Singapore & Malaysia: Llike Miami. Only with Asians.

When we announced our plans to vacation in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, the reaction was unanimous: "Why the hell are you going there?"

A fair question, I suppose. After all, Southeast Asia lacks the exotic air of places like Tahiti and Bora Bora. The hipness of Prague and Croatia. And the life-threatening danger of Bagdad or Fallujah.

No, Southeast Asia's appeal lay in its "off-the-radar" quality as one of the few remaining areas of the world that doesn't actively hate us Americans.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16

We left San Francisco at 11pm Thursday and arrived, haggard and surly, in Singapore—or S'pore as the locals call it—Saturday around 12:30pm. The flight was only about 16-hours, but the airline lost a day somewhere over Antarctica (we complained, but they refused to compensate us for the loss).

At Singapore International Airport, we grabbed a shuttle to the Amara Hotel near Chinatown. With zen gardens, enormous goldfish ponds and tasteful, minimalist furnishings, the place was trendier than we expected. (It was possible, we later realized, that the hotel wasn't trendy, but rather merely Asian.) The Amara Hotel possessed quite possibly the most impressive feature I have yet to see in a modern building: elevators with "close-door" buttons that actually work. Instantly. Better yet, the company that makes it is named, I kid you not, Schindler's Lifts. Priceless.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17

Getting around in most foreign countries is right up there on my fun-to-do list with Taunt the local police. But, in regard to public transportation, Singapore has no rival. Sorting out the Mass Rapid Transit, ("MRT") system was so easy a monkey could do it. Not a good thing, since the local monkey population was fast becoming a nuisance.

The MRT is, bar none, the easiest, and most efficient, public transportation system I have used anywhere in the world. It works like this: You just buy, or rather rent, a credit-type card and charge it up with money, say $10. Then, when you go through the turnstiles, you simply touch the card to the pad and it registers your entry point into the system and opens the gate. On your way out, wherever that may be, you tap the card to the exit turnstile and it calculates your fee, deducts it from your card and tells you how much money you have remaining. Brilliant.

Our first stop on the MRT was the Colonial Area. This section of downtown Singapore that celebrates the good ol' days of British Imperialist oppression. Singapore, it seems, was once a British Colony (I think there may have been a few other colonies, too). The area is notable for still having British buildings standing that weren't burned to the ground the second Singapore "won" its independance back in 1959. I say, "won" because Singapore got its independance sort of by default. It seems the island was supposed to be handed over as part of Malaysia, but the Federation of Malaysia didn't get formed officially until four years later. So thanks to gross inefficiency and government foot-dragging, Singapore now gets to oppress its own people itself, instead of relying on foreigners to do it. I'm sure that was a big relief to many.

We found the humidity and heat in this near-equatorial paradise highly enjoyable, for a while. But soon, to prevent our own spontaneous human combustion, we had to seek relief. The nearest air-conditioning was inside the Raffles Centre, a huge modern shopping complex named after the guy who originally swindled the island on behalf of the British Crown. Across the street is the Raffles Hotel where you'll find the world-famous "Long Bar". Reportedly, bartender Mr. Ngiam Tong Boon invented the Singapore Sling for the Raffles Hotel back in 1915 or so. Being suckers for alcoholic drinks in general, and red, fruity ones in particular, we grabbed a table and ordered up a pair. They were tasty and, thankfully, strong. Still, they weren't strong enough to warrant the US$13 pricetag(!), but drinking was as good as any other way to kill time (and brain cells) while we waited for a sudden afternoon downpour to subside.

To make sure no one has fun in Singapore, they tax the hell out of alcohol. Food is reasonably priced, if not cheap, but add a glass of wine and your bill doubles. Over the course of our stay, we paid anywhere from US$8 to US$20 for a single drink. And we weren't always even drunk at the time.

SINGAPORE SLING
1 1/2 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Cherry Herring brandy
1/4 ounce Cointreau
1/4 ounce Benedictine
4 ounces pineapple juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/3 ounce grenadine
dash bitters

MONDAY, OCTOBER 18

At Spinelli's, we read The Straits Times, having learned that newspapers are a good way to learn about the local culture—for instance, despite a female population that, combined, weighs less than Oprah, Singapore is overrun with ads for "slimming salons" offering to help women lose "those stubborn last 5-grams!" How else can a woman expect to win Singapore Idol? (And yes, there really is one.)

