flyingmusicianlax

This is an amazing report! You and your friend are hilarious. "Oh, hey buddy, you're throwing up on an airplane? Let me just take a quick picture of you and then point and laugh."

Hahaha! Awesome. One of my friends uses the term "twat waffle." You may use it if you like.

Askartus

How did you manage to get some beers in almost every pic of the villa in Bali ?
Impressive!
And a bit alarming that these pics look very familiar compared to holidays, if I am with my mates ...

OttoMH

Great report mate! Just got back from Bali (2 weeks ago) and interesting to hear your perspective.. I agree on the beaches and the tourist traps - pretty irritating. 'Hay, you want taxi?'

Be aware of the departure tax too, 250k IDR. Make sure you pay it only at the official desk (just before outbound immigration) as there are plenty of scammers pretending to be official departure tax sellers waiting to relieve tourists of their money. You get a sticker on your boarding pass which is scanned about 3 meters further along.

Only drove through Kuta, looks a bit.. meh.. Agree that Jimbaran is nicer (though not exactly immaculate.) Seminyak was nice and plenty of bars/beachclubs to chill in and er... nicer scenery to look at if you know what I mean.

Hire a driver for about 500k a day to drive you somewhere nicer, up in the mountains or beaches further north. By comparison, I have fallen completely in love with Singapore - the best city I have ever been to!

Hope you have a good one - enjoy the heat, it's a positively tropical 9C today so the snow has gone and now we're flooded.

yoonny

LOL. This is a refreshing report and you still remember all those details even with all that drinking. ^

z3rb

I'm so glad people are enjoying this. I think I've decided to write a book, "Drinkin' Round the World". You guys would buy that, right?

I think I'm "that guy" in my circle of friends who no one can really understand why they're still my friend. I guess it's just because I'm so great.
The alcoholic in me takes that as a compliment. The person who is still yet to show his mother his holiday photos in me takes that as a worrying sign.

I've never been hailed by taxis so much in my life!

I should probably point out that I'm back in Scotland and have been while writing this report. I know there's mixed feelings about after/during writing of reports, but I didn't want to spend time writing when I could've been drinking in the sun!

Bali Day 2:

I'm an early riser, even if I've been drinking heavily the night before. I've spent a lot of time in hotels these past few months, but I never quite feel "at home" in a bed that isn't mine. So I woke up around 6:30am.

Obviously it wouldn't be fair to my friend if I were to wake him now, so I went for a refreshing early morning dip in the private pool. The pool cleaner came at 7, so I hid in my room watching a National Geographic documentary about Australian gold mining until he left, hoping he wouldn't judge me too much for the ridiculous amount of empty beer bottles scattered all over the place.



7:30, time to wake my friend up.

Not a hugely easy task, his villa was locked so I spent a while knocking on the window. I could tell he wasn't in the best of conditions:



It was then time for breakfast. A welcome idea in my mind. Perhaps not in his:



This was the best hotel breakfast I've had. There was a choice of American, Australian, or Indonesian breakfast. As far as I could tell, American and Australian were the same (bacon, eggs, coffee, et cetera) and Indonesian was fried noodles or something. Silly Asia, fried noodles are for 3am when you're drunk!

I had the Australian. It was lovely. It came with a starter of fruit, choice of fruit juice (I had guava), a fresh brewed coffee (I'm kind of a caffeine fiend), and Danish pastries. I don't have any pictures of the food itself I'm afraid.

Refreshed, we headed back to our villa(s) to decide what we were going to do that day. Way back when we'd decided to go to Bali, I'd done some research and found that there was a bungee jump at Kuta. Apparently this closed down though much to our disappointment. There was also quad biking (ATVing as you may call it), however this seemed to require booking ahead, something neither of us had thought of.

This left one option, obviously. You may be able to tell where I'm going with this.

Jimaran beach is "within walking distance" - a lie. We walked there but it was a struggle in the heat, so we needed something to quench our thirst. I wish I could remember the name of the place we went to, but we spent a good couple of hours drinking beer that morning on the most beautiful beach I've ever been to - well, it certainly beats Carnoustie beach anyway!





I also conquered the sea that day:



We were then sufficiently inebriated and went on to find Jimbaran proper. Along the way we passed many shops. My friend isn't a smoker but we decided to buy cigars and smoke them in our pool.

Finding cigars on Bali is not easy.

