Tag: Kuala Lumpur

  • Filipinotes – Days 6,7

    ….continued from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

    Waking up at 5 AM during a vacation. Check. Ok, 5.10. We left the hotel a little after 5.30 for our flight at 7.50. Coco Huts had cost us 10800 pesos, and was totally worth it. Very helpful staff! This time the flight was from the Caticlan airport, 45 minutes – 1 hour away. The transfer crew thankfully were more helpful with the baggage, and we even had the van all to ourselves. At the Caticlan jetty, we had to pay porters about 20 pesos per bag/per shore to get it into the boat and out, but it’s worth it from experience! From the jetty, we were taken to the airport, and had to pay airport fees of 200 pesos each. But it’s a nice, small, clean airport and there’s WiFi. The Cebu flight was on time and we reached Manila around 9.

    We realised when we landed that the hotel had arranged transport for us from Terminal 1! We boarded the transfer bus to Terminal 1, and it promptly broke down on the way! Thankfully, we were picked up immediately by another bus and dropped at Terminal 3 departure. We made our way to Arrivals and tried to find the taxi counter where our transfer to the hotel had been booked. The folks there studied the mail print out with a reverence and attention that made it seem like an archaeological specimen! Turned out English was a forgotten language there, so they pieced together letters and formed words, then tried to understand the sentences that resulted. We repeatedly kept saying Nissan and even stood in front of that specific counter but they waved us into silence as they studied the manuscript! The girl at the Nissan counter continued giving her undivided attention to her chewing gum. No multitasking, no sir! Half an hour later, they had reached line 6 where Nissan appeared, and the girl was summoned to take care of us. She wasn’t convinced, but spat out the gum and proceeded to her next task with the enthusiasm that our nation’s leader displays before giving a speech.

    The car took another 15 minutes to get to us, and from there we took an hour to get to Casa Bocobo. It cost us 600 pesos, and much cheaper that the 1000 peso options we were given by other airport taxis. We suspected that metered taxis would have been cheaper. At Casa Bocobo, we were told that check in time was 2 PM, and the earliest time we could be given a room was 12 PM – checkout time. We spent the next two hours staring at various available walls. While D sulked, I was busy multitasking – the combination of a lack of breakfast and the early wake up provided me some material to start a headache.

    We stubbornly decided to have a meal only at SM Mall of Asia, our destination for the day. At 12.30, we were taken to our room, and I discovered that I would need an adaptor to charge anything here! We quickly freshened up and took a cab to the mall, 250 pesos and about 20 minutes away. After getting there, and discovering that reading about the 4th largest mall in the world and understanding its ramifications were two different things, we realised that there was no way we’d be able to cover it in a day! We surveyed the lunch options and decided to go multi-cuisine at Pho Hoa. After a quick but excellent meal Pho, Kungpao chicken, Brochette, mango juice and Black Jelly drink and 855 pesos later, D was heady with the prospects of the massive shopping time ahead of her, and my headache gave a me a welcome message!

    The interactive maps at the mall were helpful but upside down and we spent quality time getting lost, but since we weren’t looking for anything specific, it was okay and we kept discovering new avenues and shops! I found an old favourite that had disappeared from India – Springfield! There was also a smaller version of ODEL in Lanka, and we rued the fact that we had already picked up stuff for everyone! This place is obviously a shopper’s paradise, and I frequently wanted to ask D if she needed tissues to stem the salivation. Across the road was the bay, and at about 5.45 we made our way there to watch the sunset. The promenade was alive with crowds, kids playing and mime acts! The mall had a huge number of options that allowed us to watch the bay as we had dinner. After inspecting the options, we chose Abe where we tried Manok sa Luyang Dilaw, chicken in coconut milk, and Betute, farm frogs filled with minced pork. 🙂 D was queasy about the latter when she ordered and kept asking if they’d be fried, but I saw none of that later as she crunched away the dead frog’s legs! 😀 Rice and beer and sangria followed. The bay view was beautiful, and the meal cost us  1100 pesos. Worth it, and the only thing that spoiled it a bit was my nagging headache. The taxi back cost us 300 pesos, we gave 50 extra because the driver was a sweet old man, who looked like he could survive in Bangalore traffic. 🙂

    Back at the room, I asked for an adaptor – unfortunately not available, and confirmed our taxi for the airport, thankfully available. Thus ended Day 6, our last night in the Philippines.

