checkpoint

We're flying from Bangkok to Dubai today, which means that we're finally leaving Asia and heading to the Middle East. We're also slightly more than halfway through with our trip, so I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on some of the highs and lows of our trip so far.

Starting with the highs...

Best Public Transportation
Bangkok's skytrain wins by a narrow margin over Singapore's subway system. The skytrain comes every few minutes, is super cheap (less than 1 USD per ride), and the trains are air-conditioned and well-maintained.

Best Food
It's too hard to pick one or two, so I'm going to name a top five:
- Tetsuya's, in Sydney, was our best fine dining experience.
- For street food, it's a tie between Penang's delicious hawker stands, and Thailand's fresh green papaya salads.
- Singapore claims the crown for best food courts, with Vivo City's "Food Republic" leading the charge.
- Most unexpectedly delicious were the scones that we had at some random tea house in the Australian outback, outside of Alice Springs. They were large, fluffy, crumbly, buttery, and very very fresh.
- I also have to mention Gugong, the bibimbap place we went to the first week in Korea. Something about it really hit the spot. I think I may like bibimbap better than both tofu soup and Korean BBQ.

Best Critter Encounters
One of my favorite parts of our trip has been all the wildlife that we've seen. My top five:
- The little penguins of Phillip Island were adorable and it was great to see them in their natural habitat. The koala spotting at the nearby conservation center was also fun, but koalas are a bit boring.
- Seeing kangaroos in the wild in the Blue Mountains was also a magical experience.
- I was amazed by the beautiful butterflies at the Penang Butterfly Farm, and had a great time photographing them.
- Meeting the snakes and lizards at the Alice Springs Reptile Center was surprisingly fun, and the reptiles that we held weren't slimy at all. We were also excited to encounter a very large (over 3 foot long) iguana at our resort in Ko Samui.
- I thought there was a chance the elephant ride in Chiang Mai was going to be touristy and lame, but I actually quite enjoyed it.

Best Natural Scenery
One more top five, with the top three from Australia:
- The sunrise walk at Ayers Rock was unforgettable; totally worth the early start and having to brave the morning winds.
- The day that we spent snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef may have spoiled snorkelling for us forever. I was especially struck by colors of the reef itself.
- Sydney's beaches were also gorgeous and we spent a lovely afternoon wandering from one beach to another.
- Although cultivated, the orchids in Singapore's Botanical Garden were still naturally beautiful, with unbelievable variation in shape and color.
- Finally, although not as spectacular as the others listed above, the rice paddies that we saw on our first day in Bali were also an interesting and unique sight.

Best Cultural Experiences
I expected to have a good time watching "The Capulets and the Montagues" at the Sydney Opera House, and I did. A more surprising highlight was the "Barong" dance that we saw in Bali; in addition to showcasing exotic Balinese dances and costumes, it was entertaining, funny, and told a good story.

Best View
It was a pain getting up there, but once we got to the top of Penang Hill, we were treated to an amazing panorama that included Georgetown city, the Strait of Malacca, and the Penang bridge. The view from the Petronas Towers Skybridge was not nearly as good, but we enjoyed the experience of being on the Skybridge very much anyway.

Best Temple/Wat/Ruins
D was most amazed by Bangkok's Grand Palace; we spent several house there wandering through all the intricately decorated buildings and gardens. I also liked the sprawling ruin of Wat Chaiwatthanaram (in Ayutthaya) very much. Finally, despite the rain, the Pura Besakih (Mother Temple) in Bali was very impressive and worth the time and effort (and money) it took us to get there.

As for the lows, I was chatting with a friend yesterday and she asked me whether we had found anything particularly disappointing. It actually took me awhile to think of things that we hadn't enjoyed, but here are a few less-than-awesome experiences we've had...

On our last night in Ubud, we wanted to go out to a non-hotel restaurant, so we went to the extremely popular "Nacho Mama". We spent nearly two hours there, never managed to place an order, and were totally disgusted by the dirty table, not to mention the stray dog eating off the floor. Oh, and it was raining that night, so we got wet coming and going.

On our first domestic flight, from Sydney to Alice Springs, the counter agent warned us that our luggage was overweight. We had a few hours of stress before we figured out our plan of using left luggage services to store extra bags between international flights. We've had to fly with overweight carry-on most of the trip as well (turns out 5kg is really not very much at all, especially when you're carrying three camera lenses and two laptops), and there's always a small bit of anxiety associated with that.

Many of our tour experiences have been awesome, but a few have been mediocre. We had a good time in the Blue Mountains, but the morning was only moderately interesting, so it was really the kangaroo sighting that made that tour worth it. Similarly, our half-day in the Daintree Rainforest was fun, but not amazing. I guess we might have felt differently had we actually sighted a crocodile on our river cruise. Finally, we probably could have done better on our last day in Bali by hiring a driver for the day, instead of doing a private tour, as that turned out to be quite pricey.

We've been lucky for most of the trip, but we have had to deal with rain a few times; notably one evening in Penang, when it took us nearly half an hour to walk through a torrential downpour to get to a hawker food court two blocks away, and in Bali, when we toured Pura Besakih (the Mother Temple) in the rain. Honestly though, I hesitate to complain about merely non-ideal weather, when there have been so many natural disasters in Southeast Asia in the past month.

Overall we've been having a blast, and it's hard to believe that the trip is half over. I'm really not sure I'll be ready to go home when our time is up, but maybe I'll get sick of the food faster now that we're leaving Asia.