40 Trishaws to Dinner

Scary Day

It all started on an exciting and positive note this morning, with Chinese Dragons and dancers seeing us off at the Raffles in Singapore. Finally we were driving! All the cars filed out of the underground parking lot in sequential order. We loaded the bags and off we went. My father drove, I navigated using our roadbook. You have to imagine. A roadbook is a very detailed set of instructions that guides you by providing distance measurements between points where you have to turn, plus it illustrates what these turns look like and what's around you where you have to turn. 

Little diagrams called "Tulip Diagrams" are supposed to do this (see my pic above---the fateful page in the roadbook). Well, my dad said "you are doing a great job navigating with this thing already" and 2 minutes later we got ourselves so lost that I just wanted to curl up and disappear. 

Read one little side note wrong--took the wrong turn--ended up at the wrong border post to Malaysia--totally different route from everyone else in our group. The whole thing was terribly stressful and scary, but we made it to our next destination in Malacca maybe 30 minutes after the last car of the main group. Anyway...all the Brits made fun of us, but I am just glad we are here and it all worked out. We are still working on our post-traumatic stress, but I think a few local Tiger beers will help a lot. 

Malacca. Totally different from Singapore. This is a small not-so-fancy Malaysian town where, for the first time, I feel like we are in the heart of Asia. I spent a while walking through the Jonkers Street market, a network of little streets filled with all sorts of shops and a few very beautiful temples. There was a Buddhist temple next to a Mosque next to a Hindu Temple, which illustrates the eclectic character of the people who live here in Malaysia. People don't look as smooth and pure here any more as they did in Singapore, but everyone is amazingly friendly. We asked some random older gentleman in a shady back alley for directions and got the nicest and most helpful response in good English. 

Tonight, our group is invited to a dinner at a local authentic Malay restaurant in the old part of this town. Tomorrow, we have to sign off and leave at 9 am...next stop Kuala Lumpur. I'm excited to see the Petronas Towers, until 2004 the tallest building in the world. If we ever make it there, with me in the car...

"On March 20, 1997, French Urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and feet and with no safety devices, scaled the building's exterior glass and steel wall."

Thank you friends for reading this stuff...I like writing to all of you.

Lion City

We spent a hot and humid day trekking through Singapore by foot. Singapore, its name derived from the Malay word "singha"= "lion", is one of the few true city-states in the world-a very small but rich country at the southern tip of Southeast Asia, only 85 miles North of the Equator. The whole place is only about 270 square miles in size, but it contains 4.8 million citizens whose average per-capita GDP is the fifth highest in the world. You can tell...most areas of the city consist of brand spanking new skyscrapers and expensive looking infrastructure. But then in the middle of it all you also find the authentic manifestations of the Chinese culture that has shaped a lot of the way of life here.

The people you meet are a blend of pretty Asians from all corners of the continent (Thai, Chinese, Indonesian...) who seem to float through the streets with smiles on their faces completely unphased by the buzz produced by all the European ex-pat bankers present.  The local financial industry is thriving as a result of Singapore's proximity to countries like China and Indonesia that have invested a lot of money here. But just like in Florida, the effects of the global real estate drama are being felt here as well, with prices dropping and financial institutions being rescued. 

I talked my dad into taking a flight on the world's tallest ferris wheel today, the Singapore Flyer, and we had a great time enjoying the views from way up there. Some of the pictures included herein are from that ride. Then lunch at a German restaurant called "Brotzeit" that served authentic German food and beer but was launched as a trendy urban joint filled with young hip Asians who all drank big beers and ate fatty sausage with kraut. Didn't expect that.

Tomorrow is our first day of driving. 250 miles North into Malaysia to the town of Malacca. The main event of the day will be the border crossing into Malaysia which requires a serious amount of paperwork and preparation. 

Take care y'all!

Some images

We're in business

Today our trip got a bit more serious with official signing-in sessions, meetings with fellow expedition participants and finally the picking up of our truck. There are a total of 25 cars participating in this event adding up to 50 drivers, mostly people from the UK, some from the Netherlands and few Americans. 

Looking at our fellow adventurers I'd say that we're not really going to be roughing it. It appears like people are here to casually motor from nice hotel A to nice hotel B in the comfort of their very rally-ish looking Range Rovers, which don't look like they've seen much dirt. But I could be wrong. We may be building bridges over some swamp in Malaysia soon. It's been raining here the last few days, which is very unusual for this time of year.

We picked up the Tacoma in a shipping company's warehouse that smelled like a blend of vinegar and oriental spices and our car now has the odor of an Indonesian bazaar on wheels...very nice. Last time I saw the car was when it disappeared into an 18-wheeler's belly in front of my studio in Santa Rosa Beach.

The calibration of the computer that will help us navigate this trip was a bit of a problem and I think my dad and I both felt like morons for not being able to figure it out, but in the end after many trials we managed. Amazingly enough, my Floridian Garmin GPS device works here just like it does in the US; just type in where you want to go and the thing will guide you right to it, even in Singapore. 

Tonight is the formal sign-in dinner here...will need to throw on a suit jacket and be all British. 

Cheers!!

Arrived in Singapore

You know that you are far from home when you see the Himalayans out your airplane window, they bring you soy noodles with braised meat and chillies for breakfast and a gentleman with a turban carries your bag. The Raffles Hotel here is the most historical building in Singapore; this reminder of the great global impact of British colonialism opened in 1887 and still owns the polished aura of that time. We had our first authentic dinner: Indian curry buffet. Don't eat the Lahsun Ka Achar is all I have to say. Nighty night..I am so very tired. 

Into the well

A day of goodbyes, peeking through the school fence at the kids playing, gluttonous indulging in favorite foods in expectation of meals of questionable origin. It's hard to give up control for five weeks; to hand yourself over to this journey and allow it to touch and change you. I'm off and away! Fort Walton Beach-Atlanta-London-Singapore. 35 hours of traveling. I'm in the lounge in London now and already feel like I lost part of my consciousness along with a number of hours of time. Record snowstorm in the UK yesterday, but everything seems to be working now. I worked for someone in NY once who flew to London for a meeting and when it was finished flew right back to NY. You don't know how deep the rabbit hole is...but it sure is exciting to jump in.