    Day 7

    The plan was to visit a nearby mall. We had given our breakfast preferences the night before and quickly consumed that in the restaurant. The adaptor was finally available as well!

    Robinson Mall happened to be a really short walk away, and on hindsight, we should have just lunched here the previous day! The shopping options were quite good as well, and we bought more here, despite having less than 2 hours. This has become a ritual, the last day frenzy and the rush to the airport. We reached Casa Bocobo just in time. We had already paid the 2500 pesos due. Stuffed the new acquisitions into the bag and hoped into the cab which was waiting. 650 pesos took us to the airport. We changed currency from the one option available. This airport is an 80s style one and doesn’t really have options to do anything much. The Malaysian Airlines flight to KL was delayed after we boarded and some fidgeting later we were on our way. This one didn’t have screens, so we were a bit bored. At KL, we were back in the familiar corridor and killed time (with the help of chocolate drinks at Old Town and currency exchanges involving amounts less than $10 😀 ) before the flight to Bangalore! Four hours later and the last 15 minutes of Life of PI and 3 episodes of Big Bang Theory later, we were in Bangalore. After the sloooooow motion Immigration queue, and a Meru, we were finally home!

    I loved Philippines more than Bali and Cambodia – Palawan for its beauty and balance with nature, Boracay for the sunsets and the buzz, and Manila for just being an awesome city to look at and be at. Thailand is probably close in terms of mind space. Philippines had everything we wanted in a vacation, and is relatively less touristy. It was well worth the visa headache, which involved us submitting everything we had except my dad’s horoscope and property documents, and cost us Rs.3500 each! The trip cost us about Rs.1.9 lakhs with flight tickets (including within the country) at about a lakh, staying options at around Rs.4ooo, meals at about Rs.1500 each and shopping of course! In essence, ranks right up there in terms of journeys, and highly recommended! 🙂

    The End

  • EastforEaster: Day 0, 1- Airports, Siem Reap

    Compared to the adventurous vacation beginnings we have dealt with, this one was calm and moved like clockwork. The visas had been done much in advance (Thai at VFS, Malaysian through a travel agent and Cambodia on the web) and $ reserves were increased too. On Good Friday, the Meru cab arrived on time, we didn’t forget to pack anything, check ins (real and Foursquare) happened without incident with our bags weighing slightly lesser than the pre-booked 20kg, emigration being a breeze (barring D’s belching officer) and the Air Asia flight departing on time. We were traveling to Siem Reap, Cambodia via Kuala Lumpur as part of an elaborate one week flight plan that also included Bangkok and Krabi, and was primarily driven by a focused ‘cheapest tickets possible’ approach. 😀

    It was almost like a Chennai flight and the crowd did make a strong case for renaming the destination Tamilaysia. Air Asia proved to be bright red and cheerful and was helped by a light-haired air hostess who matched it with light-headed giggles which refused to die down during the safety demos. When it came to the seat armrests, it proved to be a cousin of Deccan and on food, a replica of the alpaahaar on Kingfisher, where the focus is on alp – no, not Swiss!

    The in-flight magazine’s event list also showed its standards by considering Bieber and F1  in the same class of entertainment. But hey, the flight arrived on time in KL – around midnight, so no complaints. At the KL airport, I pretended nonchalance despite wanting to be wide-eyed at seeing a Starbucks outlet. We had about 6 hours to wait until our flight to Siem Reap. Thank God for that because Immigration went beyond annoying as our line just refused to move and we saw those who’d arrived much later moving on. The waiting area was quite a mess, and again a mini Tamil Nadu. Towards the end of our rather boring wait, there was some excitement when a foreigner claimed that something was missing  and blamed a Tamil family sleeping nearby, but nothing came of it and I was too tired to provoke either parties into further action. 😐

    Getting out of KL proved to be a much faster affair. Air Asia continued their punctual nature on the Siem Reap flight too, and we landed in Cambodia just before 8. An amazing little airport that looked more like a resort, and where the visa process was comparable to F1 pit stop times. We had $s stocked so no currencyy exchange was required. The tour operators met us at the gate and were ready to go temple trotting right then, but we really wanted a shower. I raised both my arms and the case was settled. Green and humid like Kerala, but a right-driving country, that was my first impression of Cambodia.

