Life Sucks

This was the scene 1 month ago when I first blogged about the bicycle situation in Pasir Ris. One month later, the bikes are gone. Is it due to the holidays and everybody is away? Well no, there is this big sign put up by the Town Council on the removal of bicycles. Me, I would like to think that my earlier blog post  has something to do with the Town Council's enforcement although I cannot be sure. But of course, sign or no sign, there will be some soul brave enough to take a gamble that the Town Council will not enforce the rule and park their bicycle right under the banner. I hope the bicycle can tow away.

Since the 2 break-in at the SMRT compound and the recent spate of break down, SMRT CEO, Saw Phaik Hwa has been on the receiving end of the stick from the public for her inept handling of  the problems and her lack of empathy for the commuters. Everybody remember this and nobody remember that firstly she is no engineer or transportation expert and is merely a retailer. Secondly, she single-handedly transform the very bland and stale stations into vibrant bustling "Xchanges" and thirdly in the process increased SMRT profits from $56.8m in 2002 to $161m in 2011.  With her vast retail background, I am sure she is more than well suited to solve the problems of commuters. I am very sure her brain must have lighted up and her eyes go $$$$ when she read the experience of the poor commuters who were trapped in the train without light, drink and food!  So I am pretty sure her next move, sorry guys, hate to disappoint you here but she won't be resigning, ...

I had expected the food to be like Thai food but was really surprised that it was more Chinese and Vietnamese than Thai and certainly very palatable to our taste bud. But unfortunately, the food are not so cheap with an average meal being about US$3. Vietnamese "popiah". This seems to be on the menu of practically every restaurant. Cambodia Barbecue. Actually it is a combination of steamboat and barbecue. They use a piece of pork lard to grease the metal portion and small slices of various type of meat are then placed on it to cook. Our this set comes with crocodile meat although we couldn't differentiate which was which. Some other stalls also serve theirs with snake meat!The soup at the side is for the vegetables. At another place, the barbecue steamboat came with these lot of vegetables that looks really like the wild plants in the forest. And they were rather tough and frankly not very suitable for the steamboat.

The situation in Cambodia is much better than Thailand. Here, one can take the tuk tuk or taxi without worries. Most places are safe to walk alone even at night. Only worries might be the land mines:) But there are a still a few scams floating around though. Most blatant is the "Fish Massage" which is everywhere. But instead of using real "spa" fish ie Garra Rufa which is a type of sucker fish, here the Cambodia used another type of fish. The real thing The fish a sort of tilapia or cichlids used by the Cambodian. The problem with these fish is that they do not eat the dead skin like the real spa fish but are simply nibbling away at the human fresh! The fake fisb At least the fish scam cost only US$1 and maybe some loss of skin and fresh. Not a big deal unless you suay suay go and catch some diseases from the water. This young lady was carrying a baby and going around being “friendly” with tourists. We had been pre-warned by our guesth...

Our main purpose of this trip was to run the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon but of course just seeing the temples during the run is definitely not enough and so we made a return visit after the race. We only had half a day so our friendly tuk tuk driver brought us to the main highlights of the immense complex Angkor Wat. This has got to be the most famous of the temple complex in Cambodia. Angkor Thom/Bayon. I find this more interesting than Angkor Wat.  There are a series of temples here - the central temple being Bayon. Climbing up and down the place was all joke and the sidekick who has a fear of height was terrified of climbing all the way up to the top but she did it!

We didn't have much time in Siem Reap but we managed to spend half a day visiting the Floating Village, Kampong Pluk, where the villagers stay in floating houses on the Tonle Sap.  There is even a school and a temple! Children playing in the water. I can't imagine seeing a scene like that in Sg! After the boat ride, we went on a temple hopping spree. First on the list was the Wat Preah Inkosei, which was supposed to predate Angkor but what we saw was a lot of Stupas. Next we walked to Wat Bo, one of the oldest temple in Cambodia. Next up was Wat Dam Nak, a former royal palace These 3 temples had been extensively made over yet retained some of the old structures. Not so, for the next temple, Wat Prom Rath which although the oldest in Siem Reap has bee so extensivelyt madeover, it looks so new! Next: Angkor Wat

We have only a few days to spend in Cambodia yet we took the 6 hours + journey overland from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh just so that we can see the Killing Fields. I know there is something morbid about wanting to look at death but this genocide in Cambodia was huge and something that I think everybody need to see to understand how deviant and cruel human beings can be. The is is entrance to the Killing Fields, officially known as the Choeung Ek Genocidial Center. Part of the place was so beautiful and tranquil that if not for the various signs and pits all over, I can never imagine the horrors that have been committed there. Inside the stupa at the entrance is where all the remains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge are stored. Just one of the many signs in the Centre telling the stories of what behalf the poor Cambodians. From one Killing Fields to a Killing School, we went to the  Genocide Museum or Tuol Sleng Prison. This was a school that was taken over by the K...

I can't believe that we took almost the same time it takes 1 to fly to the USA for us to go to Phnom Penh from Singapore! We had booked the Silkair flight from Singapore to Siem Reap instead of flying in direct to Phnom Penh which would have taken just over 2 hours. But since we were returning to Singapore from Siem Reap and it was much cheaper to have a return ticket from the same airport, we had no choice but to fly in to Siem Reap first. The problem was, while the flight itself direct to Siem Reap also takes about 2 hours, this flight we took has to fly via Da Nang airport, Vietnam with a 40 minutes transit. Naturally, to add to our discomfort, our flight took off late by about 20 minutes from Singapore, took off another 40 minutes late from Da Nang and landed late in Siem Reap. All in, we were delayed by about an hour and a half with the flight itself taking over 7 hours! Nevermind, we were met at the airport by our friendly tuk tuk driver who took us to our hotel in S...