An average Thursday.

Update on the Covid19 situation here in SG. Yesterday we had our highest number of cases to date, 47, putting Singapore at 313 cases. Of the 47, 33 of them were picked up at the airport temperature scanner and were residents trying to get home from Europe or the US. Now all entries into Singapore are under a mandatory 14 day quarantine. Since this was just implemented, it’s a little worrying to think there are people who entered prior to the mandatory quarantine that could be walking around. But there is a LOT of pressure socially and from the government to self quarantine so hopefully that’s happening.

The kids school had their first parent test positive yesterday. We all knew this would happen eventually. All we know is the students were asymptomatic and were in the middle school. If they were in your child’s class, they said you would be contacted separately. We didn’t receive any contact, so assuming they were not in Ella’s classes. Our kids are off school today and tomorrow anyway for conferences. A few of the other international schools closed early this week, ahead of their spring breaks. There’s a fair amount of parent pressure for our school to close. So far the school has been sticking with the Ministry of Health guidelines and they are still keeping schools open. We will see what Monday brings.

This morning we had our virtual parent-teacher-child conferences for Liam and Ella. The overall take away from them are they are doing great and have transitioned beautifully into the new school. It was nice to be able to speak with Ella’s teachers and hear how they think she’s doing. It was a big leap for her. Not just moving countries, but also moving to a different academic structure. We wanted her teachers to know we are also looking for any gaps of knowledge she may have. So far if there are any, she seems to have overcome them! So proud of her! Liam too. Not only is he rocking the academics, but his teacher said he has been integral in pulling a student who used to not have anyone to play with at recess into the group. That made my heart happy to hear. She also said he makes her happy to come to work each day. Way to go buddy!!!

This afternoon we walked to the botanic gardens To get some exercise. We are starting to try to limit our public space time a little. Trying not to overreact yet, but just be conscious.

Not sure how well you can see, but there are 2 giant water monitors in the mangroves. very cool.

Might have stopped for an ice cream float…. I had an avocado milk. Yum.

Yesterday I went for a walk with the AWA women at Fort Canning. Fort Canning was originally a Malaysian palace. Then when the British colonized, it was the site if their fort. I took the bus there as I thought it was further away. But I ended up walking home as it was so close. I will definitely take the kids back. Not only beautiful but lots of interesting history.

So many beautiful trees. Interestingly, this was also the original site of the botanic gardens as both Raffles and Farquhar (original British colonizers) were botanists!

One of the remaining towers of the fort. We went up to the top!

This is looking down the tiny staircases we went up!

The battle box museum. This is a bunker from World War II. We didn’t go in, but I will when I bring the kids back. I believe it was the last British position before they surrendered to the Japanese.

This is the fort canning center. It was part of the British military buildings. It’s now part of the national park system. Rumor has it there are outdoor movies on the lawn sometimes. I’ll have to lookout for that!

A British cemetery that’s been preserved.

The site where Raffles house was located. Note how few people are in my pictures. This isn’t hard to do, there are fewer and fewer people around each day. All the tourists have gone because of the quarantines. The Malaysian boarder is closed and people are starting to stay home more and more. There is no formal stay at home notice yet. If the universal quarantine works, maybe we can avoid one. Here’s to hoping.

This was the sunrise this morning. In this time of uncertainty, trying to appreciate the small things. Stay well everyone!

A trial run…

I hope everyone in the US is hanging in there at home. We’re having a bit of a trial run here. Yesterday, the government tightened up the travel restrictions. Included on the list was Malaysia (remember Legoland?!?). The wording was unclear if it is 14 days if entering the country from last night from Malaysia or retroactive over the past 14 days (which puts us at day 8). Ryan’s HR department has a call into MOH for clarification, but since Malaysia is shutting down their borders as of midnight tonight, there’s a bit of a freak out happening here today (cue toilet paper buying). Hopefully we will have clarification sometime today. We think we are ok as we were not sent an official stay at home notice (they check up on you) but the repercussions here are serious so we would rather err on the side of staying home. They only have one more day of school this week anyway. Thursday and Friday are parent-teacher-child conferences which have all been moved online. Not sure what the long-term outlook is for school yet. The other American school (SAS) is doing a “dry run” on their online learning program this Thursday and Friday. We’ll see how it all plays out… so far today we’ve read, done a little school work, yoga and I made Irish soda bread. I used my Disney fast pass booking skills to get an amazon prime now order in a full system (refresh, refresh, refresh) so St patty’s day celebration with bangers and mash is on!

Irish Soda bread. I’m suspect as I really love my bread maker recipe in the US but alas, no bread maker here…

Yesterday, before the freak out, I went for a walk through the Bukit hills with the AWA group. So pretty and I saw some cool wildlife!

I’m terrible at selfies… in front of a quarry.

A Kaluga, which is a flying lemur. They’re difficult to see as they blend in with the trees. We were lucky enough to see 2 of them!

