Breaking Bread

I am going to interrupt the Mum and Lovey stories (there are several more million photos of tourist attractions to subject you to yet) with some breaking news: Eoin and I are now bakers.

Bread in Singapore is... OK. The packaged bread is awful - sweet and buttery (they are filled with milk, and the bread for toasting has butter already in or something), no texture and keeps a disturbingly long time. Bread from bakeries can be better - no delicious tasty sourdoughs or anything - mostly standard white bread, but at least you can get a bit of crust... for about an hour. After that, the high humidity here really starts to affect the crust and crumb of the bread (listen to me using all my baking terms - I've definitely been watching too much Great Australian/British Bake Off). In other words, the bread goes stale pretty quick, so within half a day it tastes like you have 2 day old bread. 

Our first solution had been going to the bakery daily, but then we hatched a genius plan - OUR OWN BREADMAKER! It's awesome, too, even though our bread maker selection criteria extended only to "which one is cheapest?". We've done about 3 loaves so far, and while it does take a while (3-4 hours), it's been great to have hot fresh bread that tastes like real bread. I present our first masterpiece...

It's READY! The bun is in the oven. There is no subtext in that statement, don't get excited.

It came out of the tin, and you can knock on it and it sounds hollow.

Crumbs! A little doughy, but held up.

It's... delicious. 

We've tried a few flours and a few recipes so far (only one disastrous loaf, which was nearly too salty to eat), and the best one we've tried so far is here. We didn't do the pre-fermentation with the yeast, just chucked everything in the machine, went to bed and woke up to a deliciously light and crusty Sunday morning breakfast.

NOTE: I believe that you should all give me internet-based pats on the back for resisting the massive temptation to make this whole post nothing but bread/baking puns. I rose above the temptation.

Mum and Lovey Go To The Orchid Garden

On a sunny(ish) afternoon, we decided to go to see a little chunk of the Singapore Botanic Gardens - the National Orchid Gardens. The gardens have more than 1000 varieties of orchids (plus a "hybrids" garden, where they make nifty hybrids of orchid species and name them after celebrities or visiting foreign dignitaries), and I warn you... there are going to be a lot of orchid photos ahead. I'll start with people pictures, and try to cull my 300 pictures of flowers somewhat.

The entrance - we don't know quite what we're in for yet.

I got a picture of Lovey smiling! Thats how good these gardens are.

This is one of about 6 photos of mum... the others are all eyes close, mouth open, or she just looks pure mad.

Under the golden arches. Heh.

The garden was really brilliant and very impressive. So much work has gone into making every square metre of the garden interesting. There are so many perfect flowers everywhere, and even pushing the wheelchair up the hills didn't dampen our enthusiasm (although can't say the same for the backs of our T-shirts :)). We spent several hours pointing out every little new orchid to each other, as well as enjoying the Old Man's Beard, ginger plants and bromeliads. We were pretty happy to reach the "cool garden" after a few hours - air con really is a beautiful thing. OK, I'm going to bombard you with a  million flower pictures now... sorry. I can't choose which ones are best! I'll make them little, that should help. You can click to make them bigger if you like them. Oh, and none of these names are right - they are my names, which are pretty good names.

Bacon and egg orchids

Evil black orchids

Japanese warrior helmet orchids

Ginger plant/waratah!

Egg orchid

Pajama orchids

Old Man's Beard corridor

Visiting-the-dentist orchid

I'd highly recommend the Orchid Garden to someone looking to kill a few hours in a gently active way in a calm (on a weekday) environment. It really was spectacular, and the best curated garden I've ever seen. Going right onto the "recommend to visitors" list!

Mum and Lovey Arrive! (River Cruise and Singapore Flyer)

From the 9-19th of May, Mum and my grandma (Lovey, to those of us in the know) came to visit us here in Singapore. We picked them up from the airport on the Friday afternoon to drop them to their fancy hotel near the river, had an equally fancy (and expensive) dinner with them, then let them sleep off the plane trip.

First glimpse of the travellers.

