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.
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Farewell to Singapore
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011Marina Bay Sands Resort, Singapore
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011The 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, Singapore
Thursday, April 21st, 2011Little 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.
Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, Singapore
Thursday, April 21st, 2011We 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!
Chettiar Hindu Temple – Sri Thandayuthapani
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011The 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.
Singapore Zoo
Monday, April 18th, 2011We 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!
Singapore Skyline in HDR
Sunday, April 17th, 2011Chris 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.
Lau Pa Sat and other food adventures
Saturday, April 16th, 2011The 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.
Novotel Clarke Quay, Singapore
Friday, April 15th, 2011Singapore CBD is built around Marina Bay with small inlets forming quays going inland. We stayed at Novotel Clarke Quay located on the main enteretainment quay (Clarke Quay). It was recommended by our travel agent – great choice Louise. The location is perfect for tourists – inbetween Chinatown to the south and the Colonial district and CBD to the north. Rooms are very spacious and the service is excellent. There’s 2 showers in the room including one with a huge rose that seem to be all the rage at the moment. The diameter is bigger than my handspan!
Clarke Quay is packed with restaurants and bars of every description. There’s a Fremantle Seafood market if you’re homesick but we were delighting in all of the other great cuisines. At 11pm on a weekday the place was crawling with hip young things standing on the pedestrain bridge drinking. We could only conclude that street drinking is not illegal (it’s not and this is one of the few ways that Singapore is more relaxed than Oz). The twentysomethings had made a great mess and left rubbish everywhere. However it had all been cleared up by the morning – extremely efficient.
The Colonial district (including Clarke Quay itself) has lots of old buildings with shutters. The Museum of Contemporary Art was over the road from the hotel and had rainbow shutters. Despite the disparaging remarks I’ve read, I quite like seeing colour. Infact most of the modern buildings had also been painted various colours and it was a stark contrast to the dull white that most concrete buildings seem to be in Perth.
Chris is a bit of a tech head so we made our way to Funan Digilife – a 6 story electronics shopping complex within walking distance of the hotel. Some things like mice and CF cards were cheaper than Oz but Canon camera equipment wasn’t. Chris was in heaven and wandered for hours while I enjoyed my hip new tech status of being an Ipad owner. I must say Ipads are great until you want to transfer files or connect to anything that is not Apple. Don’t expect them to be like Windows PCs. I parked in a coffee shop and typed this up. There’s lots of free Wifi around shops, cafes and railway stations. The hotel is installing free Wifi on all floors and had free Apple computers in the foyer (on the 7th floor).
Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Singapore
Thursday, April 14th, 2011Our second stop in Chinatown was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. Chinatown is a surprisingly quiet place during the day except the temples which are crowded with both tourists and worshippers. The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple is only a short walk from the Sri Mariamman Temple and makes for an interesting morning/day depending on how much time you spend there. The temple is named after a piece of tooth believed to be one of the Buddha’s own teeth. It is housed in a stupor as per the Buddhist tradition and is not able to be viewed. Apparently there’s a lovely prayer wheel and garden on one of the higher stories but we were very satisfied exploring the ground floor.
I really debated whether to visit the temple based on images online. I’m so glad we did. The outside is a pretty though fairly typical example of Chinese architecture. I love that style and enjoyed playing with the geometry of the roof – the building is 5 story but we were well entertained by the ground floor. When we arrived in the morning, the monks were chanting and many people were praying. I felt a little uncomfortable about touristing while others are praying but no-one seemed to mind. The chanting and gongs are incredibly loud and combined with the high Singapore humidity it’s rather like a psychedelic drug experience (not that I’d know!!).
Once the chanting had finished, everyone cleared out and left the tourists to enjoy the interior. It’s a gorgeous riot in gold and red. There are more Buddha statues than I’ve ever seen in one place and everything is slathered in gold. I didn’t find many images of the interior online and there was a small sign at one spot saying no photography. I’ve developed a philosophy about these signs. If the locals are videoing or photographing, I’ll discretely follow suit. I never use flash photography as I think it’s just rude and in this Buddhist temple there was nowhere near enough space to set up a tripod. But there were heaps of locals taking video and stills, so I did some hand held HDR shots. Everything on this page is HDR and hand held and the results aren’t too bad.
If you can ignore your conscious regarding the no photography signs, the temple is well worth a visit for photographers for hand held shots.
