Why Latin America

Truth be told, I’ve been wanting to visit Latin America ever since I read about the ancient city of the Mayans when I was in school (no, not part of the national syllabus, I’m just a curious child).

After postponing potential trips to Latin America for a good two years, this was the year (2014) I just HAD to make it happen.Latin America gave me the impression of Asia. I kinda think Asians and Latin Americans share the same warmth and hospitality, the same passion for colors and the same zest for life.

When I was in Buenos Aires, they said dinner was at 8.00PM. The first appetizer did not serve until close to 9.00PM. Late dinners, isn’t this also what we love to do in Asia? How many times have we gone and have supper at the mamak‘s in the middle of the night? And what about the 24/7 eateries in Hong Kong and Penang? Just because we love to eat all the time.

Yumz : Hot & Spicy Foods 24/7 from Penang, Malaysia.

The Irrepressible Curry Mee.

 The Delish Asam Laksa.

Then of course, is my other personal reason. I charted all the cities I’ve been to until August this year and it looked like this. 

I wanted to make it look like this for the longest time ....and so I did this year! Yesshhhh ... !

10 things a Malaysian/ Singaporean should keep in mind if you want to visit Latin America

10. 

Don’t list shopping first on your list like you do when you go to Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei or Hong Kong, and you’ll be okay.

09. 

If you are female, get a travel partner for this trip because this is Latin America and like Asia, it's not exactly the safest place in the world. Petty crimes and pickpocketing activities are abound here.

08. 

Safety – This is the reason why I chose 02. 

07. 

Travel light – You are doing yourself a great favour considering you will be flying a total of 11 times over a two-week period. See my post on „HOW I PACKED FOR THIS TRIP“.

06. 

Learn how to ask and understand simple directions before your visit - in Portugese (for Brazil) and Spanish (Argentina). So I didn't do this and thought I could ‚wing it‘ like I always do when I travel solo to parts of Asia and Europe. This backfired royally.

Tip: Directions translation from Buenos Aires. Thanks to the kind gentleman that stopped to help us (coz we were looking so embarassingly blur case).

05. 

To have an actual interest in ancient history. Why go to Machu Picchu if you don’t even know the history? For the longest time, I have been so interested in Incan history (actually anything that is ancient and not fully explained, I’m interested) #sonotjustashopaholicokay.

04. 

Be prepared to be tired (but happy!). Seriously, two weeks over multiple sites, two time-zones and three countries – it took me two full weeks after I got home to Singapore to fully overcome my jetlag and tiredness.

03.

 Get Skype to talk to your loved ones at the comfort of your hotel's included wifi.

02. 

Consider getting a travel planner that specializes in Latin America continent. I found mine via Latin America for Less (LAFL - thanks guys!) - See below my post of LAFL.

01. 

Save up $$$. Forget budget airlines. From Singapore to Brazil, you have to do the major carriers – Singapore Airlines (or Lufthansa, or Delta Air) for the long haul and then there is the actual trip expense once you get there.

How I Packed for my Trip to Latin America

My actual trip spanned 10 days but if you count the 2 days for long haul return and another extra day where I spent at Sao Paulo – that’s altogether about two weeks. How do you pack for a two week trip to Latin America where temperatures vary between 30 degrees Celcius (Rio) and 17 degrees (Cusco)?

80% of my clothes and footwear for this trip are from Cotton On Singapore online. In order to travel light, you need layers you can re-use. So I needed lightweight cotton shirts, pullovers, camisoles and maxi skirts. The black maxi skirt I got from Cotton On kept me warm at lower temperatures and kept me cool at warmer temperatures. Compared to pants or denim jeans, maxi skirts are so much lighter and easier to pack (rolling method to save space).

I was working with a pallette of mostly light blues, whites and black. Here is a snapshot of my packing list :)

All items fit into my compact luggage pictured here using the rolling technique. I bought this at Parkson, Gurney Plaza Penang for a promotion price of RM100 (SGD 40). It qualifies as a cabin luggage on my longhaul flight via Singapore Airlines, but for LAN and TAM airlines - I had to check this in due to different airline luggage requirements.

This compact luggage was all I carried with me PLUS a simple backpack for daily food stuff & maps for the entire two-week trip to Latin America. Checking in and out of the airports was a breeze with this.

If you have disposable lingerie and toiletries – you can empty those as your trip progresses but that being said, you still might run out of space if you buy too many souvenirs. Otherwise, if you self-control and buy small trinkets for souvenirs (and not like me buying alpaca sweaters – what was I thinking ???), this luggage is more than enough space for a petite girl travelling Latin America for two weeks. I love this luggage and will certainly continue to use it.

I Chose Latin America for Less (LAFL)

My Latin America trip went like this :
Singapore - Sao Paulo - Rio - Iguazu - Buenos Aires - Lima - Cusco - Lima - Sao Paulo - Singapore

Personally, this kind of arrangement needed a whole lot of commitment if I did this on my own and without Latin America for Less (LAFL), there was absolutely no chance of this happening within this year. To the wonderful team @Richard,Matt&Amanda - thank you ALL so very very much for taking care of us!

Here are MY reasons why I chose to do my trip with Latin America for Less (and I'm so glad I did!)

Reason 1: No-Sweat Logistics
I wanted to visit more than one city in Latin America. This means, I need to get my arse across multiple cities, multiple airports, different flights and hotels. Unless, you have the time to do hours of research online, to select WHICH hotel, WHICH airport and WHICH flight bookings you will make. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, you still need to figure out HOW the daily logistics, how to see the sights you want et cetera.