On the Saturday, we decided to have a look at the harbour area, so caught a water taxi down to the harbour and accidentally got a free river cruise (the guy forgot to stop at our stop, so we got to go around the whole loop). We went past Robertson Quay, Boat Quay, Clarke Quay, the Sands, past the Gardens by the Bay, to the Barrage (the dam wall across the front of the harbour that makes the harbour into a reservoir by keeping the sea water out), then back to the Flyer.

Mum pulling her usual photo face in the water taxi

Clarke Quay

Looking back past the Gardens by the Bay to Marina Bay Sands and the Flyer from the Barrage

We jumped off the taxi at the Singapore Flyer (the largest ferris wheel in the world until March 2014), had some lunch in the little faux-hawkers underneath (chicken rice, roti, beef soup, and fried oysters) and then got whisked away through back passages to get the wheelchair onto the ferris wheel. It's a half hour ride around and goes up to 165 m, giving a good view over the Gardens by the Bay, Marina Bay, and over the Singapore skyline.

The thingos were slightly more modern than the Wiener Riesenrad in Vienna's Prater.

It's all held together with duct tape really.

Mum and the East of Singapore.

Gardens by the Bay

The supertree grove in Gardens by the Bay (we went there too, but that'll be a later blog)

The view from the top

Two red people and Singapore

Two non-red people with Marina Bay

After the Flyer (and some gelato, of course - sunny days in Singapore mean hot days!) we wandered down by the Esplande (the durian-looking concert halls at the Bay) to hear a Mother's Day concert rehearsal and then escape into the air conditioning by heading underground to the mall areas. We found a BitCoin Exchnge machine (pretty exciting! Just sitting there like it was a real thing!), and had a good rest.

BITCOIN EXCHANGE MACHINE!!!

Perhentian Islands

May 1st was Labour Day, another public holiday in Singapore, but this time Eoin and I had a little more time to plan, meaning we could get somewhere by plane rather than by bus.

We headed to the Perhentian Islands (said like Per-hen-TEE-an), off the north east coast of Malaysia, beautiful coral beach islands with electricity only on for part of the day, a sea we could swim in and (as Eoin repeatedly pointed out) pit vipers. We flew to Kuala Terenegganu, got to the jetty at Kuala Besut by taxi, then headed off by speed boat to the islands.

The epic trip

Kuala Besut jetty

Speed boat!

Pre-speed boat journey

Post-speed boat hair

There are two islands - Perhentian Besar (Big) and Perhentian Kecil (small). As it was a long weekend in both Singapore and Malaysia, there weren't many rooms left on the islands, so us beggars couldn't be choosers, and we had to go with Perhentian Kecil even though it has a reputation more as a party island. As it turns out, Eoin probably found us one of the best beaches to stay with anywhere on the two islands (Coral Bay on Perhentian Kecil), and even though our room was Malaysia expensive (but still less than our rent for a night), it was very, very worth it. We were right on the beach, where we could watch the sunset! We went for a walk along the beach, snorkelled 10 m from our front door for a few hours, read our books and watched the sun set, then wandered down the beach in the semi-dark to eat some BBQ fish on the sand. Happy Labour Day!

First view of Perhentian Besar

The sunset view from our room. On the beach.

Sunset from Coral Bay

Coral Bay Beach, looking towards Senja Hotel (ours is one of the last cabins on the beach there)

Sunset swimming

Looking back at Coral Bay Beach from the jetty

Pretty lights on water

Next morning we woke up to the same epic view. Ahhhhh. On the schedule for today was a snorkelling tour to 5 spots -. Every single hotel and restaurant on the island has these snorkelling tours, and every single one goes to the same spots. That makes for quite a few boats, with quite a few non-swimming tourists (domestic and international. Mostly domestic on a long weekend) shoved into life vests walking all over the coral and making me sad. The snorkelling in the deeper spots was still pretty good, although I'd have to advise anyone thinking of heading to the Perhentian Islands to get there soon - I think there are a few years left before it's properly depressing. Anyway, saw some really lovely large plate corals at (a different) Coral Bay (4 m diameter and more), some white tip reef sharks (up to about 2 m) at Shark Point, my first giant sea turtle being harrassed by French divers that should have known better at Turtle Beach (this guy actually grabbed it by either side of the shell and tried to hitch a ride. I almost punched him in his stupid bouche), saw some manky cats and tiny chickens in the Fisherman's Village (the only "local" settlement on the Islands), watched Malaysians jump off a lighthouse and stand on coral (with increasingly angry clown fish swimming down below) at the Lighthouse, and saw another tiny shark and a moray eel at Romantic Beach. It was a pretty good trip, despite my anger about people's disrespect of the one-unspoiled marine environment. I guess I was also touristing there, my boat's motor was polluting as much as anyone else, but it's sad to see fins crunching huge plate corals and French douchebags molesting turtles for their own amusement. Anyway, after coming back, we swam a bit more, ate more delicious barbeque (kingfish steaks with garlic butter and soy/chilli sauces, I think), and watch Captain Phillips in the restaurant before bed. 

