Category Archives: Food

What we are eating and where we mention food.

Touring Singapore – Central Business District & Chinatown

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After a short night of sleep for Omar and Christi, we began our official Singapore sightseeing. This is Omar’s sixth trip to Singapore, so he took on the role of tour guide.

We took a taxi from the marina to the Raffles Hotel, named after the founding father of Singapore. It was built in 1887 and is quite opulent. It is classic colonial architecture, with high ceilings, crown moldings and fancy chandeliers. We walked through the court yard and had lunch in their bakery. The food was good and surprisingly inexpensive, served on china with high quality silverware. Omar introduced us to curry puffs, chicken curry wrapped in a puff pastry, which is now a new favorite of Christi’s. Most of the hotel is blocked off to non-guests, so we didn’t get to see the lobby or any of the inside beyond the restaurant.

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From the hotel, we walked a few blocks over to Continue reading →

Checking into One Degree 15 Marina and Singapore

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It was made clear to us last night that we needed to be at the marina office promptly at 0900 to check in. Getting up wasn’t too hard since there is an enormous construction side on the other side of the cove that was making lots of noise. We were given a brief tour of the facilities. The marina is part of a private club that opened in April 2007. It costs S$50,000 (USD$38,000) to join. It is swanky, featuring two restaurants, a deli, bar, pool, gym, game room, guest rooms, and on and on. The shower/bathroom area off the pool is amazing. The facilities for the people in the marina are not anywhere close to as nice as the facilities for the club members, but it doesn’t really matter. You get a temporary membership card and can use all the club’s facilities. Most of the boats in the marina are power boats, with only a few sailboats. They also have free unlimited wireless internet to the boats, which is like heaven for us. The connection is so-so by our old San Diego standards, wonderful by our new cruising standards.

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Once we were checked in to the marina, we headed to town to Continue reading →

Eric Grab, Pseudo MD for Karimata

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Lat 1`40.7S Long 108.54.2E
We both got a fitful 10 hours of sleep and felt much better in the morning. We decided not to leave until 1600, giving us a full 24 hours of rest before setting off again.

In the late morning a fishing boat came by. Due to the language barrier, it took us a while to realize that someone was hurt and they wanted our help. One of the younger men, named Weren (sp) spoke English the best and became the interpreter. We decided that Eric should go to shore with the first aid kit and Christi should stay at the boat monitoring the radio. Eric hopped in their boat and they headed toward the structures we could see from Kosmos.

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The small village had a lovely beach. There is a dock, and just as the fishermen yesterday told us, the water is much calmer in front of the village. Upon arriving to shore, Eric was taken to a hut where a man had a big gaping wound on the left side of his forehead. They had already Continue reading →

Diving the USAT Liberty, Tulamben, Bali

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Yesterday we spent the day doing chores. Eric changed the generator oil and oil filter. Christi cleaned. For dinner, we went into Sanur again. We walked down the street, eyeing the menus at a few restaurants we passed. We settled on a place called Melanie’s Café that had an eclectic menu with a bizarre variety of foods. Eric wanted to eat there because they had a few Mexican dishes on the menu. Christi rolled her eyes, sure that a place that served Indian/Italian/Greek/American/Indonesian/Chinese/Mexican/Japanese was probably going to have terrible Mexican food.

Just like our last Mexican meal in Australia, we ordered fajitas and enchiladas. Much to our surprise, the food was actually pretty good. Granted, our standards are lower these days, but they got all the basics right. The enchiladas had the smallest smattering of enchilada sauce, but there was plenty of salsa on the plate to compensate. The fajita meat didn’t have grilled onions and bell peppers in it, but there were chopped onions on the side, and plenty of salsa, guacamole, and sour cream. Even though the food was not bad, we dreamed of the subtle things that make Mexican food so good, like poblano chiles and cilantro.

Today we went diving. We originally wanted Continue reading →

More Sightseeing in Bali

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Continued from yesterday”¦ We made our rounds around temple Tirta Empul, looking at all the structures, and then headed back to the car. We managed to sneak out the entrance so we could avoid the row of hawkers awaiting us at the exit. As soon as we were out of the temple complex, the pushy banana salesman was back, and despite having told her no at least 50 times, she managed to beat us into submission and we bought some bananas.

The next stop was a town called Bangli. We ate in a restaurant called Batur Sari that offers a nice view of active volcano Batur. While the setting was nice, the food was only mediocre and extremely over priced. Christi’s main course was $8.50, the same price as her gourmet meal in the fancy restaurant Kuta. The volcano never rumbled or spit up any lava or smoke that we could see, so we didn’t even get a show with our meal. We were also attacked by touts as we left, who literally surrounded us, all of them shoving their wares in our faces and demanding we buy their goods. We had a hard time getting through them to the safety of the car. That is our worst hawker experience to date.

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We made a quick stop at Continue reading →