Local Burger

When I traveled through Los Angeles on my way to meet up with the crew in Indonesia I made sure to find an In-N-Out while I was in town. In-N-Out is a fast food chain that is only on the west coast and has been rated one of the top fast-food restaurants in the country. Since I had heard so much about their food I was really happy to be able to stop at one. When I found one I could easily tell how popular this restaurant is by the long line of cars that stretched all the way across the shopping area parking lot at it was mid-afternoon, not even when most people eat a meal! There was also an employee who directed traffic and walked from car to car to take orders and radio them back to the kitchen to speed up the process. The menu at In-N-Out is very simple and not with much variety but what they offer is very, very good with fresh ingredients. I have to saw that the burger that I ordered did live up to its claim to fame and was probably one of the best fast-food burgers I’ve had!

Here in Malaysia there are fast-food restaurants such as McDonalds, KFC, and even a few local brands, but there aren’t any In-N-Out restaurants. That’s okay though because we’ve found something I like much better. It’s known as a local burger and can be found at most night markets where Malaysians go to get dinner. Like a lot of the food stalls I’ve found on the side of the roads these ones only offer one dish, although you can get several different types of burger. They are cooked on a flat stove, their buns are toasted, and they can come with coleslaw, cucumbers, egg, cheese, mayonnaise, special sauce, black pepper. They aren’t very expensive and you can get patties of chicken, fish, beef or even rabbit! And if you want you can get a double which comes with two patties. The person working the local burger stall makes them as soon as you order and even though there isn’t a drive through we seen cars lined up on the side of the road as they wait for their turn to get out and order. The burgers are big, messy, and delicious! Some have even been served with a fork and spoon if things get too messy. A single chicken burger costs less than 3 Ringgit and a burger with only fried egg cost only 1.20 Ringgit!

There you have it! Two delicious and very different burgers from two very different parts of the world!

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Cendol!

Before I visited the historic town of Malacca for a day I read about a popular dish served there called cendol. It’s a traditional desert in Southeast Asia and can be prepared different ways depending on where you get it but is based on coconut milk, a jelly made of rice flour and green food coloring, palm sugar, shaved ice, and often red beans or corn. Sounds like a strange mixture, and it is, but it was actually very good when I tried it! It’s similar to a very sweat snow cone with coconut cream. There were several street vendors and shops selling cendol in Malacca and it quickly became a favorite treat of mine, especially after sightseeing in the hot sun for a few hours. I ended up getting it three times while I was in Malacca (it was a very hot day) and I’m looking forward to trying different versions of cendol as we continue traveling!

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Sentosa Island And A Few Singapore Pictures

On my last day in Singapore I decided to visit Sentosa Island. Sentosa Island is a small, family themed island development in the southern-most part of Singapore. It’s designed to attract Southeast Asian families for weekend, or longer, vacations, similar to Disneyland back home. I wanted to go to Sentosa for three reasons: to see Singapore from the cable car ride to the island, to visit the aquarium there, and to visit the southern-most point of the Asian continent (according to Singapore). I was able to do all three!

To get to Sentosa I had to take the metro all the way to the last stop on the red line, Harborfront. From there I had to find my way to the cable car which was a little confusing since like most metro stations, this one let out in the middle of a giant shopping mall. Once I found the cable car it was just a short ride onto the island. The view from the cable car of Singapore was well worth the ticket! From the air you can really see how big of a role the shipping industry plays in Singapore’s economy. It seemed like the shipping ports were several times larger than the downtown area of Singapore, and you could see massive shipping vessels lined up by the dozens in the surrounding waters.

Once I got onto the island I bypassed the ticket counters selling tickets to all sorts of crazy rides, shows, and other attractions and went straight to the aquarium. I was just in time for the sea lion and dolphin show. The aquarium has three pink dolphins!

Inside, the aquarium itself was fairly small but still had some neat exhibits. In addition to the usual shark, ray, and turtle petting tanks they also had two aquariums with “windows” in them where you could stick your hand through the side wall! Take a look at the picture below and try to figure out how this is possible!