Chinatown's zoning ordinances defy all logic. Apparently, if you want to open a Karaoke bar on Tanjong Pagar Road, you have to open a bridal store next door as well. Literally. The close proximity of alcohol and bridal shops makes Tanjong Pagar an expensive area for single guys to hang out. Not only would you spend a lot to get drunk, but you could easily wake up with more than a hangover the next morning.

A highlight of our Chinatown visit was the Chinese Heritage Centre. This museum, set inside the actual living accomodations of early Chinese immigrants, takes you through a typical day in the life of an immigrant in 1940s Singapore. To be blunt, I know of dogs who have a better standard of living (and they didn't have to drag their own feces out to the curb). It was both eye-opening and extremely tragic. Don't miss it!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19

Up the street a ways from our hotel is Ya Kun, a little cafe that sells something called Kaya Toast. Amy, I guess, had heard of it and dragged me away from a perfectly good Egg McMuffin to try the stuff.
I went along figuring "Kaya Toast" sounded less puke-inducing first thing in the morning than the typical Asian breakfast of congee (rice poorage with your choice of chicken or fish. Ugh.) What arrived was toasted bread, a slab of butter and a runny egg with a green jam-like substance on the side. I waited until Amy had tried it and lived, then I gave it a shot. Made from eggs, sugar and coconut, Kaya somehow managed to taste good anyway.

Sufficiently over-cranked by the sugar rush, we took the MRT to Orchard Road, Singapore's shopping Mecca (so to speak). There, we found high-end shops of every kind inside a 5-storey mega building the size of an aircraft hangar. Across the street, we found another equally enormous building full of high-end shops. And then another. In all, there had to be 57 of these behemoth buildings on that corner alone, and the street went on for miles. One mega-mall even had an aquarium with sharks in it. Boy, nothing makes for a relaxing shopping experience like circling Lamniformes.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20th

Chinatown wasn't the only concentration of ethnicity in Singapore. There's also a Little India and Arab Street. And Amy & I, never shy about gawking at people who are different, took the MRT up to Arab Street where we wandered the crumbling, uneven sidewalks of the Third World section of this otherwise gleaming metropolis. We visited a few attractive mosques but opted not to go inside for fear of angering the local Muslim population by accidentally pointing. Or by forgetting to remove our shoes. Or by not oppressing Amy. Or any of the myriad of offenses the Muslim religion seems to have. By comparison, Singapore's draconian laws seem pretty liberal.

We completed our Fodor's walking tour and schlepped over to Little India, shedding one-third our body weight through water loss. We found the restaurant Fodor's had recommended and ordered a banana-leaf platter with Roti, Dosa and various vegetarian sauces. Then we tried to eat the way the Indians do: with our fingers. Let's just say it wasn't pretty.

The best place for bargains in Little India, we were told, was Mustafa Centre on Serangoon Avenue. Crammed inside a 3-storey building, roughly the size of one city block, was every product ever made in the history of the world. The aisles barely fit two people squeezing by each other, and the noise made the floor of the NY Stock Exchange look like the Public Library. We looked around a bit, but then decided to leave before our ears started bleeding.

Singapore is a city that never sleeps. Or maybe it was just us. Because after dinner, we took the MRT uptown, switched trains and then got on a bus to the Night Safari. What could have been a public transportation nightmare turned out to be anything but. The trip culminated 45-minutes later in an amusement-park tram which shuttled us around in the dark of night past numerous noctural beasts such as tigers, rhinoceroses, and elephants. While a narrow moat between ourselves and the ferocious beasts kept us from becoming prey, some of the less dangerous animals came terribly close to the tram. In fact, a plant-munching Tapir came so close, my outstretched foot nearly kicked it in the head. With reaction times that make manatee's look agile, it's no wonder Tapirs are endangered.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 21

Sentosa Island is a tiny island off the coast of the tiny island of Singapore. You can get there by car, but we decided to take the scenic route, namely the Cable Car. This gondola runs over to the island 110-meters above the water providing a breathtaking view of Singapore's industrial shipping port. Bring your camera!

Once on the other side, you can grab the world's slowest monorail that circles the island, stopping at scenic locations along the way. One such photo-op was at the mammoth Merlion statue—sort of a Lion with the body and tail of a lobster. The statue, a replica of one downtown, was inspired by the knucklehead who discovered Singapore and wrongly reported back about all the "lions" he saw (in fact, they were tigers). The Singapore Tourism Board, seeing an opportunity to use this blunder to boost tchotchke sales, commissioned the now-famous statue/icon in 1972. But instead of passing the Merlion off as some ancient folklore, or a legend handed down from past generations, they proudly proclaim the Merlion the creation of the 1972 Tourism Board as if to ensure getting credit for creating a blatantly commercial national icon. Kudos all around.

