a toy because she wanted me to take it instead of just setting it down. She is still like this and I'm constantly saying things "like my hands are full" or "I don't have any free hands, please just set it down". One of Samara's jobs is calling the elevator whenever we are going somewhere. One day last month we were headed down for a swim with our nieces. We were all getting our shoes on and I sent her out the door loaded up with all her swim stuff to call the elevator. We then heard her yell from the hallway, "Help, help! Can someone else push the button? I don't have any free hands." Her stressed out dramatic tone made it all the funnier. Now I know that she does indeed listen to me.

The truth about Samara

Not unlike other kids this age, Samara tells it like it is. When you ask her to talk in a quiet voice, she answers back, "No, I want to talk in a LOUD NOT QUITE VOICE (volume increased A LOT)". I especially love when she pats my chest and says in a LOUD voice, "these are for mother's milk".

A few months ago Ben asked what she'd had to eat that day because she hadn't eaten dinner. I replied, "oh just some crackers." From the other room, she called out, "No, papa I had pink donuts today." Nice. Thanks, Samara. Last time you're getting those instead of real food.

Since she's been wearing 'underwears' we've tried to teach her about being modest, keeping her dress down so as to not show off her underwear. This morning as we were getting ready for church I told her we needed to put the bloomers on to cover her underwear so she'd be modest. She replied, "I don't want to be modest. I want to be a nudey." So there you have it, folks. She speaks on behalf of all of us here in this hot and humid environment. We don't want to be modest. We want to be exhibitionists.

Tioman

We absolutely could not let our nieces come all this way to the tropics and not take them to a proper beach. That would have been blasphemous and we are not blasphemous. We decided that Tioman Island off the east coast of Malaysia, where South Pacific (the old musical) was filmed, would do since it was voted by Time magazine in the 1970s as one of the world's top ten most beautiful beaches. I know we made a pretty big sacrifice taking them there but we were willing to take one for the team.

We finally bought a portable DVD player since the bus ride was 4-5 hours. We wanted to buy one for the plane ride when we moved here and finally did. Samara was instantly mesmerized by it. We love the head phones because they squeeze her cute cheeks together and make them look like her chubby baby cheeks. Maybe she's got a future as a DJ.

We enjoyed some quality beach time. Samara loved collecting shells and broken coral.

Sarah was our resident chief with her bamboo staff.

The lovely Suzanne. We stayed at Paya Beach Resort--that's what it says it the sand.

Beach resort (as Samara called it) was a bit of a stretch, although, from the outside it looks quite nice. The girls were a little more accurate in describing our accommodations as "girls camp" but we certainly didn't mind. The rooms were fine, just not super fancy.

Besides we went there to snorkel and snorkel we did. When I graduated from high school I went on a trip to Hawaii with my cousin and two friends and it still remains one of the most magical trips I've ever been on. My mom's cousin is a builder there and let us stay in a house he'd built and use a car. It was tre magnifique. Hawaii was my first time spending a significant time at the ocean and I fell in love. So much so that my first semester of college I took an oceanography class and got SCUBA certified. After my cousin and I got certified we were going to be the 1st ever SCUBA missionaries but then she got married and I got sent to Russia. I was convinced it was my destiny to be a marine biologist or at least a professional beach vacationer. I was only able to go diving a few times and haven't been for 10 years. I'm trying to convince Ben and save the money for us to get certified here. I don't remember much and I'm sure I'd have to get re-certified.

The snorkeling was fabulous!! We went several times a day right off our beach. The coral was stunning and there were so many different fish. Our package included a little snorkel trip (to the marine park and renggis island) but we actually liked the snorkeling right off our beach best. This was a really small island near our beach that was awesome to snorkel at during low tide. Sarah was kind enough to watch Samara one afternoon while Ben and I had a snorkel date. Suzanne came out with us to take photos. Although, the mountains will always be #1 to me, the coast is narrowing the gap between 1st and 2nd.

