Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

The week is here...we head back to the good 'ol US of A for our home leave. 

Since we moved we started keeping a list of things to pick up when we are in the States in July. As we used this list to put together our Amazon.com order, it got us thinking about some of the things that we missed about the States. 

Vitamin Water Zero 

The fact things don't open up until 10:30-11 am. 

It's hot, we should get this day going early! (Most office jobs don't start until 9 am as well.) 

American cable  

Target 

Hunting

Irish Spring soap 

(the one daily use product that does not exist here)

American sports on TV. 

(Oh how we both miss ESPN!)

Nachos, chicken wings, and burgers

The Today Show

Mexican food 

(contrary to popular belief curry flavored chicken does not equal fajitas) 

Coors Light 

American prices from wine, to electronics to clothing and everything in between 

Having two cars 

The Hasty Bake Smoker 

Cooking wild game meat 

A country music station in the car 

(but did we mention we have a cassette player in our car? For those of you who don't know what that is, it looks like this...)

La Grande Orange Restaurant in Phoenix

Opa and his friends 

Getting mail that's not a marketing flyer 

(although we do get awesome FedEx packages with our mail from home like the one below) 

Antacids that actually work. 

Everything out here is the strength of Tums which does you no good with curry chicken fajitas...

Our coffee machine

And of course all of our friends and family but we look forward to seeing you very soon!

Happy Trails,
Amy & Raegen

Why is Your Time More Important Than Mine?

In keeping with the theme of an educational blog we thought we’d give you an insight into a part of everyday life in Singapore. 

Many of you have asked about shopping here. We have more shopping malls than we have combined fingers and toes with Louis Vuitton and Hermes galore. Running your everyday errands is a whole other story. We don’t have a Target, Wal-Mart or even a glorified grocery store around here so running errands becomes a serious undertaking. Dictionary.com defines an errand as a short trip undertaken to perform a necessary task or commission. I guess I should actually change my word of choice because no errand here is short. 

It took me a few weeks to admit that everything takes at least 3-4 x longer than it does at home (including laundry- fun I know!) It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I couldn’t get into my car and hit Target to grab the essentials. Then off to the grocery store where they had everything I need for a week’s worth of food while driving through Starbucks on my way home and then unload everything with a few trips into the house. That’s the American way!

Well first of all, we only have one car so I tend to run errands on foot or via public transportation. I finally had to break down and bought a “granny cart.” I suppose I should fondly name it Dorothy after my wonderful grandma who had the same cart.

While lots of stores have on-line ordering and delivery the challenge becomes the fact that you’re not picking your own produce, meats and the online selection can limited and websites aren’t very functional here. I have found a great site/app called RedMart that is great for non-perishables. It’s nice to have someone deliver your cases of water to your door when you have no car but beyond that, I haven’t been successful.

Gotta love having to carry everything from the D.I.Y store along with your home office printer all the way from the store, onto the train and home. 

Although all hope is not lost as we do have a store called Mustafa in Little India, which is the closest to a mega store that we’re going to get, not to mention it is open 24/7 and is supposed to have some great curry. The store is a city block long and stacked to the ceiling on five floors with items. The nice part is they carry a ton of brands as well as food, jewelry, electronics, non-perishables, sporting goods, cleaning supplies (allegedly...I still have yet to find these.) This store is so overwhelming that I regularly shop with my headphones on and peaceful music playing so I can avoid sensory overload. One of the other challenges with this store is that you have to go early before all of the helpers arrive after dropping the kids off at school (around 9 am) and before the local residents of that area get off of work. You also have to avoid weekends as I’ve been told it’s just chaos...no thank you!

Our home leave is coming up in less than two weeks and you’ll find us at Costco, Target and Amazon.com loading up on the essentials that we can’t find here (there are quite a few items on our list.)

Happy Trails,

Amy & Raegen

Home Sweet High Rise

We provided you with a little teaser back in February about our house hunting adventures and with photos of our three finalists. We are excited to say that we have found a house and have since made it into a home. Since this is an educational blog, you'll have to wait until the end to see the photos. (Don't scan down the page and cheat...you know who you are!) 

I narrowed down our house choices to three for Raegen to check out. It was a challenging process to narrow down from about 25 houses to 3 as I had never been to Singapore before. All of our house hunting was done in the first week of living here so I hadn't even had a chance to explore. With that being said, Singapore house hunting is the same as everywhere else...nothing is perfect but one was close enough. Some of the requirements of our new house included: 

• 3 bedrooms
• At least 2 bathrooms
• Bathtub (hey we can dream!)
• Lots of storage (hey we can dream twice!)
• One parking spot (one car, one parking spot)
• Outdoor space
• Washer and dryer
• Close to a MRT/subway station (we only have one car)
• A cool area of town with lots to do
• Open kitchen layout

Here's what we ended up with:

• 4 bedrooms        
• 3 bathrooms (+1 sort of half bathroom for the helper (we don't have a helper)                
• Bathtub
• One parking spot
• Big balcony with an amazing view
• Washer and dryer (not quite full "American size" but close enough)
• Dishwasher (they're not a common kitchen item here)
• Close MRT station
• A cool area of town with lots to do

I'll spare boring you with the details but signing on a house here is similar to the US except because we're expats there are a lot of things that would have needed to be in place (financially, local employment longevity) for Raegen to sign.  Therefore his company actually signed the lease on the house. Remember I am pretty much a second class citizen here...I was not even considered in signing on the house. I actually had to get permission to accept the keys and move into the house as Raegen was out of town. 

