Back in Wisconsin

We made it back to Wisconsin last night after a long but uneventful flight. Thanks for reading over the past nine-months!

Leaving Asia

              Today is the last day of our nine-month research trip. I finished research in Singapore on Thursday and later that night Grace got an email offering her a job in Madison. So this trip is ending in a way that will set us up well for next year. Time has flown by in part because the seasons change in a way that’s new to us, from rainy to dry, with not much of a change in temperature. It’s felt like a perpetually hot July since we left the U.S. We’re expecting to be quite cold this summer since we are used to days in from the mid 80s to the upper 90s and humidity over 90% (we thought it felt cool yesterday morning when it was only 80 degrees).

We’re leaving Singapore at 1:00am tonight and arriving in Chicago on Monday afternoon. Counting our long layover in Hong Kong, our trip from Singapore to Dodgeville will take about 36 hours. We’ll post one more update after we return to the U.S. Below are some remaining photos from our time in Singapore. 

Vesak Day preparations a few blocks from our apartment

These celebrations are probably affiliated with the big Buddhist temple near us next to the Eunos station

our favorite hawker stand, delicious Indian, Indonesian, and Singaporean food for cheap

Went for a stroll along East Coast Park, 2.5km from our apartment. There are almost 800 ships waiting around Singapore for something to carry.

Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve

On Wednesday morning, our friend took us along with her mom for a tour of the Sungei Buloh Wetland reserve. We left around 7:30am and got to the far northwest edge of Singapore by 8:00. Malaysia was less than 1 km away, across the straits of Johor.

We learned afterwards that this is considered one of the best places to go bird watching in Singapore but we only stayed an hour or so because the mosquitos started to be bothersome. We did see dozens of wading and shore birds, including the very colorful stork-billed kingfisher (here and here), a crimson sunbird, and some Brahminy kites. Others have seen many types of birds, including the oriental pied hornbill. Some of the more exciting things, to us, though, were all the Malayan water monitor lizards. The first one we saw was at least 2 meters long and quite stocky. We saw many more on our walk, but none quite this big. We also saw a crocodile resting in the water as we walked back. It was hard to believe that we were in Singapore.

            Lots of other, more serious, photographers and birders have posted lots of great photos from the wetland, just a quick google search away (like here). 

Here are a few very short videos (in which you can also hear some super loud cicadas):

Stork-billed kingfisher looking for food

A huge monitor lizard swimming

Monitor lizard resting in a pond

A monitor lizard on the path

A monitor lizard walking

just past the entrance

remember: don't hold the birds

a giant mudskipper, almost a foot long

it was very low tide

on the northern edge of the park

two Brahminy Kites on the right (with white heads)

stork-billed kingfisher

that's Malaysia

a gigantic monitor lizard, longer than 6 feet

a medium-sized monitor lizard hanging out in a pond, there were two others here, too

we were startled by a lizard sunning itself on the path

I think it was scared of us

we spotted a crocodile from a bridge on the loop back

the croc is that light dot in the water in the lower right

more monitor lizards

sunning himself by the path, probably about 4 feet long

Malacca

We went to Malacca this weekend for two days of great eating. Malacca is an old, historic city that was recently declared a UNESCO world heritage site. It was first colonized by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British. It was also home to the distinctive Peranakan culture that we’ve seen some of in Singapore. Our two friends wanted us to try to some real Peranakan cooking and to show us some other delicacies as well. They have been numerous times so knew where to take us.

We left on Saturday morning and breezed across the border into Malaysia. Pretty soon after crossing over we stopped at a big hawker stand for some breakfast. The meal included wonton mee (noodle soup), char kway teow, mee hoon kueh, and black carrot cake (one of my absolute favorite dishes and which is really more like an omelet with radish gnocchi). 

