Time flies

Well it did not seem so long ago that I have arrived her in Singapore, yet, it is already time to say goodbye and move on to new adventures.

unfortunately I could not manage to tell you guys about my last adventures here in Singapore… just not enough time!

You might ask yourselfs: Whats next?

At least I can answer this question!

Tomorrow morning we head off for Cambodia… on week, then nearly three weeks Thailand and thats it… Then I will head back to Germany to new challenges!

Thanks for reading my blog! I might update you after my trip… or I might just tell the stories in person.. 🙂

enjoy yourselfs and see you soon 🙂

Dani

Volcanoes,… loooong busrides and a paradisiacal Island… What does this sound like for you?

I would say HOLIDAY’s the basic way … Our Holiday plans took us to SUMATRA… the biggest Indonesian Islands. As most of you know, I found my love for Indonesia on my holiday last year… so for me, it is: Indonesia 2.0!

well, before getting started, it is all about changing money and… what the heck! we are multi-millionaires now… it is a real burden havin so much money, when 100.000 Rupiah is only worth about 8-9 € and the biggest bank note is exactly that: 100.000 Rupiah! See yourself:

We started our journey in Medan, which is called the shithole by the Indonesians and most of its visitors for good reason.

Thus, we directly took off for Berastagi, a little village in the north of Sumatra, which is situated between the two active vulcanoes Gunung Sinabung (2.500m) und Gunung Sibayak (2.050m) with the intent to climb Gunung Sinabung.

our home for one night 🙂 Wisma Sibayak

strolling through Berastagi..

seeing what’s lying ahead… gonna go up there?

Our plan was to take a little nap at Wisma Sibayak and then do a nights climb up Sinabung, well, none of us was expecting bad weather… we were recommended, not to do the dangerous climb of Sinabung, as it had been raining the previous days and would have been to dangerous.

This gave us a whole night of sleep in a quite cold climate, which we were not used to anymore. Early next morning, we started our trek up Gunung Sibayak and came across an interesting flora and fauna. The Vulcano above us was steaming sulfat into the air… and we had wonderful sights of the area.

pole vault the natural way 

preparing our dinner, a yummi mee goreng 🙂

well who wouldn’t want a photo with white ppl 🙂 our driver to Gunung Sibayak

me on the way up,… not too tough but nice 🙂

what would be a treck up a vulcanoe without a wonderful view?

hot Sulfate steaming out of the rocks

no matter where you look, just amazing views!

and again, only nearly to the top cause the way was quite dangerous… bugger!

anyway, we made it 🙂

Vulcanoe: check 🙂

just amazing views

and a nice little Angkot after the hot springs, back to Berastagi

On our way down, we stopped at hot springs and enjoyed the hot water on our sore muscles.

Back in Berastagi, we grabbed some satay, packed, and took off back to Medan. For an Overnigth Stay.

The next part of our Journey took us to Banda Aceh, the Area, which was hit most by the tsunami in 2005. Our tour to the harbour showed us, the good job, people had done here on building up the area.

From Uleuh-leuh harbour, we took the ferry to Pulau Weh, a wonderful Island north of Sumatra, where we were heading for the dive sites. Our destination was Gapang beach, a paradisiacl stripe of beach with Pulau Weh’s best Dive Resort: LumbaLumba divers.

Next to wonderful dive sites and good equipement, they have competent dive masters and instructors …

We spent 4 ½ wonderful days there, did 8 dives to great dive sites… and I fell in love with the Toby-fish J A cute yellow-white fish with black dots and stripes on its nose. Couldn’t get enough of him 🙂

my I introduce: toby 🙂 isn’t he wonderful? ❤

Yet, Gapang did not only have great dive sites but had a wonderful piece of beach, nice inhabitants and lots of other divers to offer. The best recipe for getting some rest … see it yourself….

on the way to paradise… crossing banda aceh, a few years back, only the was still standing

Gapang Beach at night

my paradise: so wanna go back and stay for longer 😦

Kangaroos, Penguins, Tigers… all in one place?.. off to the Zoo

While waiting for some more pictures from our amazing trip to Sumatra, I will just go on with some of our recent activities…but be sure, amazing fairy tales are yet to come up 🙂

Watch out 🙂

so off we go…

Kidz love zoos, don’t they? So I better spend a Saturday at the Singapore Zoo.

Well, you might say: „You are not a kid anymore!?“ Bit doesn’t everyone of us carry a little child inside? And anyway…there are animal one would never discover in free nature unless one would do a safari, spend an expensive holiday in Australia, the northpole or South America., you better go to the zoo to discover this huge variety.

can you find something on that picture?

So off to the Zoo 🙂 going for a loong day walk and staring at small and big animals. Well taking a little break while it was raining like hell, but then off to the Zoo-part-two.

starting off in the morning with scary crocodiles…

and turtles…

The big attraction of Singapore Zoo are the white Tigers, locked in an enclosure, which is way too small for them  well at least it is bigger then you’d discover it in most other zoos!

