Sorry if this is the wrong forum, please move accordingly.
I’d be interested to get people’s suggestions for an Asian vacation the first week of October. A little background: I am in Aceh, Indonesia and I will have about ten days during the last week of Ramadan. From here, I can easily get to Kuala Lumpur (and from that hub, just about anywhere else). I can also get to Singapore pretty easily.
It’s pretty late to be trying to plan anything, especially since everyone else has the week off and things will book up quickly. My wife and I are in different vacation places, so it’s a little tricky satisfying both of us this time out.
She had suggested going to see the komodo dragons, but to be honest, I’m a little burned out this month. While, I would like to do that some time, that’s not the kind of vacation I want right now.
Here’s what I want:
• Room service
• Hot shower
• Air conditioning
• Good food
• quiet
• Comfort
I know this will sound terrible, but I don’t really need a mixing with the locals kind of vacation. This is because my job requires me to work at the grassroots level with people from a variety of cultures and background all day, every day. Every day I work with people with a thousand agendas ,some of which I know about and others I don’t. I want to shut my brain off and recharge. I also want comfort because my living conditions are a bit basic: kind of hot showers, kind of cool AC, frequent diarrhea and last night I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen eating the biggest cockroach I have ever seen and all of it was happening on the sheets of my bed (which I was in at the time).
My wife would like more of a vacation than my “let’s go to Singapore and get drunk in a really nice hotel and you can go see the komodo dragons at the zoo” plan. Any thoughts or advice are appreciated.
ETA: I really didn’t enjoy my time in Bali, and it can take as long as 12 hours to get there from here (really).
madmonk28, how about Langkawi in Malaysia? I heard about it a week ago and decided to meet up with a friend there in the second week of October after reading up on it.
Madmonk is a GUY? Yup, I know that “monk” is suggestive of a particular gender, but somehow I formed the idea that madmonk was a female poster.
Madmonk didn’t like Bali? What did you do, hang out on Kuta Beach being harrassed by touts? That’s the only way to have a truly bad Bali experience, IMHO.
Well, ordinarily I would suggest many Indonesian adventures, but Idul Fitri is not a good time to visit here, unless you go to a largely non-Moslem area, that is to say … Bali. (Or Flores or Lake Toba, but if it is hotel luxury you want, these are not good destinations.)
I’d hazard a guess that Malaysia is not a good place to visit, given your dates.
ETA: Is your wife really that opposed to Singapore? Given your situation, it sounds perfect to me. Despite its reputation for being somewhat culturally arid, it has fabulous museums, extraordinary food, delightful parks, and awesome (though expensive) hotels. If you want to try to talk her into Singapore, give us more details on what she enjoys, and I’ll try to help.
So many great options! How about Thailand? You can get a darn nice hotel room in Bangkok for not too much money. Or maybe Chiang Mai would be more up your alley? That strikes me as a place where you could find a nice place to stay, but maybe do some day trips to do the sort of things your wife wants to do.
If you really want to get away from it all, we spent a weekend at the Banyan Tree in Bintan to celebrate our anniversary. It was lovely. And a quick ferry ride from Singapore. No komodo dragons, though.
My absolute favorite vacay in SE Asia was a trip to Seam Riep in Cambodia. The ruins are amazing.
Or how about Vietnam? I’d love to go to Hanoi and Halong Bay. (I’ve only been to Saigon in Vietnam.)
Thanks all for the input, ShakWave: any idea what Malysia is like during Ramadan? I ask because I thought about going there, but wasn’t sure how it was during the holiday season.
CairoCarol I am a guy, and I’m not sure how to take your comment, I’ll try to butch it up (I kid, I kid).
I HATED Bali. We went to Ahmed and were a virtual prisoner on the grounds of the hotel, there were actually crowds of touts waiting outside the gates every morning to try to sell us crap. To be honest, there is a much nicer beach on Sabang an hour away than anything I have seen on Bali. Maybe I’ll give it another chance, but Bali is the #1 most over-rated vacation spot I have ever seen.
