Author: missruslee

Header of the Month: Nighttime London.

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I had a hard time deciding what the header of the month should be for May.

So I decided on London, the city I know and love best after Copenhagen. And since my favourite London friend’s birthday is this month, I suppose it is apt to dedicate this feature post to the city where he grew up.

By the Thames, London, United Kingdom.

Header London

We all just have to accept this fact: Samuel Johnson did not exaggerate. His famous quote, “No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” was true to the last word. Having visited London on three different occasions now, I still can’t get enough of it. It simply has everything, from old architecture to modern ones; musical plays and football stadiums; a place like Canary Wharf buzzing with serious looking people and hipsters’ den at Camden; expensive shops and shabby ones; dirty toilets and beautiful scenery. A place of contrast – some people may call it messy, but to me, they are all co-existing in a beautiful chaos.

The city is as beautiful during the day as it is during sunset, and at night. During Christmas period, it gets an added sparkle from the festive and twinkling lights. It may seem off-season to post Christmas pictures now, but just in case you plan to visit London in December, here are pictures that I took of some of the most beautiful sights in the city.

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Guangzhou highlights.

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Having not been to China for nearly three years, I have almost forgotten how phenomenal and interesting the country is. Last weekend, I was in Guangzhou and was reminded exactly that. Although it isn’t the most picturesque of all places, the capital of Guangdong province boasted itself as a key national transportation hub and trading port. In shopaholic terms, this means that it is the wholesale market of the world!

I can see why though. Buildings and buildings of wholesale markets selling everything from clothes to jewellery to toy cockroaches… However, since I’m not exactly big on shopping, I tried to spot what other things Guangzhou was made of. Here are some highlights of my four-day visit.

First up, as always, the food. I love Cantonese food. Dim sum is the obvious choice but there is so much more to Cantonese food than just that. We had this awesome fishball stuffed with crab roe just across the street from our apartment. It was delicious.

Photo and bite enlarged to show texture.
Photo and bite enlarged to show texture.

Although, to be frank, the plane food that I had on my Singapore Airlines flight was not too bad either.

I get ridiculously excited over plane food.
I get ridiculously excited over plane food.

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A beautiful wedding.

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So here is the deal: I did not go to Bali just to eat, as this post and this post seem to have suggested.

Instead, I was there to attend a wedding, a very beautiful one if I may add.

It may not have started perfectly. It rained heavily and the venue for the vows had to be moved from a beautiful spot by the beach to a sheltered open hut. (And I arrived extremely late that I missed the saying of the vows, but the bride and groom do not have to know this. For a valid reason though since my hairdresser was an hour late!). But as the afternoon and the night progressed, it just got better.

After the ceremony, there were cocktails and canapes, which were amazing. I did not even know what cocktails I had and did not bother asking, but they were really good and the appetizers tasty. Not much good picture from the first part and this was the best one that I got.

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After that came my favourite part: the wedding reception. It was set in a beautiful tent with a row of 6 tables (I think), each table decorated with beautiful flower arrangement. The whole setup together with the fairy lights surrounding it created a very dreamy atmosphere.

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Balinese roast pork aka ‘babi guling’.

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Leave me alone with nothing planned and I will do this: eat.

On my last day travelling solo in Bali, I could not recall doing anything else apart from ensuring that my tummy was not in want. One of the highlights in my not-so-adventurous pursuit of traditional dishes was babi guling or Balinese roast pork.

Bali is probably the only place in Indonesia whereby you can taste a lot of varieties of pork, served in non Chinese style. Being a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, most of the restaurants serve halal food since it does not make much business sense to ignore the meal preference of close to 90% of the population.

Bali is different though. The majority of the population in the island is Hindu, which means that they eat pork but abstain from beef, which is perfect for me since I do not eat beef. This is why you can find blatant selling of pork and pigs being hung which will leave the people in other parts of Indonesia gasp in horror.

Although this scene of lamb cutlet did scare the hell out of me a little too.
Although this scene of lamb cutlet did scare the hell out of me a little too.

So anyway, back to babi guling. You can find this everywhere in Bali, but two of the more famous branches are Babi Guling Ibu Oka in Ubud and Warung Pak Malen at Kuta/Seminyak area.

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Naughty in Bali.

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Since Bali rained on me on my first day here travelling solo, I had nothing to do apart from enjoying my hotel suite. It was a classic example of a beautiful accident – I was just looking for the best deals for hotels in Agoda and not even realising that I had booked a hotel suite for myself.

