Asia
Video
Here’s an overview of the Asian leg of our trip:
- 1 night in Shanghai, China
- 3 nights in Taipei, Taiwan
- 3 nights in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
- 1 night in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia
- 4 nights on Dragon Dive LB Yoshi in Komodo National Park, Indonesia
- 4 nights in Bali, Indonesia (2 in Jimbaran and 2 in Seminyak)
- 4 nights in Singapore
On our way to Shanghai, we experienced the worst delay of our trip of ~ 4 hours, which is pretty remarkable for such a long trip. We also had a pretty hard time even paying for a car to our hotel. Our normal trick of using ATMs to withdraw foreign currency failed over four different ATM cards, and we were still unable to load money using WeChat Pay or Alipay (new international “launches” notwithstanding…), so we bit the bullet and paid the ~30% spread at the airport money exchangers.
Anyhow, we were upgraded to the biggest suite on the floor, with an incredible view! We had a lovely morning exploring The Bund, getting Shanghainese soup dumplings (xiaolongbao), salted cheese tea (which we pleasantly discovered on last year’s trip to China), and a curry lunch.
Shanghai: The Bund, cheese tea, dumplings, mediocre air quality, and our suite
Our first night in Taipei, I met up with DK and his friends, who were finishing their leg of the trip. Kelly stayed in the hotel to rest, as she had come down with a bit of a cold (all over the course of one week, we went from being 7 hours in France ahead to home time to eight hours behind in China).
We wanted to play it safe and take advantage of the medical care in Taiwan, so we made a quick trip to the doctor the next morning. On the way home, we picked up dragon fruit, passionfruit, sugar-apples, and more to feast in the hotel room!
Often known as the Tsukiji of Taipei, we loved Addiction Aquatic, and feasted on a selection of raw and cooked seafood.
Taipei: Addiction Aquatic Development, Fourplay 2.0 with DK, and fruit shopping
Kelly had her first massage (of many inexpensive and high-quality ones to come), and we were off to our first night market at Ningxia. We ate the usual suspects: stinky tofu, deep fried taro balls with salted egg yolk at Liu Yu Zai (劉芋仔), Fang Chia Shredded Chicken (方家雞肉飯), spring rolls (古早味潤餅), and topped it all off with some sesame peanut mochi shave ice (芝麻花生麻糬冰) and some durian and guava for the walk home. The mochi was a definite highlight, as was the shredded chicken.
Taipei: Ningxia Night Market
The next day, we had some famous Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup at Yongkang. From there, it was a short walk over to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, where we watched the Changing of the Guards. We then made our way over to Taipei 101. Although we were still full from the beef noodle soup, we couldn’t help but try some of Hawker Chan’s inexpensive Michelin-starred chicken. While tender and flavorful, we thought it didn’t measure up to its Singaporean counterpart.
Taipei: Yongkang Beef Noodles, National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei 101, and Hawker Chan
We walked it off with a beautiful hike of Xiangshan, or elephant mountain, with striking views of the Taipei cityscape.
Taipei: Xiangshan trail and Taipei 101
Finally, it was time for another night market at Raohe Street, where we had the Fuzhou Black Pepper Bun (our favorite!), Chen Dong Pork Ribs Medical Herbs Soup, Ma Shu Bao Bao mochi, taro milk, xiaolongbao, and of course some durian for dessert.
Taipei: Raohe St. Night Market
While DPS airport is only 15 miles from Ubud, it can take up to an hour and a half to make the drive, due to narrow roads and a mixture of scooter, car, and foot traffic. In terms of foreignness (architecture, culture, religion, …), we’d put Bali up there with Morocco. Our driver gave us a helpful introduction to the culture. For example, birth order is front and center in their society. He told us to call him Komang, which means third born. Kelly and I are both Wayan, or the eldest. On our way to Ubud, we stopped by a coffee plantation and tasted six kinds of tea and eight kinds of coffee, including kopi luwak, or civet coffee. It was definitely smoother, but I don’t need it to be a daily drinker. We also left with a pack of delicious mangosteen tea.
Bali: Kopi Luwak tasting at Negari Luwak
Our villa in Ubud was amazing, and I think we took full advantage! We had several meals outside by the pool (and cooled off while eating chilled fruit in the pool) and enjoyed the outdoor shower / bathtub (which itself was in a fish pond!).
