Know Your ABC's (and AYE's, CBD's, and PIE's)

When we first told our friends in the US that we were moving to Singapore some immediately would ask “Do they speak English there?”.  We would gently explain that while Singapore has 4 official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil), English is the primary language spoken by virtually everyone.  We heard about “Singlish”, the amalgam of other languages into English, but really haven’t heard much of it after moving here.

So we didn’t expect that we would have to learn a new language, but we have.  Getting directions in Singapore sounds like a NASA launch sequence with the odd sounding, difficult to decipher, acronyms tossed left and right.  There are acronyms here for roads, areas, schools, and government agencies—everything.  They are almost all 3 letters and not pronounced as a word, but as a series of letters.  (Somehow this seems highly appropriate since I work for Visa, which is itself as a recursive acronym.)

Here’s an example:  “To go from the CBD to SIN, I can take the ECP (with no ERP).  Or, I can take the MRT.  From home I can MRT or take the PIE or the AYE to the ECP. Hopefully I am flying SIA (or SQ), but I can be assured I am going to get through passport control thanks to the ICA.”

Sometimes conversations can sound like an episode of “The Californians”, but with letters instead of numbers.

Here’s a short list:

• MRT - Mass Rapid Transit -- This is the subway rail system in Singapore that I ride almost every day.
• SBS – Singapore Bus Service – Exactly what it sounds like.
• LRT – Light Rail Transport – Light rail vehicles that feed the MRT.  We haven’t been on one of these yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
• ERP – Electronic Road Pricing – These are the gantries that use car transponders that charge fees for driving into the CBD.  The price varies by the day and time of day.
• CTE -- Central Expressway (somehow turning two words into three letters)
• ECP – East Coast Parkway
• AYE --    Ayer Rajah Expressway (this time the acronym is the first 3 letters??)
• MCE – Marina Coast Expressway
• BKE – Bukit Timah Expressway
• TPE – Tampines Expressway (two words again?)
• PIE – Pan Island Expressway
• LTA – Land Transport Authority  -- The letters you will learn about if you park illegally, drive in a bus lane, or have the wrong type of license.
• COE – Certificate of Entitlement – Yes, owning a car in Singapore is considered an entitlement—a very expensive entitlement.
• HDB – Housing and Development Board – The housing authority for Singapore
• CBD – Central Business District – Known as “Downtown” in the US
• URA – Urban Renewal Agency – This is the well run planning arm of Singapore’s government.  They plan up to fifty years into the future and do it very well.  Their City Gallery is not to be missed.
• SMU – Singapore Management University
• NUS – National University of Singapore

Gotta Go Phi Phi

Water Entry

My last day of diving instruction in Phuket was at the Phi Phi Islands, a 3 hour boat trip from the Chalong Pier.  For those who don’t know, Phi Phi is actually pronounced “Pee Pee”.  The Phi Phi Islands are known for a few things. 

I Found Nemo

First off is the diving.  There are limestone cliffs that drop straight down from a couple of hundred meters and keep going down under the water.  There are also shallow bays that are filled with aquatic life—fish, coral, and moray eels.  There is a lot of variety of dive sites in a small area.  The area is protected because it is a National Park.

Barrel Sponge

Secondly are the getaway hotels that dot Koh Phi Phi.  They are not over the top expensive and many look to be a nice place to just get away from the rat race.

Blue Starfish
(yes, that's the name)

Lastly is one that is bragged about a lot in Phi Phi (and in Phuket in general).  Phi Phi is where the movie “The Beach” was filmed.  Now I am not the biggest movie goer so it’s no surprise that I haven’t seen it. But I haven’t been able to find anyone who has actually seen it, even if it did star a young Leonardo DiCaprio.  I checked on Rotten Tomatoes and it scored a 4.4, so no surprise.  Here is a scene from the movie shot at Maya Beach.

Giant Clam

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Our first dive of the day was also the last of my certification dives.  We dove at Koh Bida Nok, the southernmost of the Phi Phi Islands.  We stayed mostly on the west side and finished the last of our tests.  Mike, our instructor, also made sure we hit our 18m depth (the maximum of Open Water Diver certification).  Visability was pretty good at 10-20m.

