With the trip to Malaysia getting cancelled, I needed to find something new to do on Thursday. Roman and I got into a debate about the subject over breakfast until we agreed to go to Universal Studios on Sentosa. Jeremy decided to splitt off to go tour the Marina Bay Sands Casino.

 Universal Studios in Singapore was significantly smaller (again like everything in Asia) to its American counterpart, but it still had plenty of entertaining things. The Transformers ride was a hybrid of Indiana Jones in Disneyland with a 3D movie and the two roller coasters were fast and fun. The best ride at Universal Studios was The Mummy thrill ride. There was a bunch of other rides and a water show as well, but I would rather not bore readers with exhaustively describing Roman and I spending an afternoon at a theme park. I made two notable observations at Universal Studios. Attendance at the park was sparce as it was Thursday afternoon in a country with a 2.5% unemployment rate (Knott’s was packed with NEETs and kids cutting school when I went there last during a weekday morning). Secondly, the look on all the non-white visitors was one of complete astonishment, which it made it obvious that most of the attendees had never been to an amusement park.

 After returning to the hotel, Roman and I met with Jeremy to go get Korean barbaque. The food was good and was a excellent value that featured unlimited meat, drinks, rice, and ice cream. The best things there were the terriyaki chicken and the most strongly marinated beef cuts. Since it was Jeremy’s last night in Singapore, we ended up going on a night on the town. First, we walked by the Marina bay and saw some lit up remote control kites that produced an interesting show.  We then went into the casino, which had a passport check as stringent as the Singapore airport. This initially baffled me, but I later found out that they needed to verify we were not locals. As part of the country’s efforts to curb vices, Singaporeans have to either pay a daily $100 entry fee or a $2000 annual subscription just to enter a casino. Despite the prohibitive cover charge, Singaporeans still regularly visit these casinos. As Jeremy described to me before hand, the Marina Bay Sands resembled the senate chamber in Star Wars Episodes I-III. It surpassed anything I had seen in Vegas or Macau. I grabbed a soda there and waited for Roman to decide to play at the poker tables. Jeremy wanted to go the Avalon Club, but the $35 cover charge for a dead Thursday night was not worth it. Instead we went up to the Ku De Ta rooftop bar and club on the top of the Marina Bay Sands. The bar provided the best view of the city at night. While Jeremy and Roman each got a drink, I just stared off into the cityscape. We chatted up there for about an hour before it started to slightly rain. Roman and I left to go back to the hotel, while Jeremy stayed out the rest of the night. I’m not sure about what he did, but I will find out when I return to the US.

Denpasar airport was a major pain. The airport structure looked tired as if it was built in pre-Castro Cuba and the air conditioning worked poorly. I had to go through security and customs twice each and pay a fifteen-dollar airport passenger fee. The layout of the airport was also poor with the gates unevenly split up and a lack of seats for waiting passengers. The airport claimed to have Internet, but neither my phone or computer were able to connect. Overall, it is the near the bottom of my airport rankings (a different post), but these comments may be obsolete soon with upcoming renovations.

I arrived at Singapore airport at 11:10 AM. Immigration was fairly easy, but the subway does not accept my ATM Card. As a result, I went back to the arrival floor got some money and ate a burger at Carl’s Jr. for lunch (first decent burger I’ve had in a month). I then caught the train into town and looked at the cityscape through the windows. I got to my hotel several hours before Roman and decided to use the time to catch up on blogging and go for a swim. Roman finally arrived when I got back from the pool at 5:00 and we went out on the town a few hours later.

