Scrumptious America and New Horizons

Every year we visit America during the summer to see family and friends.  This summer was no exception as we ate and visited our way through both Los Angeles and Orange counties.  Food overseas is great, but America has a few winners, too:

The ribs are so tender and juicy! 

Ichiban's garlic edamame is one of our favorites.

The jambalaya is irresistible!

Chicken masala makes our mouths water.

So now that we have enjoyed breaking bread with many of you (and are a few pounds heavier), we are off to our next exotic location, which is:  

(Drum roll, please...)

Bangkok, Thailand!

For more details, visit our new blog at:

cabrerainbangkok.blogspot.com

Good Bye, Singapore

Well, the school year has finally come to an end.  Students are on summer vacation and we have decided to move to another country.  Singapore has been fabulous!  It really is the "Jewel of Southeast Asia" because it is so safe, clean, modern, friendly, and the cuisine is deeeeee-licious.

Before we left Singapore, we decided to spend our last day and night at the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel.  

Here we are taking a dip in the rooftop infinity pool (the highest in the world) overlooking Singapore's Central Business District.

After a scrumptious dinner with friends and a luxurious night at the hotel, we flew off to Japan for a week before finally arriving back home in America.

So where are we off to next?  Keep checking this blog for details...

Rock Star

I've always wanted to play the drums.  As a kid, my brothers and I would drum on the kitchen table before and after dinner and we would slap our knees as we made up silly songs.

During the holidays, the Sears Wish List catalog would come out and I would spend a lot of time on the drum pages, trying to decide which one Santa should bring me.

When I became an adult, I still yearned to play the drums.  In March 2012, I joined AdHoc, a casual band composed of musician/educators from our school in Singapore.  We performed at a small place on Arab Street called BluJaz Cafe to raise funds for the YMak Path Project.  I only played the congas, but that evening inspired me to officially take drum lessons with Jason Cruz at HomeGround Studios.  So...

The zebra skin drum set at Blu Jaz.

...18 lessons later, I had learned enough to practice, rehearse, and play 6 songs.

In early May, I played in my second appearance, covering 7 songs for a farewell party at Penny Black in Singapore and my 3rd appearance was for my own farewell party back at BluJaz in early June.

Recently, while in Tokyo, I found this place called Gigabar.  Think of it as karaoke for instruments.  There is a live band and you sign up to play a song with your instrument of choice.  That was really fun.  I played Bad Company's "Can't Get Enough."

I'll keep playing, practicing, and learning from now on.  I'll also continue to update this blog with my drum adventures!

Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia (Borneo)

We almost lost all of the photos from this trip due to a hard drive failure on our laptop.  Luckily, we still had a few photos on our camera's SD card.

There are many islands and beautiful coastal cities in Southeast Asia to choose from.  These past two years, we have been to several different Malaysian cities on the mainland and heard that Kuching was a nice place to visit.  The island of Borneo is shared by Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

Kuching is a 90-minute flight from Singapore.

This pair of macaques monkeys wouldn't let us cross a bridge, and we weren't brave enough to try.

This is a silver leaf monkey, much calmer than the macaques.   The babies are a light orange color.

This is a flying lemur with a baby staring right at us with those huge eyes!

On our way back to the meeting point, we saw a school of dolphins, but this is the only photo we have of that special sighting.

Ice teh tarik, chicken kway teow, and a pastry for $3.00.
It doesn't get much better than that.

This bronze dragon overlooks the Sarawak river from the boardwalk that runs through the city.

Shadows, clouds, sunset, and ocean from 20, 000 feet.

The symbol of Sarawak, the Malaysian state on Borneo, is the hornbill.  The hornbill habitat is further south on the island, so we didn't see any live ones.

At the natural history museum, they had these stuffed, colorful hornbills.

 The highlight of our trip was to the Batang National Park, a coastal rainforest that is home to the proboscis monkey.  It had just finished raining when we got there, and several of them were eating in the trees at the edge of the beach.

This bachelor was snacking just above us.  They have big hands and a huge...proboscis!

Book Week

At our school, we had a book week and on Friday a group of us dressed up as characters from Alice in Wonderland.

If you haven't guessed, I was the White Rabbit.

Our Trip to Taiwan

For Chinese New Year, we spent the week in Taiwan.  There was lots to see and do as the Taiwanese celebrated the Year of the Snake.

I added another tick to my Haircuts Across the World checklist.
My barber even sang Chinese songs as he happily cut my curly locks!

Here's another "jumping" photo of me.  This time I am in front of the tallest building in Taiwan: Taipei 101.  What you can't see is that I'm on a narrow ledge and there's a three-foot drop behind me.

This beautiful flower clock with surrounding cherry blossoms is in a beautiful, hilly area called Yangmingshan National Park

We stayed at the very artsy Amba Hotel in Taipei.  As we entered the lobby, we were greeted by some cool works of art.  And as we looked closer, we were even more amazed by the artists choice of materials...

Can you guess what this is made of, yet?

Yes, it's a portrait made entirely out of children's stickers: Hello Kitty, Pikachu, and Xi Yangyang!

We spent one evening at the Shilin Night Market looking for some delicious, local food.  There were so many people packed together that we didn't actually move for a whole ten minutes. We decided to shimmy out of the crowd and found some delicious chicken sandwiches on the way out!

Outside the Taipei Fine Arts Museum were these 10-foot tall sculptures of Taiwan's aboriginal people, animals, and flowers.

Taiwan has Gemstone Coral fields off the coast and we were awestruck by this sculpture in Taipei 101.  It has pagodas, flowers, and people inside the little houses!

Here's a close-up of the coral sculpture above.  Amazing detail!

One of the reasons we went to Taiwan for vacation was to see the celebration of Chinese New Year.  We got a full dose of culture when we visited the Long Shan temple and were lucky enough to witness food offerings, incense burning, group chanting, candle lighting, and hundreds of people everywhere!

For the second half of our trip, we travelled down to the city of Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan.  On a tour of the countryside, we rented a paddleboat in a beautiful lake with stunning views.

Can you guess what material this is?
Did you guess wood?  You're right!
She is an aboriginal woman hand carved by the Ami people.

One thing that struck us about Taiwan, is that they love to dress up their dogs!  They also take them everywhere: restaurants, malls, and temples!  Check out the latest in Taiwanese dog fashion below:

Chinese silk jacket.  Very cultural.

Bomber jacket, denim shorts, and shoes!  Très chic!

Casual sweater on a cool winter day.

Matching orange jackets for dog and owner!

Yes, that's a hoodie with a fuzzy ball on top.

Comfy crocheted coverlet.  Retro 1970s.

Most dogs we saw rarely walked on their own.

Young pups travel in style with their very own pooch pouch.

Some canines even have 4 wheel drive.

I wish someone would carry me around all day.