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Our second dive of the day was one that Mike was looking forward to.  Despite having almost 5,000 dives logged, this was going to be a new dive site for him.  We went to Hin Klai, which is a site that doesn’t break the surface so it feels like you are in the middle of the ocean.  The dive starts at about 5ms and goes down from there.  I think the timing was not the best for this dive as there was (at least for a beginner) a pretty good current that also stirred up particulates which left visibility at about 5ms.  Probably timing a dive at slack tide would be best.

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Green Eel

Lionfish

Our last dive of the day was my favorite: Phi Phi Ley at Tuttle Rock.  Well named for as soon as we entered the water we saw a Green Hawksbill turtle.  It was surrounded by people (all making sure to give him/her enough space).  It then swam up to the surface to get air.  Mike tracked it and when it went down again we were there with it alone--very cool.  I also entered a massive school of fish.  It was like a wall that wrapped around you.  And lastly, we did a “swim through tunnel” which was exciting.  (Prior to entering the water, the boat captain took us for a little excursion into Maya Bay—no Leonardo sightings.)

And these dives were why I decided to get certified again.  The beauty under the water is spectacular and its something that takes work to do, so few people do it.  To me it’s similar to my back country backpacking trips.  Knowing that few see it makes it much more special.

A Familiar Old Dive

When we moved to Singapore a little over a year ago I declared that I wanted to get certified (again) for scuba diving.  The diving in Southeast Asia is wonderful and while no one else in our family wanted to get certified, I know we have friends coming to visit that are divers and I wanted to be able to enjoy diving with them.

I grew up in a Southern California beach town and got my original PADI certification in a PE class in the mid-70’s.  With some other friends—Rick, Jeff, and Jim, we dove for 3 or 4 years on the beaches of Laguna Beach with an occasional Catalina Island trip.  The last time I dived was before I met Julie and that was almost 38 years ago.  Rather than try to get my c-card reissued I thought it best to start from scratch.

I did a lot of looking around trying to find the best option for me.  And while Singapore had a couple of locations that provided pool instruction for Ocean Water Diver certification, the required ocean dives meant a weekend trip to Malaysia and it just sounded too grueling to me.  I started looking at destination options and landed on Super Divers in Phuket.

Why them?  First off Phuket was on our places to visit and since my birthday bumped up to the long Easter weekend we thought it would be a good get away (don’t worry, Julie and Christopher had a good time exploring while I was learning).  Secondly, Super Divers was VERY HIGHLY RATED on both TripAdvisor and Google.  I contacted them by email with several questions, all of which were answered completely and promptly.  I decided to go with them and paid in advance via a PayPal link they sent me.  Note that their refund policy is OUTSTANDING – right up to late the day before you are supposed to start.

I was picked up at my hotel on time by a car and dropped off at the Prince Edouard resort where we did our classroom and pool training.  Besides me, there was another young couple from Hong Kong—so the total group was 3 which meant very focused attention from the instructor. 



Dive Instructor Mike

Our instructor was Mike (aka Texas Mike—but don’t hold the Texas part against him).  He was patient, knowledgeable, and had a lot of different ways to approach training if the first way didn’t work.  On top of that, he was a nice guy.  And if you are going to spend 3 days with someone it REALLY helps if they are enjoyable to be around.

Classroom training has come a long way in 40+ years because of technology.  First off the courses done via video with great follow-up by Mike to make sure the key concepts were fully understood, not just memorized.  Second is what technology has done to diving.  The last time a lot of time was spent on how to use dive tables—now a dive computer on your wrist will do that for you (and better).  The last time I was certified you spent time practicing buddy breathing—now you have a auxiliary regulator to help another diver.  And your Buoyancy Control Device (BCD) is attached to you air tank to make using it much simpler.

