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Posts Tagged ‘Asia holiday’

Today has been a travelling day, mostly. I left the hotel in Batu Feringgi at abound 9 o’clock for a flight at 12:15. So there was the usual ‘hanging around the airport’ thing before a very efficient and short flight back to Singapore. A taxi ride from Changi airport got me to my hotel, the Changi Village hotel (in Changi village) by about 2:15.

I spent the latter part of the afternoon taking a walk around Changi Point. This turned out to be very hot (surprise) and I was pretty much melted when I got back to the hotel. I had been researching local restaurants & bars, but I decided instead to spend the evening in the hotel. So I had a meal at their Italian eatery, the Cantina of Venezia, on the 8th floor which had an outdoor terrace. I don’t think the food was very special – certainly not worth what I paid for it – but the setting was sensational. It seemed that I was looking down on the jets coming in to land at Changi airport.

Then I blagged my way into a gathering of regular guests that was arranged by the hotel administration – a sort of ‘keep in touch with your customer’ do, with canapés, little desserts, and drinks. OK, I didn’t blag my way in; I peered round the door, asked what was happening, one of the staff asked me if I was actually staying at the hotel and when I replied that i was, practically hauled me in. I ended up having a fascinating conversation with a French couple who knew northern England very well – they’d been married in Liverpool and knew and liked the Lake District very much.

I need an early night tonight. The flight to Dubai is at 9:35 tomorrow morning, which means I have to be on the shuttle to the airport at 6:30, which in turn means getting up at about 5 am. Bed, here I come.

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Chinese temple in George Town

Today I visited George Town, the main city in Penang (which is itself a state of Malaysia). This required a bus ride, on a local bus – but as ever with these things, it was all absolutely straightforward and easy. And cheap, too – the cost of the ride, about 20 kms or so, was MR2.70, or around 50 pence, each way in an air-conditioned bus.

George Town is a strange place. You could say that it was “nearly Singapore”. Like Singapore (and Malacca), it was one of the Straits Settlements, and in fact was claimed by the British (or by the East India Company) almost 40 years before Singapore. For much of the 19th century George Town (and Penang) was at least as important to British interests as was Singapore. I believe that it was only in the 20th century, with the development of the naval base and associated land defences at Singapore, that that city got ahead of Penang in economic and political terms. And in the end, of course, Singapore ended up as one of the world’s city-states, free to put the interests of the city at the heart of the nation. George Town wasn’t as fortunate. That said, it’s apparently still the second most important area of Malaysia, economically-speaking. It has a city population of 700,000, while the urban area that it commands has a population of 2.5m. Much of downtown George Town is dominated by all the paraphernalia of a modern eastern city – high rise apartments and hotels, and shopping malls.

But that’s not what I was there to look at. I was interested in the George Town World Heritage area. This consists of a labyrinth of small streets close to the old port area where formerly the traders, merchants and craftsmen (and women) of George Town made their living. Essentially the streets consist of terraces of buildings, the ground floors of which were given over to business while the first (and sometimes second) floors were given over to living quarters. The enterprise on the ground floor could be anything – a workshop, a small warehouse, a merchant’s office, a retail or wholesale premises, somewhere that sold food and drink – whatever economic activity could be fitted into the structure and from which people could make a living. As I said, it’s very reminiscent of the older parts of Singapore, and i believe that the term ‘shophouses’ applies to the premises in George Town as well as Singapore.

By the 1970s & 1980s things had moved on – the new technology of trade (containers, global networks) rendered much of these old premises redundant, and the older area became very run-down and dilapidated. But the area was declared a World Heritage site in 2008 and various protection measure put in place to preserve the architecture, and it’s become a major tourist attraction.

One problem is that because it’s remained a working area, it’s very difficult to get good pictures of it – the streets are very busy, there are cars parked everywhere, and of course there are endless streams of motor bikes zooming around. So no great pictures, I’m afraid. (the 90º+ heat didn’t help, of course.)

One interesting aspect of the area is that there are a number of Chinese temples. These too are historic (late 19th century in some cases) but I have a feeling that the actual buildings may have been renewed since then. A few of them are very grand.

I also visited one of the Clan Jetties. These are structure that were originally based on boats joined together and projecting out from the shore into the sea, by more than 100 yards. On this structure were built houses and some business premises, and later shops. They were built by the Chinese and each of the jetties was built by a specific clan or extended family. I visited the Chew jetty and I gather it’s the case that many of the current residents (they are still lived-in) are members of the original clan.

Finally, I must report that while in George Town I ate local. I visited a tandoori shop in George Town’s Little India for lunch. Formica tables, simple menu, and I was told what to order – Tandoori Chicken with plain naan. Delicious; and incredibly cheap. The chicken and naan cost me the equivalent of £1.50, and, big spender that I am, I bumped it up to £2.50 by adding a glass of really thick mango juice.

