2. Sapporo, Japan

3. & 4. Kyoto & Osaka, Japan

• Nijo-jo Castle: (1603 -1868, home of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu) which had special squeaky floors (nightingale floors) so ninjas couldn’t kill people at night!
• Kinkaku-ji: The famous Golden Pavillion, Buddhist Temple built near the end of the 14th century and a featured wallpaper on every Apple computer for the past several years.
• Osaka - Universal Studios: Hellllloooo Hogwarts! Even with butterbeer in hand (just don’t drink it unless you like melted toffee in a cup) we explored the town of Hogsmeade recreated in stunning detail.
• Fushimi-Inari Taisha: The famous shrine, established in 711 AD, includes 4 km of “torii” (iconic japanese gates/arches) to walk through.
• Suntory Yamazaki Distillery: One of the most gorgeous distilleries and tastings ever, but sadly most of the product is sold out due to the popularity among locals.
• Kyoto Hyatt Hotel for Christmas Brunch: This was an amazing experience.  We all dressed up in our ugly Christmas sweaters and went down to the Kyoto Hyatt for Christmas Brunch, which included amazing carollers as well
• Kiyomizu-Dera: This Buddhist temple founded in 733 AD and rebuilt in 1633 AD was constructed without a single nail! This holy place is located halfway up Mt. Otowa.
• Miyajima Island, Itsukushima: An immensely beautiful and serene island where deer run free and I wanted to explore the whole island by foot, or move in and grow roots. Tomayto tomahto.
• Hiroshima, and the Atomic Bomb Dome: Where we went to the Peace museum and couldn’t deal with our emotions for a while.

 Last Leg in Tokyo

• Ginza: If you thought you have been to a luxury, high end street, than you are mistaken, because Ginza is so large and has so many varieties of luxury stores it's mind boggling. Not to mention the amount of people. It included a Sony museum and a Yamaha concert hall located 7 stories above the street, and a music school on the 10th story above that. Ali was saddened when he found out a pair of drumsticks would cost $40! Sadly, he had to let them go.
• Gotokuji Temple: This buddhist temple is where the legend of the original beckoning cat (maneki neko) comes from, or as my ma loves calling it, the “Graveyard of Kitties”.
• Odaiba: A large island that was built (you read that right) in 1853 for the purpose of defence against naval ships, this seaside neighbourhood is now bustling hub full of shopping and entertainment. Did we mention we took a self driving train to get there?
• Harajuku: Where fashion is hopped up on steroids. This is a great place to people watch and/or shop for the latest in everything
• Hamarikyu Gardens: A peaceful park right in the middle of a commercial district in the downtown core.
• Arcades: Being a child of the 80s, Ali wanted to explore the arcades here. Japanese arcades are nothing like North American ones! For one thing, they're much larger (7 stories on average), and 10 times louder! The games are far more advanced and creative here than anywhere else with everything from music instrument games with real instruments, vintage games dating back to the 80s, 90s, and beyond, smoking, arcade carnies, highly sophisticated photo booths where you and your friends can publish a pro quality magazine complete with special effects, and games that will only ever exist in Japan like testing your strength against a sumo wrestling machine, and games where you have to dance the zombies away with J-pop music. Ali's childhood bucket list item was finally crossed off.

Koh Samui! Sun! Ocean! Koh Tao!

How can you take a vacation from your current 5 months vacation? I guess there is a first for everything.

We have been craving a beach with sun and no rain for a couple months, and boy did we get what we asked for.

Welcome to Koh Samui and Koh Tao, the two islands we selected out of hundreds to visit. Each island offers white sand beaches, azure colored waters, and all kinds of activities. We found that both these islands, despite being geographically similar, couldn't be more different in personality. It's like having two siblings of the same family. One is shy and one outgoing. One polite and one quite cheeky.

Koh Samui

We arrived by plane and saw that we have really just landed on an island by their cutest airport, with a wooden hut in tow.  The very expensive taxi ride for 5 minutes, showed us how cheeky this island was. It was nothing like Chiang Mai, it was an island with attitude. With trucks that drive around the main road with huge billboards but even bigger speakers in the back blasting music and trying to get attention for Muay Thai fight to Sexy wet t-shirt contests.

As we absorbed the new atmosphere we created a routine for the island; breakfast on the beach in our cute little beach huts; sun bathe by the pool; swim in said pool; read; move to the beach; read; swim in the hottest, shallowest ocean; sun bathe on the beach; out for dinner; and REPEAT! Life was hard, as anyone can imagine.

The one huge thing we noticed was we were no longer in our amazingly cheap Chiang Mai, we were on an island in the middle of no where and everything was now expensive. Our dinner budgets skyrocketed, thank god for the tiny thai restaurants we found hidden away like the rarest gems. Which gave us a perfect spot for people watching like every other Australian shirtless guys ironically always searching for shirts.