I love going on these walks. It’s nice to meet up and chat with a lovely group of women and it’s also great to explore new areas of the city that I can take the family back to. Bukit Timah nature reserve is definitely on the list! Singapore did a fantastic job of keeping enough park space as they developed the city. The parks have great amenities too. Lots of covered buildings were people do yoga and tai chi, outdoor exercise equipment and yesterday I even saw a reflexology walk. I’m going to have to go back and use that one!

Working backward… on Sunday we had a too short visit from my college friend, Kristen and her kids as they make their way back to the US from East Timor. She timed it perfectly. I think if she had been a day later, we would not have been able to see her. Our kids got to swim together, take a walk by the river and have dinner before they headed back to their hotel for an early flight. So bittersweet when they left…

While walking by the river, we finally saw the river otters! They were BIG! And kinda gross as they were pooping and peeing everywhere to mark their territory. Eww.

Back to Saturday… I dragged the family to east coast park to ride bikes since I had enjoyed my ride on Tuesday so much.

Found the Opti’s! Not sure how excited the kids were about this discovery…

So many kite surfers and wind surfers! We might have to take up a new sport! Also, under the flight path for Changi airport. Planes were still coming and going regularly. we also had an ice cream/beer at the wake boarding park. Somehow I didn’t take any pics. It was awesome and I totally want to do it. On a weekday, as early as they open 😉

Right before we left the park, we saw a group training birds. Big birds like parrots. It was so cool to watch!

Stay well my friends!!! 💕💕💕

Friday the 13th

It really feels like a Friday the 13th this time. First off, my condolences to all on the school closures. While it is for the best, having a never ending spring break is daunting to say the least.

Last night the Singaporean prime minister addressed the nation. He advised calm but to be prepared for further restrictions. He was measured and comforting. He also delivered the speech 3 times, in English, Chinese and Malay. He continued the mantra that we are all in this together. It was comforting. (https://www.gov.sg/article/pm-lee-hsien-loong-on-the-covid-19-situation-in-singapore-12-mar). In the last 24 hours, Singapore’s added some additional travel restrictions (mandatory quarantines for travelers from Europe) and some “suggested” quarantines for other Asian countries (including Malaysia, glad we’re not going to legoland this weekend!). US isn’t on the list yet. Ryan’s still going into the office, but they are suggesting increased social distancing. We’ll see how long school continues for us. Luckily they have all the pieces in place for distance learning and since I’ve had almost 2 months to marinate on it, hopefully I’m ready. Looks like all travel for the foreseeable future is tabled.

The good news is there’s tons to do outdoors here. On Thursday, I met up with a group of women to do the MacRitchie reservoir loop, including the treetop walk. 15k later… it was great to be outdoors, chat with some interesting and nice women and get some exercise. Saw a bunch of monkeys and monitors, but luckily no snakes. The excitement for the day was way back on the loop, there were about 10ish police officers that were routing us around a certain area. there were 2 tarps, one big and one small. I was hoping it was a training exercise, but we later read it was a death of “unnatural” causes. Guessing a suicide since it was next to a tower. So sad.

Part of the reservoir. The water was amazingly clear.

Thursday I also had to sign up online for Liam and Ella’s conferences. I’m happy to report it’s the same annoyance it is in Fairfield. After many server crashes, I at least got the same day. Liam in the am and Ella 11-12 (10 minutes per class). They are parent-teacher-child conferences here. We had Avery’s this week on Wednesday and I love having the kid included. We’ll see how it goes with the bigger kids.

Today I went to the kids school to pay for Ella’s music lesson (a bummer, their string groups are free, but lessons you have to pay for)…this brings up an interesting conundrum about Singapore. It’s like opposite land from the US. Here if something’s run by the government, it runs like a top. Private industry, you never know… take the kids school. Some things, like lunch, I can pay for online using a credit card. Other things, you have to pay directly from a bank account. So far, we haven’t opened a local bank account (we actually did just give in and open one, hiring our helper was the breaking point for this) so to pay, we either need to do a bank transfer which takes a few days or physically go to the school and pay by credit card. This is true for many things, not just at the school. For some reason online payments with credit cards are difficult here and they tend to use mostly banking cards. Strange but annoying. That and figuring out how to get a “passion” card are conundrums for me. I think a passion card is a discount card (for groceries, etc). They always ask me for it at the store and make a strange noise when I say I don’t have one. Rumor has it I have to go to my community center to get one. Have to figure out where that is first..

Onto the weekend. We’re not social distancing well as Liam’s having a sleepover. If we survive that, hopefully I’ll torture the family with some kind of outdoor activity tomorrow. On Sunday, I’m anxiously awaiting a visit from my college friend, Kristen as she and her family make their way from their home in East Timor back to the US for good. Luckily they’re not connecting through Europe! I haven’t seen her in a couple of years so I’m excited to spend some time with her and her family!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some condo art. In Singapore, they feel a good condo complex has to have some kind of art. Our complex has very pedestrian “people at play” sculptures. A lot of the others are modern art. here’s a few I’ve snapped in my travels.

Also water features are important, I’ll have to get some pics of good ones. Have a great and healthy weekend!!!

Some Wednesday thoughts.