Passing every shop, I'd look at their tobacco section (letting out a tear as I remember how expensive my precious Marlboro Reds are back home), see nothing that resembled a cigar, then ask if they had cigars.

"Do you have cigars?"
"..Cig...ar? Cig...arette?"
"No, cigar. Like a thick cigarette"

At this point they'd either give up on trying to understand me, or show me their cigarettes. Eventually we found a woman who said we'd find them at the supermarket. The supermarket, we were told, was 400m away.

Now. I'm from the UK. We use the metric system. I know roughly what 400m is. I may not be the fittest man, but I reckon I could walk 400m without complaining too much.

400m on Bali is apparently a 20 mile hike. Or it felt that way anyway.

My sunburn was not getting any better.

We found the supermarket. They did not have cigars.

Food, then. By now it must've been at least 3pm. Friend saw a sign for a tapas place. Obviously when in Asia, the thing to do is tapas. Hell, at least it wasn't McDonalds, right?

We'd actually already passed this place before asking for cigars. It was quite far away. The place was called New Matahari Cafe. Obviously we started with some beer.



From our table, though I don't have a picture, there was a great view of the shore. Ordering food was a case of selecting what seafood kind you wanted, from various kinds of prawns and shrimp to live lobsters and crabs. We went for pan-fried river prawns.

Best. Prawns. Ever. The garlic butter, the fried rice. The soy sauce thing. Everything about that meal was perfect.

There was even a group of musicians who came in and serenaded us with an amazingly well done cover of "Red Red Wine" before heading off to another place to find tourists. I'd like to say I tipped them generously, but I ignored them as best as I could. Because why on EARTH would I support talented poor locals? I have beer to drink! Gosh!

We decided we'd had enough strenuous activity for one day, and got a taxi back to the villa with a quick stop at the local "Ma Ma Mini Mart" that sold beer near us. We bought lots of beer.

The rest of that evening was much as it was the evening before. Drinkin' beer. Singing songs (Now we had "Red Red Beeeeeer!" to add to our ever-increasing arsenal of beer songs).

Flight the next morning at 10am or thereabouts. Post about that coming up next (just a short one - I'm worried about hitting the post word limit on this post).

z3rb

Leaving Bali:

The next morning happened like the one previous. I woke up shockingly early, went for a swim, and waited until a reasonably time to wake my friend up.

Breakfast was fantastic, again.

We checked out, paying for our incidentals. That's a point, actually. I've not spoken of the Pat-Mase restaurant yet. We ate there both nights. The first night I had a rather unimpressive noodle and prawn dish. The noodles were hard, and the prawns still had their head and weren't peeled. You could probably ask them to peel them for you. My friend had a burger - I know, right? The next night... well I had a burger, and it was really quite good. He had some kind of squid thing which I had a taste of and was quite nice. Overall, I'd recommend if you stay in Pat-Mase (Which you totally should!) at least try their restaurant one evening. The bloke who serves you is so lovely, and the prices are really good (by Western Standards™). I recall it being around 100,000RP for a main course and a 660ml beer (8/10).

Anyway. We checked out.


Goodbye, Pat-Mase, I hope to revisit you some day.


Cover from the sun at DPS

Taxi to the airport was 50,000RP (about £2? An 8/10). DPS is a bit confusing. You pass through security before you can even check in, so make sure you've got something proving that you're meant to be on a flight. I had a printout of my receipt from VF which was enough. During check in there's another security check, which seems random, where they look through your carry on. Then after check in, you need to pay an exit fee of 150,000RP (as a poster above said, be careful, there can be scammers!) before getting airside.

Once we were airside, I had to find a smoking lounge. We walked past it at least once before we saw it. My advice to smokers is: don't bother. Find a bar, they let you smoke in there, too. Beer was fairly expensive, 50,000RP for a 330ml Bintang, although that might've been their "ripping-off-a-tourist" price, since it wasn't on any signs.



Time to go to our gate (I'm usually a "drink until final call" kind of guy, but my friend likes being at the gate an hour before boarding). More security at the gate. Toilets in the gate were absolutely filthy. In fact, DPS is kind of a dirty airport in general - I'm interested in seeing how their under-construction new terminal will be.

Boarding was pain free.

I recognised one of the crew members from our earlier VF flight, although she didn't seem to recognise us. Either that or she was good at hiding it. I had booked myself seat 9A, although my friend was a dick and took it, so I was stuck with 9B. I told him if he slept at all, I'd wake him up. I hated him at this point.



