wrapping up last year

Okay, only a little bit slack on the posts about Singapore... well maybe a little bit more than a little. I knew I was in trouble when I wrote "More on that soon" in the last post. Alarm bells went off in my head. Memories of "coming soon" websites with their little under-construction animated .gif came flooding forth. I forcefully ignored the warnings and wrote "More on that soon" anyway. Foolish!

Oh well. Now I have some time to write about Singapore. Why now? Well I've just arrived in Sweden! haha... I've got spare time on my hands. No tennis, no basketball, and thanks to Easter, no work either! :-)

So before I start writing about Sweden I'll wrap up last year, by putting a few words to paper (err... keyboard?) about my weekend in Singapore. Looking through the photos, I took some good ones (modest aren't I?), and I have some good memories of the place.

Singapore is a melting pot of races: Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Malay are the most prominent. Thank goodness for this too because after 3 weeks in Cambodia I can remember I was ready for a good curry! I spent most of the days visiting different cafés and restaurants in search of variety. On Friday night I had a cheap dumplings and noodles (and beer) at a hawker stall in the Malaysian red-light district. Saturday I went for a wander around town taking in sights like the incredible concert hall:

I had a western meal in town - cappuccinos etc. Singapore is known for its' shopping, and I could see why. I wasn't in the mood for shopping and just went to Borders for a couple of new books (I'd run out in Phnom Penh). Singapore has an awesome public transport system, and somewhat amusingly if you are less than 90cm tall, you can ride for free!

During World War 2, Singapore was invaded by the Japanese. I visited Changi prison which is where many Australian P.O.W.'s were held. It was great as it also included information about what it was like for the local Chinese and Malay population too. What interested me was that the Japanese spread propaganda that they would treat the Asian population well ("Asia is for Asians") - only to invade and treat them worse than the foreigners! Civilian deaths were quite high, and there is a memorial near the centre of town:

This simple and stark monument stands 70-metres tall. Other photos of it are in my Picasa album.

Saturday night I had some excellent Arabic kebabs, I liked them so much I went back the following lunch time for more. I had to visit Sim Lim on my last day in Singapore. It is a 6-story shopping centre with only computer stores in it! It's like a permanent swap-meet gone mad. It's also near Little India, so I could get a decent curry :-)

In no specific order because my memory has faded a bit, I also visited the Australian pub, the "Prince of Wales", to make sure it lives up to the reputation of the St. Kilda name-sake. It's not as large of course, but they do host quite a bit of live music. Singapore has a very sensible way of running its' zoo: at night. Most animals are nocturnal right? Right. So why not run the zoo at night? Very good idea. The night safari zoo was good thing to do, I'd recommend visiting it. Watch out for the "free" bus scam however: free on the way there, not so free on the way back. Finally I also visited the Swissôtel hotel in town:

It's big, very big. I had a meal up on the observation deck. Unfortunately Singapore's weather for the weekend had a pattern to it: sunny in the morning, tropical down pours in the afternoon; and so the view wasn't great. It didn't matter though, I could still survey the middle of town and see where I had been over the weekend. And it had been a good relaxing weekend at that. Now, I can say with certainty, there will be posts on Sweden very, very, soon.

a walk in the park

This morning I've got a teleconference at 11, so I don't have to get to work until then. Hence the tourist part of my brain kicked in and said "go for a walk". Actually after being stuck inside an exchange for the past 3 days, pretty much all of my brain said go for a walk. So I did.

I decided to have a wander around Thu Le Park which is across the road from my hotel. I quickly discovered that the zoo prevents you from walking the whole way around, and from my previous post you can see there is an island in the middle of the lake: that is part of the zoo as well. I didn't really want to go to the zoo, so I back tracked and went around the other way.

Voi Phuc Temple is a façade! Literally. Here it is from the front:

Behind the façade are the temple grounds, with a few more buildings further back. The temple was built because the people worshipped a Prince that vanquished some pirates back in the 11th century. He then did some other nice things, so they made him a God. Not a bad job description I reckon - Godprince.

I've been told there isn't enough electricity for everyone, and so there are rolling blackouts through out the day. Being good proactive people, the Vietnamese use energy saving bulbs - even in their temple lanterns!

After wandering around the temple grounds for a bit, the zoo then extracted its revenge on me for avoiding it at the start of the walk. To continue my walk I had to enter, and pay the extravagant entrance fee of 2000 Vietnamese Dong... which is an entire $0.15 Australian... : )

There's a back entrance to the island which I couldn't see from my room, and it's guarded by ferocious red crocodiles!... of the concrete variety.

Inside the zoo, the vast majority of exhibits were Vietnamese animals, which is great for a tourist, but all the signs were in Vietnamese too; not so good for a tourist! But then again, I was the only westerner in there as far as I could see, so they've got their target audience correct. (The relativity cheap entrance fee might also be an indication that it's for locals.)

Vietnam is home to many species of Macaques (lets just call them monkeys for simplicity), and the island housed all their enclosures. Because monkeys are cute, I took heaps of photos of them:

There were also the usual such as elephants and tigers; the ordinary such as goats and deer; and the more interesting such as the Malaysian Porcupine (below), and the Binturong - otherwise known as the catbear, which of course is neither a cat or a bear (just like the platypus isn't a duck or a beaver!)

The elephants were a bit sad, as the were chained down to the spot by their legs - except for the one that was currently being exhibited, it was being fed, but was made to stand on a ridiculously small stand, like in an old fashioned circus. The goats on the other hand had an awesome enclosure, with a temple like construction for their protection from the elements. If it's not colloquially known as the temple of the goat, then it should be!!

The porcupine was looking a bit sleepy, so I suspect it might be a nocturnal animal... It was kinda rocking on it's feet with it's eye's closed, while it's mate snoozed in the corner. The binturong's were the weirdest animal I'd seen in a long while (excepting the oversized red coloured cockroach-things I'd seen in the street the other day...). Cat-bear goes some of the way to describing what it looks like; have a look at the photo instead! : )