It feels strange to watch the US going through the virus paranoia from half a world away. Mostly it’s heartbreaking to watch what looks like a country unprepared from top to bottom. What felt harsh in the beginning here in Singapore now feels like a relief. We have had “social distancing” measures implemented for almost 2 months now. Our kids (or us) have not had any sports games, assemblies, or group activities larger than 40 people in that time. The kids teachers aren’t allowed to touch the kids (both Avery and Mrs Sapna are saddened by this rule). It seems only Americans still shake hands… But despite all that, the government has made a concerted effort to keep the economy functioning here. School is still in session and work still continues. Base line life is still normal. Grocery stores are fully stocked (including toilet paper). How do they do it? People follow the rules here. Yes, there are strict repercussions for people who violate orders here (expulsion from the country, fines and imprisonment). Beyond that though, there is communication. At any time I can log onto the ministry of health website and see exactly how many cases Singapore has. I can see where they live and what “cluster” they are a part of. We currently have no cases that are considered “community spread” or that are untraceable. The government here goes to Herculean lengths to trace every case. We had one school have a case (thankfully not ours). They closed for a long weekend, disinfected and reopened. To me what’s most important is I can also see exactly what I should do if I am concerned I have Covid 19 (you plug in your address and they tell you exactly what clinic to go to, I tried it out, and it gave me 35 options within 2km). That alone is heartening. Luckily we haven’t had to try that out, and hopefully we never will. This communication, led from the top, is what gives a feeling of safety. Sadly, the top in the US is such a mess, I don’t see how this could be possible. How can a government so at war with itself come together in our time of need? I guess prayers are all that’s left.

Singapore’s info:

https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19

Contrasted with the US:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

On a happier note, if I can give any advice, if your spring break plans get canceled, make the best of it and enjoy things closer to home. Beach? Safe! Hiking? Awesome! There really are a lot of things to do if you think about it.

What’s happening here? Regular life. I met up with a group of women yesterday for a bike ride on the paths in the east coast park. It was so fun and easy to rent bikes! I will definitely take the kids back soon!

Our bike riding crew! A lot of the ladies had cool folding bikes I was a little jealous of..

This morning we had Avery’s parent-teacher-child conference. What a lovely format! We all spoke together about her strengths and what she wants to work on moving forward. We continue to love Mrs Sapna and are so proud of Avery. This move has been very hard for her, but she’s working very hard and we couldn’t be more proud!

To leave on a “funny” note, I’ll discuss squat toilets in more detail. As an American, we sometimes forget there’s a larger world out there that doesn’t live as we do. For many people sanitation is not something to be taken for granted (if you are quarantined, can I recommend the Netflix show, “inside bill’s brain”? It’s about Bill Gates, but also about his foundation and they explain the sanitation issues better than I would). Anyway, for millions of people, they only have access to pit latrines or squat toilets. When they travel to more “first world” locations it’s possible for them to not know how to use a “regular” toilet. Hence, why we see signs like this many places:

Yesterday at the hawker, I took some pics to demonstrate.

If you see a sign on the door like this, walk away, this one is not for you!

But if you miss the sign, this is the infamous squat toilet. Now if you don’t wait to queue for the regular toilet, by all means, squat! But for the rest of us, we’ll wait for the regular toilet..

As I said before, to date only Avery’s squatted. Another new thing for us in Asia is paying to go to the bathroom. We’ve not encountered this in Singapore, but in langkawi we did multiple times. You have to go? 1.50 ringitt. Want toilet paper? Another ringitt. After our mangrove tour, Avery had to pee, so we paid her 1.50 and off she went (not sure if we paid for toilet paper, she probably dripped dry). She came back out and casually informed us, she couldn’t find the regular potty so she used the squat. She didn’t seem wet or any worse for the wear. All those camping trips coming in handy now! Bad parenting on my part not going into the bathroom with her, but I didn’t have to go and it was 1.50!

That’s all I have for today. Keep washing those hands and stay healthy!!! 💕💕💕

Everything is awesome!?!?

When the world is going mad, what do you do? Head to Legoland!

Our original plan for this weekend was to go to Bangkok. About a week ago things started looking less stable. Since we hadn’t bought our flights yet. We decided a big city wasn’t the right move right now. Then early in the week, Thailand imposed a 14 day quarantine on an expanded list of countries, including Singapore. No point traveling to sit in the hotel room. A few days later, they partially walked it back and said if you were a tourist you didn’t need to quarantine, but that was pretty confusing to us. We also began to worry Singapore might expand their quarantine list. Too many unknowns for us. As we were all pretty bummed about not going. After a few brainstorms, we decided to head just over the bridge to Malaysia and Legoland.

We went all in. We were in an “adventure” themed room.

We arrived on Saturday morning, from Singapore, with a little traffic at the border, it took us about an hour and forty five minutes to get there (without traffic it would be about an hour). We traveled by car with a driver. Still not ready to drive ourselves on the other side of the road. Since everything was basically empty, they let us check in immediately. At 10am! the kids were in heaven with all you can build blocks and a treasure hunt in our room!

The view from our room on the 6th floor.

