SINGAPORE PHOTOS (PART 1)

This is the first batch of photos I plan to share on this blog from our recent trip to Singapore.  After much deliberation, I've managed to select 42 out of the 350 pictures I shot — they aren't necessarily the best that I took but they do represent the essence of our week-long visit.  I hope you enjoy them...

Our Tiger Airways jet (an Airbus A320-200, for those interested) after landing at Changi International's new Budget Terminal.  The terminal is bare-bones but with extremely low landing and docking fees it allows the airlines using it to offer lower airfares to the public.  There's a free shuttle bus that takes you to the fancy Terminals 1 and 2.

After checking into our hotel (the Oxford on Queen Street), Tim and I set off walking to explore our neighborhood.  It was chock-a-block with interesting churches, both a Buddhist and Hindu temple, several worthwhile museums (including the highly-regarded Singapore Art Museum), and loads of fancy shopping malls.  About a 10-minute walk north we discovered the sprawling Bugis Market area which reminded me somewhat of Bangkok's Chatuchak Weekend Market with all sorts of inexpensive stuff to buy.  Most of the shop/stall owners seemed to be Chinese.

Singapore is a very expensive city to dine out (or buy much of anything, for that matter).  However, food bargains can be found in hawker stalls which are large groupings of small Chinese kitchens surrounded by tables.  You sit at a table, taking note of it's number, and wait for a drink seller to come by.  After you've got your drinks, you go and order from whichever kitchen looks the most appealing to you (they all looked pretty dingy to me!), telling the cook your table number so they can deliver your food when it's ready.  It was fairly chaotic, hot, and smelly but seemed to be Tim's best bet for finding something she wanted to eat (the only Thai restaurants in the areas we frequented were of the upscale/expensive variety and weren't up to Tim's standards in terms of spiciness or variety).  Here, Tim is enjoying a bowl of noodles; she prowling around looking for hotter chilies to add to the soup.

Our first task on Tuesday was to visit the Royal Thai Embassy, located at the top of Orchard Street — Singapore's MAIN shopping area with numerous hypermalls lining the road.  The embassy only takes visa applications from 9:15 until noon; you put in your application and leave your passport on the first day and then pick it up after two on the following day.

One of the more fun ways to get around Singapore is via a Chinese-style rickshaw.  They are fairly numerous and not very expensive (about S$10 for a 30-minute ride).  The owners decorate them with often outlandish paint schemes (notice the Batman rickshaw).  During our visit, it always looked like it was about to rain so we never rode in one of these...


We did, however, decide to take a bumboat trip down the Singapore River.  These traditional boats take passengers up and down the river; most opt for a 30- or 45-minute roundtrip cruise for S$12-15.  We had arrived at the head of the river through a tunnel under the Esplanade Theatres (a building that looks like a giant durian to me) and numerous touts approached us offering just such a cruise.  However, Tim was hungry and we spotted a Thai restaurant on the waterfront.  While eating, I happened to read a bit in my travel guide about river taxis.  After lunch, I went to the ticket booth the touts were hanging out at and asked how much a river taxi down to Clark Quay would be; it was S$5 for the two of us and we travelled on the same boat as the passengers who paid the cruise price.  Since Clark Quay is near the turnaround point, we only missed the recorded commentary about the far side of the river on the return trip.  A good travel tip, I suppose...

A view towards Boat Quay; formerly in disrepair, the old Chinese shophouses have been wonderfully restored into some really nice restaurants and nightspots.  The different heights of these buildings are indicative of the wealth of the original owners — the taller the shophouse, the more well-to-do the family.

A visit to Singapore isn't complete without a vist to Royal Selengor, the famous pewter manufacturer.  You can take a tour of the factory and even take a class on how to create beautiful objects from pewter.  We opted for a stroll through the huge retail area, jaws dropping at some of the prices.  Needless to say, we didn't make any pewter purchases (although there was a tiny medallion for just S$5 at one of the counters).



There's plenty of public art on display throughout the city.  Here, Tim poses amidst three of them.




Although Singapore has plenty of very impressive modern architecture I much more enjoyed the old colonial buildings, most of which are painted in striking pastel colors.

I'd completely forgotten it was Halloween until we came across this apparition on Clarke Quay.