Good flight generally. We were given a nice sweet thing.



Before too long we were back in SIN, ready to drink again.

My liver hurts just thinking about this.

CreativeBill

This is getting even better with each instalment. Sign me up for a copy of your book. Actually, make it a couple - I know a few people with a sense of humour failure, we could call it a self-help manual ^^

z3rb

Back in Singapore.

When I had been in Singapore a few days earlier after my mighty journey from Scotland, I was too tired and hungover to appreciate it. Honestly Singapore was the part of the trip I was least looking forward to. That's not to say I wasn't looking forward to it at all, far from it, but Bali and Kuala Lumpur would be better, in my mind.

I was hungover and tired this time, too. We took the hour and a half journey from SIN to the NTU campus, planning on watching TV for a bit there then heading to Lavender (another hour on the MRT) where my hotel was, then heading into town. For a drink. Because we hadn't had enough of that.


Back in my friend's awful, smelly, hot room, the name of this drink cheered me up. Hah, poo.

We watched a couple of episodes of Storage Wars. My friend hadn't seen it before so he was in for a treat. On a trip last year to the US I spent a whole day watching Storage Wars. This has nothing to do with this trip report, so I'll move on.

Lavender MRT station, we had to find my hotel which was called "V Hotel". My friend isn't hugely observant and missed many signs wondering how I knew where I was going.

I spent an awfully long time looking for a hotel in Singapore. I had thought of doing a night in the famous Marina Bay Sands followed by 2 nights in a budget hotel. I thought about 3 nights in the Best Western which would qualify me for the next tier in their loyalty scheme. I thought about the Hilton. Any way you look at it, hotels in Singapore, it turns out, are expensive and cramped. I eventually settled on V Hotel around a week before my departure. It was S$150 a night excluding breakfast (A 3/10 VFMBWS™), but had decent enough reviews and a pool.

Check in took ages while my friend waited. I went up to my room to dump my bags and check out the room.


It's certainly... cosy.


But the pool looks nice.

Then we headed back to the MRT to City Hall station. The advantage of travelling to a far away land with someone who lives there is that they know their way around so you never get lost. Imagine my surprise, then, when he lead us in 3 separate directions when looking for Clarke Quay where I was told there would be bars and restaurants.



We walked past a few places before settling on an Indian place. I don't recall the name of it I'm afraid. We had a curry each, a garlic naan, and a "jug" of Tiger beer, it came to around S$70 as I recall (5/10). Good food, wonderful delicious lovely beer. Om nom nom.

Then we headed to do what all the cool kids in town do. Well, the exchange students, at least. See, the problem with being a Scottish exchange student in Singapore is that the Scot in you likes to drink, the fact that you live in Singapore where a bottle of Vodka costs S$90 means drinking is expensive. That's no even club prices, either. So one must avoid bars. One must definitely avoid clubs. One must drink, in the most Scottish way possible, on a bridge.

Drinking in public unlike Scotland is perfectly legal in Singapore. This appeals to me. People gather on a bridge at Clarke Quay to drink. There's even handy public toilets and a 7-eleven from which to buy booze.




A six-pack of 330ml

And honestly that's what we did that evening. I headed back to V Hotel, my friend headed back to his pit of despair.


Boo!

aSiAnRiCk

Glad you were kind enough to give him an extra hour of sleep LOL

z3rb

The following day

The day after, we were going to do something touristy. My friend had some classes to attend and as such I had some time to kill.

I started by getting breakfast. There was no breakfast included in my room rate, so I went on an expedition. There was a vendor across the street from the hotel selling fresh fruit, so I got some watermelon for around 50 cents. Delicious watermelon, but I was still hungry. I found a Wendy's (yeah, I know right?) and ate there. There are no Wendy's in Scotland, so this is totally eating cultural food right?

Went for a swim in the hotel. The water was very cold, but it was otherwise lovely. That was, of course, until the Traumatising Experience!

I'm 20. I may look like a 35 year old who's nursing a hangover, but I am just a wee lad. I was alone in the pool enjoying myself, when a woman who couldn't have been younger than 65 got in. She swam towards me. I swam away from her. I guess, in her crazy world, if someone tries to get away from you, then they definitely want you. I did not. I am not a fit man, so she caught up with me. She started splashing me. I'm too hungover for this. I left and hid in my room for a bit, crying to myself in the shower.

