We're Famous...In Singapore American News

We have been very lucky to dive head first into the Singapore community. The expat community here reminds me a lot of Phoenix in the fact that if you’re willing to step up, work hard, you will be able to find all sorts of ways to be involved and expand your horizons and your network. I joined the American Women’s Association (AWA) almost immediately after moving and shortly after joined their Board of Directors.  I highly suggest joining the AWA to anyone moving to a foreign country as I have met some amazing ladies and learned a lot through their local tours. But I digress…

While on my job hunt earlier this year I was encouraged to volunteer in the office of the American Association.  To make a very long story short (you’re thinking FINALLY!), the American Association’s Communications Manager asked if Raegen and I wanted to write a piece for their December issue of Singapore American News. The theme for December was celebrations around the world and since we’ve decided to get hitched she thought we’d be perfect to write about wedding traditions in Asia. 

The hardest part about the story was that there are a multitude of cultures and traditions that we could’ve highlighted but we only had 900 words to educate our audience. After submitting the story and photos we learned we would be the cover story of the December issue of the Singapore American News. A big thank you to our friends who submitted their photos and helped us with edits. It takes a village!

To read the whole story Wedding Celebrations in Singapore, click here. Happy reading!

Happy Trails,

Amy & Raegen 

Come on over, the water's fine

Since we are welcoming four new visitors to Singapore this month we wondered after 10 months of reading this very entertaining and educational blog, how Singapore lived up to their expectations.

We chatted with our first two visitors, Harry Balmoral* and Barry Heathfield*, to see if Singapore was what they expected. Here are their thoughts…

·         Singapore is much more Western than expected. Many expats consider Singapore to be Asia Light/Asia 101 because it’s much more Western that other cities in the region. English is actually the official business language, although it does have four official languages- Tamil, Mandarin, Malay and English. 

·         People here take pride in what they wear. Everyone looks put together. For the most part, the people running around in their errand-running gym clothes are expats.

An expat, wearing gym clothes, running errands and enjoying some delicious food with friends
at the Tekka Market. 

·         Singapore is remarkably clean. Barry went as far as to say spotless.

·         Singapore is a great place to visit (especially visiting the One Degree North team) but there are some amazing opportunities for quick getaways to places such as Bali, Cebu, and Phuket. In fact, one of our wonderful guests copied the itinerary straight from Don't worry, go Krabi for a midweek getaway. He was not disappointed.

·         Technology is amazing. Face Time allows us to chat live and delay free and all for the price of an Apple device. Harry remarked how he felt like he already knew parts of the city as we had previously provided him with a digital tour during our chats.

·         The food in Singapore is excellent. Don't bother ordering the ‘American’ food as it’s rarely worth the calories. Although let’s be honest, it fills the void for a little slice of home when needed.

Enjoying the crowd favorite black pepper crab as well as Raegen's favorite Din Tai Fung. 

·         The subway system (known as the MRT) is awesome and makes getting around so easy. They both understood the system almost immediately and could navigate without parental guidance.

·         Both Barry and Harry were amazed even after reading the Sticker Shock blog post, at how expensive many things are here, with the exception of the MRT (train) and taxis.

·         As with every major city, it’s also nearly impossible to get a taxi when it’s raining. Did we mention that it’s monsoon season? Although we do love the GrabTaxi and Comfort Cab apps.

·         Foot massages from Alleviate are fantastic and not to be missed. If you have some extra time check out the fish spa. Ask for ‘Steven with a V.’  

Gotta love the fish spa

Foot massages

·         The last but most agreed upon point is that it’s hot. That no matter how much we told them that, they couldn't quite wrap their heads around the hot and humid that is our weather. I believe the quote was “Hot yoga has nothing on working out outside in Singapore.”

So come on over, Singapore is fine. 

Cheers..Singapore is awesome!
A Singapore Sling toast at the famous Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. 

We are excited to have our next two guests head our way this week. Stay tuned for the adventures and revelations surrounding their trip. We guarantee there will be a few more visits to the fish spa/foot massage place in our future. 

Happy Trails, 

Amy & Raegen 

*Of course these are not their real names. I’m sure they’re someone’s, just not theirs. 

Deer Down Under

READER ADVISORY- If you are opposed to hunting for your own food, you might want to skip over this week’s blog and check out next week’s next post. Don't worry the story is still G rated. 

Much like my father, whenever I need a break from work, I always find my solace in the woods, be it hunting, fishing, hiking or any other outdoor activities.  As I spend more time in the woods it always draws you back and I find that I need that future trip to keep me motivated.  Since Singapore is an island in Southeast Asia, there are not many opportunities for this escape, so you need to get off the island.  So why not head down under to Australia to see what they have to offer?

A few months back, Amy being the good sport that she always is, decided that she would checkout hunting camp for a few days with me and take in the whole experience.  Ian from Tru Blu Hunting was a gracious host and provided us with a bed, hot shower, food as well as loads of coffee and animals to look at!