First we ran into this LEGO elephant. Amazing.

Then we checked out “mini land”. Since this park is in Malaysia, most of the displays were buildings from Malaysia. Above is the petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur.

They had a Singapore display too, complete with a Merlion that would spit water at you when you pushed a button. That was all day fun for Liam and Avery.

LEGO Taj Mahal. Hope to get to the real one…

LEGO Angkor wat. We have a trip tentatively scheduled for may. Will we make it?

Then we headed to ninjago land. Ran into Kai on the way!

Took a ride on the falls ride in adventure land. Got soaked!

Built some cars and raced them. This was one if their favorite things that they did. We had to go back on Sunday to build again! predictably, Avery left in tears both times because “she wasn’t done!!”

Went on a “drop ride”. Little did Ryan know, you had to pull yourself to the top. Hmmm.

Back to the hotel for lunch and to change for the water park.

Ready to take on the water park! Not too many pics as we were too busy riding the slides. Both parks were fantastic from a ride perspective, Avery could ride everything but it was exciting enough for Liam and Ella. But, Ella was probably on the upper limit for who the park is fun for…

Ninjago was playing in the wave pool. If it hadn’t started to thunder and lightning (which they did NOT call the people out of the pool. Yikes!) they would have stayed in there all day. It was about 3:30 when it started to pour. Luckily we had already done all the slides. We headed back to the hotel to change.

Because I’m crazy and can’t let us rest, we headed to the sea life museum. This was a great, 45 minute experience. Would we have bothered if the weather had been nice? Probably not, but it was the perfect way to kill a rainy hour.

They all loved designing fish and setting them free to swim on the big screen. They have a similar program at the Norwalk aquarium. But it’s much more fun when there’s no one else waiting for a turn…

We then checked out a mall that was attached to Legoland. Found a grocery store with yummy ice cream! Groceries were MUCH cheaper in Malaysia. Tempted to stock up… the exchange rate is VERY in our favor. 1 ringitt is 25 cents USA. Another reason we love Malaysia.

We headed back to the hotel and met up with Liam’s friend, Faisal’s family who were also at the park for the weekend, celebrating his sisters birthday. Liam and Avery had a ton of fun building endless LEGO creations with their friends and we all ate dinner together. It was a great night!

The next morning, since the park didn’t open until 10, we took it slow. Avery loved playing with the legos in our room and looking out at the park. It was really very cute. The room was also great as it was 2 rooms, one with a king sized bed, the other with a bunk with a trundle. It was so nice to have a room designed for a “big” family. Asia is only really set up for the 1 child family….

We had our breakfast and met “the chef”. Asian hotels rock the buffet breakfast. You can get any food type you want. Asian, western, Indian… so. Much. Food.

Built one more tower with their friends. Then we hit the park to finish off the rides we missed the day before. Faisal’s family headed to the water park as they missed that the day before.

We were literally the only people in the kingdoms section. It was a completely surreal experience. We rode the dragon roller coaster twice in a row and could have kept going. I’m sure LEGO is in a conundrum about it. They have to be losing money. There are more employees in the park than patrons. But they are also a large employer in the area. So do they close to save money and continue the economic devastation this virus is having? Or lose money and keep employees. They have restricted their hours. They are only open 10am-6pm. My guess is eventually if things don’t return to normal they will have to close. That will be so sad…

Driving school. Ella was a model student, obeyed all traffic laws. Avery, obeyed most. Liam, was a hot mess. Luckily we have a few more years until he turns 16…. the video was captured after he tried to do a u-turn to catch Avery. Fail.

LEGO boating is difficult. Liam sat this one out after his driving school ordeal…

Ella and I took a ride in the observatory which was a nice, air conditioned break.

We finished off the day with a little more car building (they really loved it). Bought some “prizes” in the store. Again, exchange rate in our favor. 3 LEGO sets, 3 mini figures and a bonus set abs mini figure. $128 US. Nice. Finished up with lunch at a KFC 🤢in the mall. Good news is it was only 46 ringitt. $11 us for a family of 5… again, I love Malaysia.

We’re home now after a quick ride across the border. Hopefully we don’t start a new Covid cluster here caught at Legoland Malaysia… All travel is so up in the air right now. We haven’t booked anything yet for spring break. Now that the virus is spreading worldwide it’s hard to know what next week will look like, let alone a month from now! It’s funny how things have changed. We now are worried for our family and friends in the US. It doesn’t seem possible for containment to work there the same way it does here. It’s interesting, some things in our life here are restricted because of the virus, but for the most part, daily life continues. Ryan goes to work and and kids to school. We get our temperature taken and wash our hands a million times per day. I hope the US can get it figured out too so that our family and friends can feel as we do. Concerned but still living our life. Things might change here too. We had an uptick in cases over the weekend. A new cluster developed and it looks to be a big one. The government is cautioning we should plan for a second wave. In the meantime, we’ll all just keep washing our hands…

I’ll leave you with this little ear worm. every time we took the elevator…

Now’s the time!!!