There was also a moving walkway that snaked under a massive aquarium while all sorts of sea creatures swam around you.

Here is a picture of me in front of one of the many reef colonies that were in the aquarium.

After checking out the aquarium I headed down to the beach. According to Singapore this beach is the southern-most point on the Asian continent, but Malaysia disagrees! I made it just in time for sunset.

This is a picture of me just after the sun had set. Most of the lights in the background are shipping containers!

I wandered around the island a bit more and most of it was brightly lit with neon lights illuminating water features, statues, and decorative vegetation.

There was even a giant merlion statue that was several stories tall!

As I headed back to the main island of Singapore I could see the downtown skyline rising up from Sentosa.

After almost six days exploring Singapore I was happy to finally be heading back to the boat for some much needed rest. Below are some other pictures from my favorite parts of Singapore.

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Kumai

Kumai is a small town a few miles up the Sekonyer river. The road that runs along the river is really the only major road and there are no traffic lights. We even had to take a 20 minute bemo ride to the nearby larger town to find an ATM! We spent some time wandering around Kumai and it didn't take too long to see most of it. The main road is lined with small shops and restaurants as well as with food carts and food stalls selling traditional Indonesian food.

There is a large population of Muslims on Kalimantan and it seems like there is a beautiful and brightly colored mosque on every block. During prayer hours the mosques call to prayer from loudspeakers on tall towers. The sound is kind of pleasant from a distance but when you're close to the buildings its hard to hear anything else!

Kumai isn't a popular tourist destination and only a few of the locals speak a small amount of English even though lots of tourists come to the island of Borneo to see its ecology. Because of this we usually create quite a scene just when walking down the street. Everybody greets us with a 'Hey mister!' as we walk by, whether from their store, house, or as they whiz by on a motorbike. Children are especially enthusiastic about saying hello and waving to us. Going for a walk around town can feel more like walking in a parade!

One interesting thing about this town is that it has a booming swallow industry. There are giant bird houses that look like small hotels scattered around, and many more under construction. They are made of cement, unpainted, and have small holes in the walls for ventilation. When the houses are finished being constructed they cool the building with air conditioners to attract swallows to build communities there. During dawn and dusk the swallows swarm around their homes by the hundreds feeding on insects, chirping and screeching loudly. It's actually kind of eerie to look up and see them swarming above you. The swallow houses are built so that their nests can be collected and sold to places like China where they are made into a soup which is considered a delicacy. One bowl of swallow-nest soup can cost $40-$100 US dollars!

The river is wide here where we are anchored and there is a lot of activity on the water. Canoes paddle by, tiny speedboats zoom past, larger canoes with loud motors slowly pass by, houseboats taking tourists into the orangutan park slowly cross the river, large ferries transport people and vehicles, and larger barges and fishing vessel make the trip between the town and the ocean. Meanwhile the river current is constantly changing with the tides.

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My Time in Kuta

I beat the William T. Piquette and its crew to Bali, Indonesia by about eight days so I waited at a homestay on Poppies Lane 1 in the busy city of Kuta. Kuta is right on the beach on the south-western end of Bali and is probably Indonesia’s number one tourist destination. The city never sleeps and motorbikes race through the streets at all hours. The homestay that I wandered into was run by two Balinese locals and had a very laid-back atmosphere. The didn’t even ask me to pay when I first checked in. They just handed me the key to my room and told me to stay as long as I liked!

The types of people who wandered into that homestay all seemed to have similar stories and to be going in similar directions. Most were recent college graduates who wanted to travel before starting their career or seasonal workers who traveled during their off-season. At any rate, everybody had something in common with everybody else, regardless of nationality, if only for the simple reason that they have traveled to the same locations in Southeast Asia or eventually were going to.