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On the afternoon of my third day in Singapore I visited Gardens in the Bay. This is a sort of ‘hi-tech eco paradise’ – or at least, that’s how it’s intended.If you know the Eden Project in Cornwall you’ll get the idea, but with added technology.

Update: here’s the text! Gardens by the Bay consists of three broad areas. First there are acres of ‘walk around’ areas, laid out in gardens. For example, there’s the Chinese garden, the Malay garden, and so on. There are also large areas of open grassland. In fact this area is pretty much like a botanic gardens, and is also free to enter. The second area are the two domes – the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, and they’re not free. These are both enclosed and controlled environments. The Flower Dome contains flowers and other plants from the several Mediterranean climatic environments around the world – California, South Africa, Chile, and of course from around the Med itself. This is interesting enough, but (unless you’re a plant enthusiast) not exactly spectacular. It’s saved, however, by the presence of additional ‘exhibition’ displays, and when I was here they had displays of cherry blossoms. These were very popular, with queues of people being photographed beside and among the blossoms. I took some images of this blossom myself – examples below.

Then there’s the Cloud Forest dome. This is an artificial reconstruction (and explanation) of the way vegetation on a mountain is stratified by the climate that is present at a given altitude. So particular species of plant will only exist on the mountain within a fairly narrow range – no lower than a certain height, and no higher than a certain other height. For this example they’ve picked plants that thrive in the ‘cloud zone’ – temperate climate (in fact blissfully cool) and with plentiful moisture, mainly from the clouds that form around the mountain at the relevant altitude.

In the case of the Flower Dome you just walk around the floor of the dome, but it’s a bit different for the Cloud Forest dome. There’s an artificial mountain, some tens of metres high, with plants growing all the way up it. I gather that in fact these plants are zoned – that the climate isn’t constant throughout the dome – but I didn’t really spot any great difference. But having marvelled from the ground at it all, you then get to ascend by lift to the fifth or 6th floor, from where you walk down. Some of these walks, as you can see from the images below, extend out from the ‘mountain’ by many yards. Presumably so you can appreciate the thing in all its glory, I expect – certainly not just to give the visitors a thrill! Basically you gradually descend round and round the mountain, sometimes passing through it, sometimes on a walkway out in the air, until you reach the bottom.

But that’s not all! I said that it replicates moist conditions. So how can they do that in an enclosed dome in equatorial Singapore? Well, every couple of hours or thereabouts they ‘mist’ the mountain – hundreds of tiny vents issue a fine spray or mist of water which moisturises the plants. Of course it looks spectacular (again, see a couple of the images below) but I’m sure that’s just a happy accident.

 

First, in the Cloud Forest and Flower domes:

The next spectacular area of the Gardens is the Supertree Grove, together with the associated Skyway (there’s an extra charge for this). The Supertrees themselves are between 25 and 50 metres high, and actually perform engineering functions for the park – e.g. as air exhaust outlets for the cooled conservatories. They’re each made up of a concrete core; a steel frame exoskeleton; and onto that are fixed millions of plants. The Skyway is a 138 metre walk between two of the medium-height trees.

I enjoyed the afternoon I spent there. To be honest, I think that unless you were interested in horticulture or botany much of the open gardens might be a bit ‘blah’. But the two conservatories are amazing, especially the Cloud Forest, and the Supertree Grove is just one of those ridiculous things that’s actually wonderful.

I gather that at night they illuminate the Supertrees…. maybe next visit.

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I spent this morning exploring Little India, the area near to my hotel. It’s a much more traditional area than most in Singapore; it features mainly low-rise buildings, with traditional shops spilling out onto the pavement (or rather, the pavements almost run through the fronts of the shops). As its name suggests it’s a predominantly Indian area of Singapore – Indians, or Singaporeans of Indian origin, make up about 10% of Singapore’s population. (The overwhelming majority are of Chinese descent – almost 75% of the population.) The walk was hot but interesting.

I visited a Buddhist temple, inside which is a 50 feet high statue of the Buddha, made of concrete and weighing, it was suggested, about 300 tons. It was built in situ in the 1930s, inside the already-constructed temple. I spoke to the attendant/guide and we had an interesting conversation. This resulted in the strangest thing (or most unexpected) that I’ve heard in a long time. I told him where I came from and he replied saying that he really liked English TV; and then he mentioned ‘Allo ‘Allo as a particular favourite…..

In the afternoon I visited the Gardens by the Bay, but that deserves a post of its own.

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Bridges over Singapore river

I seem to be falling behind myself in terms of posting here. It’s now the end of today and I haven’t done yesterday’s post yet.