I was thinking this weekend as we traveled around the city, enjoying ourselves in not crowded places (that are typically packed) that if you want to come visit us, now’s the time! (Relatively) cheap flights, everything’s open and the weathers the same everyday! Spring break anyone?!?

Actually all kidding aside, our awesome friends and family are quickly booking our summer up with visits. We can’t wait to see them and show off our temporary home.

This week we interviewed helpers. What a strange process that is. The tale is best told over a drink but our experience so far is agency=bad doing it yourself=good. We’ve made an offer to a lovely woman named Janeth who is from the Philippines. She currently works for an Irish couple who gave her rave reviews with the only criticism being, she might be too “frank” with her opinions. Being American, we’ve learned already that as a nationality, that is a trait we already posses (that drives people crazy sometimes). So we hope it’s a perfect fit. She’s also very religious, so maybe some of her catholic ways will rub off on our heathen children? Her contract with her existing employer is until may 1st, but we’ve agreed to transition April 13th. So far, so good. I’d be lying to say I wasn’t nervous to have someone live with us, but I’m also excited to relinquish the never ending laundry in the very small machine…

On Saturday we ate lunch at the Newton Hawker. Ella has a great video that I’ll be posting soon. Just need to figure out how to upload something that big….

The videographer herself… I’ll leave it to her to explain what the mess in front of her is.

Saturday afternoon, Liam went on a play date, Ryan napped and Ella teched out, so I took Avery to the pool. She finally found a friend her age (and an 8 year old sister). They only played for a short while but hopefully we run into them again soon!

That night, Ryan and I actually went out! A large group of women from the AWA were going to a brewery in Changi village. One of them, I remembered had a daughter who is a senior in high school, so we asked her to babysit. Score! We also were invited to their house before. They live in a beautiful shophouse on emerald hill. Emerald hill is a historic street off orchard (the biggest shopping district in Singapore). It is lined with shophouses that have been converted into restaurants, stores and homes. Ingrid’s home was stunning. I don’t have any pictures because I didn’t want to be creepy. Inside, it was 4 stories high, all wood. I really can’t describe it, other than to say it was just lovely and so different from our uber modern condo. We then took a party bus with 5 other couples up to Changi village. We had a fantastic time, met some interesting people and danced to a band playing music from the 60’s to the present day. We also had some good beer. It was an interesting concept. You buy a pre-paid card then “tap” the card at the beer tap you want and you pay per volume for the beer. Our full pours didn’t lend its self to bring a cheap night out, but it was worth it!

Sunday morning, Ryan and I played tennis together at the condo. He hasn’t played since he was a kid, but that didn’t stop him from being much better than me 🤦🏼‍♀️. Luckily he’s very patient and we had a good time. Hopefully it will help me improve my game as I am not very confident serving and with match play.

We then debated what to do and ended up reading down to gardens by the bay. This is typically PACKED with tourists. We went in both of the bio domes and played in the children’s garden with very few people. Both awesome and eerie.

An art installation. They glow to music at night.

Inside the cloud dome. It’s supposed to represent a tropical, mountainous habitat. Of course the kids complained they were cold.

We interrupt this blog to show you the correct way to use a toilet. This is a real thing here. Look up a “squat toilet” and you will understand why. These signs are everywhere and there are sometimes squat toilets here in Singapore (but always regular too). Of note, only Avery so far has used a squat toilet. More in that when I finally finish the langkawi post…

On to the flower dome! There are some BIG trees in here!

Avery’s decided to act ridiculous in all picture. Sigh.

We finished the night with dinner by the pool at the American Club. A pretty solid weekend.

The only sad thing is we decided not to go to Bangkok next weekend 😢 we’ve been trying to continue on with our plans despite the virus, but traveling to a city made us concerned. We’re not particularly concerned with catching the virus (though we probably should be since Liam touched all the straps on the MRT yesterday and Avery chews her MRT card 😬). The larger concerns are the potential downstream implications, if after our return, Thailand has a dramatic increase in cases (like what happened in South Korea and Japan). we could then end up in a quarantine which would be difficult for Ryan with work and the kids with school. For the immediate future we will probably try to pick smaller, “safer” travel locations. Instead, we are probably going to go to an island in Indonesia you reach by ferry and boat from Singapore. For spring break, we had wanted to go to Vietnam but will probably shift to Australia. Just trying to decided, reef or Tasmania… our life is difficult.

In the meantime, all is well in Singapore. We pray the rest of the world can say the same and we hope the US figures out quickly how they are going to handle the virus situation. The world is depending on it.

Buddha temples and helpers

It’s been over a week since we came home from Langkawi and I still haven’t finished my posts! Oh well, I’ll get there…

Life’s gone on… while everyone in Singapore is still very vigilant about Covid-19, the number of new cases has leveled off and half of the cases have recovered and are released. It feels like Singapore has it under control for the moment. How in-depth they research each case is mind blowing.

