Day 69 (14 August): The Eastern Suburbs

After sleeping in a bit this morning, I went with my aunt and uncle to see Sydney's 'Eastern Suburbs' which are south of the Sydney Harbor and obviously to the East. They also tend to be upper- and middle-class suburbs like the 'Northern Suburbs'; however, they are slightly older as the Harbor Bridge which connects the North to the rest of Sydney wasn't building until the 1920s. Just like in the North many of the Eastern Suburbs are built up on hills with houses that feature superb views out over the harbor.

At the Head of Sydney Harbor where it connects to the ocean we stopped for lunch at an apparently world-famous seafood restaurant called Doyle's now known among Sydneysiders for its substandard food while retaining its amazing views. I had an Entree (which is an appetizer in the US) of Balmain Bug and a Main (which is what we call in the US) of Baramundi fish--since these were both seafood items only available in Australia. The bug is a prehistoric looking shellfish that tastes somewhat like a cross between a prawn and a lobster only chewier than both. From there we checked out 'The Gap' park which is apparently a well known suicide site in Sydney and looks out to the Pacific Ocean. We then went down to Sydney's famous surfing beach, Bondi, and then back through some more of the Eastern Suburbs.

Upon returning to their house, I jumped in a car with James and met a friend of his at a pub before coming home to yet another enourmus meal. This time it was a full-on Australian meal, featuring Australian lamb and for desert Pavlova (which is a uniquely Australian thing.) Once again, Bill opened up his wine cellar which I now got to enter and see his massive collection.

Observations:
1) Bondi Beach seems a lot like Pacific Beach in San Diego. In Sydney it epitimozes the sterotypical Australian Beach scene, just like Pacific Beach does the same for Southern California. They attract similar crowds, etc.
2) Reputation. Bill and Ellen still took me to Doyles despite a terrible review recently in an Australian paper. This just shows the power of reputation and location as the place can serve out decent (but overpriced food) and still be packed based on other factors. I honestly couldn't complain much about the food.
3) Queensland license plates say the 'Sunshine State' on them like Florida license plates in the US. Apparently, in a similar tradition parts of Queensland are also called the 'Deep North' in parallel to the 'Deep South' which makes sense since its closer to the equator.
4) Bars/pubs and hotels. This tends to be a common mix in one building in Australia or at least was the case for both places I've been to. Apparently, it is a common phenomenon in the 'Bush' where there may only be one building for people traveling through to stay and 'entertain' themselves.
5) Speed cameras. All around Sydney, there are cameras that automatically send a ticket and fine to your home if your are speeding. Scary thought in the US, since everyone speeds.

Day 68 (13 August): Winter at the Beach and in the Bush

Stepping off the plane in Sydney, Australia at 5 am, I was greeted by my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bill at the airport as well as a southern hemisphere winter chill since it was in the low 40s. We drove to their house in Castlecrag in Northern Sydney where I took a brief nap before being treated to a champagne brekkie (as they call breakfast in Australia.) We then called my cousin Adrian who actually was in Washington DC with my grandmother and father as he is going to be there for a year, pursuing an LLM Degree at UVA Law School.

My cousin, James and I then went food shopping, for a lunchtime BBQ we would have at their beach house at the extreme Northeasten edge of the city in a very nice place called Palm Beach. After we'd come back with the supplies we took a lesiurely drive up the coast where we BBQed with some amazing ocean views and a selection of excellent Australian wines from Bill's cellar. On the way back to town we drove a different way that included going through the Kuringai National Park which has some classic Australian 'Bush' landscape, but no Kangaroos.

Within a couple of hours of getting back to Castlecrag it was time to strap on the feedbag again where I was force-fed some more excellent food and given even more Australian wine to sample. Since it was a Saturday night, and my cousin James had plans to go out with one of his multiple girlfriends that evening, and my aunt and uncle insited I go out, I called up one of the Australians I'd met earlier during my travels. We met up in a 'dodgy' (an Australian adjective with ambiguous meaning) bar but had a good time nonetheless.