Another highlight of the Zoo ist he fact, that it is built into real rainforest. It is fun walking through authentic rainforests and discovering most of the animals in their natural surroundings.

You could even meet King Julian from Madagascar there .

You can lose youself in the „Australian Outback“ for a while end enjoy Australian Kangaroos, Wallabies and the like.

Right before you jump right into the Lion King J watch out for Timon and Pumba…

And can anyone answer the question: are zebras white horses with black stripes or black horses with white stripes? Does it mean they are white horses with black stripes when they are white between their legs? Can’t come to any conclusion… need help 😉

 

and many many more…

well,… go find him :))

would like to know, what he is longing for…

enjoy the wonderful view… no skyscrapers or the like

well, he must have a real hard time at this climate.. pore mate…

you better not come too close to that Lion just across the street!

quak 🙂

well, who are you?naked moles are definitely not pretty… this even looks way better than the original!

my beauty… isn’t she wonderful!

Wonderful big elephants… no chance of not adoring them!
waddlewaddle 🙂

The Adventures of Pandora

Singapore has a lot to offer… Sentosa, high buildings, Zoos, Night Safari, Mc Ritchie… I could go on for a while… and they are even developing more and more new tourist attractions every now and then…

 

One new attraction, that was just finished are the Gardens by the Bay… an amazing piece of land, just off Marina Bay, …

which hijacks you to Pandora, right into the Avatar Movie! Amazing huge artifivial trees …

with plants growing on them,…

many flowers, Jungle Sounds,…

little lakes with huge insects ..,

, light and sound shows… amazing.

Just lose yourself in there and let yourself be taken into the adventures of Pandora… by night and day

 

 

 

 

Thanks for a great weekend at Singapore Tina ☺

What is the best about being abroad for a longer period? Right, having visitors from back home, whom you can share your experiences with. Thus, I was very happy about my friend Tina to come over to Singapore for a couple of days.

Wild planning in advance which would lead us to some nature walk, Islands, up the highest hill of Singapore and even higher buildings started in advance… well, unfortunately, we had not calculated the weather-god into our planning…  Yet, let’s start from the Beginning …

Finally, Tina got the requested flight to Singapore… you cannot imagine how happy I was, even though I could have been on Tioman that weekend, yet, there will be enough chances to go diving the next months… so I happily skipped Tioman and welcomed Tina at Singapore…

Her hotel was at Orchard Road, so this should be my first time at orchard… emerging from the MRT, I got lost right away! Way tooo many people there, too many shops and colours, but finally I made it to her hotel J and welcomed her in Singapore!

After our dinner at Orchard, we took off for Clarke Quay to meet Shahira for a short party night at Attica… pretty good music, lots of fun and way too many people 😉

For the Saturday, the only full day we could spend together, we planned to do a nature tour… cycling on some island or just trekking, yet, we had made our plans without the weather-god… and he seemed to have other plans with us!… Hoping, that the rain would top, we took off for my apartment, had some food and… well, fell asleep… we awoke in the evening, right for taking off for the city to enjoy a dinner at Lau Pa SAt … best satay in town and a nice cocktail on a rooftop bar at marina bay.

 

On Sunday, Tina had to do the shuttle to Jakarta, thus, I spent a quiet day at the pool. On Monday we met up for farewell dinner at Orchard.

Even though, we could not really follow our plans, we had a great weekend… chatting, sleeping, enjoying Singapore and just chilling out…

Thanks Tina 🙂 

 

Tanjong Beach… Sentosa

Thinking of Singapore, one has the impression of a big, busy city: lots of shopping malls, hawker centers, taxis, busses, cars, hotels, beach… beach? Well no, it’s a city…

Might this city have some beach! Well, if you call Sentosa’s stripe of sand on the Sea a beach, then yes, there is a beach 😉 unfortunately, the water is not really clean, as the huge freighters anchor not far from it, but it is a nice place to spent a chilly afternoon with your friends at. And so we did… 6 girls, Sentosa and Tanjong. Off we go for a quiet (?) afternoon.

Enjoy the pics…

Zumbaaa @T-Systems

I do not only want to bore you with tooo many pictures of my travelling and sight seeing… firstly, I am here in Singapore to work…

Yet, as well as in Germany, T-Systems Singapore set focus on work life balance. So if you see about 10 Europeans and 3 Singaporeans shaking their bodies and touching themselves in the T-Systems lobby at 7pm on Wednesday, you know what’s going on.

A short delegation of T-Systems colleagues is shaking their bodies to Zumba Rythms, being animated by a … well, lets call it… not too sporty looking… Zumba trainer… and having lots of fun J

Thanks HR for Zumbaaa J

Melacca… sightseeing,… well only takes half a day, let’s go shopping ;)

You could call this Post: “Malacca – Second Try” as well. Yet, this time, everything worked out quite well… we took the bus to Malacca Friday evening, just nearly missing out on a wonderful night market in Malacca’s Chinatown district. As we arrived quite late, we ony saw the last few bids of the night market being uninstalled…

one night in Chinatown

Yet, we were totally compensated by our wonderful and welcoming hostel: Café 1015. A quite low priced but comfortable hostel. Or should I call it “convenient” 😀

For anyone who wants to stay in Malacca for one or more night, I can highly recommend that.