I’m never 100% sure if the hotel I’ve seen on TripAdvisor is all as it seems. I recalled a certain budget hotel I booked myself for my stay in Limmat, Zurich. It had decent reviews on TripAdvisor but when I actually got there, it was quite horrendous and I was unable to change elsewhere as the entire stretch of hotels at the Limmat area were fully booked at the time of my visit.

With LAFL, they take this kind of nonsensical worry out of your hands.

Reason 2: No-Hassle with Local blahhh Agencies

I've actually done alot of research before LAFL. I visited the STA (student travel) office in Bugis, the Contiki office and called the high-end ones at Beach Road. I felt STA was abit too tiring for me since it was mostly backpacking tours (been there, done that, not now thanks). Contiki staff made me more confused since they don’t offer any standard programs for Latin America. Also the staff at the Contiki office here in Singapore just don’t have the time for you because majority of their customers want Europe – not Latin America. 

 

Same thing with the high-end ones, most just don’t do Latin America – and even if they do, they will tell you they want at least 10 persons to organize the trip (sorry, I don’t know 10 people all at once crazy enough wanting to go on a trip with me, that’s just impossible) If you ask me, I think the local agencies are missing out on this slice of the pie – there are people like me here in Singapore and Malaysia, wanting to experience the best of Latin America and we most certainly don’t want to be in a huge tour group in order to do this!

Reason 3: You feed your Kiasu-ism

For a person as kiasu as me (kiasu: local slang meaning the fear of missing out on a good thing), LAFL gave me so much confidence for doing this trip with them and they had so much patience when we worked out the preliminary logistics together. I can honestly say they tried their absolute darnest to get me the BEST of everything, working within my personal budget but within reasonable expectations. My hats off to them - they made sure every location I visited went off like clockwork, everything was synchronized to the trip itinerary and that was simply amazing.

Reason 4: Safety

Safety, I was obviously very concerned for my safety since coming from Asia – I am aware of all the going-ons of petty crimes and I expected Latin America the same. Online forums about safety in Brazil were not very positive, so I was understandably worried. I asked my travel planner so many questions that I was impressed that they actually never asked me to shut up. I appreciated that they were so professional about this.

My experience coming off Latin America is yes, you do have to exercise a higher level of caution overall. Having a travel planner helps you because they know which hotels to put you at, they know how to arrange and book the key tours for you and generally get you from point A-Z reasonably well. That all being said - you do, however still have to exercise your own vigilance.

Reason 5: LAFL just rocXx okay

Initially, I was quite apprehensive to enlist a travel planner located abroad. This means the main form of communication would be via emails and all transactions - payments for flights et cetera had to be done online. And so, being the sceptical little me - my initial interactions with them were so careful that really, if I were an LAFL staff ... I think I would be so pissed off by me!

Nothing of that sort happened. LAFL was simply stellar. I did not come away feeling that I was being scrutinized or judged. I ABSOLUTELY 100% believe from their actions that LAFL genuinely want to ENABLE their clients (wherever their clients are) to experience the BEST of what Latin America has to offer. 

This is the core of their entire LAFL brand and customer experience, It is certainly invaluable and I hope it NEVER changes!

I really want to say thank you to Richard who is beyond amazing. He took my first ranting email, read it, immediately understood what I wanted then and was so consistently lovely every step of the way. To Matt, who was extremely generous – even took time to reply to my emails which he deemed urgent when he was out of office and to Amanda, my gorgeous travel advisor who helped me arrange everything A-Z on my trip. I owe it to all three of them that I experienced the wonders of Latin America this year. BIG THANKS.

BTW, LAFL is not paying me to say all of this. So if you do decide to contact them after reading my blog post, I hope that you will reference me „TheSuperfairy“ so that they know I am putting in a good word out for them. 

FINAL NOTE, in my search for tour planners online – there are some online planners with very similar monikers to LAFL, so please only contact the real LAFL.There are ways to verify this online, please do your own due diligence.

Good Luck!

 

Why my trip to Rio was only so-so

The mere mention of Rio, conjured images of Mardi Gras from New Orleans (they call it the Carnivale in Rio), hot samba men and women & colorful collage of life. I was deliriously humming Copacabana tunes just thinking about Rio. My actual experience of Rio the time of my visit (end-Sept 2014) was just grey everything. Maybe I felt rushed throughout the entire time I was in Rio. My visit to Christ the Redeemer site. As soon as as I stepped out of the elevator, I saw this – the back of the statue.

Then when I went to the front, I saw this – a tidal wave of tourists (local Brazilians were alot there as well). 

There were so many chances of getting my picture photobombed at any angle that I gave up. It also did not help that how do I put this ... I had a guide that was more interested in fulfilling her personal tour schedule rather than helping me experience the best spots in Rio.

Sorry ... had to vent. To be fair, I am sure not all guides are like this in Rio.Not done yet. Food in Rio ... sucks. I had this really strong beef with black bean rice. If that’s the local dish, I say I need something else.  

The only thing that looks good to me in Rio was the roadside Caipirinha. 

Okay, let’s get to something positive now. The Beaches! NOW I can actually see the local flavors and colors here on Brazil's world renowed beaches. Absolutely no complaints here.

Copacabana and Ipanema were really lovely and lively. Loads of locals there, and I just felt so alive walking on the sandy beaches. I took so many pictures. I just loved the ambience and I’m so very glad I finally got a chance to see the famous Copacabana and Ipanema. Everyone was so friendly there and it was great joy to be in the thick of the action. Thank you for something that is so positive that I can take away with me about Rio.

Here are my postcards from Rio's beautiful beaches =)  XoX