Something else Singapore has an abundance of are fines.  The most famous are the "no spitting" and "no durians" signs and there are plenty of "no smoking" ones as well.  Just a few years ago, you also got fined for chewing gum (it was as illegal to sell as much as it was for discarding it) but at least that restriction has been lifted.  In all the markets, you can buy t-shirts with the saying "Singapore is a Fine City", surrounded by the various "do not" logos.

Well, I think that's enough photos for one blog entry (it's not really the bandwidth I'm concerned with but the writing of captions).  I'll post a few more tomorrow or the next day.

BACK HOME, BUT NOT MUCH REST

It's been a crazy week and I've barely had time to sit down and catch my breath, let alone try and bring this blog up-to-date.  Now that I do have a bit of time, I'm not really in the mood to write a lot.  I'll write more about our trip when I post some select photos later in the week; but I'll try to write a bit more extensively tonight about this weekend in Phuket (before I forget).

Tim and I spent last Monday through Thursday in Singapore.  My impression of the city is as one large park with trees and flowers everywhere.  It's also the cleanest place I've ever visited.  Some people describe it as "sterile" but I found it quite refreshing to be in a "civilized" place once again after the garbage one encounters in Thailand.  Our hotel was located in a very nice area of Queen Street, a short walk south of Bugis Market and a bit north of Fort Canning Park.  I'll go into more detail when I post some photos but we did manage to do A LOT of touristy things during our brief stay.

Oh, yes.  I received my Non-Immigrant (O) Visa without any real problems at all.  It was a two-day process — submit the application (with fee) before noon on the first day and retrieve the passport (with nice full-page visa) after two the next.  I now can legally stay and work in Thailand at least until the expiration date of October 30, 2007 (longer with the month-long extensions granted after every three months).

I must mention that Tim hated Singapore.  I think that had as much to do with the lack of Thai restaurants in the areas we visited as to the general expensiveness of the city as a whole.  It's a shame, really, as I'm ready to return already (and who can resist Tiger Airways' 30-baht one-way fares?) and she has no desire ever to go back...

We did sleep in a bit Friday morning after our late-night return to Phuket (in the rain, of course) but we headed out to Patong in the late afternoon for the Carnival marking the beginning of the tourist High Season.  A large section of the beach road was blocked-off with stages erected at both ends sandwiching numerous food/souvenir/beer booths.  Our live-in "daughter" Nadia met us soon after our arrival (she moved in with us a few weeks ago but stayed with a friend during our trip) and it was wonderful to see her (I'd missed her massages) before heading off to work at one of the temporary restaurants set up in front of the beach.  One of the highlights of the night was a "Super Model Bikini Fashion Show" (unfortunately, my camera failed me).

Saturday and Sunday nights we attended Loy Krathong (ลอยกระทง) festivals in Karon and Patong.  This is held around the full moon of the twelfth lunar month and the main goal is to launch a small boat made of banana leaves with flowers, candles, and incense sticks out onto the water.  The candle is lit, a wish made, and the boat is pushed away from the shore.  The tradition is that you keep watching the boat until it drifts out-of-sight with the belief being that the longer the candle remains lit the better your luck will be in the coming year.  Many Thai ladies are dressed in traditional costumes, competing for the title of Nang Nopamar (นางนพมาศ), bringing out their true beauty more than anything else.  Also, illuminated Lanna-style hot air balloons are launched into the evening sky giving the entire area a truly magical feel.

I felt Saturday was the most fun as it wasn't the actual Loy Krathong night and thus somewhat less crowded.  Tim and I spent a little while shopping in the markets surrounding Karon's festival site and then returned after picking up Nadia from work.  We were later joined by Opat and spent a very late night dancing on the big stage.  In Thai carnival tradition, you had to buy a ticket for 10 baht a dance and then choose one of the ladies onstage (or take your own) as a partner.  Tim purchased a big wad of tickets and gave them to Nadia and I, opting to sit out all but one of the dances.  I'm usually not much of a dancer so I was very reluctant to be one of the only farangs up on the stage (there were perhaps only one or two others at the entire festival as it really is a Thai event rather than a tourist one).  Anyway, spurred on by several bottles of a fairly decent Japanese beer (Asahi, on sale with a buy-two-get-one-free promotion) and Nadia's insistence that I dance with her I ended up dancing for a couple of hours.  In fact, since I was dancing with Nadia they never collected any of her tickets so we ended up giving some away at the end.  They only played Thai songs but it seemed like I knew every one of them because of Tim's karaoke VCD's!

One of the best things about Thai festivals and carnivals is that there is no curfew and when we left around 4a.m. it was still going strong!