We arrived in Malacca a few hours later and went straight to lunch at Nancy’s Kitchen, a Peranakan restaurant. It was a neat little place and our friends ordered us a lot of dishes to try. These included: ayam buah keluh, banana flowers in coconut milk, chap chai, popiah, kueh pai tee, cucumber pork salad, 4-angled bean fry with sambal, and bawang kepiting.

After lunch, we wandered around a bit before our friends took us to try cendol, one of the many regional varieties of shaved ice with various sweetened toppings (it’s called halo-halo in the Philippines). We took a brief break in the hotel and then went out for some more wandering that included hearing a band with a good accordionist.

For dinner, we went to a place that specializes in crab. We had another feast, this time with a delicious dish of ginger and spring onion venison, a spinach stir fry, kung pao chicken with dried chili, otak (fish cake), and carnation milk crab. We walked around the bustling Jonker Street night market (full of generic tourist items) and had some dragon-fruit popsicles before finally calling it a night. 

The next morning, we went to a Hainanese ChickenRice restaurant that already had a line out the door at 10:00am. We walked around bit more and then grabbed some snacks at Nancy’s, including ang ku kueh, ba chang, and ondeh ondeh, before leaving Malacca. 

Before returning to Singapore, though, we stopped in Johor Bahru, the Malaysian city just north of Singapore, for some lunch. We went to a big tin-roofed hawker center where our friends know lots of the cooks. Our meal included some more soups with various fish and meat in it as well as a plate of crawfish. 

            For the last part of our grand food tour, our friend took us to a row of durian stands (segregated from the rest of the hawker center because of their smell). Even though we had seen durian regularly in Manila we had never actually tried one before. The smell is completely overpowering and I found it pretty much unbearable (an experiment with durian-flavored gelato in Madison resulted in a false gas leak alert). Our friend loves durian, though, so we felt like we had to give it a try. He picked one out for us, had the vendor open it up, and we used forks to take out a small bite. I was quite surprised by the creamy, custardy flavor and actually had several bites. The taste was stuck in my mouth for the rest of the day but it actually tasted ok. 

 

breakfast hawker stand just over Malaysian border

some of breakfast

one of the best dishes of the weekend: black carrot cake

well-preserved old home in Malacca

pretty much the whole downtown area was made-up of old buildings like this

lunch at Nancy's: kueh pai tee

our food guides at lunch

enjoying our first feast

walking around downtown Malacca

ice grinder for cendol

bases for the rest of the cendol (add ice, condensed milk, sugar, etc.)

a finished basic cendol

lots of durian-flavored items, we like the definition of "one bite puff" here

lots of these guys around giving rides, at night they have crazy lights

woman wearing traditional Peranakan dress

outside of Nancy's, where we ate lunch and had a snack the next day

one of many beautiful buildings

it was a beautiful, but hot, day

some of the red buildings in the main tourist drag

the old Malacca Club, where touring bands and troupes would perform

old water wheel on the river

fun band playing (link to video here)

lots of very expensive antique shops, most had old record players and '78s

starting to set up for night market and late afternoon snack

one of several Chinese temples we saw, this was the biggest

and of course lots of touristy stuff to buy, rubber chickens included

Dinner at Restaurant Lee

our second feast of the day, with crab as the centerpiece

getting messy fingers from prying out crab meat

another view of dinner, live crabs on the left

back downtown after dinner

night market had lots of generic tourist items but also had fresh tea

Sunday: lining up for Hainanese Chicken Rice Balls

making rice balls

brunch, chicken in center, rice balls on plates, a citrus-chili mix in the jar on the left

some nice doors downtown

snacks at Nancy's 

these have a burst of liquid sugar (like molasses) in the center

lunch at hawker stand in Johor Bahru on way back (it was at least 100 degrees under these tin roofs)

fresh frogs for eating (our regular grocery store has an even larger selection)

lunch, crawfish on the bottom left

picking out a durian

vendor opening our durian, note the glove he wears to protect his hand

first bite of durian (using a fork instead of my fingers...)