Observations:
1) Australians like to drink. This unfortuantely was a constant theme throughout the day, although I am more impressed with Australian wines than I already was. Apparently there's a lot more to it than cheap Shiraz that makes it into the US. Most of the best don't make it over to home for me.
2) Mothers like to overhost, overfeed, etc. Not that I'm complaining since this has provided a nice break in my trip.
3) Sydney is the world's largest city, but only by land area. We drove for about 45 minutes to reach my relatives Palm Beach house and they already lived in the 'Northern Suburbs' which are well within the city limits.
4) Lack of highways. Despite its size Sydney has almost no highways and when they do they are almost all toll roads. Its pretty amazing how well traffic flows given the lack of highways.
5) Towns with similar names, feels. On the way to Palm Beach we drove by Newport Beach. From the glimpses I got out the window it didn't seem that far off of Southern California's Newport Beach (Orange County) in style, attitude, or culture.
6) Children living at home. This is a very common phenomenon in Australia until kids are in their late 20s. Part of why it happens is because of the high cost of living in Sydney. Another reason is that kids go to 'Uni' within striking distance of home, so there is no need to move out and no tradition of dorms, fraternities, etc. It seems to create a lot of awkwardness though, especially when the children have 'overnight guests.'
7) Politeness of a small town. Despite being in a major city, when we went shopping for the BBQ we had a number of long conversations with neighbors, shoppkeepers, etc. which seems to be a normal phenomenon here.

Southeast Asia (or Malaysia/Singapore) Wrap-up

Both Malaysia and Singapore surprised me, especially since I thought I knew what to expect as I have read a decent bit about both countries and knew more about them than other places I visited. Malaysia surprised me most as I expected it to be somewhat similar to Thailand in that I expected it to be slightly frantic when at least the parts of it that I saw were a lot closer to what Singapore is like. In both I was particularly surprised by how friendly and welcoming everyone was in both countries. I was also very impressed with the food in both. The extent of the Chinese diaspora throughout SE Asia was something that I had not fully appreciated until seeing these countries either.

Another couple of observations:
1) The Proton. This is the local car in Malaysia that get some support from the government in that to protect the local auto industry their are high tariffs on imported cars. I knew about this, but it was cool to see them. Apparently, the Malaysian government is starting to let the ethnic Malays import the cars without the high tariffs, so I'm sure there will be some type of arbitrage that takes place to import foreign cars while circumventing taxes.
2) Shorts. Singapore is the only country in Asia that I've been to where you actually see some of the locals wearing shorts.
3) Singapore-Los Angeles. At times, walking around Singapore I couldn't help but think about how it paralled LA in that there is at least on a surface level a very materialistic culture. A lot of younger Singaporeans also dress like Southern Californians wearing lots of surf brands, etc.

Day 67 (12 August): Lion City

I woke up this morning in Holland Park--which is a neighborhood as I did not sleep on a park bench--(and is the primarily expat area that Laurent lives in) and took a stroll down to the Singapore Botantical Garden where they have some amazing Southeast Asian tropical flowers that even kept my attention. From there I made my way around Singapore's diverse neighborhoods: first to Little India and then down to the Civic Center (where I saw City Hall and the famous Merlion, part-lion/part-fish, statue that is the symbol of the city-state). I ended my day in Chinatown before heading out to the airport for my overnight flight to Sydney.