Only activity we participated in that involved any real effort (remember, the routine) was kayaking. We took out a kayak out into the water and realized quickly kayaks don't move as fast as they do on tv. We kayaked out to the middle island which is covered completely in coral rock. I don’t know if you call it cheating, when you kayak but the water depth is never higher than your waist or sometimes a person would swim by. Still a conundrum. None the less this was a great way to end our stay in the cheeky island of Koh Samui.

Koh Tao

Arriving only on one of the few ferries to the island, we knew this was a whole different sibling of Koh Samui. Getting off the ferry to follow the sign with Anna's name on it, made us feel like royalty. Until our taxi ride was about 2 minutes, and the hotel was a 5 minute walk from the pier. Koh Tao, was something amazing, like a tiny island, with a village and everyone bent out of shape for diving. Dive shops/hotels/huts everywhere you got. Very few paved roads, mostly only small mopeds and people walking everywhere. We knew right away we were in love. The island has a small town feel and a bustling night life with restaurants all over the beach.

The island was largely uninhabited save for a few fisherman. It only became a resort around the 1980's when travellers started showing up in increasing numbers. It's still a diving mecca, but that's slowly changing as older tourists started returning with their families. Many tourists come here mostly from Europe to dive, rock climb, and snorkel. The whole island is 21 square kilometers.

We resumed our said routine up top, but added a few adventurous walks, exploration of the island and a full day trip swimming with the fishes. The snorkeling trip was an amazing decision we made, it was on a long boat, with lots of people. They wizzed us around and dropped us off for a snorkeling heaven, made us forget the awful time we had in Bali trying to achieve the same outcome. It was a full day event, and boating around the whole island was amazing, we even stopped on an even more remote island called Koh Nangyuan, apparently one of the most beautiful islands in the world. They were right, it was the tiniest and the most beautiful island.

As our time is ending, we are really sadden by this, but than we realize its Bangkok time only followed by a whole new introduction to EUROPE! Helllllllo Germany, we can't wait.

~Anna

• St. Peter's Church, 1710,  with tiles from Portugal, stained glass from Italy.
• Metal Structure of Jesus trying to teach his buddy to walk across the water
• Old Dutch Fort made out of lava rock, which was a church back in the day, that stands on top of St. Paul's Hill.
• Statue of St. Francis, with his right hand missing (Due to the fact he died in Malacca and the Vatican requested his right hand to be sent to them to verify it was him….this has to be what CSI was like in the 1700's)
• The King's Well which was built for his wife from China to bathe in
• Vibrant Chinatown with streets like Harmony street, where a Buddhist Temple is next to the Muslim Mosque and a Christian Church.
• Christ Church Melaka, 1753, which was never red to begin with, but the British decided to show off their royalty colours. (Also they painted most of the buildings red, and it is still there to be seen).

• All the crazy over the top malls, that you get lost and spend days in.
• Our fantastic brand new condo, with an amazing pool, free wifi and a café to boot.
• KL Monorail, where the only place where the rain can't touch you, and a girlfriend who knows all the stops
• The constant view of the Stadium Negara, which in two months was never occupied by more than one security guard.
• The feeling of being locals in such a distant land and being able to help others discover KL
• The 10$ movie night out, including tickets, reclining love seats, popcorn and drinks
• The shabby IT Mall with everyone always asking you "YES, I can help you"
• Becoming epic jaywalkers, who deserve only gold medals encrusted in diamonds
• Ali being the tallest man in Malaysia, feeling like everyone are his minions
• Shopping in the Non Halal section and feeling like rebels
• The Terima Kasih song, which will be engrained in us for the rest of our lives
• The catchy election songs, that we know all the words to  (jom kita mengundi)
• The realization that America is not the center of the Earth, but China is
• Daily drug busts and prostitution rings, where are ours?
• All the fun people we met, and how much we learned about Kazakhstan

• The incredibly, impressive and completely consistent daily thunderstorms.
• The lovely prayer call at 5:30 every single morning.
• The 3 schools, with screaming children at 7:30 in the morning.
• The amazing glares that Anna endured
• The fact that shoe size 48 (13 in Canada), is a made up number and doesn’t exist in the world
• Size XL is almost a medium back home
• The suspicious lack of dogs, all around
• The stray cats without tails, like ever, and I mean ever
• The scooters with their own rules and a hunger for murder

 
 

Previously, on the "The Singaporeans" our heroes exploring the great country/city whine half way through they were stricken with sudden sickness brought on by a viscous combination of rain, intense air conditioning, and a lack of warm clothing. This assault resulted in our heroes having to retreat to Kuala Lumpur to lick their wounds and regroup to fight another day. We vowed we would, and that day has come! Singapore was one of our favorite destinations, and a favorite of our readers as well so we were determined to return. This time, no sickness will stop us. Here we go.