We first went to a hawker stall recommended to us by the hotel staff. It was like a giant outdoor food court with a range of cooks with different types of Asian food. We must have ordered the wrong thing because we ended up spending $40 US on a special plate that supposedly serves 3 people. It was a collection of skewers of beef, chicken, and shrimp served with two plates of rice. The beef and chicken tasted great while the shrimp (with heads and shell still on) even for Asian standards difficult to crack. We then went walked across a few street to Citibank’s office. It was pretty fancy and had a nice food court tucked into the second floor. I found it humorous that there was a bar called “The Bank” right across the street. We then walked down Shenton Street until we found a dart bar. Roman and I played three matches of darts where I took two of the games. Other than the darts, the only thing notable about the bar was that they served beer kegs shaped liked the Eiffel Tower. After the darts games, Roman and I walked to a 7-11 knockoff and bought some chocolate and water bottles. We strolled a little through China town and went to sleep.

Early impressions of Singapore are mixed. It reminds me of a more urbanized version of Irvine, California. It is very clean (only saw one piece of trash on the ground the whole day), and easy to walk around. It is also horribly expensive with food in restaurants on average double American prices, and rents starting at $2000+ per month. The weather is very hot and humid all day every day (like Miami in the summer all year) and the place feels kind of sterile with mostly just towering office building and government apartment building (85% of population lives in one). Living costs are high so only people who do well here are supposedly white expats, those in finance, and government officials (who have the highest average pay in the world; in fact the prime minister makes $3,000,000). I will have more on my impressions as my trip continues.

I arrived to the Sun Island Kuta at 1:00. The check in was an easy process and I assumed Roman was already waiting for me in the hotel room. To my surprise I beat him there and due to a lack of communication outside of e-mail, waited for him in the room. After an hour of blogging, Roman finally arrived. Shortly afterwards, we headed over to the pool for a swim. I swam while Roman lounged on a chair preparing for his Series 7 license (used to legally sell securities).  We then headed for a late lunch at a Japanese place in downtown Kuta. The thing with food in Indonesia is that it is really cheap, but often not filling. My chicken teriyaki with rice was just $3.60, beef teriyaki for $6, pizza averages $4, a pasta dish with meat at $4.50, steak fajitas at $5, filet mingon at $8, ribeye steak at $10, ice cream at $2, water bottles are 50 cents, and bottles of Fanta Orange start at 70 cents. If you want local Indonesian food or eat at lower end restaurants (Roman and I ate at nice places), it will be even cheaper than the prices above, but is highly variable in quality. The only place a traveler will get ripped off is at a restaurant that also poses as a beach nightclub.  As a result of all the cheap eats, Roman and I ate like kings, but I often got desserts after dinner (which I rarely eat in the US) or order extra appetizers or entrees just be to satiated. Similar to Thailand, I have been overloading on soda. I probably have consumed over 40 Fanta Oranges and Sprites since I flew into Hong Kong and health reasons are the only reason I have not broken fifty or one hundred because they are dirt cheap and taste great.

Then Roman and I played basketball on a court above the swimming pool of the Hotel Paradiso. An airball into the pool transformed the game into of pool horse. With the hoop overhanging the pool higher than ten feet, it made shooting tough, but Roman ended up winning a close match. Roman then went to the gym to lift weights and I walked over to Kuta beach. This was the first time I had seen Kuta beach in the daytime and it was underwhelming.  The waves are non-existent, trash and touts litter the periphery, and the sand was black but not due to volcanic ash. I turned back and picked Roman up at the gym and headed back to the gym. I constructed my travel map and did some blogging and we were off to dinner. I ate a pasta dish and caught up with Roman about the markets, travel, and life. After dinner we went on a brief walk and then went to sleep.

Wednesday was primarily spent moving from Kuta to Seminyak. We stayed at the Haven Resort, which was about a fifteen-minute walk away from the beach. After checking I went swimming and read more of the British Empire book in the pool (up to WWII now). What continues to baffle me with Roman is that he travels all the way to Bali from the US and barely ever swims at the pool or the ocean. I have invited him to go surfing and he turned me down numerous times. In fact he never went to the beach the entire trip. He still had a good time though. Different strokes for different folks I guess. That night we went the wrong way to the beach and ended up at the main highway. On the way back to the hotel we found a Belgian steakhouse where we ate dinner. Compared to Kuta, Seminyak is more upscale with high end galleries, clothing boutiques, and restaurants. Nevertheless, the place leaks of Indonesia with Balinese architectures, decomposing sidewalks, gas stations (using that term loosely) that consists of a rack of bottles of Absolut Vodka filled with gasoline, and stray dogs all over the place. Visitors need to watch out for stray dogs as they are highly likely to carry rabies. After dinner, Roman watched CNBC all night as I did some trading. I try not let the noise of the financial press influence my trading, but Roman watches it all the time. It does not help that the Indonesian Sports Channels are weak. It’s either soccer or reruns of Big Ten network basketball games on the American Sports Network.

