Now that I’ve recovered from the flu that Chris gave me, I’m off to Perth until the end of the week. I’ll be going to not one but 2 footy games and may also check out the ACDC exhibition at the WA Museum. Preparation for Paris (my next trip) has been an almost fulltime job for a few weeks so it should be a fantastic experience.
Chris will be home and able to help with any Pilbara gifts. I’ll be offline until I’m back.
I’ve been to Phuket several times 20 years ago and again last year when we enjoyed a very relaxing time at Laguna Beach Resort within the Laguna complex. The complex consists of a gated community of 6 hotels connected by a manmade lagoon. Strangely LBR was full of Russians. Even the restaurants had Russian menus. We noticed one big difference between the Aussies and Russians at the resort. Russian mums were quite happy to stick their toddlers in floating rubber rings and leave them unsupervised in the middle of the massive pools where they couldn’t stand. I watched the few Aussie blokes (and women) seething at what they saw as highly dangerous and neglectful parenting.
We were also reminded that Oz is one of the few countries with skin cancer education. White people just got lobstered at the pool each day and then complainened of feeling unwell at breakfast. The hotel staff seemed to have a quiet respect for the large white people wearing shirts and hats in the pool, no matter how uncool we looked!
Because of the last minute cancellation of the Japanese trip we could only into the Dusit Thani within the complex. The rooms are noticeably smaller, at least half the size. And the TV channels are all news and sport. No Starworld or the local channel that shows Survivor. These things are important to me!! We were only saved by free wifi at the lobby and managed to download our favourite TV shows. You may be asking about the need for TV, but when you are bedridden with fatigue, you can’t sleep the entire day. Chris also missed a swimup bar and the restaurants didn’t have the choice of LBR.
Unfortunately Chris and then myself got some sort of infection/virus which put us in bed for much of our stay in Phuket. So we didn’t do any photography in Thailand, not even the Buddhist temple I’d planned to visit. On the final day we went in Jungceylon (the big shoppping centre) in Patong to buy more cold and flu drugs. Medication is roughly half the price in Oz. Also went on a huge travel guidebook shopping spree since books are so much cheaper. For Lonely Planet and other big names guides, it’s half the Oz price. I bought 6 books for $A100.
For dinner we tried Shabu Shabu for the first time. It’s the Japanese version of hotpot. You have a pot divided in half so that two types of soup can be ordered. The table has a cooking plate in the middle that heats the soup. A conveyor belt has raw meat and veg. Just make your choice and cook your dinner yourself. There’s condiments like garlic, chilli, coriander and sesame seeds that can be added to taste. I had the Tom Yum soup while Chris enjoyed the chicken soup. I had a cross section of seafood, chook and beef meats but the pigs liver was too much! And stacks of bok choy, corn, mushrooms and particularly black eared mushrooms which I’ve never found in Oz.
This particular restaurant was called Shabushi as it was a buffet of both hotpot and sushi. For a set price of $A10 per person, it’s outstanding value. The food was absolutely delicious and the service was great. Yes it’s sad that I keep eating Japanese food in whatever country I visit.
I haven’t spoken much about Thai food. Believe me, I mostly ate Thai but given I’ve been eating and cooking Thai for 20 years there wasn’t a novelty factor. I just love Pad Thai for lunch – rice noodles with veg and meat. And my absolute favourite is duck curry which is a red curry of duck meat, lychees and pineapple. Thai curries are either red or green. And most Thai food uses coconut milk which is delicious but quite high in fat/cholesterol. The main flavours in Thai food are lime, coriander, chilli and fish sauce. It’s packed with flavour without being heavy. And doesn’t have much gluten which is great for me.
Thailand is also very good at stocking soda water. To minimise sugar intake we usually only drink soda water rather than lemonade (called Sprite in much of Asia) or Coke. Most of the rest of Asia don’t stock soda water. Despite being unwell, we loved our Phuket stay and found it extremely relaxing.
Our trip to Singapore was a huge success. We found it friendly, polite, clean, well organised, amazing variety and quality of food, heaps of photo ops and currently very cheap for Aussies. I’m sure we’ll be back.
Thanks Singapore.
The Marina Bay Sands Complex is a complicated and impressive piece of engineering. The complex contains shops, theatres, casino, cultural centres and of course the 3 pronged hotel. Much of it is built on marine sands and the hotel has a very tricky design that is lucky to be standing. The long sides of the building are concave rather than being parallel and whilst being built, they formed the shape of 2 dominos leaning on each other. There’s an excellent National Geographic episode on the construction project.
We visited the Skypark (the long canoe bit on top of the 3 hotel buildings) at night. The observation deck is on the 57th floor and costs $S20. There is a ridiculous rule that says no professional photography euqipment (what IS a professional camera?) although it’s not acted on. There is also a sign downstairs saying no tripods. Again locals were ignoring it so we did break out the travel tripods. Someone had set up a tripod at the top of the main stairs which was really dumb so we discretely hid ourselves in one corner of the upper deck.
It’s a bit of a scrum but quiet on Sunday night and the whole thing is open until 11pm. I say quiet but the noise level was very high with some serious duff duff at the pool. It’s a glorious infinity pool at some ridiculous length (150m? I can’t remember). While in Singapore a visit is a must. Photography opportunities are good particularly at quiet times.
The infinity pool is constructed such that it looks like a sheer drop over th edge. Of course it’s not but the illusion is spectacular.