    We reached our hotel – The Golden Mango, and were told that there had been no power for the last 12 hours. Though check-in time was noon, we were given a temp room for freshening up. Thanks to the dark, I managed to  dismantle the shower faucet and create a mini flood. The adventure had begun. We asked our guide to take us somewhere nearby for a quick meal and thus arrived at Lily’s. I had a beef breakfast to compensate for the trauma earlier. The coffee with milk turned out to be a strange animal though as the latter had only a cameo.

    We then drove to the Angkor Thom complex. The guide got us the tickets for the next 2 days and we began with the south gate, where we saw the Cambodian version of the samudra manthan in Hindu mythology, the devas on the left and the asuras on the right. After passing through a version of the Bat Cave, we realised the expanse of the place but still underestimated the walkathon to follow!

    Bayon was our first stop, and there, slowly but surely, you begin to realise that all around you people are making faces. Ok, seriously, when you see it for the first time, they are quite amazing to look at, but after a while, you might find them repetitive, unless you’re the kind who can spot minute differences in architectural styles. The language is not really a communication barrier, but I didn’t see many guides adept at story telling, and that really would have made a difference.

    Thankfully, there are apsaras – past and present, and bas reliefs to keep you distracted. It’s also fun to watch people posing at various points. 😀 I tried my hand and the results were disastrous.

    We then w—a—l—k—e—d past minor structures and trees and tiny ponds to Baphuon and the Phimeanakas, and then the Victory Gate with its Elephant and Leper King terraces from where the king watched his armies assembled before they rode for battle.

    Since we were tired of plain walking, we decided to take a break and do some climbing. Presenting the Ta Keo temple, which gives you rewards for negotiating those :O climbs. Don’t me misled by the can/bottle, they’re for storing the oil, water etc for worship, I was only talking about the view. The search for escalator signs yielded no results.

    Up (the operative word usually) next was Ta Prohm, where the restoration work is a collaboration between the Cambodian and Indian governments. Amidst cicada sounds and an eerie ambiance, Ta Prohm proved to be different from the rest because the jungle seemed to be winning the fight against man’s construction. It also helped that among these ruins, Anju mol (Angelina Jolie to you) had become Lara Croft.

    We then set off for lunch to a place suggested by the tour guide, despite our massive eateries-to-check-out preparations, mostly because it was quite past lunchtime. Lunch was decent, washed down with Angkor beer. After the lunch craving was satisfied, we moved to the last tour spot  of the day – Prasat Kravan, made of reddish bricks for a change. We got back to the hotel by about 3.30. Power was still not back but was expected by 5. We warned the tour guide that if it wasn’t back by then, we wanted a change of residence. I needed to charge my camera batteries okay? And than at about 4, an unexpected visitor arrived. Rain! Which was only supposed to arrive in the first week of May!! I remembered Sikkim and thought our luck had run out! But thankfully, by 5, the rain had disappeared and the power was back.But it did mean that our plans to see the sunset were washed out. So we asked the driver to drop us off at Pub Street.

    Before we decided on dinner, we decided to take a walk inside the Night Market nearby. Walking for shopping is complaint-free. 😀 This walk was quite some fun as we window shopped and D bargained for items she had no plans of buying.

    Lured by this sign, I suggested we try out Temple Balcony though it wasn’t featured in our list. Though the apsaras were overdressed (as per Hindu mythology detailing) and slightly different from what I had envisioned, the food was really awesome. The dish shown here is the Amok Fish in Banana leaf, we also had yellow noodles and a Khmer chicken soup. This dinner, watching Pub Street go by, was probably one of the best events of the trip. Yes, there was free Wi fi too.

    And now it was time to sample the Cambodia version of the autorickshaw – the tuk tuk. A tuk tuk ride at night is something you really must do when you’re there. Depending on where you stay and your negotiating skills, it will cost you about $2-3. An early start awaited us the next day.

    until next time, how many roads must a man walk down….

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