Thursday I ate some banana dough waffles for breakfast and went to Seminyak beach in the morning while Roman was watching CNBC Asia (more of a joke than American CNBC where the anchors always try to spin every news story to “risk on” and bring on either no guests at all or ones with little credibility).  Seminyak beach differed little from Kuta other than slightly better waves (not really suitable for surfing though). I spent about 90 minutes there before heading back to the hotel. I went to the pool and played volleyball with some Aussies before finally reuniting with Roman. In the evening we went out to a Mexican restaurant run by a California expat (not bad for overseas Mexican food) and I studied for CFA level 2. Compared to Thailand, Western food is much better in Bali due to the presence of a large expat community that owns and operates most of the restaurants in Seminyak.

Climax at Waterbom

On Friday, Roman and I went to an Indonesian water park named Waterbom. Despite being in Indonesia, the park was clean, modern, and up to Western standards. Overall, our time at Waterbom was enjoyable. There were a variety of slides that covered every type of ride you would find at Wild Rivers (excluding a wave pool), except with no lines at all. The longest wait I had the whole time was about ten minutes.  The one thing, however, that stood out for me at Waterbom was the Climax slide which Roman and I called “the chute”. I had never seen anything like at an American or European water park. Instead of a normal slide entry, passengers enter a capsule and then drop straight down at a nearly vertical angle (88-89 degrees) before momentum slowing loop ends the slide. It scared the crap out of me, but my inner thrill seeker compelled me to ride it. As I climbed up the stair case to the surface, my nerves tingled. It did not help that the operator said in Aussie accent “Ready to enter your coffin”. The capsule closed on me as I stood on the wet metal floor of the chute. In three seconds, the floor dropped like a trap door and off I was. The ride was fast and exhilarating, but it hurt my back too much to do it again.

One thing I want to do more of when I return to America is extreme sports and thrill seeking activities (that are not self destructive like drug abuse). I done snowboarding, surfing, water skiing, offroading and extreme roller coasters, but I want to also try kite boarding, ATVing, motor racing (on a track or with jet skis), hang gliding, sand boarding, and perhaps other while improving my surfing. Now that I am better at surfing, I think I am going to quit winter sports as I do not find them or cold weather to be a very good time.

After the water park, I listened to a recording from my mentor from UCSB, former top hedge fund manager Chris Blair. Sometimes in my pursuit to become a legend of trading and the markets, I get discouraged and think about my lack of non-finance/business skills. But every time I listen to the one hour recording I get re-inspired to succeed with my hedge fund career and the plan ahead. The thing to remember is the only thing that will stop me from long term success are my own negative thoughts and self limiting beliefs. My main personal resolution for 2012, has been and continues to be developing more optimism and eliminating debilitating self limiting beliefs and so far I have made significant progress on this front. I have seen a lot of the dynamism of the emerging markets compared to the West that Chris mentioned since I began my trip in Hong Kong. I’m going to make it a habit  to go back to this track whenever I feel pessimistic about myself (along with reading more James Altucher and avoiding Zero Hedge).

Roman and I ate at a pizza place that night which was pretty good (even for US standards). We ordered two pizzas, seafood pasta, and bruscheta to fill us up in our last night before Singapore. I took a long bath and then went to sleep for an early morning flight.

Here is a map of my journey. I hope it gives some geographical context to my trip. The yellow areas are highlighted countries while the blue dots are specific sites.