Fishhead Curry and Such - Our Life in Singapore: 2009

Four months since my last post?? Are you kidding me? Well, you know the old saying, "No news is...no news." Something like that anyway. When I started this blog, I had every intention of posting, at the very least, once a month, but I just can't seem to do it. I guess I could post more frequently about everyday things, but believe me, you do not want to be subjected to that. Do you really want to read about how much our last grocery bill for three days worth of food was? How many fights I refereed between Alex and Ali? Or how much I hate exercising? Believe me, I'm sparing you the agony.

But I did think that you'd enjoy hearing about the trip that we just took. We went to Tioman Island in Malaysia for spring break. Tioman Island is a small island about 20 miles off the coast of peninsular Malaysia (just to the north of Singapore) in the South China Sea. It's known for its coral reefs and beautiful, clear waters, perfect for scuba diving and snorkeling. It's managed to remain uncommercialized despite its popularity for divers. There are only a couple of roads on the northern part of the island (we stayed on the southern tip) and the main form of transportation around the island is either by walking on the jungle paths or by boat. Tioman Island has a small claim to fame in Hollywood, also. For you movie fans out there, if you've ever seen the movie South Pacific, they used Tioman Island to portray Bali Hai.

We decided to go to Tioman Island for a few reasons: beautiful waters, peace and quiet from busy Singapore, and -- most importantly and the main draw for me -- we could drive there. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have an intense fear of flying and avoid it at all costs. Let me clarify: an intense, hand sweating, heart racing, white knuckling, stomach turning, panic stricken, fear of flying. Do you remember the old TV show, "The A Team"? On the show, Mr. T's character was afraid to fly, so the other A Team guys would drug him or knock him unconscious to get him on a plane. Like, in every episode this happened. When it comes to flying, I'm kind of like Mr. T -- but without the mohawk, gold jewelry and muscles. Colin generously offered to knock me out (a little too eagerly, I might add), so we could fly on the tiny (tiny!!) plane from Singapore to Tioman Island, but really, a road trip through Malaysia appealed to me much more. We could drive two hours to a town in Malaysia called Mersing and from there, take a one hour ferry ride to Tioman Island. From there, our resort's boat would pick us up to take us to where we were staying. Piece of cake.

No sooner had we made up our minds to drive, when we started getting these "looks" from people when we told them we were driving through Malaysia. You know, the "raised eyebrow, grimacing, are you out of your mind" sort of looks. See, living in Singapore is kind of like living in a bubble. It's very, very safe over here. But apparently when you cross the border to Malaysia (a mere 15 miles or so from our house), well, it's a different story. We were being told of incidents of expats being targeted for crimes in Malaysia, especially those driving Singapore plated cars. Robberies, carjackings, police shakedowns for money...that sort of thing.

SCREEEEEECH!! Um, what?

People were giving us advice like, "just don't stop for any reason", "if someone hits your car, keep driving" and "hide your money in your car, so if you get pulled over, you don't have to give all of your money to the officer." I had these visions of driving out of idyllic Singapore, crossing the border and people ramming into our car and trying to force us off the road. (Hey, that sounds like an episode of the A Team!!) To put my mind at ease, I called our insurance agent and got his opinion. His advice was, "You'll be fine, don't worry. But if someone tries to steal your car, don't fight with them. Just give them the car." Yeah, that was some comforting advice. I finally sought out the opinion of a couple friends who have been in Singapore for several years and have driven to Malaysia many times. They reminded us that Singapore is a little removed from reality as far as crime goes and assured us we'd be fine, but just to be aware of other drivers and their intentions. And yes, that it was indeed a good idea to hide our money in case we got pulled over. All in all, it still sounded safer than flying!

Still we weren't taking any chances. We forbid the little ones from drinking anything before we left ("We're not stopping! No bathroom breaks!!"), emptied the car of all of our CDs (they may get the car, but they're not getting my CDs!) and we were off. Since I'm the only one that has passed the driving test and has a Singapore license (envision me breathing on my nails and buffing them here), I drove. After crossing the border into Malaysia, I took a deep breath and tried to resist driving like a bat out of hell -- speeding, blowing through red lights and screeching around turns. You know, the way that I normally drive.

Really, it was an uneventful trip. There were a few heart stopping moments with crazy, idiot drivers driving in the oncoming lane around a curve or up a hill. And at one point, we were in a line of cars on a two lane highway and a car came tearing past us down the gravel shoulder of the road. Gravel was flying everywhere and of course, our windshield took a direct hit and got a small nick. We were annoyed, but looked on the bright side; we were now less likely to be carjacked. What self respecting carjacker would want to steal a car with a cracked windshield??

I will say that it would have been helpful to know Bahasa, the language they speak in Malaysia. And, incidentally, the language that their roadsigns are in. I know exactly nine words in Bahasa; all of which I learned from the multiple language signs around Singapore and none of which would come in handy in Malaysia unless I wanted to say, "Selamat, bukit! Bahaya! Selamat datang pulau jalan. Awas, desa kota." It might sound impressive, but when translated to English means, "Congratulations, hill! Danger! Welcome island street. Caution, village town." That's all I've got. Every single Bahasa word I know and still unable to form a sentence. I really need to learn some verbs. Thank goodness we really only had to stay on one road for most of the drive to Mersing and I was able to manage that despite my limited command of Bahasa.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in Mersing, found our resort's office that operated from the mainland and got our ferry tickets. We parked our car in the "guarded" lot (only half expecting it to be there when we got back), grabbed a bite to eat and at 2:00, drug all of our bags to the ferry terminal. Our ferry was supposed to leave at 3:00, but by 4:30, there were over 300 people in the little ferry terminal and no sign of a ferry. Come to find out that the ferry couldn't get to the terminal because it was low tide. (I had actually heard about the inconsistent timetable that the ferry runs on and wasn't very surprised that we were waiting, but at the same time wondered why the heck they'd schedule a ferry to leave at low tide anyway. I mean, it's a coastal town; don't all coastal towns kind of already know when it's low tide? But I digress.) Finally, at 5:00, three ferries came in at once. The terminal was pretty chaotic as people jockeyed for position, not even knowing which line to stand in or which boat to get on. We somehow found our way to the right ferry and were finally on our way to the island.