It is easy to make friends in the homestay, especially with other solo travelers. While waiting for the crew to arrive I spent most of my time wandering around the maze of tourists stalls, reading or walking along the beach, eating at inexpensive restaurants, and chatting with other travelers. Staying in Kuta is exhausting. Just walking down a street takes a lot of effort since you have to dodge motorbikes who squeeze by you with inches to spare and you have to resist the temptation to stop in every shop to see what the shopkeeper is selling so enthusiastically. It’s a non-stop party city and from the beach you can see airplanes arriving to the nearby airport one after another. It’s a popular tourist destination for Australians and it was common to see whole families zooming past on their motorbikes wearing matching t-shirts they had just bought at a tourist shop, the youngest ones with braided hair.

Evenings were usually spent hanging out on the beach watching the sunset. Both locals and tourists crowded the beach at this time to see the always beautiful sunset. Many of the Indonesian and Asian tourists would come to me and my new friends from the homestay and ask to take their pictures with us. I guess it isn’t common for them to see Westerners where they come from. One Saturday the beach was full of Indonesian students who came to Kuta to practice their English with Westerners. They would come up to us in groups of three or as many as eight, introduce themselves and then ask us our names, how old we were, where we were from, and other questions like that. They would always want pictures with us so they could prove to their teachers back home that they were practicing English with foreigners. It was flattering at first but soon became kind of annoying and I eventually got tired of smiling!

One day I was determined to explore an area outside of Bali. Since I don’t have an International Driver’s License and good public transportation doesn’t really exist I decided to rent a mountain bike and travel North up the coast to Tannah Lot, one of Bali’s most famous temples. After biking about an hour up the coast it turned too rocky and I had to turn off and follow the roads. I hadn’t been able to find a map but getting to Tannah Lot was pretty easy since there aren’t many roads to begin with and whenever I did come across an intersection I would just ask somebody nearby to point me in the right direction. After 2.5 hours I finally arrived to Tannah Lot! It’s a beautiful temple near cliffs on the south-west coast of Bali and its only accessible during high-tide. I knew that I wanted to stay until sunset so I thoroughly explored the area visiting smaller shrines nearby, wandering through yet another maze of tourists shops, and scrambling along the tidal pools along the base of the cliffs. It was a beautifully sunny day and the water surrounding the temple was a brilliant turquoise color. Just like on Kuta beach, a lot of Asian tourists were very interested in my story and wanted to take their pictures with me!

After an extraordinary sunset I started the long bike ride back to my homestay in Kuta. The ride home was dark since there were no streetlights other than the traffic that was whizzing by me. Balinese people don’t seem to be bound by street lanes and will comfortably ride down the road on whichever lane they prefer. They didn’t seem to mind racing past my on my bicycle at all! The ride home was pretty terrifying and I mostly just tried to stay to the side of the road and hope nobody would get too close. Other than that, it actually was pretty pleasant to go for a long bike ride past rice terraces and cow pastures in the cool night air. When I finally made it back to Kuta the peacefulness of Tannah Lot was just a memory and I was back to the hustle and bustle of Kuta.

A few days later I returned home after doing some errands and there were Adam and Amanda waiting for me at my homestay! After we reunited I joined the rest of the crew aboard the William T. Piquette and officially moved aboard on the fourth. I’m excited to be heading off to our next destination soon but am sad to be leaving Kuta, just as I was starting to feel at home there and could walk around without getting lost!

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On my way!

Hello from the Mojave Desert! My name is Matthew Webb and I'll be joining the crew in Bali, Indonesia. I'm a recent college graduate with a degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from North Carolina State University and minors in Outdoor Leadership and Environmental Science. I've spent the summer in Raleigh, North Carolina working for one of my professors on urban water quality projects.

My family moved to North Carolina when I was in middle school but before then we moved around every few years because my Dad was in the Navy. I've had the opportunity to do some traveling in the US and also a little around the world and am looking forward to the places I am going next with the crew!

My sailing experience is mostly limited to small boats on lakes around Raleigh so I'm really looking forward to joining the crew and getting my sea legs.

I've been vising family and friends in Southern California for the past few days and have seen some really incredible sights! The picture is of me enjoying the Devil's Golf Course this morning in Death Valley National Park, the lowest, hottest, and driest part of the country!

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