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So I wasn’t complaining that I had to be stuck in my room for the whole afternoon. But when night came and it was time for dinner, I grew a little restless. Since the rain had stopped, I decided to venture out for some food. I was contemplating whether to be adventurous and tried something new, but thought better of it and decided to be safe and sinful. I went for Naughty Nuri’s Warung, an amazing BBQ pork ribs restaurant that I visited during my last trip to Bali in September, and this time I was going to have a whole rack for myself!

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Header of the Month: Boudhanath.

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It’s been a year now since I went to Nepal on my first ‘voluntourism’ trip. I have promised to write about it since ages ago, and since it’s been procrastinated so much, I think this place very much deserves the attention – hence becoming the header of the month for April.

Not that I’m exactly abiding by my own time in posting this header of the month as well. First week of April has come and gone and here I am, ten days late, in publishing this post.)

Anyway, presenting to you the Header of April.

Boudhanath, Kathmandu, Nepal.

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Kathmandu as a city is probably the epitome of how the capital city of a poor country is like. After all, Nepal is the second poorest country in Asia in 2013, just doing slightly better than Afghanistan with GDP per capita of USD 1,300. The city, if you can call it one, is really dirty, and you can find beggars and hungry kids strewn all over the street. The people are so poor that often times you will see the kids smelling glue at the roadside just to suppress their appetite. One even snatched a sandwich from my hand as I was eating while walking past them. Things that we take for granted… Thinking back, it was quite insensitive of me eating my food in front of starving children.

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Just in case you are wondering.

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I haven’t gone missing. I haven’t been travelling this week either. Instead, I was busy with this.

My favourite use of the Singapore Indoor Stadium
My favourite use of the Singapore Indoor Stadium

My annual sports journalism stint at Singapore Open Superseries was brought forward this year from the usual timing in June to April. Lots and lots of fun as usual and I always find this to be the perfect marriage between my passion for writing and badminton.

It was a week-long of endless speed writing, so much so that sometimes I felt that I ran out of words to use! But as always, words will magically appear, even though after hours of staring at the same paragraph or getting distracted by Facebook every now and then.

One discovery I made last week was that too much pork could cause writer’s block! I had steamboat with some friends on Saturday and after that I could not write a single word for the longest time.

Anyway, here is a little glimpse into how my badminton journalism life is like.

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Borobudur Temple: righting the wrong.

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No visit to Jogjakarta is ever complete without paying homage to the world-renowned Borobudur Temple. Situated in Magelang, about two-hour car ride away from Jogjakarta city, Borobudur Temple is worth the journey – it is after all the biggest Buddhist temple in the world and at one point in time was one of the seven wonders of the world.

We made a grave mistake of visiting the temple not only in the weekend but also on the eve of an Indonesian public holiday. Which was definitely not the wisest thing to do since Borobudur is one of the cheap destinations for pretty much everyone living in Java. Also, because we are not the earliest risers in the world, we only got there at around 11 AM. Considering some dedicated photographers would have already been ready with their tripod set up at about 5 AM, we definitely deserved the huge line forming at the ticket counter, not to mention the baking hot sun.

The line to get the tickets for local.
The ticket counter for locals.

At least among the things we did wrong, we got a couple of things right. Like the fact that one of my friends is non Indonesian and could get her ticket at the Borobudur International Visitors Centre. Check out the queue for that.

Nothing.
Nothing.

She did have to pay for the price for that, being a foreigner and all. Her entry ticket was USD 20 while ours was less than USD 3. Reminded me of my time in Taj Mahal when I had to pay a much higher ticket price as a foreign tourist (750 Rupee or USD 12) while my Indian friend paid close to nothing (20 Rupee or USD 30 cents). The best part of this arrangement was that we had the spillover effect from her being a foreign tourist and a very kind guy in the counter helped us to get the local tickets through the backdoor and did not even want to receive any tip! Truly hospitality at its best.

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Jogjakarta getaway.

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Jogjakarta is like a sneaky little person with a lot of tricks up its sleeve. At first glance, it could barely call itself a city. With an international airport that just about works and a city so small that it spans around 32 square km, I really did not expect much out of it save the legendary Borobudur Temple.

The terminal.
The terminal building, which was just 50 steps away from our plane.
Cue chaos.
Cue chaos.

A closer look, however, will reveal that there is so much more to the place than a mere small town behind its time. The city may not be massive, but the province stretched far and therein lies a historic place with rich culture and lively art scene.

As is customary in most of my posts, I will start my praises of any place from its food.

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