Tru Blu hunts a property called Water Valley Ranch which is about three hours outside of Adelaide, Australia.  This ranch is one of the largest privately held ranches in the world and they claim that from one end to the other it is 200 km (about 124 miles)!  The property was absolutely gorgeous and made the entire experience just that much better.

The two species that I was looking for during this hunt was a Javan Rusa deer and a Sambar deer. The Javan Rusa and a Moluccan Rusa came very easy with perfect one shot. We now had some great venison to take home. Amy was able to be a part of the successful day of hunting as the winter sun set over Southern Australia.  Since this was her first true hunt, the expectations were high to continue to have great days like that.

The next few days did not prove to be as successful as the weather didn’t cooperate and the Sambar would not be as easy.  We saw numerous animals (kangaroos everywhere!), but there was one Sambar that stuck out. Ian said it was the biggest he had ever seen in on the property in his 15 years there, so I knew that I would have to holdout for this special deer.  After numerous attempts to take down this beautiful Sambar, we came up empty handed but had a great time regardless.

To wrap up a great trip at hunting camp we spent an evening in Adelaide where we had some amazing food and wine before heading back to Singapore.

When deer season came to an end in Australia, I called Ian to see if that large Sambar was still around. He is and it looks like I will have to find another time to make a trip to Water Valley Ranch to try again. Obviously Amy is more than welcome to join... but I am guessing she will take a rain check. Something tells me she’s cheering for the Sambar.

Amy & Hound holding down the fort during the hunt. 

While there is no hunting season, fall or cooler weather in Singapore, we made cranked down the air conditioning, made venison chili and watched college football (go Irish and Sun Devils) yesterday. Hey we can pretend!

Until then,

rhs & AB

Beijing off the Bucket List

Like most people, Amy had the Great Wall of China, one of the wonders of the world, on her bucket list.  Beijing is much closer to Singapore than the US and since we had a public holiday in Singapore we decided to make a last minute flight up there to check an item off the bucket list. China was also having a public holiday…throughout the country workers had the week off in honor of National Day. (Their '4th of July.')

Before leaving for Beijing we had arranged a tour guide for the day to visit the Great Wall and Emperor’s Summer Palace.  Jessie came highly recommended by some friends of ours. Did we mention that she is rated #4 on TripAdvisor for tours of Beijing?! (Go Jessie!)  Jessie and a driver picked us up at the hotel at 6:30 am. We left so early because as we mentioned it was a holiday week and many Chinese vacation within their country- i.e. there were A LOT of people in Beijing.  We saw the Mutianyu section of the wall and by saw I mean we could not have picked worse weather. It was cold, wet, and foggy. This meant that we could only see about 30 yards in front of us. Not exactly the way to see the massive scale of this 2000 mile wall.  There’s always a silver lining and ours was the fact that there were very few tourist there. Jesse told us that on the day before a more popular section of the wall had 88,000 visitors in one day. I might have seen less than 88 total people on our section of the wall including the workers.

Our next stop was the Summer Place. The Palace is where the Emperor would spend his summer months. As you can tell in the photos- this place was MASSIVE. It might be bigger than some countries but it was beautiful. My favorite part of the Palace were the gardens that the Emperor commissioned as a gift for his Mom’s 60^th Birthday. He had the wherewithal to start the construction when she was 40 years old. I can’t even plan 15 days out for my Mom’s birthday; way to show me up Emperor. (Love you mom!)

After a long day of touring Amy and I needed to refuel so we had dinner at the famous Da Dong Restaurant.  This is one of the most famous Peking Duck places in Beijing and they have a 165 page menu! A little history is that Beijing used to be called Peking, hence being known for the place to have Peking Duck. The meal was wonderful and might be in my top 5 places to eat in the world.  The duck was to die for. Now if I could only figure out how to make duck like that from our duck hunts at Big Lake.

Our timing in China was interesting as the protests were still going on in Hong Kong. It is widely known that China sensors a lot of the media that comes into the country. This was very evident as you watched any news channel. Right as a story began on Hong Kong the channel would go completely black until the news story was over. They also block the IP address (the web address) for Facebook and Instagram. It definitely makes you appreciate the luxuries that we have in the US and other Western countries.

The next day we decided to take in the sights of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We went through security to enter Tiananmen Square and if the afternoon crowd was ‘light,’ I wouldn’t have wanted to see them in full force. The square had a beautiful display of flowers since it was the holiday. 

Luckily, the Forbidden City wasn’t as chaotic as we thought. After walking through the massive Forbidden City we ended up in Jingshan Park where we walked up the hill to see beautiful, expansive view of Beijing.  We must have walked at least four miles, but we were able to see a lot of great sites.

We decided to top off our evening eating scorpions, cricket-like things, and numerous other delicacies at the Donghuamen Night Market. (Don’t worry we already had a proper dinner beforehand.) 

To that we say chow down!

Until then,

Raegen & Amy