Adventures in Guangzhou!

Our guide in this endeavor was a pleasantly plump young Thai woman who was possibly the funniest non-native English speaker I've ever met. She was throwing sarcasm around left and right (e.g. "To see if the oil's hot, put in a drop of water. Or just stick your finger in it--if your finger burns it's ready."). She had one liners (e.g. "The onion and scallion go together like Romeo & Juliet."). She even poked fun at us in an appropriate old-friend sort of way. It was great! And, eating both my creations and half of Kelly's I stuffed myself from 9am to 4pm.

After a quick nap we went back to the Night Bazaar and made a handful of purchases. Or, at least, the girls did. I pretty much observed. One thing that I thought was interesting, though, was the amount of Hebrew around. I saw a bunch by one of the hostels near us but I wrote it off as an isolated occurrence. Nope. Right in the middle of the night market was a huge restaurant owned by a couple of former Jerusalem residents who were making a killing selling falafel, shwarma, and Israeli salads. Walking around, I even heard quite a bit of Hebrew being spoken. For such a small country, they sure do get around!

For dinner we met up with Keely, my friend and two year PiA Chiang Mai veteran. She led us (on her awesome motorbike) to a great little place on the river where we chowed down and yet more amazing Thai food. It was great to reconnect with Keely and hear about her travels and experiences. I was also supremely impressed with her Thai. It put a little perspective on how far I've come in Chinese and how far I still have to go.

After dinner we retired to the rooftop bar to celebrate Tricia's 21st birthday in as much style as Chiang Mai had to offer. The rooftop bar was just that--a bar on a roof. It was pretty cool! I tried unsuccessfully to have Tricia come of age to the tune of a hip dance club but she decided that imbibing a few buckets of mai tai on the roof would suffice. Probably a good call.

We woke up early yet again and headed to the airport. It was time for another couple of passport stamps--leaving Thailand and re-entering Singapore. We arrived in the late morning and took the immaculate subway to our hostel. The hostel, though highly recommended in our guidebook, was one of a kind. It was easily the most unfriendly place I have ever stayed and I'm still unsure why it had to be that way.

There was an extensive list of rules posted up by the check-in desk (that was also posted on several other walls) that included the following: no wakeup calls, no using the [highly towel-like] sheet as a towel, no public displays of affection beyond holding hands, no showing of bare torsos, no checking out after 10am, no leaving your sheets in the room, no leaving on the lights or air conditioner, etc. These don't seem too over the top until you got to the bottom of the sheet and it informed us that any infraction of the rules was punishable by immediate and conclusive dismissal. In other words, get out and don't come back. Wow.

Anyhow, we took the MRT to Chinatown and waded through the new year's crowds to get to a magnificent Hindu temple. Having never been to a Hindu temple before, I was totally overstimulated with the the sights, sounds, and smells. It was amazing! The architecture is pretty incredible to begin with, but add in the people, the statues, and the offerings, and it's very cool. The Hindu temple also seemed to serve as a community center, of sorts, where people could meet and hang out. Again, it appeared to be much more active than most Chinese temples.

After wandering around for a while around several other Singapore neighborhoods, we took a bus to the Night Safari Zoo. I had my reservations about shelling out a lot of money to see a bunch of animals sleeping, but I was way off on that one. We got inside and the place could not have been more alive! We decided to go all out and pay for the tram ride around the park and were rewarded with one of the best experiences of the whole trip.

We saw anteaters, lions, tigers, deer, hairy pigs, rhinos, vultures, hippos, and hyenas. What made it so incredible was that most of them were only an arm's length away! I could swear that they were fake at the beginning of the ride, but I was wrong. It turns out that they were very much alive and very much active. I was speechless watching my namesake, the lions, walking around and yawning. I could learn a thing or two from them--apparently the males sleep for about 20 hours a day and then spend the rest of the time taking care of the kids and eating the food that the lionesses have hunted. Not bad.

After the ride we walked around through some of the trails and got right up close to even more cool animals including bats, flying squirrels, and pumas. We then had a late dinner and celebrated Tricia's birthday one more time by buying her ice cream. What newly-crowned 21 year old doesn't want ice cream and a trip to the zoo on her birthday? We made our way home and went to bed. Unfortunately Tricia's vacation with us had come to an end and she had to get up way before the crack of dawn in order to catch her 6am flight back to the States. We bid her goodbye and hoped it wouldn't be too long before we'd get to vacation together again.

[For those of you who are interested and can't wait, here are pictures from the trip. For those of you who want to be surprised, hold off and I'll post the link again at the end-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/awolfe03/sets/72157594555283382/]