Our friends also joined us for the trip and this is their niece and daughter. My friend (the mom) is a nursery leader in our ward. Thanks to her, Samara now stay happily in nursery by herself. It was so fun to have them on the trip with us as well. As you can see this 7-inch HD bad boy can really hold its audience.

When the tide comes in the water spills through a river-like opening that cuts through a far end of the beach. We went exploring through the still water at the back, where we saw an old boat graveyard.

I do occasionally let Ben be the one behind the camera and look what he produces. So cute...maybe I should give it to him more often.

I love this photo especially when it's small and you can't see all my aging skin damage. Darn all those years of high-altitude sun exposure. When we were uploading this my nieces pointed out that she was signing "I love you". How adorable is that?! She just recently mastered the sign. Of course, it's also the sign for airplane when you turn the hand upside down so this could have had something to do with the loud jet flying overhead. Whatever. She loves me.

The rest of these are just some random photos to convince you all to come visit us.

The dark water is all fish! There were so many of them. This was below the pier/boat dock. I think they all hang around because people throw out bread/food for them.

The water was gorgeous! I was fascinated by how the time of day and light changed the color of the ocean. There was a storm one day and it changed from this to midnight blue in a couple minutes and then to the colors you see below once the rain stopped. Light + water=perfection.

As I worked on this post another one of our pet fish died (Samara's lu lu). On second thought, it's probably a really good thing that I didn't major in Oceanography and become a marine biologist. Half the fish in the ocean would be dead. I better stick with "professional beach vacationer". I wonder if anyone is hiring...

Here are some thoughts for those of you here who are thinking of or planning a trip to Tioman.

If you have a car definitely go. It would only be a couple hours drive. We loved it and would totally go again. However, we'd probably do it a little different. We booked a package through Discovery Tours. They were fine to work with but the bus ride was LONG. The bus ride was very windy and bumpy and we were at the back. We all got really car sick, which is something we are not prone to. I feel so sorry for people who get car sick easily. The way home was a little better because we were in the front. I looked into hiring a vehicle at one point and am pretty sure you could hire a taxi/van for about as much or a little more depending on your group size. With a car you wouldn't have the hassle of getting in/out twice for customs and could stop when you wanted. We had to make a rest stop about 20 minutes after Johor Bahru, which seemed like a waste of time since we'd just stopped and pottied and all but because of Ramadan it was the only place opened for the rest of the journey. The ferry ride was about 1.5 hours but we were one of the first stops of it would be longer if you were staying more on the north end of the island. The ferry ride was enjoyable except for the silly Malaysian karaoke music videos playing. You can also get a speed boat, again for probably not much more but I'm not sure how much faster it is.

Like I mentioned in the post, the snorkeling is fantastic. The places we went on our trip were neat but not any cooler than right off our beach. We really wish we could have gone to corral island. We've heard that is amazing and thought we were going there. Corral island was listed as a stop on the website so we didn't think to ask but we didn't go there for some reason. We bought a couple snorkel sets before we went that we'd be happy to loan out in exchange for chocolate. :) You can also rent them at your resort though. There are also some waterfalls and jungle trekking that we didn't do this time. We only went on a short little hike.

Our accommodations were fine but if you want something fancy I've heard you need to go with the big resort, Berjaya. I'm not sure if it's right on the beach though like the smaller places are. I don't think you could go wrong wherever you stayed. I've talked to others who stayed in more rustic places but it seems the beaches are all nice as is the snorkeling right off them. Ours was a little dirty (trash) is some places and we expected more of a white sand beach. I know there are some beautiful white sand beaches (at least I've seen pictures) but I'm not sure if there are hotels on those.

Random August Happenings

Meet our nieces, Sarah and Suzanne. They stayed with us for the month of August, which flew by as we kept them quite busy. Among the sightseeing and getting busted for sneaking gum into the country they also got to experience the joys of UHT boxed milk and living in a condo the size of their kitchen. Seriously, their kitchen is about 200 sq feet smaller than our place. Like I feared, Kitty the fish promptly died the day after they left. The others will probably follow suit. This and the pictures below are at the Bird Park. We'd never visited it before so it was fun to make a trip there.