Yesterday morning I slept late (surprise) and didn’t wake up until 9 o’clock. So what with shower, breakfast, etc, it was quite late before I set out for the day’s plans. I decided to visit the National Museum. This tells the story of Singapore from the earliest known records or artifacts up to the present.You’ll not be too surprised to learn that it’s the history of the last half-century which takes pride of place, and why shouldn’t it? While Singapore was prosperous and busy in 1963 (the year it gained independence from Britain and entered the Federation of Malaysia), it wasn’t at that time a first-world city with extremely strong positions in shipping and finance, whereas today it is. So well done Singapore, and the museum tells the story of the struggle for independence and how it achieved  with it fairly and without rancour. I learned a lot especially from the “How we built” special exhibition which details how Singapore was rebuilt and expanded from the 1970s onwards; a process that hasn’t stopped yet.

After that I explored the Singapore River area, and that was visually interesting and attractive.

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This post is a report on my first few hours or so in Singapore.

After getting to the hotel yesterday I showered and changed, and then went shopping. I wanted to get a few things and I’d identified that there was a mall (City Mall) just over the road. it was also alongside a Singapore Metro (MRT) station, which (once I’d got a ticket) would allow me to go in search of a sim for the phone – I must have my data! The mall was good; quite busy, especially on the lower-ground floor where there was a small supermarket and other ‘practical’ shops, and I was able to get what I wanted.

Next was the MRT ticket. I bought a three-day tourist pass for S$30, which includes $10 for the pass itself and which I can get back by returning it at any MRT station when I leave. I can also extend it if I need to, which I will.

Then I used this to got to another mall at Bugis where there was a Singtel shop (Singtel being one of the cell phone networks here). I had to wait a while here but eventually bought a HiTourist! sim for S$15, which will last for 5 days and which gives me 4Gb of data (plus an allowance for local and international calls. That has worked OK since then, although it did seem to take a few hours for it to recognise the sim this morning.

After the shopping I went back to the hotel and walked through the ‘Little India’ district – as its name suggests this is an almost exclusively Indian area complete with temples and of course the ever-present restaurants. There’s actually a large covered area, almost a market, full of food stalls, but I couldn’t make myself try one of them – they were quite busy and looked a bit intimidating, especially as I was very tired. But not too far away I allowed myself to be persuaded into the Khansara tandoori restaurant where I had a vegetarian meal – vegetable samosas, gobi masala, a plain naan, and a mug of Tiger beer all for around S$20. The gobi masala was excellent but the vegetable samosas were a little different from what I’m used to. They were about twice the size and also much more spicy. Never mind, I cooled my scalded palate with naan and Tiger.

Then later I went out on the MRT again and down to one of the waterfront areas, Marina Bay. I wanted to have a night-time look at the Marina Bay Sands building but found that there was a weird ‘light sculpture’ event happening on the The Float, a large pontoon in Marina Bay. There were a lot people looking at the exhibit but not too many people paying their money to go and look at it from inside.

Then it was back to the hotel where I collapsed into bed not long after 10pm. I was awake for a while just before 5am but got back to sleep, and the next thing I knew it was 9 o’clock in the morning.

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This will have to be a short post about a very long experience – flying to Singapore from Manchester. I’ll even leave out all the packing angst that occurred, as that’s not actually part of the trip. So you must imagine me all ready to go at just before 8:30 Monday morning.

The trip over the Manchester took 90 minutes or a bit longer – this latter mainly caused by the car park I’d booked a place in not being named as described in their email to me. But I found it, and was going through baggage drop at just about 10:30 for a 13:10 flight, and the usual hanging-about-at-the-airport ensued.

The flight from Manchester to Dubai was with Emirates, in an Airbus A380, and I have to say this was very comfortable. Partly because I had a (pre-payed) good seat, but also because I think those A380 economy seats are comfortable. Anyway, 7 hours later I was landing at Dubai at just after midnight local time to transfer to another Emirates flight and with a changeover time of just over two hours. Dubai International was very busy even at that time, but I gather that because of time differences, departure times from airports all over the world, and flying times, that airport is very busy all hours of the day – indeed, late night may even be the busiest time as that’s when daytime flights from Europe arrive.

No problem making the connection and then I was onto an Emirates Boeing 777 for the flight to Singapore. This too was about 7 hours but nowhere nearly so comfortable. Partly this was because I think the seats in the Boeing were just less comfortable, but also because I ended up with the largest woman in the world sat next to me.

So then I arrived at Singapore at late lunchtime on Tuesday. By the time I got to my hotel I’d been travelling for nearly 24 hours since leaving home.

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Asia here I come!

So tomorrow I’m off on my holiday to Asia – five nights in Singapore, three nights in Penang, Malaysia, and a couple of nights in Dubai on the way home. Hopefully I’ll be able to post while I’m away, so look out for the posts.

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