Korea? What Korea?

From Singapore...the land of all things delicious. So far our trip is going well, if a little more expensive than we planned. The flight over was good but not mind blowing...which is what I expected from the "airline all the other airlines talk about." The food was good and the women were beautiful but South African Airways is still my gold standard.

I booked a hotel near the airport a few months ago, knowing how tired we would be when we arrived. The hotel ended up being really fancy and it started our trip off right. We slept in a big comfy bed (the online reservation even allowed me to specify "No feathers" much to my relief) and awoke this morning to a beautiful view of the ocean framed by palm trees and tropical flowers. Perfection. We had a big breakfast buffet and then went for a swim in the roof-top pool. We had set aside a few days of relaxing before our real backpacking trip began. It was nice to live in the lap of luxury for a day.

This afternoon we headed into the city and booked into our more reasonable hotel the "New 7th Story Budget" in the city centre. It's run by this really nice Indian family and the mother has a crazy lazy eye. The grandfather is the elevator man (never actually been in an elevator with an elevator man before...too bad he doesn't have one of those little organ grinder monkeys) and he's a little jerky on the stick. Every time he bounces us to our floor he says "Rough landing! Just be glad it wasn't a crash landing!" and then he laughs at his own joke. It's really cute and he's so sweet.

Tonight we are heading out for a crab dinner...a free one I might add! An inflight magazine ad promised free crabs to visitors, although I'm sure most people don't actually ask about it. We asked and after showing the proper ID and our boarding passes and a lengthy discussion we "passed" the test and became the proud owners of two chili crab vouchers. Looking forward to that.

Will probably head to Malaysia in a few days...will try and keep you posted. I must warn you though, I can feel myself slipping into that heady traveling existence where time and borders cease to exist. On second thought, that might just be the Carlsberg.