Bali: Our villa at Luwak Ubud Villas
With it being the summer, the heat and humidity were fairly oppressive. Still, we didn’t let it deter us from hikes, although I ended up drenching my hiking shirt in sweat fairly early on. And the frequent breaks for fresh coconuts and refreshing teas made all the difference!
Bali: Campuhan Ridge Walk, coconut at Karsa Kafe, lunch at Bridges Bali
We kept our distance from the monkeys in the Sacred Monkey Forest and just watched them from afar.
Bali: Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and Hippie Fish Ubud
The next morning, our driver Yoga took us on a wonderful tour of the island. For $50, or about the price of a taxi to the airport in the U.S., we had a private driver for ten hours. We started with a hike through the Tegallalang Rice Terraces, dodging past a lot of costumed people doing photo shoots.
Bali: Morning breakfast in villa and Tegallalang Rice Terraces
Yoga drove us north to Kintamani, with stunning views of Mount Batur and Lake Batur, a volcanic crater lake. We then stopped for one of the most scenic lunches we’ve had at overlooking the Mahagiri Rice Terraces. We had a private tour of Besakih Temple, known as the “Mother Temple” due to its size (at least 86 temples, and the largest in Bali).
Bali: Kintamani, Mahagiri, and Besakih
On the way back to Ubud, we had time to stop by the Tukad Cepung Waterfall before some delicious local cocktails and food.
Bali: Tukad Cepung Waterfall and Night Rooster
We had one night in Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores, a common jumping-off point for Komodo National Park. The views did not disappoint, with at least several islands of the archipelago in constant view. We did some last-minute cruise shopping (especially loading up on sunscreen), and had a delightful happy hour halfway up the hill overlooking the city. The drinks and local arak left a bit to be desired, though.
Labuan Bajo: Osiana Alo, Blue Marlin, Warung Mama, and Paradise Bar
Early the next morning, we stopped by Dragon Dive Komodo to finish off some paperwork and study. Everyone on the boat already had their PADI Advanced Open Water certification, and we had to catch up with the Deep Dive module, which enabled us to dive to 100 feet (and was one of the earlier dives). We had 15 dives planned (of which we ended up doing 14 and sat out one night dive) over the four nights / five days.
We met our lovely divemasters, Alexis and Arno, and the rest of the passengers. Wojtek and Diana were a Polish couple who enjoyed liveaboards so much that their vacations have been this format exclusively. And Sam, Sarah, Fiona, and Julie were a group of Sydney-based friends who love diving together (I still find Sarah’s daily pre-work dives to be very impressive!).
Having only logged ~ 20 dives, we had one order of magnitude less experience than our co-passengers and two less than our instructors.
Dragon Dive LB Yoshi
We soon settled into a routine, with morning coffee, tea, and nutella-banana sandwiches before a briefing and dive. Alexis and Arno drew charming illustrations of each dive site in advance. We had plentiful seafood to fuel up in between dives and made a few stops landside (cleaning up trash from a beach, hiking Padar, seeing Komodo dragons on Rinca, and hiking Pulau Batupengah).
Dragon Dive LB Yoshi and Padar Island
The constant putting-on and taking-off of the neoprene wetsuits and the corrosiveness of the salt water was hard on our skin. Since we don’t love night dives, we ended up sitting out one of the two. Padar was stunningly beautiful, with panoramic views from its summit.
Dragon Dive LB Yoshi, Rinca Island, and Pulau Batupengah
We saw several komodo dragons during our tour on Rinca. Our guides were armed with big sticks to keep the dragons at bay. Our last dive was certainly the most memorable of the trip. In fact, Alexis said it was her favorite out of ~1800 dives as well! We saw a huge school of ~100 mobulas early on in the dive as we were making our way to various manta ray cleaning stations. Along the way, we saw plenty of sharks and turtles as well. Around 30 minutes into our dive, we hit the jackpot at our third cleaning station. We saw roughly ten manta rays getting cleaned and sat on the sea floor for nearly forty minutes just enjoying the show.
Dragon Dive LB Yoshi: night dive and feast with crew; Labuan Bajo: Bajo Bay Fisherman’s Club and La Cecile
We really enjoyed our first liveaboard experience. We were slightly afraid of “getting sick” of diving, since we were nearly doubling our lifetime experience over the course of five days, but it didn’t get old. Still, I think it was a bit longer than is preferable for us for future liveaboards. We had one final night in Labuan Bajo and had some good food and drinks while overlooking the city and debriefing our experience.
