Excuse me, Indonesia, do you mind not smoking?

I'm now working in the Marina Bay Financial Center, a new office complex built on landfill along with the Marina Bay Sands Casino, an absolutely crazy looking building that I've shown pictures of earlier.  Three giant towers with what looks like a boat on top.

So I've been meaning to take a nice picture of the view from my building but it has been too humid to get a nice clear image.  And then this week, the visibility got worse.  Much much worse.

Seems we are downwind from the annual intentional forest fires in Indonesia.  They don't always go right over Singapore, but when the wind is just right, lots of smoke in the air.  It doesn't smell that bad but it does seem to gunk up the sinuses.

I think the winds are starting to shift again, though.  Looking up you can see where the edge of the smoke cloud is.  Not a storm cloud there, that is all smoke.  Lets see... Malaysia is to the right, go to Kuala Lumpur, smoke!

It is the last month of the dry season in Indonesia, so I won't have to worry about the smoke too much longer.  Until the next Chinese festival day, anyway.

Speaking of which, I should have done a post on the Festival of the Hungry Ghost:
http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/en/browse/whats-on/festivals-and-events/hungry-ghost-festival.html

If you come to Singapore and everyone is standing around drums filled with burning paper, you might get the wrong idea.  But don't worry, they are just cutting out the middle man, skipping the malls, and straight up burning money.

(Fake money, of course.)

Ice kopi take away

There is a coffee shop half a block from me, but it is no Starbucks.  It is a traditional coffee stall where you have to know the local terms for everything.  Kopi instead of coffee, teh instead of tea, and odd suffixes to request evaporated milk.  And look what happens if you want it to go... I mean for take-away... They give it to you in a plastic bag.  For god's sake, hold it by the string or it will squirt out the straw.



More details about the traditional coffee house menu is here: http://leonefabre.blogspot.com/2011/03/drinks-singapore-style.html

There are also western style coffee places--like Starbucks and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf--if you like a more western menu, a to go cup, espresso drinks, or paying three times as much.

Welcome to the Jungle

Went on a nature hike today through a string of parks called the southern ridges.  I started at the Harborfront station (which is, of course, under a mall).  And got a quick glimpse across the water at Sentosa Island.  Kind of a close-to-home resort destination. (Well, my home anyway).

 Round the other side of the mall were these awesome kid cars.

 But then cross the street, and you have stairs ascending up into jungle canopy.  This is the way up to Mt. Faber.  Not a giant mountain, but way to big to call a hill.

 There is actually an arial tramway from Sentosa Island to the top of the mountain.   But I went up the hard way (or the cheap way, as I was looking at it).  The building in this picture is huge, it will keep showing up in later  pictures.

 There were signs saying "Do not feed the monkeys." Alas, I never saw any.  But a huge variety of giant trees, palm trees.  There are even a few types of conifer that can take the heat.

 And you could catch a few peeks of cityscape between breaks in the trees.

 Judging by this picture, I must have been about 30 stories up or so.

 A good view of the tramway.  It has a stop inside the top of that big building, which is over the train station and the mall there.  Then it passes on through to Sentosa Island.

 This is part of the planned landscaping around the lookout at the top of the mountain.  The lookout has arrows pointing in the direction of major Asian cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Bangkok.

 That building starts to look like a space station as we start to see it from other angles.

 These are orchids.  Only one is blooming.

 ..And it didn't really look much like the one in the picture on the sign.

 Definitely had a problem with the either the sky being overdeveloped, or the greenery being too dark.  These trees had a lovely dappled canopy, though.  And they were huge.

 Up to this point, I was just walking along paths along the side of the road.  But as I went west they did some interesting things to really get you up into the trees.  This is Henderson Wave Bridge.  The arches between the support piers have been turned into more of a sine wave shape, that curves up over the bridge to give you a bit of much needed shade up there.  I'm sure the engineering of it is fascinating.

 Looking down at the roadway underneath.  We are way up from there.  There is the strange building again, and it gets weirder looking from each new angle.

 After the bridge there is a bit more roadside path, but then I came to a metal walkway that lifts you back up into the forest canopy. I think it is called the forest walk.

 Pictures really don't do justice to how big these trees are.

 There is another bridge that is apparently cool at night because it is lit up with colored LEDs.  But I like these trees you can see while standing on the tree, because of there crazy wide canopy.

 Tall palm, standing all alone.

 A little hard to make out, but this tree is covered in purple flowers.

 Luckily I took a close up, and you can actually see the bridge I was talking about a little earlier (with the LEDs)

 This palm has some sort of black berry-like fruit.

 On the other side of that bridge was a group of formal gardens, I guess none of the gardens impressed me enough to pull out the camera, except for the one with an aquarium.  This fish would turn around and stare at me wherever I stood.

 I still haven't learned the names of most of the trees in Singapore, but now I can identify this one.  A rubber tree!

 As it got late in the evening, National Day celebrations began, including the flying of giant flags from their military helicopters.  I completely failed to get a good picture.  You can just make out one to the left of the crazy building.

 And the dang camera app closed itself before letting me take a picture, so the flag was just starting to leave my view by the time I took this one.

There are three helicopters, the one in front is pulling the flag.  There is a weight hanging off the bottom of the flag to help it not be completely wound up by the wind.  The other two helicopters are flying escort.  There were at least three teams of these guys flying around.

And later, from a different part of town, I got to see the fireworks.  The casino in the background was awesome, because the fireworks would reflect sparkling light off the glass windows.

Bugis and Kampong Glam

 Not too far from where I am staying right now is Bugis street.  Definitely a street worth walking down if you are ever in Singpore.  It is well inside the central part of Singapore, better known for its shopping malls (as you will see later in the post) but you travel through time quite a bit walking down Bugis.

 Starting just a little off of Bugis, we have two temples side by side.  This one is Indian.  There is a gallery of statues on the front, each ornately painted.  There are a lot of these temples in Singapore, and this is far from the most ornate, but you can get up real nice and close to it.  And it is part of such a bustling street.

Here is a Chinese temple.  Quite a bit of commercialism out front, with flowers and incense to buy, for use inside the temple, I gather.

A better view of the front of the Chinese temple.

 As you go down the street, you have a lot of cool shops.  Bulk Chinese herbs.

 Religious statuary.  People kept coming up and rubbing Buddha, especially his belly.  There is a little donation container under him.  The store behind is full of little statuettes.

 This man is selling birds in the middle of the sidewalk (the roadways through this whole section are closed to traffic, making sort of a pedestrian mall)  The birds aren't actually sitting in the cage at all.

 There are at least 5 birds in this picture.

 Now I have made the turn onto Bugis Street.  The huge electronics mall, Sim Lim, is actually a block or two behind me at this point.  There are tons of shops set up in tents: toys, clothes, key makers and watch repair shops.  And a discount mall behind it with more herb sellers, and statuary, and some jewelry.

 Then as we cross the street from there, the entire street has been covered in a tent.  There is a big vegetable market to the right of the entrance.

 And in there it is jam packed with stalls selling all sorts of crap

 Cross the street again, and suddenly everything is much more upscale.  A glass top has been built over the roadway, and traditional mall stores are in the old store fronts.

 And then look at this crazy mall!

But just a few blocks away from the malls is a part of town, like little India, but this is where the muslim population lived under british colonialism.

 Despite what you might think about a neighborhood anchored by a giant mosque, it is quite hip, with cafes and bars lining the street.

Also lots of clothe sellers and carpet stores.

And yes, that is another mall in the distance.