I then decided to head out to Orchard, the famous shopping street of Singapore. It was about 15 minutes away by the MRT I think. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I saw were pretty much all the same shops that I could get in Glasgow - H&M, Claire's Accessories et cetera so I didn't spend that much time there. I did go into Marks and Spencer (I love M&S) and notices they sold knitwear. It's never below 20 degrees here, why would anyone want knitwear?

Silly Asia.

It was then roughly time to meet my friend. I don't recall the MRT station where me met, but our plan was to go to the Singapore Flyer, the massive London Eye-esque ferris wheel. Along the way we saw some things we found amusing.





And then after a bit of navigating the streets of Singapore we were there.



Admission was S$30 for me, and $15 for him as he's a student and I'm not.

Evidently they didn't think that just having the flyer itself was enough, they needed a completely unrelated and silly exhibition attached to it.





Anyway, once on board the views were fantastic. In all it took around 30 minutes on the wheel to go around. Our cabin had around 15 people in it all moving around taking pictures.





I'd recommend going to it, even at S$30. Great views of the city. We went at dusk which I think would be the best time to see the skyline.

Then it was time to find a drink. We started walking towards the MRT station as we were planning to head to the Arab street for beers and a shisha, however a bar's "buy one get one free" offer on craft beer distracted us for an hour.

Once at the Arab Street we found a shisha bar and ordered 8 330ml bottled beers (on offer for I think S$40 - Singapore's an expensive place to drink compared to Glasgow). I ordered the mango shisha, which I think cost around S$20. I wouldn't consider that great value for money.



I'd probably avoid this particular bar again. The staff weren't terribly efficient and the toilet was a bit of an ordeal. It was called Marbins or something to that effect.

After the shisha coals died out we headed to our respective places to stay, with the plan of going to the Gardens by the Bay the next day.

z3rb

Sorry it's been a while - I've been a bit distracted.

Another balls-sweating day in Singapore

We'd agreed to meet, after my friend's classes for the day, at 11am I think. Gardens by the Bay, which he'd not been to. I wasn't at all fussed about going to it, but it was free and it had some cool architecture.

Marina Bay MRT station was our meeting point.



Unfortunately my friend is an IDIOT and this wasn't the right stop.

Back onto the MRT, which on the new line by Marina Bay Sands has cool driverless trains which you can stand at the front and pretend to be the driver. Totally awesome.

Next stop which is under the Marina Bay Sands, when we got out there was a great view of the building:



I love that building. I watched a documentary about it somewhere whilst I was on this holiday, but I can't remember where.

The Gardens by the Bay can be seen by these crazy metal mushroom trees. For anyone who's played World of Warcraft, think Zangarmarsh with some natural light.




My face is swollen from the sunburn, it's not normally that fat. Okay yes it is.


There was a fountain and I pretended I was peeing using very clever photo angles. Aren't I cool?

Walking around for a bit, there was a cool bit where it had the six major cash crops which made Singapore worthwhile back in the day, but I don't remember them. Look it up, whatever. One of them was cloves, I disregarded the law and picked one and smelled it and it was lovely.

Then it started raining. Luckily we were near the visitor centre.



The photos don't do it justice. This rain was mental, and lasted for around 30 minutes.

After we were bored of nature and metal trees, we headed back towards the Marina Bay Sands to look at the mall and get some food hopefully.


Seriously guys, why is there a wonky boat at the top?


Inside the MBS.

The mall was mostly full of high-end designer shops, Prada, Luis Vuton, Rolex etc.


It even had a canal for gondolas.


And a leaky roof!

My friend does this thing where he gets really grumpy if he's not had any food, but he doesn't think it's him being grumpy, it's you. He had not had any food, and his constant moaning was grinding my gears. MRB has a hawker centre-esque food court. I had a ramen with fried pork dish for around S$3 (9/10) and a Tiger beer for S$5 (4/10).

We were then bored of this and wanted a drink, so we headed on the MRT towards Chinatown.

As soon as you get off the train it hits you. That smell. I hate to say it and come off as culturally insensitive, but Chinatown in Singapore smells. Really smells bad. I couldn't stand it, but said nothing. We found a hawker centre and had a couple of beers.


Ha, People's Park? More like PEE PARK! AHAHAHAHA!