When we arrived at our stop, our resort's speedboat was waiting to pick us up as promised. As I was standing on the pier, waiting to get onto the speedboat, I looked down to the water and was surprised to see how clear and blue it was. I don't think I've ever seen such clear water. The kids and I stepped onto the boat and Colin boarded last. He was carrying his shoulder bag which had his laptop, our passports and money in it. As he got on the boat, the bag slipped off his shoulder, fell and got wedged between the pier and the boat. He grabbed it up just in time, stumbled onto the boat and the only thing that he lost was his sunglasses which we helplessly watched sink 15 feet all the way down to the bottom. Boy, that water was really clear!

We finally arrived at our resort where we were greeted with drinks, shown to our villa and told to take our watches off and just enjoy not being on a schedule. And that's exactly what we did. The resort didn't have TVs or internet service. There was only one phone in the office and no cell signal on the island. Colin was officially unavailable to his work and was able to destress (though he did cringe a little everytime the phone would ring, worried that it was his office calling with an emergency). It was a bit of an adventure getting there, but for the next five days, we had a great time relaxing and enjoying the beach and sun.

Alex and Ali immediately took to the water and went snorkeling with Colin several times a day. There was great snorkeling just off the beach and from the pier of the resort. Alex and Ali were little underwater explorers, swimming through schools of fish and finding sea urchins, sea cucumbers and little Nemo fish living in anemones. Alex even found a "buried treasure". A wine bottle that was covered with some barnacles and sea life. He was convinced it was from a sunken ship and we didn't have the heart to tell him that it was probably trash that someone on a boat threw overboard a few months ago. So he proudly brought his buried treasure home. We took a boat out one day with another family and went snorkeling. I was so surprised at how brave the little kids were. They absolutely loved it. There was a dive school on site and Cameron and Colin went scuba diving one day. Another day, Colin took a boat out to go scuba diving and had a great time. Eric enjoyed jumping and diving off of the pier.

We had some experiences with nature, too. A few mornings, we were woken very early by what sounded like someone banging on our door. We finally realized that it was monkeys running along our tin roof. Colin had his own little run-in with the monkeys. He was walking back to the dining area with PB&J sandwiches for the kids one evening (they did NOT appreciate Malay cuisine) and heard a grunting/growling noise behind him. He looked back to see a group of monkeys and the biggest one was running towards him. He said he was just about two seconds away from throwing the sandwiches at the monkey and running for dear life, when the monkey lost its nerve and stopped about 20 feet from him. The monkeys had actually gotten into another family's villa and stolen some fruit from them, so we were a little wary anyway. But apparently these weren't junk food eating monkeys because if they were, they would have broken into our villa. We had much better things to steal -- Pop Tarts, Oreos, Froot Loops. They did want those peanut butter sandwiches, though.

We soon developed a nightly ritual. After dinner, we'd go down to the pier to watch the 6 foot blacktip reef sharks come in to feed on the fish (more interactions with nature!). Yes, this is the same pier that my children would swim from during the day. I was assured that the sharks only came at night and no one had ever seen one there during the day. One night, the dive master, in an effort to convince people to do a night dive with the sharks, got in the water with them to prove that they wouldn't bother you. Sure enough, the sharks really were afraid of him and swam away if he got too close, but it wouldn't have been a pretty sight if it turned out he was wrong! After watching the sharks, we'd then head up to our villa where we'd play a game of Uno or Memory with Alex and Ali. Then the next thirty minutes was spent killing every single bug that Ali saw in her room and trying to convince her that none of them were poisonous. After that, we'd play a game of Taboo or Sequence with the older boys and then head to bed. It was truly a quiet, peaceful, and relaxing week.

Our trip back was a bit of an adventure also. Our resort's boat dropped us off at one of the main piers on the island so we could catch our ferry back to Mersing at 11:30. Unfortunately, this time the ferry was running right on schedule (figures!) and we were running 5 minutes late, so we literally "missed the boat". We, of course, didn't realize this until our speedboat had sped away and we found ourselves stuck on this pier at the end of this little village until the next boat came at 2:00. Which put us back near Mersing at 3:00. And guess what happens around 3:00? That's right, low tide. So we made it all the way to Mersing, but were stuck just offshore on the ferry, unable to get to the terminal. Eventually a speedboat pulled up alongside and they transferred us and all of our bags onto the speedboat so we could motor in to the terminal. We got our car (it was still there in one piece!) from the lot and began our drive home. Since we had no trouble on the drive up to Mersing, (unlicensed) Colin wanted to drive home. About 20 minutes into our trip, we came to a police roadblock. The police questioned Colin about where we had been and where we were going. They inspected our Singapore car tax stickers to make sure they were current (they were. Whew!) and scrutinized Colin's passport and US drivers license. They finally waved us ahead and we breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was then that we realized that we hadn't even taken the time to hide the money in the car and our whole wad of cash was stuffed into Colin's wallet. We're such savvy travelers!

All in all, what should have been a 3 or 4 hour trip in total, turned out to take us over 10 hours and was capped off with Ali getting carsick in the backseat when we were just minutes from home. But we had an awesome time that week. We didn't get robbed, carjacked, lost, attacked by monkeys, bitten by poisonous bugs or eaten by sharks. And best of all, I didn't have to fly anywhere!