Observations:
1) Chinatown seems like a strange concept in a city that must be majority Chinese. The place is still very nice, but a little more disorderly than the rest of the city. Calling the district Chinatown almost seems like an excuse for the moderate level of chaos. The same seems to be true for calling Little India, Little India.
2) The more remote suburbs of Singapore look very planned and almost communist. I wonder if this is as a result of heavy government planning.
3) The Ministry of Manpower. This is what they call their 'Labor Ministry' since they think it sounds less communist than calling it Labor. The name sounds ridiculous to me and conjures up images of little people in a big place lifting weights.
4) Food in Singapore is very, very cheap especially since it is the best I've had anywhere in Asia. In fact, it seems like the less you pay the better the meal you get.
5) Service jobs. The Indians in Singapore, like in Malaysia, still occupy the service jobs except for being maids. Fillipinos seem to take on the role of being maids and nannies like in Hong Kong (despite being one of the richest countries in SE Asia prior to WWII.)
6) Johor Baru. The guy next to me on the flight to Australia worked for Hewlett Packard Australia in their logistics office. He confired that Johor Baru is starting to overtake Singapore in its logistics abilities but seemed to think that a number of the companies were undercutting each other and potentially driving each other out of business.
7) Laurent's take on Singapore is that it is 'a better to live than visit' primarily because it has good schools, comfortable apartments, etc but that given the strict laws there's not the same energy you see in some other cities.

Day 66 (11 August): Plastic

I took an early morning flight from Kuching to Johor Baru, Malaysia which is back on the pensulia and just across from Singapore. I proceeded from there through the border formalities and into Singapore.

Arriving in Singapore I dropped my bag at a hotel in Clarke Quay (since I would be coming back to the area in the evening to meet up with Laurent, a former co-worker of my friend Lisa's at the US Embassy in Singapore.) I then took a walk through the Colonial District stopping for some lunch at a Hawker Food stall for some excellent cheap food. From there I went to the famous Raffles Hotel where I stopped at the Long Bar and had a Singapore Sling as this is a traditional stop on any world tour. The hotel also has a net little museum that's worth seeing (including a picture of a guy who shot the lion under the billiards table when Singapore was still a wild place around 100 years ago.) Moving on from the Raffles, I took a walk up Singapore's famous shopping street, Orchard Road, where I perused the scene before heading back to Clarke Quay for my second US Embassy employee happy hour in just over a week.

Observations:
1) Sarawak has a completely independent immigration authority from the rest of Malaysia. I actually got passport stamps coming in and out of it to the rest of Malaysia. According to a local that I spoke to on the way to Singapore this is due to history and that Sarawak has traditionally lagged economically so the intra-country immigration was designed to keep opportunites for true locals.
2) Population boom. According to the same guy, Kuching's population has doubled from 400,000 to 800,000 in the last 4 years. He said that most of the immigration is coming from Western Malaysia and tend to be by the wealthier ethnically Chinese Malaysians there who seek out the more relaxed lifestyle of the city.
3) Johor Baru. The city is trying to compete with Singapore and starting to succeed given its lower costs as a manufacturing center. It also has recently become a larger transportation hub (shipping of containers) than Singapore according to the guy I sat next to on the plane.
4) Several Malaysians I talked to today seemed highly concerned about drugs in Malaysia, particularly in KL and that they were a problem. I saw no evidence of this. In fact when arriving in Malaysia they print on the arrival documents that smuggling drugs in is a capital offense in big block letters.

5) Singapore is so clean that the place almost seems like its made of plastic. This is one of those things that you hear about, but don't really understand until you see. Along with that its also a fairly sterile, quiet, and orderly place. Even the Hawker food stalls are probably cleaner than many US restaurants.
6) There was a Ferrari parked in front of the Raffles. This just seems completely useless given the lack of long streches of open roads in Singapore; I guess the point is to show that you are wasting money by owning one in Singapore though.
7) No jay walking. This is a serious offense in Singapore. Knowing this made me a little nervous at intersections and looking around to see if I could find anyone doing it I couldn't.
8) No soliciting. This also seems to be a big deal. A white guy who didn't look like he was from Singapore came around to a bunch of tables with a note basically begging for money. When the proprietors were notfied he was promtly kicked out with disdainful looks.
9) Singapore shopping actually takes place in malls. I imagined botiques on the famous Orchard Road but instead you find enormus malls most likely due to the heat and tropical weather outside. The malls all have ridiculous names as well. One particularly high end one was called 'Paragon' which I thought was great.