This is an example of how they trace each person. Anyone they were in contact with is contacted. They look into grab records and trace your steps. This is where Singapore has a certain element of “big brother is watching”. I don’t think this level of granularity would ever be possible in the US without a million lawsuits…

The bigger concern are countries that are reporting none or very few cases (Indonesia, we’re looking at you!). We’re not sure what to think about travel. We are planning to go to Bangkok in a week and a half but we will have to see. Luckily nothing’s booked that can’t be changed. spring break is also still up in the air. Originally we were wanting to go to northern Vietnam but we may table that and head south. The good news is there are lots of travel deals to be had out there! We aren’t particularly concerned about actually catching the virus (though we do wash our hands a lot!) but more the disruption that would occur if one of the countries we were to visit was put on the quarantine list. All five of us stuck in the condo for 2 weeks doesn’t sound like the best plan to me.

Over the weekend, the kids got some play dates in, we furniture shopped (new bookcase with pretty teak shelves, yay!) and then on Sunday Ryan got his first round of golf in while the kids and I went down to Chinatown. As expected, it was empty. While the kids really just wanted to shop, I made them at least look at a few other things. There are a number of interesting temples in Chinatown. One is the Buddha tooth relic temple. Basically bits and pieces of “Buddha” are strewn about Asia in temples. Here in Singapore. We have a tooth. Who knows the validity of this, but the temple is super cool. There are a thousand little golden Buddha’s inside and Buddha’s in different “phases”. In the above picture, the kids are standing in front of the future Buddha. We also saw our “personal” Buddha’s for the year we were born.

This is the one for the year of the snake, Avery and I share this one. We made a bow to it.

Unfortunately, due to the virus screening (in all public places in Singapore you have to have a temperature check. I don’t even really notice them anymore. At the temple we also had to write down our name and contact info) we couldn’t go up to the actually tooth room on the 4th floor. It was also very hot as they were not using the air con to try to improve ventilation. Needless to say, that made for some whiny small visitors. I guess we’ll have to come back…

While we walked around Chinatown, Ryan played his first round of golf with his co-worked Jim at marina bay. He reported it was a fun and sweaty round. He didn’t play the best since he hasn’t even picked up his clubs since October, but was happy to be back out. The only downside was the cost, he’s going to have to find a cheaper location! He might be ferry bound in the future to Batam or Bintan

We’ve also officially joined the American club. Our membership is still being finalized but I’m playing tennis on Friday’s (sadly, it was rained out last week). Ryan and I had dinner at the bar on Saturday while Ella babysat, which was nice. She even got both Liam and Avery to sleep!

As good of a job as Ella did babysitting, we’ve also hit the wall and need to figure out child care as well as other household “annoyances”. Basically we’ve come to the conclusion every other expat reaches. We need a helper. A “helper” is a live in domestic worker. There are many ways to hire someone. I had hoped to find one from another expat family who is leaving, but unless we want to wait, no luck there. I went to an agency this week and interviewed 5 lovely women (the “agency” was a surreal experience. We had hoped that going through an agency would provide a level of security for ourselves and the worker, but I’m not sure that’s true..) we are only considering “transfers” which are domestic workers already working in Singapore and we are more inclined to hire a Filipino worker as other nationalities have food constraints. I also like Filipino food. I have 2 coming back to the condo. Hopefully one of them works out. It will be very strange to have someone living with us. I wasn’t very keen on it and I’m still very nervous. I also worry our living space is too small for them, though I’ve been assured it is not. But I’m also excited to give up cleaning, laundry and cooking. I’ve felt very tied to the condo since moving here between the never ending laundry, grocery shopping and deliveries. And the truth is, I don’t really know how to cook with local ingredients and I welcome someone who can do that for us. Right now finding the right person and ironing out all the details is a bit confusing. But it will come together and hopefully make living here a more enjoyable experience for me. I cannot wait to be able to go out at night for more than 2 hours!

A goodbye from yoda statue from one of my AWA walks this week. I also began to learn Majong. More on that to come.

Guest post by Liam

I went to the wet market today to buy fruit. I came home with a dragon fruit. The kids have been wary of it because I made the mistake of buying one before we moved to try. But it wasn’t ripe. At the wet market, they ask when you want to eat it and pick it out accordingly. For reference. It’s a little soft to the touch. They come in purple or white (but look similar on the outside). The vendor at the fruit stall told me the purple is sweeter. It’s also much messier. Might get white next time.

He took 2 or 3 more bites after the video. It’s not super sweet. I think it’s kind of refreshing. Luckily I like it as I think it’s my breakfast in the morning.

Boating with Captain Eva on the Damai Indah

Full disclosure, I think this was the favorite thing we did in Langkawi. When I was looking for activities, I knew we wanted to do something on a boat, seeing the other islands. I happened upon Captain Eva’s website via another blog. What luck!

First off, it was a little challenge to get to this excursion. Many of the tours provide transportation, but this one did not. Our hotel concierge was concerned about “traffic” in the main city of Kuah and advised us to leave early. Apparently there was a cycling tour on the island. We got a taxi and away we went to the other side of the island. Langkawi is a little bit of a sailing paradise. It’s windy, but protected. There are 2 yacht clubs on the island. We were to meet our boat at the Royal Langkawi Yacht club, where our captain had her own pool bar!