The pool training was fun.  It had been a long time since I had donned my scuba gear and gone under.  It also came back to me fairly well.  Clearing a mask, buoyancy control, and communicating with hand signals.  I don’t think I will ever forget the mental of image of Mike pointing to his head to mean “think before you do it”.  After the third or fourth time of doing a skill wrong (or more likely too fast) he was pointing to his head so hard I was worried that he would puncture his skull.  But it was all done with safety in mind—now, or more likely sometime in the future when Mike wasn’t around to remind you.  And that’s what I wanted.

Pier Trucks

On Board the Pier Tricks

The second day I was picked up at the Palms Resort and Hotel a little earlier by a mini-bus for the ~1 hour drive (with other pickups) to the Chalong Pier to meet up with Texas Mike and get on the dive boat.  The pier is quite long and there are trucks that shuttle you back and forth—it’s a little chaotic, but that’s part of the charm of Asia.  The boat had about 50 divers onboard and almost all were with a dive instructor or dive guide.  This made the chaos much more manageable.  There was no shortage of the food onboard, breakfast, lunch, drinks, fruit—all you could need or want.

We chugged about 2 hours out to the Racha Islands for our three training dives.  In 2010 an extended period of warm (hot?) water bleached the coral, basically killing it all.  There were fish around, as well as white coral (with some beginnings of rebirth) so there was stuff to see.  There was also a sandy bottom, which was great for learning and testing.   Mike put us all through our paces and we learned and demonstrated many diving skills in our three dives.  At the end of the first day I think we felt good—sometimes a little frustrated, but we knew we were learning it the right way.

The next day pick up was a little earlier.  This time it was a different boat from Chalong Pier (the same chaos) and we headed out to the Phi Phi Islands (a three-hour trip each way).  After the first dive of the day we had demonstrated and passed everything—we were certified Open Water Divers.  That meant the next two dives were more about polishing our skills and enjoying diving, I ended up back at my hotel about 8:15 pm, a long but rewarding day.

So now I am a (re)certified diver.  I plan on diving again with Super Divers and Mike, next time with our friend Lisa when we head to Phuket with a group of American friends.  Next year it will be somewhere still to be determined with Peter and Trish, college friends.  So I am happy that I did it the way I did it with the instructor I got—no regrets in any way.

Just Phuket

A few months ago we realized that Good Friday is a national holiday in Singapore .  Holidays that fall on a Friday or Monday in Singapore are special because it means a long weekend to go somewhere.  The fact that Wednesday was my birthday made it real easy to justify taking one day of PTO and having a great long weekend.  The “somewhere” we decided to go was Phuket Thailand   .

Phuket was on our bucket list of things to explore in Asia while living here and that was where we decided to go.  I also wanted to get recertified for scuba diving (the first time was 42 years ago and I hadn’t been diving in 38+years—time to start over).  I found a VERY HIGHLY recommended dive center, Super Divers, booked an Open Water Certification course, we booked some reasonable flights on JetStar, got a hotel for the three of us and we were set.

Julie found us a great place to stay, The Palms in Kamala Beach—just north of Patong.  It was a 2 bedroom place with a patio that had steps directly into the pool.  It too was well rated, had a restaurant, and Kamala Beach is much slower that the frantic scene in Patong—especially on full moons—seriously! Since I would be gone for 3 days of diving, Julie and Christopher got to explore Phuket on their own.

Julie worked with the tourist info desk at the hotel via email to line up the three days they had.  A little back and forth and Julie got what she wanted.

For the first day, it was just a car and driver for half a day (not a tour guide which was fine).  The driver turned out to be the same one that picked us up at the airport the night before.  His English was very limited, but much better than Julie’s Thai.  The first stop was the lookout at Karon viewpoint.  The photos you see online can be beautiful, and while it was good, the haze that day took it down a couple of notches.  Still enjoyable.

From there they headed up to Big Buddha.  The Big Buddha is EXACTLY that, BIG! (45 meters high).  It looms atop a mountain and can be clearly seen from Chalong on the east and Kata on the west.  It was built in 2004 entirely from donations.  It’s built of concrete covered with white jade marble squares.  It was a mellow place to be and you could walk around and completely under it.  There were lots of monks chanting and people praying.  People wrote messages on foil hearts that fluttered in the wind.  The messages were for good luck and passed away loved ones in exchange for a donation—the Buddhist version of Catholic votive candles.