This was a dark and cold arctic room that provided a nice break from a very hot day.

You can feed some of the birds like you can the animals at the zoo. We were close by Sarah and Suzanne took the photo. Samara and I weren't quite as brave. The little cup was full of live worms and one jumped down my shirt so I screamed and then Samara screamed and then we threw our worms on the ground for the birds to eat.

I think we'll stick to zoo animals like the kangaroo.

The owls are also housed in a dark room and were beautiful.

Suzanne also loves photography so I stole this picture from her because I loved it. There are flamingos at the zoo as well, but they're not as cool as these ones.

Samara and I were sitting on the tram by this lady who picked her right up. Samara normally flips out when people do this (yes, it is a regular occurrence) but it didn't bother her this time so we had to get a photo.

This isn't the most exciting photo but I'd seen these monks at the bird show and noticed their sandals looked a lot like chacos. When we walked past them I asked if Samara could be in a photo with them but then someone else had the same idea so that's why the others are turned around.

Another place we made it too that we hadn't been before was Palau Ubin. It's a little island that's just a 10-minute, $3.50 bumboat ride off the east coast. It seemed similar to where we'd visited in Thailand and sort of felt like going back in time. We rented bikes but they were NOT $2. The $6 ones we rented were worth about that at a garage sale so I guess it's a good thing that they "no, no don't have don't have any bikes for $2". The question was answered in a tone that suggested we were crazy for thinking the bike rental was $2.

Samara quite enjoyed the ride and was the only one not swimming in sweat.

On the boat ride back--so cute!

This is a dirt barge that we saw on the way back. From what we understand, this is dirt they take from digging the underground MRT lines that they then use to build up the island.

Can you guess what the girls' favorite place was that we visited twice....the turtle museum. It took them about two months to make our membership card (Ben's convinced we are the only people ever to get one). We've been elevated to celebrity status though. Both times we went the owner came out to visit with us and let us feed cucumbers to the bigger turtles. We were the envy of all the other visitors. Maybe I should tell them about the membership and see if I can get a cut of it.

A beautiful sunset. We love our view!

A lovely full moon that I was able to get some shots of bright and early. I've woken up at between 5:00 and 5:30 AM regularly since moving here and can rarely fall back asleep. It stinks. I wonder if jet lag is supposed to last 8 months. Now, it's late and Ben finished his book so I best be off to bed. There are a couple more posts to come about Tioman and then I'm all caught up.

Date Night

One of neatest things about living in Singapore is learning about and mixing with so many different cultures. By law, you have to be tolerant of others religious beliefs. So, even though only about 15% of the population is Christian, they celebrate Christmas and I feel more comfortable and PC here saying Merry Christmas than I did working at Deer Valley Ski Resort in Utah.

The other major religions are Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. Besides celebrating and decorating for Christmas, Singapore celebrates something they call "One City, Three Festivals", which includes Hari Raya Aidilfitri for Muslims, the Mid-Autumn Festival for Buddhists, and Deepavali for Hindus. The festivals overlap and take place from August to October.

It starts with Hari Raya, which celebrates Ramadan, the month-long time of fasting for Muslims when they abstain from food and drink from dawn until dusk. Additionally, many Muslims abstain from other "pleasurable activities" during daylight hours (the song "Afternoon Delight" has no meaning during Ramadan--that's Ben's comment. I tried to tell him this is a family blog). This takes place in the Malay quarter or Kampong Glam, which we've visited before. Since we had babysitters available, I met Ben after work a couple weeks ago to head over there for the light-up festival and the start of Ramadan.

We started off the night by breaking our non-fast with some delicious grub. It was a middle-eastern restaurant. We enjoyed some humus and baba ganoush as well as a tasty egyptian salad and some fish and potatoes. Seeing as we permanently abstain from certain "pleasurable activities" we didn't take advantage of the hookah pipe to the right of Ben.