My wife isn’t opposed to Singapore, but we go there a LOT. It is my default destination and I think she suspects that I’m delaying the planning of this vacation so we can go there again. We (she knows me) also will probably spend Christmas there again this year and were just there in June.
Mostly, I don’t want to do much planning. I want to write a check stagger off a plane and plop down somewhere (I’m really burned out this month). My wife isn’t as crispy and would like something to look at while I rock back and forth and drool.
Madmonk, I believe I formed my mistaken view of your gender a year or so ago, when you said something sympathetic after I started a thread bitching about the shallow expat wives who spend all their time on waxing and manicures. You sounded a bit familiar with the phenomenon, and from that I leaped to the assumption you’d been privy to intimate waxing conversations yourself, ergo were female. I should never assume.
Do you have any sense of whether Lake Toba offers what you’re looking for? Or perhaps you’ve already been there, done that. I haven’t been there since 1989. At that time the hotels were … basic. But the scenery was drop-dead gorgeous.
Too bad your Bali experience was bad. I skip the tout-infested areas entirely and usually stay in Ubud (which is getting touristy, too, unfortunately), using it as a jumping off point for visits to Kintamani, Besaki, Klungklung, etc. Though the last time we went we stayed at a really nice resort, the Nirwana. It didn’t have a beachy beach but the grounds were heavenly and you could eat breakfast every day outside with a spectacular view of the Sunset Temple. I assume you can get local rates - do you have a DINAS visa? It is much cheaper that way.
CairoCarol, no problem I was just kidding. I indeed know the expat life having worked in international development these many years (in fact, I think you and are both working on USAID projects these days).
We are going to Bali after all, near Pemuteran. One of the reasons I didn’t want to go to Bali is that it takes so long to get there: five hourse from Aceh to Jakarta, 2 hour layover, 2 hour flight to Bali and then 3 hour drive to the north. I could almost be in Instanbul in that time flying from Banda to KL to Istanbul. Two days of a one week vacation spent with Garuda (shudder).
The other thing that drives me crazy about Bali is the fake friendliness. I prefer Aceh where if they like you, they like you and if they don’t, they don’t. In Bali I had this conversation over and over:
“Where are you from?”
“US”
“Where in the US?”
“Washington.”
“The city or the state?”
“City.”
“Oh, do you want a massage?”
I have this fantasy to spread the work on travel forums for every expat to answer Flint, Michigan, so that the government decides to open consular offices there to assist the thousands upon thousands of Flinters that travel half way around the globe to get a massage.
BTW, Toba’s nice, but basic as you say. Things have decayed since it’s peak tourism years. Another great trip is Bukit Lawang to see the oranguatans.
I would score a big fat ounce of that far-out Thai green, and spend a week in a hotel room with three prostitutes and a pet monkey. The first step is to convince your wife that it’s all in the name of cultural experiences.
Sounds like the OP is in need of a modern country, so I would suggest Singapore. It’s a nice place, clean, efficient. We’ve stayed at the Peninsula Hotel. Great location, fantastic views from the upper floors, really not too expensive considering the quality of the service, a little over US$100 a night for what feels like a five-star hotel. That’s a great deal for Singapore and sounds like the kind of place you may be looking for. I’ll bet a good travel agent could get the price down, too.
But 10 days is too long in Singapore. I like Kuala Lumpur a lot, and the train ride between the two places is just under four hours if I remember correctly and very pleasant. Not been there for a while, but I remember liking the Puduraya Hotel. It’s right on top of the chaotic, noisy Puduraya Bus Station, and you would not believe it could be so quiet up there, but it is. More great views, too, and again a great location. But I’ve since heard they’re looking a little run down. Liked it fine when I was there, though. I remember it was not expensive at all.
How about Taiwan? There’s a definite lack of Komodo Dragons, but there are really nice hotels and there is a week’s worth of tourist stuff to do if you feel the need.
Thanks all, we have indeed settled on Bali. Not my first choice or even my third, but we’re paying the price for not planning sooner. My wife didn’t want to go to Singapore because we spend a lot of time there already. I do want to explore Thailand and that will likely be my next one after Christmas in Singapore.