South-East Asia

Articles from this Category

Angkor Thom & Angkor Wat revisited

Nice weather had returned to Siem Reap. We set off at 0800 by tuktuk again to Eastern Mebon, picking up where we had left off the day before. The sunlight was perfect, illuminating the facade of the first few sights we visited. The big one for the day was Ta Prohm, made famous by the […]

Read more

Wet day indoors

It was a wet morning. It looked like a big cloud system was hovering around and wasn’t about to pass quickly. I was proved right and it did hang around all day. So it was a chill and massage day until attending the Phare Cambodian Circus in the evening.  This is an acrobatic show performed […]

Read more

Angkor Thom revisited

Our body clocks woke us up early so it wasn’t a big deal to leave at 0550 for sunrise around 0545. According to an newspaper article I read, Angkor Wat’s west gate is ridiculously overcrowded with people waiting for the sunrise so I took their advice to go to the east gate instead. Instead of […]

Read more

Revisiting Siem Reap after 14 years

Leaving Kuala Lumpur We walked from the Tune Hotel to the check-in area at KLIA2 and did our bagdrop 1.5h prior to departure. Going through security, they were really slack with LAGs and metallic objects but we realised later that there was a stringent check-point near the gates.  I later understood it to be a […]

Read more

State funeral

I accompanied my aunt to church this morning in her old neighbourhood of Serangoon.  As we were early, we drove around and saw how her old house (and many others) had changed from simple single storey to typically three. After church, we had a simple lunch at home.  The heavens had opened and wept for […]

Read more

A nation in mourning

We managed to get our last-minute paid upgrade to Business Class for the flight to Singapore departing at 0115. Despite the ungodly timing, I stayed up for the supper service before sleeping, because I was hungry. I had expected to skip it in favour of a longer downtime but my tummy rules. I did have […]

Read more

World’s Largest Flower

I had called the state forestry office yesterday to enquire whether any rafflesias (world’s largest flower) were in bloom. Rather unexpectedly, they said “Yes, there is one on its last day” and encouraged me to go. So, it was a disappointment for me to wake up to a wet day. While the rain wasn’t torrential, […]

Read more

Gateway to the Heart of Borneo

It has been about 18 years since I had been to Sibu, where my mother hails from. As a child we had gone there to see grandma frequently. I thought I was long overdue for a visit there and had bought the air-tickets cheaply and impulsively some 10 months (sounds contradictory but it was impulse […]

Read more

On a friend’s farm

An old classmate runs a farm outside of Kuching, near the Wind Cave and Fairy Cave.  He had organised a gathering of old friends so that us city folks could enjoy a touch of the Borneo outdoors.  We had a picnic by the stream and some of us finished the day with dinner at Siniawan […]

Read more

Flying to KLIA2

Last little bit of sightseeing in Makassar With the 1h time difference between Ambon/Papua and Makassar, I woke up early. With two half-days in Makassar, I wanted to make the most of my sightseeing opportunities to catch sights that I didn’t get to do few years back.I was out the door soon after 0700 to […]

Read more
Go top