From our elevated vantage, we saw the "beach" as the best place to kill the bulk of our remaining time. We grabbed a few empty chairs outside a bar, ordered a jug of Carlsberg and took in the spectacular tropical vista before us. Well, "spectacular" if you discount the 13 oil tankers and freighters stacked up on the horizon waiting to get into port.

Our bliss was interrupted by the appearance of several beautiful peacocks flocking around us. We tossed out bar snacks and watched in awe as the proud birds, resplendent in brilliant azure plumage, fought over every morsel like common pigeons. (To make matters worse, they honked like geese. Tres ignoble, if you ask me.)

With night falling, we headed back to Little India for Deepavali, the Indian Festival of Lights. The streets were lined with twinkle lights making Little India look, for all intents and purposes, like Florida during Christmas (sans the tacky illuminated plastic, waving Santa Claus, of course).

Back at our hotel room, we were relieved to have made it through a week in Singapore without ever getting caned. Or even worse. Hey, this place didn't get to be such a neat, orderly society by just asking nicely. In Singapore—as it is with most if not all of SE Asia—drug trafficking carries the death penalty. (Normally, I wouldn't have been concerned, but I was in possession of a healthy supply of Sudafed at the time.) To give you an idea of how strict the government is around here, you can buy a t-shirt that says, "Singapore is a fine country" (get it?) which then lists the numerous offenses for which you can be fined, and for how much. (However, nowhere listed was the amount for "Wearing lame t-shirts in public.")

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22

We flew out of S'pore's Changi Airport and arrived an hour later in Malaysia and took a cab to the Palace of Golden Horses, a ridiculously elaborate resort outside Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as they call it). With it being off-season, we had the place essentially to ourselves. And yet they still managed to put us as far from the lobby as possible (no doubt reserving the good rooms for foreign dignitaries like Carrot-Top).

Besides our well marbled and gold-fleck dipped Palace Of Golden Horses resort, The Mines Resort City comprised of a central, rather large man-made lake surrounded by a golf course (that Tiger Woods was reportedly paid $1mil to play), a four-storey shopping complex with an indoor river (so you can take a water-taxi right inside the mall itself), a beach resort, a Wonderland (an amusement park) and a business park. Over 50 delegates and other famous types who've stayed there are pictured in photos in the main lobby to impress folks. However, in the light of day, The Palace of the Golden Horses was looking a little less Golden, and showing its age. Certainly the main lobby and grounds were fairly well kept up, but the room we got was a bit more musty and moldy than we would have liked. It was fine, but hardly "five-star" as promised. Next time, we'll stay in the city.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23

We woke up the next morning and decided to take a city tour to get the lay of the land. At 2pm, our tour-bus arrived disguised as a Japanese subcompact. The tiny, four-seat economy car turned out to be a Malaysian Proton. Founded in the 1980s by then prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, Proton was meant to symbolize the country's rapid industrialization and aspirations of first-world status. (It was a nice try anyway.)

I was shocked to learn that there are several car companies here that I never even knew existed: Perodua (Malaysian), SsangYong (Korean) and Mitsouka (???). They make cars here in three basic sizes: small, smaller and nano. Presumably for fuel efficiency, but it's unnecessary since gas in Malaysia only costs about US$1.40 a gallon. But an even cheaper mode of transportation is the popular buzzing moped/motorcycle. About 40% of all Malaysian highway traffic is nutcases on mopeds wearing their coats backwards (so the zipper's in back). The reason for which was never sufficiently explained.

We crammed into the "backseat" of the Proton and headed uptown. Our affable Indian guide, Raj, (who speaks English pretty well, call him at 012-6624655), drove us all over greater KL pointing out all the major sites, such as the World's Tallest Flagpole (which we found out actually isn't). Raj next showed us the inspiration for the name "Kuala Lumpur" which means "the meeting of two muddy rivers," and the spot lived up to its billing. According to Raj, a ship of Chinese workers got stuck at the junction and just decided to stay there and mine tin.