View from the observation deck. The infinity pool can be seen on the far left.
My favourite shot of the Singapore skyline is below and yes it is an HDR shot. Most of the above are single exposures.
Little India is obviously a great place to get wonderful Indian food at a reasonable price (and we feasted!). It’s also covered in goldsmiths. It felt like 50% of the shops were jewellers with glittering displays. I’d found the destination of all the gold I’ve been involved in mining over the last 2 decades! Chris and I agreed that African gold jewelry seems very chunky while Indian seems more intricate while still being completely over the top. The necklaces would more accurately be called neck cuffs, they are so big. But very fine.
We spent a morning in Little India. Interestingly, Chinatown is almost dead during the dead but Little India is alive and busting. We visited the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple which again was squeezed between other buildings and crammed with worshippers and tourists. I deliberately tried to include people and movement in the interior as that was my experience of the temple.
The temple is very photography friendly (although I’d suggest never using a flash). Little India really does feel like a suburb in India has been cookie cut and dropped into Singapore. OK. So I haven’t been to India but it was certainly what I would imagine!
The Chettiar Hindu Temple is within easy walking distance of the Novotel. I arrived to find some sort of celebration in progress. Hindus are wonderfully robust, loud and colourful in practising their faith. It’s a stark contrast to the austere (read oppressive) atmosphere in the European churches. There was a huge procession around the temple grounds with drums and wind instruments. Children were running around, laughing and yelling inside the temple. I stayed outside to take some HDR shots of the gorumpan. It’s a more stylised version of a gorumpan with less of the statues.
We spent the better part of a day at the Singapore Zoo and had a ball. It is extremely well laid out with heaps of drinks, food and facilities. They have a free tram doing circuits which was a life saver for me as a CFS sufferer, there’s no way I could have walked everywhere.
Our favourites were the white tigers, orangutangs and otters. The design is very open plan so you do feel like you’re there with the animals. Recommended for anyone visiting Singapore. The restaurant has a good range and the beer steins of honey lemon iced tea were the highlight. We caught taxis from the city which were $20 one way and there’s usually taxis at the zoo to come home.
I had taken a day off from photography (and I only have wide angle lenses anyway) so Chris took the images below (don’t know about you but I can see the difference in image quality using the cheap camera and lens). There were 3 white tigers. The dominant male spent most of his time patrolling at the top of the pen while the females were in the water. The first two images show 2 big cats having a play fight with the second showing the unimpressed look on one tiger’s face!
Chris and I both took our Canons for a night shoot on the city side of Marina Bay. Marina Bay was originally a salt water inlet that has been dammed and is now a freshwater holding area. Singapore Skyline has changed so much in the last few years due to the incredible amount of construction. Despite being used to constant construction in Perth, I was impressed at the amount going on in Singapore especially aorund the Marina Bay area.
Here’s some HDR shots including the arty one from Chris with the reflection on the glass seat.
The image below shows the Singapore Flyer on the left and Marina Bay Sands Complex on the right. More on this amazing piece of architecture later.
The Aussie dollar is particuarly strong compared to the Singapore dollar (about 1.30 exchange rate) so food and taxis are really cheap. OK, not Manilla cheap but still say 30% less than Oz. The first night we stumbled upon Jumbo seafood at Clarke Quay. We scoffed ourselves on duck salad, chilli crab, pepper crab, rice and soda water for $S100. Each crab dish was an entire crab plus bowl of sauce which would have cost a fortune at home. Surprisingly, the pepper crab is much hotter than the chilli crab but so delicious.
We are still lamenting not going to Japan and had Japanese for one lunch. A bento set for $S15 was so tasty and great value. On the second evening we went to Lau Pa Sat market to have some of the famous satay. Lau Pa Sat has a permanent undercover food stall market open all day and in the evening lots of small satay stalls open next to it. It’s very smokey and atmospheric and the place is usually packed. The tables are tiny and the sell is pretty strong so be prepared to wade through the sellers rejecting as you go. The satays are $S0.60 each and sold in lots of 10. Admittedly the amount of meat on each stick is less than I’m used to. We bought 10 chicken, 10 beef and 10 duck. Although they were great tasting, all of the meats tasted the same. I found that 15 satay sticks by themselves was not a meal for me. I had to go hunting for vegies and rice.
On another day, I tried Maraturamen restaurant within the hotel complex. The guide books (I use several) said that the bowl of Ramen isn’t enought for dinner so I ordered dumplings as well. Don’t know where they were eating but the bowl was huge! Ramen are long, cylindrical Japanese noodles in a chicken broth. There’s no actual chicken meat but tasty as all get out.
I’ve found a cure for the Singapore humidity (it’s not as hot as home but very sweaty). It’s a desert called ice kacang. A mountain of shaved ice with sweet syrup, glace fruit and pureed mango. I can’t get my head around sweet corn as a fruit but it certainly is yummy and cools you down. We’ve also developed a taste for iced tea, which Singapore does so well. At the zoo, the restaurant sells large beer steins of lemon iced tea – heavenly. We’ve tried various flavours, some sweeter than others. Honey lemon is great and despite me not liking ginger, I am enjoying lemongrass ginger iced tea each morning. Also had lemongrass juice and my new favourite lime juice.
For a bit of extravagance, we window shopped at the Raffles Complex. I bought a pack of 6 macaroons and feel in love with the pistacchio ones.