We met with Captain Eva and got ready for our cruise. Avery took a quick swim in the pool. We come to find out, we’re the only ones on the cruise that night. Yay for us! Captain Eva is fascinating. She’s German and left Germany at the age of 38 to sail around the world. She came to Langkawi for 2 weeks and has been here ever since. She’s actually trying to sell her business if anyone’s interested…

Checking out “our boat” as Captain Eva called it. It was us, Captain Eva and here 2 crew (who I sadly can’t remember their names. They were so lovely!)

The boat had 3 levels. Inside was a full kitchen, bathroom and berths that were used by the staff. The main level that had beds to lay on, a full bar, a GIANT tiller and a third level with a sun deck. the girls are on the top here.

As we cruised out (sadly no sails), the kids enjoyed all the lounging and the all you could drink soda. The Damai Indah was originally an Indonesian cargo vessel that was retrofit to be a charter boat. It oozed charm and was beautifully maintained. Her name means “Peace and Beauty”.

Finally we made it to our cruising destination on the leeward side of an island that means cucumber in Malay. There was a open part of the top deck that we weren’t allowed on during the cruise out. Soon enough we learned what it was for. Jumping! We all jumped off about a million times, like little kids. Looking back, I wish we had jumped more and longer. The water was beautiful and warm. We thought Avery would be scared (she did ask to wear a life jacket) as it was pretty high, but nope, she jumped right off!

Ella and Liam also jumped off the bow. They decided it was too much work and more fun to just jump from the top.

We then took the small RIB boat to check out a cave on the island.

You can see the cave we went to just past Ella on the right. The entrance was small, we just fit. But inside went up to the top of the island and was filled with stalactites and bats!

The approach

Inside the cave

We then took a motor around the island

We re-boarded and lounged around before dinner.

Captain Eva made us a feast! Red snapper, prawns , chicken and her famous corn (she told us everyone loves her corn and she was right! Liam licked the plate)

After dinner was served, Captain Eva took the RIB back to her pool bar as she “ had some business to attend to”. See you later!

With full bellies we watched a beautiful sunset

The langkawi eagle statue from the water

We came back to the pool bar where Captain Eva was “attending to her business”. She invited us to stay for a drink (which would have been amazing and fun) but we had tired little monkeys and a 45 minute grab ride. Sadly we headed back to the hotel.

Sometimes you do things you know you will remember always. For me, this was one of those things.

Lovely Langkawi

Our first weekend getaway has come and gone. When we agreed to the move to Singapore, a big motivation for us was the travel that we would be able to do from here. Our goal is to try to travel somewhere once a month. For months, I’ve been enjoying researching where to go and realizing that there are actually too many amazing places to see and too little time. I picked langkawi because it was easy to get to (only a 1:20 flight), looked beautiful and fun. It was all of those things and more!

Our first opportunity was valentine’s weekend. The kids had a half day of school on Friday, so we decided to pull them for the day. With the paranoia about the virus, we were a bit worried about taking the trip and did discuss cancelling. I’m so glad we didn’t!

Our flight was 8:45am on Friday morning. We left the condo at 6:15 with our Purell and face masks. We were through security and eating breakfast by 7:15. Amazing to be so close to the airport and to live near such an efficient airport! Avery and Liam quickly declared they hated the face masks and they’d rather get the virus. So much for masking up! Ryan, Ella and I did wear them on the way to Langkawi. None of us wore them home on Sunday night…

Our flight was delayed for about 30 minutes, but nothing too serious.

Airport in Langkawi. The kids loved getting off right on the tarmac.

Langkawi is the northernmost part of Malaysia. It’s known as the “jewel of Kedah” for its beauty. It’s actually an archipelago of 99 islands of which only 3 are inhabited (we think all are inhabited by monkeys!). Langkawi means island of the reddish brown eagle. It is known for its eagles, beautiful topography and lush rainforest.

After a 20 minute car ride, we were at our resort, the Berjaya. There are a lot of resorts on the island and it was difficult to choose. Traveling as a family of 5 is a challenge. We didn’t think we were ready to try an air b&b yet (and were glad we didn’t on langkawi) but a lot of the hotels and resorts don’t have rooms that accommodate us (were also not ready to try separate rooms they aren’t attached) So when I was looking, the Berjaya had a “family” room (which was 2 rooms attached, one with a king bed, one with 2 twins). They “allowed” us to violate the 4 people rule for this room. I also liked the location. Close to the cable car and set on a beach and in the rainforest. The resort itself was a little “meh”. It’s an extremely large resort (you have to take shuttle buses to get back and forth to your chalets). The size means it’s also a little “tired”. But, the beach and pool were lovely, the food was good and wildlife wonderful so despite that, overall our experienced was positive. I’d also add, we are a little jaded. We’ve stayed in some lovely hotels over the years and live in a beautiful resort like condo in Singapore. We’re spoiled and are ruining our children.

Our room was the two balconies on the bottom.

Finding starfish (Ella was the only one who could spot them on the sand)

The resort is set between a beach and the Machinchang geopark rainforest.