Our place is on the 17th floor of Marina Bay Suites. It's a great location with an MRT station right below us and 4 out of the 5 MRT lines within a two block walk. We are also right next to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel (the boat looking building) as well as a mall, plenty of restaurants and bars, as well as Gardens by the Bay. The Marina Bay area is right next to the Central Financial District so it's busy down here during the day but after work and on the weekends it's quiet, which is one of the reasons we love it here. We get our workout in by running around the 'bay' (2.4 miles for those who are counting) and we enjoy dinner on the patio often. 

We fell in love with the patio

One quirky thing about Singapore houses (in those built after 1997 and until recently) have to have their own bomb shelter in the house. Every single unit in our building has their own shelter. For most people it's extra storage. For others, it's the helper's living quarters.

Our bomb shelter which holds our microwave, wine fridge and the "garage" (the giant container on the left.) 

Welcome to our home...

We'd be remiss if we didn't think our awesome realtor and the team at Asian Welcome for helping us find our new home.

After a lot of blood, sweat and sore feet along with the arrival of our shipment we are now able to enjoy our first home together!

Happy Trails, 

Amy & Raegen

Don't Worry...Go Krabi

As you may have figured out we like to travel to new places. What you may not know is that I also love to surprise people with cool stuff. In the past I’ve tried to surprise Amy with some sort of trip for her birthday.  Since this year we are planning on hiking Mount Fuji in Japan over her birthday weekend so I didn’t want to spring that on her considering you need to actually train to get ready.  So I took the bull by the horns and planned a surprise anniversary trip.  I started asking everyone who had been in Singapore for a while where we should go. Most people suggested either Phuket (Thailand), Bali (Indonesia), or Krabi (Thailand).  

With those in mind I did a quick search and Krabi looked right up our alley. It was a little off the beaten path as opposed to Bali or Phuket.  Not to mention Krabi still has access to the Phi Phi Islands and some cultural aspects.  Best part it is only about a 1 ½ hour direct flight. 

The next task was finding a hotel.  I started with TripAdvisor, since that is the go to site for recommendation in Asia.  The Amari Vogue Krabi was in the top 3 in the whole Krabi area. Even better that the prices were reasonable, and unlike many of the other amazing looking hotels in the area you didn’t need to take a boat to get there.  I assumed (wrongly) that the boat trip would add a lot of time to and from the hotel but we found out it really didn’t. Next time we might have to stay on Railay Beach. 

Finally the week of the trip arrived and Thailand was in total chaos, or at least that is what the news said. A few days before we left there was a military coup and the media was drawing a lot of assumptions on what was going on. Previous experience indicated that this was a great time to go, since many people would cancel their trips and they would be hungry for tourists.  Also we were not planning on going to Bangkok where most of the turmoil was.  But just to be safe I talked to one of my co-workers who was there during the beginning of the coup and he said that he saw one police office on the way to the airport, aka business as usual. 

The flight, car ride and hotel all were great and we made it to the hotel in time for their 1 for 1 (2 for 1 for you Americans) happy hour special.  We also tried the onsite Thai restaurant which was very good.  The original plan was to get Amy certified for scuba (which would take 2 full days of diving), but after seeing the resort and checking out the surrounding area we decided to play it by ear and see where the days would take us. (We never did end up diving.)

The next morning we had some coffee and ‘free’ breakfast.  While reading the paper and looking at things to do on TripAdvisor we decided to have a morning workout where we would climb 1260 steps to see the Tiger Cave Temple.  Despite being 99° and 95% humidity we figured we were fit enough to do it as we had been training for Mt. Fuji by climbing the stairs in our building.  Next thing you know we are in a cab in our workout gear with a camera, some water and sunscreen.  The hike started off easy and then about 45 steps in the steps turned out to be large by Siegfried standards, about 15 inches tall. By the time we made it to the top I was 98% covered in sweat (there was one spot on my shirt that had not soaked through) but the view was amazing.  The Buddhist monks believe that putting shrines up high makes them closer to God, it felt more like hell to me, but totally worth it. The way down was much harder than the way up but we survived.  

We grabbed some water and after being followed around by monkeys (they’re cheeky little things,) we decided to check out an area on the other side of the hill where the monks actually worship and live in caves.  This was cool until we saw a big jungle snake and high tailed it out. 

The next day we hopped on a boat for an island hopping/snorkel trip to see the Phi Phi islands.  I was in this area 12 year before not only on boat trips but I also diving.  I was so excited to see them, but I was sad to see how touristy it has gotten.  But once you get there you can see why; it is so freaking BEAUTIFUL!  The islands are sheer cliffs that plunge straight into the water and then between you have small, perfect white beaches that can only be reached by boat.  There were a lot of tourists at Maya Beach (where the movie The Beach was filmed) and everywhere really. 

Our last full day involved doing nothing. We sat under a tree at the beach, caught up on our reading and recharged our batteries. It was an awesome day to follow up two full days of sightseeing and activities and a great way to finish up our trip.

I hope that you get the opportunity to make it to Krabi as it is an amazing place, with beautiful sites, wonderful people and affordable prices.  Not to mention you cannot beat the pad thai! 

Until then,

Raegen & Amy