Category Archives: Travels

Sarawak Cultural Village, Part 1

One year after moving to Malaysia, we do the touristy thing and visit the Sarawak Cultural Village in Damai, north of Kuching, to see how the different tribal people of Borneo used to live.

Entrance to Sarawak Cultural Village

Sarawak Cultural Village Entrance

My mom is in town, visiting with us for a few weeks. We took advantage of the Hari Raya holidays to go to the Sarawak Cultural Village, about a 45 minute drive to the Damai resort area north of Kuching. It is a tourist attraction, a “living museum” modeled after the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu where the historical lifestyle of various ethnic groups of Sarawak are put on display.

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Minato Mirai, Yokohama

All work and no play makes Nate a dull boy.

Spending full work days in a single conference room is not the most fun thing to do. Our workshop’s organizers realized that, so they made sure to include one “team building” activity which involved getting off work a little early, and taking a train to Yokohama to have dinner in Minato Mirai.  It was about a half-hour trip from Shonandai to the Sakuragicho station where we disembarked and joined the madding crowd.

Yokohama Station

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Japan Day 1: Yokohama

We arrived in Japan and got our train tickets for the Narita Express to Yokohama Station.  The scenery at the beginning of the ride was beautiful, with acres and acres of verdant rice fields along the way.

train ride from narita to yokohama japan

As we got closer to Tokyo, though, you start to see less and less green and more and more tall buildings.  The Express dove under the city, so we didn’t get to see much of it until we were well past it.  Tokyo would have to wait until another day…

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Shopping on Orchard Road, Singapore

Our last full day in Singapore was spent doing – what else – shopping!

Wheelock Place, Orchard Rd

wheelock place orchard rd singapore

Singapore is a Mecca for shopping. But on this past trip to Singapore, most of our time was spent with family and friends. Whether it was eating at Annie’s Aunt’s place, going to Noble House for dim sum, Imperial Treasure for Peking duck, or Rider’s Cafe for Western food, we didn’t really have time to ourselves to just shop.

So for our final full day in S’pore, we left the kids with Grandma and took a cab down to Orchard Road. Here, block after block of the glitziest malls are lined up for your shopping pleasure. We started at the newest and glitziest of them all, Ion Orchard.

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