Then we headed to Clarke Quay and drank beer from 7/11 on the bridge.

z3rb

Also I should point out that the MBS mall has a casino, which I'd totally be into if I weren't one month short of the minimum age of 21 to gamble in Singapore.

abczyx

Your friend is apparently not aware that there is an MRT station called Clarke Quay then. Although I'll give him Marina Bay since that is a misleading station name (you wanted Bayfront).

I was about to say that casino isn't worth entering, being solely consistent of rich Chinese tourists hooked up to slot machines, but then I remembered that it's the only place in the city where you can smoke indoors!

CreativeBill

Oi, z3rb! Put that beer down and tell us some more about your trip .

z3rb

Sorry! Life's been a bit hectic, being denied a US L1-B visa even though you were planning to relocate your life to the states is kind of a kick in the bollocks. Anyway, today's my 21st birthday, I'm in a hotel in Dublin for work, so I'm depressed. Time to put on some Fleetwood Mac relive some memories!

Getting to Kuala Lumpur

I'd agreed to research buses to Kuala Lumpur (KL hereafter, not to be confused with KLM), and normally I'm excellent at such things, but I didn't do any research until the night before we were due to leave. My friend had been before, he stayed in some hostel which I think was called Reggae Reggae Sauce McCheap Hostel - not good enough for a jet-setting businessman such as myself. I'd booked us into somewhere a slight step above a hostel.

The only problem was getting to KL. Before I'd left, I looked at flights, and Tiger seemed to be the only option within a reasonable budget, and while it would have made my OpenFlights profile look a bit better, the bus was super cheap and my friend had done it before.

According to the mighty internet, there was a bus at noon from the Boon Lay shopping mall - conveniently the nearest MRT station to my friend. We'd agreed to meet there at 11am.

I checked out of my hotel, never to see it again probably.



I think I accidentally started an ashtray fire.



We met. It was 11am. Excellent.

The problem was, of course, that the bus was at 4pm. We had 5 hours to kill in this shopping mall. I think we went into every shop. I didn't buy anything.

The tickets for the bus were S$40 each (7/10 VFMBWS™) one way which was cheaper than the flights would've been, and they took us to the city centre of KL. The tickets could be bought at the Five Star Travel kiosk in the mall, but the bus was a couple of stops on the MRT bus away.

It was finally time to check in for our bus journey, so we made our way there. They gave us some water bottles which had their logo on it - I thought it was a nice touch, and called it "bespoke water" which my friend thought was ridiculous.


Oaft, dat EI Gold Circle luggage tag!



Being from the UK, and being used to Megabus coaches (think Ryanair in bus form) I wasn't expecting a hugely comfortable bus journey, but once I got on the bus I was impressed.


The leg room!


The electric recline!


Heh, pecker. I was really excited by IFE (or should that be IBE?) on this journey. It even had some crappy Linux games (Supertux, anyone?) that I remember playing probably 8 years ago, along with a crappy controller.



The bus had maybe 8 people on it, I've no idea how they make any money. Soon thereafter we were off. The land border between Singapore and Malaysia is fairly simple, fill out the entry card, get a stamp in your passport, etc, then pack on the bus for a 4 hour trip through some of the most beatiful countryside I've seen. My friend and I watched Jonny English 2 on the IBE. It was good.


Bridge from Singapore to Malaysia.



Then we were in KL. We had to get a taxi to the hotel which was fairly simple to find.

We checked into the DoubleTree By Hilton™ at around 8:30pm. For 2 nights it had cost me £170 for a double room which considering the crappy hotel I'm in in Dublin is costing €100 a night on corporate rates is a 7/10 VFMBWS™. We were given a cookie - as is tradition at DoubleTrees - at checking.

The room was pretty nice, on the 23rd floor I think so far enough away from the noise of the motorway and trains below.



That night we went for a walk and found some food at a restaurant which to our surprise didn't serve beer but it was too late to change our minds. I had a steak which was deep fried and pretty awful. The name had 2 letters in it, though I don't remember which. It was close to the Petronas Twin Towers (a short walk from the hotel). Avoid this place, it was crap.



We then walked back to the hotel and saw a random Royal Bank of Scotland at the bottom of the Twin Towers, which I thought was pretty cool so far from home...





Then we went to Seven Eleven, grabbed some beer, and drank in our hotel room. The next day we were going to Asia's Best Attraction™.

Stay tuned!