2018 new year's journey east

There are advantages and disadvantages to marrying a foreigner. Chinese New Year brings to mind an advantage and disadvantage. Advantage: there is never any argument over whose family we will spend the most important holidays with: my family for Christmas and Thanksgiving, her family for Chinese New Year. Disadvantage: spending one of these holidays with the family is going to involve a very long trip. In fact, to spend Chinese New Year with Christine's family involves not just a trip to Singapore, but another trip to Malaysia as well. Never mind the difficulty and expense of travelling, however, because our 2018 trip to the former Straits Settlements was very enjoyable.

In the kampung

It is traditional that a Chinese family would spend Chinese New Year at the husband's parents' home. Christine's husband doesn't have any immediate Chinese family, and, besides, we already spent November and December with his family. Christine grew up spending the holiday with her dad's family in Ipoh, Malaysia. So to Ipoh we went for the holiday -- four nights there, a few more nights for me in Singapore, and Christine and Bobby stayed on in Singapore for two more weeks.

Mr. Chen's ancestral home in the kampung (aka, village), which is actually outside of Ipoh. Kampung life is famous for being more relaxed than city life; I think city folk romanticize it.

All of the Chens, plus their partners and progeny, gathered in the kitchen for dinner, where we would eat the traditional Hakka dishes that you don't easily find at restaurants. Everyone is holding chopsticks because it is a Chinese New Year tradition that everyone toasts to the new year and in unison tosses the shared new year salad in the center of the table.

Bob watching his great aunt prepare those delicious and rare Hakka dishes.

Delicious Hakka dishes, before we dug in and wrecked them.

The family gathered for the obligatory reunion photo.

We travelled into Ipoh to eat some of the local famous Chinese food. Ipoh is known for a number of special snack brands. Christine remembers them from her youth and still likes eating them. Here she is shopping greedily for snacks.

Christine, Bob, and I stayed in another house with some of Christine's cousins, plus her uncle. This house rents on Airbnb. When a brand makes it to a Malaysian kampung, it has truly gone global. The inside was a bit barebones, but there was air conditioning in the bedroom, so Bob slept comfortable, even sleeping through the endless rounds of Malaysian pirate fireworks, some extremely loud and close.

Ipoh is surrounded by limestone hills, and in these hills, one can find caverns. A long time ago, Chinese people lived in these caverns; now some of them are made into Chinese temples.

In the kampung are several open-air restaurants serving popular, local Cantonese-style dishes. As a non-Chinese person, I would never think to go to such places, or may not feel welcome, but I'm glad I had hosts to take me. The food was super good. Bob liked it too. He was also a big hit with the restaurant staff and patrons. I think babies are just generally popular in the kampung, but mixed race babies may be especially popular. We definitely didn't see any others around!

We had the new year reunion dinner at a Chinese banquet hall. We tossed the salad and ate all kinds of good food. Bob ate very well.

Day tripping to Penang

We visited Georgetown, Penang, for one day while Christine's relatives watched Bob. Christine and I visited Georgetown in 2011. I documented it in a blog post, but the post was lost when my old blog was unceremoniously shut down by the site's owner. We also visited another part of Penang in 2017 for Wei Hao's wedding.

Georgetown is a fascinating place. In the English colonial empire, it was a port city rivaling Singapore in wealth and importance, but once Georgetown became part of independent Malaysia, with Singapore being given the boot, Malaysian laws favored the port near Kuala Lumpur. Old Georgetown became a time capsule, with the old buildings still standing and increasingly rotten over the years, sometimes with trees growing through the roofs. It has become more popular lately as a tourist destination, with European backpackers drinking cheap beer at bars and staying in hostels. The city still has a decaying beauty, and there is some very good Straits Chinese food, with different ingredients and recipes than sometimes found in Singapore.

In 2011, Christine and I had coffee in this stall set up in an alleyway. It was surprisingly good, and a re-visit was at the top of my list of things to do. Unfortunately, it was closed for the Chinese New Year holiday.

In 2011 Christine and I took a photo at Love Lane in Georgetown, and that photo was used on our save the date card. Here, we recreate the photo.

I was pretty excited to see that Starbucks has now made it to Georgetown. The shop was kind of cool, with the old original tile floors (which can commonly be found in the old Georgetown (and Singapore) shophouses, though the tiles are usually dirtier and more broken up than these cleaned up ones). The staff was also super slow, and the menu options super expensive.

Back to Singapore

All good things come to an end, and holidays with family crammed into tight spaces are sometimes tiring. On Sunday we headed back to Singapore in the rental car. The ordinarily six hour drive turned into a twelve hour drive due to the heavy traffic flow of Chinese Singaporeans headed back to Singapore after the holiday. The drive from Ipoh to Singapore took longer than the flight from London to Singapore. Bob's patience ran out somewhere north of Kuala Lumpur.

Back in Singapore, Bob and Christine spent an enjoyable few weeks hanging out in the heartlands, going to the local coffee shops and eating local cuisine favorites, like prata, prawn noodles, and chee cheong fun. Bob didn't have a problem munching any of it down. Even though it was very hot in Singapore, as usual, he tends to eat whatever we put in front of him.

These pictures below are all snapshots of the journey from the Chen home to their favorite coffee shop for breakfasts and lunches.

Trying to catch a nap on Waigong's shoulder.

Trying to catch a nap on Waipo's shoulder.

Catching a quick swing on the playground with Waipo.

During the days, Bobby hung around his grandparents' super clean house, playing with his toys and causing a ruckus, all the while his grandparents were just thrilled to have him there.

A quick soccer match with Waipo.

Helping to clean the super clean house.

Wai po came back to London with Christine and Bob. Her timing was great (terrible, I mean?) because she landed in the middle of what passes for snowmageddon in London. The poor lady had never even seen snow before.

This day in the FD Linge Flat (in London) practically looks sunny. No wonder they're so happy.

I hope to not miss any more Chinese New Years in Singapore or Malaysia. We want Bob to grow up with these experiences. He will have three new cousins in Singapore next year!