Friday we spent the day enjoying the resort, The pool and the beach. The kids loved both equally and Ryan and I really enjoyed the swim up pool bar with cheap drinks! Beers here cost the same as in Singapore. 15 but instead of S$ it’s Ringitts at a 3:1 (4:1 to the US $). We love that exchange rate!

Being in the rainforest, there were so. Many. Monkeys. There were signs EVERYWHERE at the resort not to feed them. But monkeys are smart. They watch. As soon as food or a bag is unattended, they grab it. This one is a dusky leaf monkey eating a piece of pizza. This is about as close as you can get to them. They are wild. Ryan tried to take a portrait of one and got hissed at. They have sharp looking teeth!

We watched the sunset over the mountain before heading back to the room to clean up for dinner.

Friday night we made probably our biggest goof of the trip. The resort had 5 restaurants. One was a Thai restaurant out on a pier. It looked great. The only reservation they had left was 8:30. We said yes, our kids eat late, they’ll be fine, we thought. Ha! We didn’t take into account the 5:45 wake up and all day playing on the beach and pool. They were a disaster and we were dining with a bunch of honeymooners and people on once in a lifetime trips. On Valentine’s Day. Oops. We muddled through and the lovely staff was afraid we didn’t like our meal and offered us another (this dinner was include with our room). We took our exhausted minions back to the room and plunked them in bed ASAP before we caused and honeymooners to decide to forgo having children!

The next morning Avery and I sat on the balcony and listened to the birds and watched for monkeys. Little did we know what we were wishing for…

This video was later in the morning while we waited for the shuttle (the scooters are the staffs, the buzz around delivering things) Earlier while Avery and I were sitting on the porch the monkeys came. And we watched and the kept coming. Then they were climbing up our building! We ran inside and quickly locked the door! They came onto our porch, tried to open the door. We had our swimsuits out drying on the balcony. One big male picked up my swim coverup and put it on its head! Needless to say that went in the wash. Later that day a local was telling us that the monkeys do that at all the resorts. When they find an open door, they head straight for the mini bar. Smart monkey!

That morning after a giant breakfast (buffet with any food option you want. Western, Indian, Malay, Chinese… the kids and I all had Indian, go figure!) we headed to the oriental village, sky car and sky bridge. I’ll write about our excursions in separate posts as this one would be waaayyyy too long… all of our excursions were amazing on Langkawi. Never once did we feel like something was a waste of time or money! We were able to walk to the village and the sky car from our hotel which was great! We spent from 10am until 2pm there. After that we had to do a quick change to get to our afternoon/evening excursion.

So many beautiful pics from the morning, it’s hard to pick…

We were going on an afternoon/evening sail out of the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club in Kuah. Our concierge was very concerned about “traffic” for us to get there. I guess there was a cycling race going on. We never saw any cyclists and not much traffic other than scooters with lax safety laws. It was interesting seeing the island outside the resort. As with most islands, the locals don’t live like the guests at the resorts. Lots of scooters, simple concrete homes with metal roofs, more monkeys. Also lots of potentially interesting roadside food stands. As we were eating on the boat we didn’t stop, but it would be fun to ride on a scooter and check some out! We also saw schools (the kids were in school on a Sunday, not sure why) and mosques as Malaysia is a Muslim country. The town of Kuah was more “urban” looking with less roadside stands and more restaurants. They even had the ubiquitous American exports, Macdonald’s, Starbucks and 7-11.

I will write about the boat in another blog as well, but it was really a gem. We lucked into being the only passengers on the boat so we had our own cruise on a unique ship. It is a memory for a lifetime. Read about our cruise here: Captain Eva’s cruise on the Damai Indah

Our ride for the evening. The Damai Indah

Exhausted, we got back to the hotel around 9 pm and went right to bed! The next morning we had to be up and ready for our mangrove tour!

Of course we all “slept in” the next morning and had to make a mad dash to be packed up, checked out and have breakfast before the tour picked us up at 8:50. Besides the sky car and sky bridge, on Langkawi a mangrove tour through the kilim geopark is a must do. Our shuttle was us and another couple from our hotel who kept to themselves (might have been because the kids, specifically Avery were CRAZY in the shuttle bus. We realized she had 6 sodas the night before in the all you can drink boat ride. Oops) Along the way we picked up another couple from an air b&b down a dirt road which was right on the beach. So pretty. I was interested but Ryan’s still not sure. He thinks food procuring would be a challenge (remember the roadside food stands? I don’t think he thought they were as interesting as I do, nor does he relish the Malay breakfast of Nasi Lemak… ). they were a nice couple, they live in Europe (I forget where) he’s European and she’s Jamaican. Once we got to the geopark entrance where the boats were kept, we met our guide and away we went! This will get its own entry as well so stay tuned!

The tour wrapped up around 1:30pm and again was amazing. We headed back to the hotel for more swimming and beaching until our flight at 8pm.

We watched some hornbills flying around the pool.

So our first weekend trip was a success. Now all that’s left is to decide if our March trip should be beach or city…. hmmmm.