Singapore and Malaysia Wrap-Up

Facts and Figures
Length of Stay:  Nineteen days
Miles Traveled to Enter:  3,800 by plane from Brisbane, Australia
Miles Traveled:  2,050 by plane + 360 by bus  = 2,410 total (27,630) since landing in Quito)
Places Visited:  Singapore, Kota Kinabalu, Kinabalu National Park, Semporna, Sipadan Island, Kinabatangan River camp, Sandakan, Kuala Lumpur
Intercity Buses Taken:  2
Flights Taken:  2
Times we had no idea what we ordered to eat:  3

Rankings in the full post.

Jeff's Top 3s
Meals -  After two months of mostly self-catering, the cost of food was low enough for us to eat out again.  Even in Singapore, which is very developed and an international city, the food was very cheap.  This list was tough to put together because the food was uniformly very good, and we often had no idea what we had just eaten.

1.  Chicken satay @ food stall, Kota Kinabalu.  Satay chicken skewers have been on bar menus for a while, and while the satay sauce seemed like nothing more than hot, creamy peanut butter, I still really enjoyed them.  The real thing in Malaysia is much better.
2.  Roti canai, tandoori chicken and curry @ a mamak restaurant, Kuala Lumpur.  We set out for lunch one day in KL, not knowing what we were looking for.  Really hungry after wandering around and finding nothing that jumped out at us, we decided to walk into the next restaurant we saw.  We walked into a place with no English signs and a menu we couldn't read and we were the only westerners in the joint.  The waitress came over and asked what we wanted, and we confessed we had no idea and just to bring out something recommended.  It was delicious.
3.  Some kind of Japanese noodles @ ION Orchard Mall foodcourt, Singapore.  Unlike American malls, where the food has been sitting out all day, and wouldn't be that good even if it were fresh, foodcourts in Singapore offer quality food.  You can find cuisine from pretty much Asian country here, and it's all good.  We picked this place because it had a long line, which turned out to be a good strategy.

Stays -
1.  Betel Box, Singapore.  Very friendly and helpful staff and in a location that helped us see more of "real" Singapore.  The owner, Tony, was great and lead us on a food tour that made my top three experiences.
2.  Reggae Guesthouse, Kuala Lumpur.  When I was looking for a place to stay in KL, I almost skipped over this one due to its cheesy name.  Name aside, I loved this place.  It was very clean, very cheap and had the all-important free WiFi.  One of the best hostels in which we've stayed on this trip, and would have been #1 on this list if it hadn't been for Tony's food tour.
3.  Uncle Tan's cabin, Kinabatangan river.  Not Harriet Beecher Stowe's long lost sequel, but an atmospheric camp in the middle of the jungle.  It wasn't the most comfortable place in which we've stayed, but one of the most memorable.

Experiences
1.  Swimming through a huge school of big-eye trevally (jacks) off Mabul Island.  It's tough to single out one moment of our dives off the east coast of Borneo, but it was this moment, on our first dive of the first day, that I knew the diving was for real.

2.  Sleeping in the jungle.  There's no soundtrack like the jungle at night.
3.  Tony's food tour.  One of Singapore's strong points is its food, but options can be overwhelming.  Thankfully, our hostel runs a weekly food tour that took us through pre-dinner snacks, appetizers, main courses, desserts and post-dinner snacks.  Not all of it was good (dried cuttlefish was awful), some of it was weird (red bean flavored ice cream) but most of it was excellent.  It was an epic night of eating, with over twenty different items consumed.

Magge's Top 3s
Not feeling so well, so I'm going to make this short and sweet

Meals - We had tons of great food, most of which I still don't know what it was.

1. Food Tour - tons of tasty (and some not so tasty exotic) food.
2. Indian food in KL for lunch. We had no idea what we were ordering, but it was good.
3. Green curry on the side of the street in KL. I love green curry. I would probably eat green curry for every meal if I could. Still a little ticked that the guy probably charged us at least 5 times more because we were tourists. We're kicking ourselves for forgetting to ask about prices before we ordered. We're usually good about that. 

Stays
1. Reggae House One (not to be confused with Reggae House Two) in KL. Though our room was a bit cell-like, I liked the rest of the place, plus they had bananas and apples available all day for free, which automatically made the place awesome.
2. Betel Box in Singapore. Great staff, tons of reference material for our trip, awesome tour.
3. Uncle Tan's Jungle bungalows. So we had some critters running over our feet and I definitely am suffering from PSD after those bathrooms, but you don't often get to sleep in the jungle. It was pretty cool.

Experiences
1. Diving Sidpadan  - that's a no-brainer
2. Our "day off" in KK. I had such a great time when we went to the island for the day and went snorkeling. Great, great day.
3. Food Tour in Singapore. I could barely keep my eyes open towards the end, but the Food Tour was a fantastic way to get to learn more about Singapore. This is a must-do for anyone that goes to that "fine" city.