Below are a few pictures of the Sultan Mosque and the area to give you an idea of what it looks like in the evening compared to when we went before in broad daylight. It's quite beautiful. We are excited to attend some of the other activities that will be going on for the three festivals.

I really like the other building in this picture (above). I don't know what it is (hotel?), but it reminds me of the Spider-man movie for some reason.

It's lit up like this for the festival.

Fishy and Sticky Business

Our two oldest nieces, Suzanne and Sarah, are here visiting for the month of August. We're enjoying having them here and showing them around Singapore. I'll be catching up on posts over the next couple of weeks.

We have a fish farm that is just a 10-minute free shuttle ride away. We've never been so we decided it was worth a visit. Fish Spas, where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet, are really popular over here and when I discovered they had one at the fish farm for about 1/3 the price of a normal spa I thought I'd take the girls to see what all the fuss is about.

Samara didn't like it very much and only last about 30 seconds. It is insanely ticklish and we were all screaming when we first put our feet in. I wish we had a video of our screams. I think that is what really scared Samara.



There were also bigger fish that I couldn't stand. It felt like they were going to eat my feet off. Sarah liked them better though and braved both feet in the pool with the bigger fish. Suzanne gets the award for letting the small fish go at her feet for the longest. It was a fun experience, but I don't think I'll do it again too soon. It took me long time to build up the calluses on my feet that they gnawed away at.




There are all sorts of fish for sale at the farm. Take this guy, for example, who cost a mere $6,000. Seemed a bit pricy to me, which is perhaps why when the three girls ganged up on me they were able to talk me into spending $8 on these four little fish.



I must admit it wasn't too hard of a sell. They are pretty cute and it's relaxing to watch them swim around. I'm sure they'll promptly die once the girls leave and aren't here to take care of them. We each picked one out. From left to right their names are Kitty (mine), Flit (Sarah's), Lu lu (Samara's), Gordon (Suzanne's).

While I've been busy exploring Singapore culturally with the girls, Uncle Ben has been teaching them how to evade Singapore's criminal side. He took them up to Johor Bahru, Malaysia (Singapore's Tiajuana) to get all the Avatar DVDs (they brought me home Ugly Betty and I CAN'T WAIT TO watch everything I've missed) and some chewing gum. Problem was they got held up in customs, had to sign a chewing gum log and dispose of it in a special chewing gum garbage can. The DVDs they let slide as "you're allowed a certain number of pirated dvds per trip." We honestly thought you could bring chewing gum in for personal use but that you just couldn't import it or resell it. Apparently not. We've since learned a lot of interesting details about gum. Apparently, on the list given to a person when shipping things, chewing gum is in the same category as dangerous weapons. When we told someone else this they said that a local told them the reason. During the inaugural year of the MRT, someone put their gum in the wrong place on some mechanical/electrical equipment and it shut the whole system down for a day until they figured out what the problem was. It was after this incident they banned chewing gum.

Samara loves to talk. In fact there's rarely a moment when she's not talking, narrating what's going on, or asking a question just to ask a question. The other day in a taxi we had the following conversation:

S: Mimo, what's he (taxi driver) eating?
M: I don't know Samara.
S: No, mimo what's that guy eating?
M: Samara, I don't know. That's none of our business.
S: Mimo, the taxi driver is eating gum. Everyone including the driver laughs.
M: She caught you, sir. We'll have to turn you in for chewing that gum. Then I told him about getting our gum confiscated in customs. He then confirmed you aren't supposed to bring gum into the country but told us that you can buy it here if you go to a pharmacy and give them all your information including address and IC number (like a social-security number). It's so bizarre. Seriously, what are they going to do if a gum-related problem arises, track everyone down whose information they have and arrest them as suspects? When I have a bad day and want to blame Singapore or its citizens for it I totally chew gum and once I even spit it out on the street. Take that Mr. customs guy but please don't take my Ugly Betty from me.