Our return trip to Bali is where we really took it easy. We relaxed at the Intercontinental and explored its 34 acre property. We had plenty of tropical fruit, walks and runs along the beach, massages, and pool lounging / hopping in between afternoon tea and evening canapés. And we managed to squeeze in a white water rafting trip down the Ayung River!
Bali: Intercontinental and white water rafting
Bali: Intercontinental amenities and food!
After two nights, we moved hotels to Seminyak in order to explore a new area. We took surfing lessons and were able to stand up and catch several waves on our own! We gave Grab (the superapp) a shot and used it to get around quite effectively.
For our last night, we enjoyed the Hotel Indigo amenities and had a wonderful dinner.
Bali: learning to surf, Hotel Indigo, and Tree Bar
Bali: Salon Bali
In Singapore, we were greeted almost immediately upon arrival by Jiun Haur, who took us to Din Tai Fung (marking the third country in which we’ve had it). We then made our way over to the Marina Bay Sands and enjoyed a rooftop sunset at CÉ LA VI, crazy-rich style.
Singapore: Din Tai Fung with Jiun Haur, Marina Bay Sands, CÉ LA VI
Singapore: nightscape
Later that night, we watched the Spectra Light and Water show before dinner at Makansutra Gluttons Bay (almost all of our meals in Singapore were from hawker stands), which included char kway teow and an oyster omelet.
Singapore: Makansutra Gluttons Bay and Spectra Show
The next morning we hit up Bugis Food Street and Albert Food Centre, with Ah Seng’s famous Bak Chor Mee (亚成潮州肉脞面), Pondok Makan Indonesia’s satay, Heng Gi Goose and Duck Rice (兴记鵝鸭饭), and Jin Jin Dessert’s (津津甜品) signature Gangster Ice, with mango and durian.
We had some ice-cold cocktails at the classy Atlas Bar, whose Art Deco grand lobby looked like walking straight onto a Great Gatsby set. And we had our favorite hawker food of the trip at Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodles, with perfectly-flavored minced pork and fixins.
Singapore: Bugis Food Street, Atlas, and Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodles
We grabbed a cocktail tasting flight at the hotel bar, where we waited for Yongfeng. He and Jiun Haur then took us to Chomp Chomp Food Centre where we ordered too many dishes to count (including some delicious BBQ stingray. They were consummate hosts for us in Singapore! After Chomp Chomp Food Centre, we slept off the food, had a humid run through Fort Canning Park, and grabbed some breakfast in Chinatown. Our first stop was Hawker Chan, which we thought edged out the Taipei location. We also enjoyed kaya toast and coffee at The 1950’s Coffee, more xiaolongbao (a personal favorite), and Ann Chin Popiah (安珍). This time, our mid-afternoon snack was some oyster-heavy ramen at Hototogisu in an up-and-coming mall.
Singapore: Chomp Chomp with Jiun Haur and Yongfeng, The 1950’s Coffee, Hawker Chan, high tea at Intercontinental, Old Hill Street Police Station, and Hototogisu Ramen
We made our way back to the famous Merlion and watched Spectra from across the bay.
Singapore: Gardens by the Bay and Old Hill Street Police Station
For our penultimate day, we finally tried laksa, which is a sort of fish noodle soup. It was quite good at Original Famous Penang Laksa, and we did a bunch of shopping in Chinatown (for those who received durian-flavored snacks and salted egg / spicy fish skin chips). We finally made it indoors at Gardens By The Bay and walked both the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. Because we went around the winter holidays, the Gardens were almost entirely transformed for Christmas Wonderland. There was a light tunnel, plenty of night-time light shows and entertainment, and “snow” hours. It was quite magical!
Singapore: Gardens by the Bay and Original Famous Penang Laksa
To top off the night, we stopped by Native and Operation Dagger. While we enjoyed the local ingredients and mythos around the drinks at Native, arguably the concoctions at Operation Dagger were better, gimmicky witholding of liquor types notwithstanding.
Singapore: breakfast with Jiun Haur, Ah Seng durian, Native, and Operation Dagger
We spent our last day in Singapore with Jiun Haur, Yongfeng, Reina, and Allison, visiting the Singapore Zoo. Jiun Haur graciously gifted us an overabundance of durian from Ah Seng, which we devoured while overlooking the Singapore River. To top off an incredible trip, we watched the light show with the indoor waterfall at the Jewel Changi Airport.
Singapore: zoo, last high tea at Intercontinental, and Jewel Waterfall