Julie wanted lunch and the driver understood her need and found a really good Thai restaurant Baan Poo Doo Lay (for Julie and Christopher that meant not spicy) with a great view.  Food makes long days go better.

Fueled up they were ready for their last stop—Wat Chalong, a Buddhist temple.  It was built in the early 1800’s and is the largest and most popular temple in Phuket.  Locals and Thais from all over visit this temple to pay their respects.  The “compound” had different styles of architecture and was enjoyable.  What Julie didn’t enjoy was the periodic fireworks that were set off in a brick vessel—scared the crap out of her at first.  Eventually she got used to it, but I think that she will have the memory forever.

Julie enjoys seeing locals dressed up for ceremonies—whether it is a wedding or something else.  She was not disappointed at Wat Chalong as there was a couple celebrating something.  Then it was time to head back to Kamala for a dip in the pool.

I got home from diving and after a beer in Taste, the hotel’s restaurant and bar, Julie and I headed to the beach while Christopher enjoyed his down time in his room.  Kamala Beach is calmer than Patong, but that doesn’t mean that it is devoid of activities.  As the sun set, we watched as locals collected jet skis at the end of the day, put them on trailers that they hooked together to form trains of up to four long that were towed off the beach with a 4WD pickup.  Once to the street they break them into groups of three that they tow with scooters with sidecars.  It’s really funny to see these scooters give it everything they’ve got just to get down the street.

Dinner was at a beachfront table at Salt and Pepper—a restaurant owned by a Swede that serves Thai and Italian food.  Good food and location—the price was even better.

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Phuket is an island and Julie wanted to spend some time on the water.  She and Christopher got picked up the next day and got on a large boat at Ao Po Pier on the northeast side of the island for a tour of Phang Nga Bay.

Phang Nga is a national park and is known for its limestone “stacks” and caves.  Julie and Christopher got their first cave experience at “The Bat Cave”.  After getting into inflatable canoes with a paddler/guide, they went into the cave at high tide which meant they were a little too close to the bats hanging on the ceiling and the smell of bat guano.  From there it was off to Hong Island where they got into another canoe and explored multiple caves, which were gorgeous.  Some were so low you had to lay flat on the bottom of the canoe to get though the entrance.

After that an on board lunch of Thai fried rice with fried chicken wings hit the spot (food always makes the day go better).  Once lunch was done they transferred to longtails for the ride to “James Bond Island”, made famous by the movie,  The Man With the Golden Gun.  After that a little swimming at a secuded beach on the Andaman Sea and  then headed back to the hotel.




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Julie saved the best for last, a visit to an elephant rescue, the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary.  Historically being an elephant in Thailand (and many other countries) has not been a great thing to be.  Elephants are used (and misused) in both logging and the tourist trade.  Both industries are hard on these animals and this center “buys their freedom” for ~$35,000 USD per elephant.  They come to this reserve to live out their days.  And since they can live to 80 years that can be quite some period of time.

This is a new organization, less than 2 years old.  Prior to purchase the elephant has their “registration” reviewed for eligibility.  This covers what they did and what their physical condition is to make sure they are truly animals that need and deserve this final rest.

Two elephants were rescued together and will not separate from each other.  The others are more loaners.  Julie and Christopher both got to feed an elephant watermelon (which she really enjoyed) and cucumbers (which she ate only after that yummy watermelon was gone). 

One of the highlights of the visit was to watch the elephants in the swimming pool (aka a mud hole) which the elephants loved.  The pair of elephants enjoyed every minute until the alpha female (the younger one) decided it was time to leave.  And the older one just followed what she did.

Video One

Video Two

Brian got home from scuba diving on Phi Phi (something for another post) and it was time to pack up (in the dark no less due to a Thai power failure—evidently not an uncommon occurrence).  A morning flight back to Singapore with memories to last a lifetime (especially at Brian’s new age).