Far East Trip, The Final Chapter

I decided to wait until the horror of the plane ride home had a chance to fade a bit before summarizing the last part of our trip, but it turns out that jetlagged preschoolers are also not the greatest side benefit you can get from an international jaunt. Oh well. Things will be normal soon. Things will be normal soon. Things will be normal soon...

Naomi was fine, if a bit sleepy, after her Benadryled Christmas nap. We had our Christmas dinner at one of the local restaurants. Allow me to ramble for a few minutes about two random Malaysia-visit fun facts. One is that the Malaysian language seems to be written out more or less phonetically. So you can read signs out loud and feel like you're kind of speaking Malay, which of course is not true of Chinese signs. Also, though, it seems as though whenever a concept is in need of a word and there isn't an obvious Malay one, they just throw in an English word and Malay it up a little. (I am sure this has something to do with the fact that Malaysia was an English colony for a long while, right?) So, after your stop at the klinik, you may need to head to the farmasi for some medication. Hope you have insurans!

My favorite one of these, restoran, is the segue to my next fun fact: everyone eats out there all the time. It's hot all the time (so who wants to cook?), and restaurants (or restorans) are cheap and ridiculously tasty. All over the place, in every building, the bottom floor has shops and restorans- these restaurants are open air, brightly lit up with flourescents, with cheap plastic chairs and big round tables covered with chintzy cloth. The restaurants have wacky names- I wish I had just written up a list. The ones I remember, though, are Restoran Okay (didn't eat there), Restoran Shanky (did eat there- yum), and one near Jim's parents' house called Restoran Extra Super Tanker. So for Christmas dinner, we ate at the one around the corner, can't remember the name, though I do remember Jim's dad jokingly calling it "Regular Tanker."

So, day after Christmas, back to Singapore. Jim's sister's family has this Honda station wagon with a third row seat which miraculously accommodates ALL of us, even his parents, who came along on this jaunt. The day after we got there, we headed to Sentosa, which is like that Pleasure Island place in the Pinocchio movie, except we didn't see any kids turning into donkeys... it's covered with fun and they continue to develop the heck out of it. We went to a beach resort called Siloso for one night. It took me about half an hour on the beach to get a sunburn, but the kids had a great time. The pool at the hotel was extra super tanker dreamy- huge waterfall thing, water slides, and a long beautiful pool to stroll around in. The girls responded exactly as I remember doing, as a kid, to the combination of vacation and pool: they wanted to be in it every second.

The resort was on a beachy area with other tourist attractions. We decided to do the "luge" ride, which meant putting on a semi-smelly borrowed helmet, riding up a ski lift thing, and zipping down a hill in a go-cart. The luge part was over so fast, it was a little stunning. Hence the slogan of the ride- "Once is never enough!" Ha. We ate our meals at the hotel restaurant, which was not that great, but maybe it's because I'm spoiled by all the Malaysian joints. It was good enough, and convenient, and had Naomi's new favorite restaurant meal (besides rice with soy sauce, which she ate about ten pounds of on this trip): Fish and Chips!

It was hard to leave the pool, but we headed back to the apartment on Monday. Tuesday was the Singapore Zoo, which is so lush and gorgeous, you almost forget how hot it is. It was a better view of many animals than I have had before, but in a few instances I think that was because it wasn't so great for the animals. A cheetah let me know exactly what it thought of me. And Naomi and Rachel got to feed a giraffe!

One more night out, to eat Shanghai style dumplings (I think), which are like the Freshen-Up Gum of the Chinese dumpling world (but you know, not minty). On Wednesday, we had to be at the airport at 5:30 a.m., and our gracious host and tireless driver, Jim's brother-in-law, got us there in plenty of time. They fixed our seats so we were all together, the first flight was not too bad, the flight from Tokyo to Vancouver was pretty terrible for the first four hours, but OK for the last four. In Vancouver, the nearly endless security screening was a bit loopy, especially when I had to coax Muriel into letting the nice CATSA lady give her a full body pat down. Oh well.

Short plane ride from Vancouver, short town car ride from the airport, freezing cold home sweet home. I am glad to be back, even though our house seems so dark and cold compared with the warm, bright homes we left behind. Soon, Muriel will stop behaving like a deranged maniac, Naomi will go back to sleeping all night, and we will re-acclimate to this cold damp place. Next post will be pictures!