Location! Location! Location! That rule has worked in real estate and for McDonald's, and it worked for us as well. The hotel was well chosen, and well placed. We enjoyed the old Chinese Opera House which was now the Santa Grand Hotel. They did have the smallest rooms we have ever been to, but the charm and the colours was all well worth it.

We have to say this is one of the most vibrant Chinatowns we've ever experienced. It's large and the people here are very outgoing, friendly, and helpful (not to mention all the fun characters we met). During the day the weather is way too hot, so the streets are pretty bare. At night is when you want to go out in Chinatown. It really lights up and comes to life. Half the stands aren't even open until the evening. We had our last meal there of "fried baby squid" (the crunchy eyeballs were a bit to get over) and chicken and fish rolls with rice and beer.

What an adventure it was to explore the "Sim Lim Square", which is just another giant IT malls. After getting over the shock of all the stores (computer parts, phone cases, laptop/tablets, repair, games, etc.). Anna had quiet the chuckle about the mall, she said "it's like visiting eBay in person". Since we were here, we decided to fix my phone (it has been out of commission since beginning of our trip). What should of taken 1 hour, took us 3 hours, and 2 trips, after the screen was half falling off, and the missing parts. We weren't the happiest campers that night. But my phone was fixed, and here I was connected again.

We had to catch up on our lost sightseeing time from our last trip, and we did. We explored the "Art Science Museum" of Singapore located next to the Marina Bay Sands. The exhibition was named "The Art Of The Brick" by Nathan Sawaya which is a New York based lawyer who always had a fascination with Lego. He has created some if the most astounding works of Lego Art I've seen. Some of his works look eerily like you're looking at a real life representation of an old video game, especially the ones of people and faces.

Another fun activity we did was attend a circus in town called "Le Noir". They were a European style circus similar to Cirque Du Soleil, but on a much smaller scale and a bit risque and on a very small circular stage! Bring on the sexy half naked men and women!! It was one of the best live performances we've ever been to. They had the funniest clown, sexy assistants, contortionist, trapeze, strongmen, all of it. Definitely a highlight. 

One of the reasons for our return was for me to collect on my birthday gift, which is to drive a Lamborghini and Singapore! Thanks honey! The company is called Ultimate Drive (www.ultimatedrive.com). You can either drive a Lamborghini or Ferrari around town. I got lemon yellow Lamborghini Gaillardo convertible to drive. I had to drive with one of their people in the car, and being its a two seater, Anna couldn't come (sad face here).  We drove around town along what was the Formula 1 circuit when the Grand Prix was here. It's a fun tour with bridges and tunnels to navigate. When driver gave the signal, it was time to floor the gas pedal. That was fun!! Is like being pulled in a slingshot it's so powerful! With the roar of the engine right behind your ears and the wind in your face (since I don't have hair) it was something else. After I got used to it (right hand drive and being a Lamborghini) I started driving like a normally do, which means by the end the passenger usually has to convince me to slow down a little bit (he he he). I got my fill now. The bucket list is now one item shorter.

The last thing that happened isn't one of our finest moments. We had Singapore right where we wanted it and were about to declare victory. We mentioned earlier that I had my phone repaired here and the ordeal it was to fix it, but we the real fun was to come. I was finally happy to have a phone for the first time in about 3 months that worked. I updated it, took photos, installed apps, and was ready to start using it more than the iPad. Than, something happened. We were coming home from Le Noir the night before we left. We took a taxi home and the phone slipped out of my pocket on the backseat. AARRRGGGHHH!!!!!  I just got the darn thing! We tried to contact the taxi company, but they were no help. It turns out that I forgot to setup a password on my phone (duh!). At first Rogers told me they could disable my phone and it would be secure. Than the next day they confirmed all they could restrict was the SIM card so my information was accessible. CRAP! I had a sinking feeling in my stomach for about three days. As I was about to write it off, I get an email from someone asking if I lost my phone. At first I was scared. I responded and tried to find out all I could about the person who emailed me. After a few back and forth emails, it turned out that he was the son of the taxi driver who drove us and was intent on returning the phone to its rightful owners. By wash relieved! The phone is currently in the mail enroute to us in Malaysia as we speak and I am eager to get it back. It just goes to show you can't always assume the worst. If my phone was locked, there was no way this person would've found me. I offered to reimburse the costs of shipping, but they refused referring to the kindness of people and the fact that we are all struggling to do our best in this world and as people we should help one another out. This goes to show the quality of people we met in Singapore.

The various personalities of Singapore communicated to us on this trip much more vocally than our last time around. Singapore is a complicated lady. It takes a while to get her to open up, but when she does, she shows you such variety, generosity, and honest affection with a show of grace that is unique only to Singapore. We would eagerly return.