We got to see the palace where the ruler du jour lived, too. Much nicer than our Golden Palace, the KL palace houses a new royal family every five years. Since Malaysia has 9 provinces and 9 ruling families, they each take turns living in the palace. Once the five years is up, the next family moves in. In forty-five years, they get to move back in again. If they survive that long. If not, then Junior gets the pad.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23

We took the Mines water-taxi (RM$3) across the lake to the Mines Shopping mall. Unlike the ones in downtown KL, the Mines mall was a low-rent zoo. Kiosks were shoehorned into every inch of floorspace giving it a bazaar-type feel. We didn't recognize any of the stores with the exception of McDonald's and KFC, both of which are extremely popular with lazy, overweight Malaysians. All seven of them.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24

Every morning at 10am, a shuttle leaves the Palace for the KLCC, or Kuala Lumpur City Center. And every morning, we missed it. Once again we took a cab to the Central Market instead. The Cental Market is a big warehouse with two floors and tons of shops selling locally made crafts and jewelry. But a few streets away is Petaling Street, a closed-off, covered road lined with kiosk-like tents in the street selling "genuine copies" (not those fake ones) of designer bags, clothes, sneakers, perfume and watches for dirt cheap prices. Combine their low prices with a 3.85-to-1 exchange rate and shopping doesn't get more fun.

Once we reached our ATM card's withdrawl limit for the day, we toured some of the nearby Chinese and Hindu temples before ending up at the Petronas Twin Towers, the world's tallest twin towers. We watched the outdoor fountain watershow and hung out in the beautifully manicured 48-acre park in the shadow of the Towers. Illuminated at night by powerful spotlights, the steel-wrapped structure is nothing short of spectacular. We almost forgot how petroleum companies like Petronas were raping the planet and mortgaging mankind's future.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25

Malaysia, it turns out, is only one of two places on Earth (the other being Brazil), where you can see colonies of fireflies in the wild. This we had to see. So Raj drove us to the coast, past endless fields of palm trees (the source of palm oil, a major Malaysian export). Near where the Klang river empties into the China Sea, we were taken to a dimly lit river dock. From out of the pitch blackness, a boatman, rowing much like a gondolier in Venice, pulled alongside and motioned for us to get in.

Stepping onto this long, wide and low rowboat was like stepping back into primeval times. Against the strong current of the murky water, our boatman slowly inched our boat up the river in eerie silence. The appearance of a Pterodactyl or Ichthyosaur wouldn't have surprised us in the least, such was the vibe of this Land of the Lost. Just about the time we started wondering if the quiet boatman planned to roll us and leave our bodies for the crocodiles, we saw the fireflies. Hundreds of them, in fact. They eat the leaf of the Beremban tree, a bush-like tree that lined the river's edge. From a distance, the bushes appeared to be wired with dim, white twinkle lights. It almost looked fake, that is, until the boatman rowed our boat right up into the bush and we were able to touch the fireflies. It was amazing.

These fireflies—called "kelip-kelip" in the Malay language—are really 6mm long beetles, which belong to the Lampyridae species. They produce a cool yellowish-greenish glow in the lower abdomen. Both male and female fireflies are able to flash, but only the males flash in unison; the synchronized display serves to attract a mate. Now you know.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26

Malaysia isn't all sunshine and palm trees. Three hours outside of KL lies a good-sized mountain. And up in that mountain is a plateau of sorts. Back when Malaysia was a British colony, that plateau was found, and settled, by Scots of all people. Why red-headed, fair-skinned Scotsmen would move to balmy, tropical Malaysia is anyone's guess. But once we got up into the mountain, we learned why. At 1500 meters above sea level, Frasier's Hill is a cool 60-degrees fahrenheit (with fog, no less). Lush and green, the area has a charming Scottish hamlet feel complete with Inns, Pubs and, no lie, a 9-hole golf course. The Scots are mostly all gone now, but the village is still popular with pasty-faced tourists who can't take tropical heat and humidity. Like us.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27

Having done everything we'd planned, we burned off the whole day doing pretty much nothing and, that night, went to the resort's Polo Lounge for Ladies' Night. We sucked down beers while a cheesy keyboard/midi player with a mullet—but not just a mullet, a permed mullet—banged out music while a woman in a business suit (?) murdered popular songs. We stood it for as long as we could and then left to go have Peking Duck at the highly regarded Chinese restaurant also in the resort.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28

We had an early flight that morning and, thanks to the huge time change involved in traveling halfway around the globe, I'd set my watch alarm incorrectly so it never went off. Fortunately, we'd made arrangements with a cabbie to call our room if we weren't down in the lobby at the predetermined time. Unfortunately, he never bothered to show up. Luckily, the hotel got us a different cabbie who exceeded the legal speed limit for the entire hour-long drive (!) to the KL airport. (Not every foreign country has citizens nice enough to flout their own laws for the sake of over-sleeping tourists.)

A scant 16 hours later, we were back home, tired but happy, having gained a lot from the experience. Specifically, a lot of stuff we had to declare to US customs. (We did mention the excellent exchange rates, right?)