From Café 1015, we took off for our sight seeing tour around Malacca… in order to avoid the rain, we started off with a quite interesting boat tour through Malacca, yet, it seems that only those parts of Malacca look quite new and repaired, which are along the tourist paths. This really gives me to think…

After the boat tour, we strode along Malacca, taking photos, walking across churches, up a hill to a dutch graveyard, the ruin of a church (St. Pauls) a boat, which resembles Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl, the Seaside …

Next to those fantastic sights 😉 one discovers lots of loud, really colourful bicaks… with mostly friendly drivers … in Malacca

Well, Sight seeing in Malacca is not a hard day’s work! You can see most of it by strolling around the city for half a day. Thus, we decided to go shopping at lunchtime, before we took off for an early dinner at Chinatown and headed back to Singapore…

KL and Mala…. no… just KL … wanna keep that owl!!!

Here, I could tell quite a long story, about how we wanted to visit Malacca but went back to Singapore instead… yet, let me start with the good part of the story: our trip to Kuala Lumpur!

Everybody who has been to Singapore or lives here, will agree, that it is a stunning and somehow amazing city, and you can spend a lot of time on discovering it.

Yet, as it seems to be the gateway to Asia…thus, you will for sure head off to discover the surrounding countries. And this is what Tina and I did… we went off for Kuala Lumpur or KL, as it is called by most Malayans and insiders.

It has not been my first visit to the city, thus, I tried to see some of those part, I was not yet able to discover. In order to visit those places we hopped on the hopp-on hopp-off busses through KL after a quite short night in a basic hostel (Backpacker’s-Inn, can be recommended to anyone who does not want to spend too much money and is ok with tiny rooms lacking windows and a shared bathroom ) and a yummi breakfast in Chinatown.

Backpacker’s Inn

Chinatown 🙂

The Hopp-on hopp-off bus lead us across the city, showing us KL’s most famous sights. Our first stop then was KL Bird Park… it is the worlds biggest free flying bird park. And it is really great! I loved the huge variety of different birds as well as having a huge cute and fluffy little owl sitting on my shoulders. You could also feed little parrots as well as huge ostrichs. We spent quite a while at the bird park, before we left for the national mosque.

on tour

at the bird park

scary owl!!!

… nooo! fluffy, cute little owl… wanna take you home!

after feeding those tiny cute… ouch!… little parrots

behind a waterfall

and feeding the ostrich…

on the way to national mosque… monkeys crossing

The national mosque is a quite strange place for a western woman, as you have to fully cover yourself including your hair. And I realised: this definitely does not suit me!

who the… what the…???

Luckily, we witnessed a real muslim wedding there. The groom himself was even a German. His family was not allowed inside the mosque, as the were no muslims.

After this quite confusing experience, hopped on the bus for Menara KL or KL Tower, as it is called in English. From there, you have a wonderful view on the Petronas Twins and Singapore’s Skyline. If you ever go to KL, do not miss out on that one!

KL’s Skyline, unfortunately, it was quite cloudy, when we were there 😦

Menara KL at night… charming!

After shopping at Central Market and enjoying a delicious dinner at Chinatown, we went off to our hostel to grab some sleep before take off to Malacca early next morning.

Yet, our plans to visit Malacca were crossed by the lacking of a bus space in the evening… thus, we spent to hours at stinky Malacca Central, the central bus station there, before we took off back to our beloved Singapore… Where we had a delicious dinner at Nex Mall, before we came back to Fortville.

Partying… normal, NO WAY! let’s go up the heli p

Well, in Singapore, you sometimes ask yourself: what is normal… so far, I have not come to an answer. It is an ever buzzing city, it seems like much of it is changing all the time, whereas many things just stay the way they are… so let yourself be torne into the city and off we go!

Especially the night life and party experience in Singapore is worth a blog… while others celebrate in dungeons, caves, prisons or whatever, Singapore tends to host the best parties in dizzying hights such as the one altitude or even on top of the heli pate of Swissotel. Those are definitely worth a try if you spend some days in the city… They offer stunning views of Singapore at night, delicious drinks, some even food and an experience you will not forget too soon….

one Altitude… there it is!

Us on top of Singapore… One Altitude

A stunning view on buzzing Singapore from One Altitude

and on the Marina Bay Sands as well… one Altitude is about 100m higher than the MBS

me on top of Singapore 🙂 in front of the MBS 🙂

At New Asia Bar with Tina

on top of the Heli Pate 🙂

and another stunning view 🙂

that’s the proof… a heli pate full of people

well… me again on top 🙂