Waking up to this, you know you're really on a tropical holiday!

Our hotel, with our cabin just being the palm tree on the left there.

Off to the wild blue yonder!

The first time I've ever hit a table in a boat. This is the actual table we ate dinner at that night.

Eoin forgot his sunglasses, so picked up some stunning replacements

The majestic steed (and a boat) at Romantic Beach. Eels and sharks... super romantic :)

Although this is the view from Romantic Beach... maybe more aptly named than I gave credit for.

Can you feel the romance?

You can't hide from a photo when you're knee deep in water.

Ahhhh, blue water!

Snorkelling... done!

Friday (snorkel day) was our only full day, as we had to head back late Saturday afternoon in order to be able to get on our plane Sunday morning (the leaving ferries aren't very regular, and we've realised that if you're relying on Malaysian public transport to be punctual, you're going to have a bad time). So waking up Saturday morning and realising that we weren't tooooo sunburned, we decided to go for a big wander around the island with our last 7 hours or so. First, we walked over to the other side of Perhantian Kecil, to Long Beach, the "party beach", swam, then back to Coral Bay (the green starting pin in the map below) to start a big trek around the south side of the island to the Fishing Village.

Our walking path (it was easier to put in a picture than explain)

Long Beach

Coral Bay, right outside our hotel. Totally picked the right side of the island, nice work Eoin!

Magical snorkelling spot. About 2 km around the island, we found a little camp site with a dude who told us we could use his private jetty. We were so sure our stuff was going to get stolen, but it didn't, and this was the best snorkel of the whole trip. Giant grouper, sea snake, amazing coral (not super colourful, but all alive, lots of variety and all unbroken!), lots of fish life. So glad we risked it.

An abandoned hotel now populated by monkeys. We picked up a lost, very chatty Russian girl who quite liked the look of Eoin who got her water bottle stolen by these guys (high five monkeys. Heh heh heh)

The Russian chick actually has her boobs out somewhere in the back of this one! But otherwise awwww, nice shot on an unpopulated beach (except Russian chick)

Look at that ocean! You don't get this in Singapore!

Shady spot for a 5 minute rest at one of the resort beaches around the south if the island.

Awwwww, lovely view! (Damn, Russian chick caught us to request photos of herself every 20 steps for the next 2 km. Thats her, ruining my palm tree photo)

Fisherman's Village outlook (towards Perhentian Besar)

We finally got to the Fisherman's Viallge, we left our Russian comrade at a restaurant and tried to walk on to Long Beach. After a few false starts down baking hot, shadeless streets, up mountains we ended up at a construction site, and gave it up as a lost cause. We caught a water taxi back to Coral Bay, checking out our path from the water, grabbed our bags and headed on out. The speed boat back was driven by a slightly mental dude, obviously happy to have the 2 X 200 hp motors to let him smack into every single bit of sweel he found on the way back. We loved the spray, but the lady at the front of the boat with the YSL bags looked a little less impressed...

Eoin of Malaysia (like Lawrence of Arabia, get it?)

One of the resort beaches around the south of the island

Goodbye Perhentians!

From Kuala Besut, we waited about 1.5 hours for a public bus to Kota Bahru, met some nice people while waiting, then absolutely wasted our evening in an exciting new town. It took a bit of street wandering to find the hotel, and then the sun, walking and bumpy bus combo did us in and we rested instead of exploring. Definitely getting old. Caught plane home with no issues (even got O'Brien's Irish sandwiches at the airport), and arrived home on May 4th to get in some traditional Star Wars viewing.