Sunday, Tim was to sell beer and soft drinks for the Patong Loy Kratong Festival.  She and Nadia drove in early and Doug was supposed to pick me up later.  However, he never made it and Opat ended up driving all the way from Patong.  After checking on the status of Tim's sales, I took a walk down to Bangla Road which was filled with carnival booths as well as a large stage on the eastern end.  Kratong boats and flower arrangements were for sale everywhere.  I even ran into teacher Bob, American Bob, and Ging while walking around (we'd had a few drinks with teacher Bob on Friday as well when we spotted him at the High Season Carnival).  Back to Tim's spot on the beach and I ran into Ben and Nid.  Shortly after that, it began to rain so Ben and I retreated to a nearby Italian restaurant where we enjoyed an excellent pizza (the best I've had in Thailand thus far).  The light shower soon became a torrent and Tim refused to budge from her spot despite a severe lack of customers.  Nadia returned after her work (she works 5-12 at Coconut Resort); it stopped raining as soon as she hopped off of Lek's motorbike.  She walked with me down to the beach where we launched a hot air balloon (a bit of trial-and-error as the balloon didn't want to go skyward at first).

Around 1a.m., we packed up the coolers and decided to find a better spot closer to the intersection with Bangla to catch the after-bars crowd.  However, the police were directing everyone away when we got there so we decided to head for home.  We'd barely started driving when all the lights went out; Patong went completely dark due to some major power failure so it was another omen that we should leave.  As we climbed the hill towards Karon, I happened to look back and was struck by the image of hundreds of paper hot air balloons ascending into the sky.

As we came into Karon, we noticed the carnival there was still in full swing so we decided to stop off for a bit.  Tim set up shop at the entrance to the beach-front park and suggested Nadia and I go and float our Loy Krathong boats (we'd forgotten earlier).  You normally set your boat adrift with your significant other but as Nadia has truly become part of the family, they didn't see any problem with it (I didn't know this detail until I read up on the festival today).  Because of the rain earlier, the candles and incense on our boats refused to light so I don't know how lucky we'll be.  After our boats drifted off into the darkness we checked out the end of a concert in the new amphitheatre before returning to Tim.  She hadn't sold any beer or soft drinks at all in the previous hour but wasn't willing to give up just yet.  We spent some time walking around (the Thai dancing wasn't that tempting tonight).  We finally left around 3:30, all of us in a rather subdued mood.

Today was another sleep-in day.  Nadia gave Tim a massage while I began unpacking from our Singapore trip (finally!).  The three of us went over to Central Festival for lunch and some serious shopping since we didn't buy very many souvenirs in Singapore.  We then met Jum who has just returned from a long stay in Udon; she's going to be staying with us as well until Jacki returns from Belgium in a couple of weeks.

Well, that brings this blog more-or-less caught up.  I'll write more extensively about our sightseeing in Singapore when I post a few photos later in the week.  I still have A LOT of other things to clear off of my desk but I promise I won't wait too long!

HEADING TO SINGAPORE

We leave for Singapore early tomorrow morning.  I'm really looking forward to the short holiday — the main purpose is to obtain my multiple-entry Non-Immigrant (O) Visa (which will allow me to remain in Thailand for another year without any further immigration worries) but I'm also treating this as our honeymoon (we never had a real one since Tim's daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter stayed with us in Ayutthaya right after our legal marriage).

We land in Singapore a bit after eleven in the morning; too late to get to the Royal Thai Embassy before their visa application deadline so we'll spend some time sightseeing after checking into our hotel (near Fort Canning Park just north of the CBD).  I plan to be at the embassy before they open on Tuesday morning (Ben went last week and said the queue was very long when he'd arrived shortly after their opening time).  We then have the rest of that day as well as Wednesday morning to sightsee or shop (the Thai embassy is surrounded by many, many shopping centers).  I have to collect my passport (complete with new visa) after 2:15 on Wednesday.  Our flight doesn't leave until late Thursday night so we'll have seen just about all there is to see of Singapore before departing.

I'm not taking the laptop with me and I doubt I'll want to hole up in an internet cafe during this trip.  So, it may be a little while before I report back (even when I'm at home, I'm posting less and less these days)...

SINGAPORE, HERE WE COME!

After doing a bit of research on Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, I decided the latter would be a better place for Tim and I to go and apply for a multiple-entry Non-Immigrant (O) — the so-called "marriage visa."  I just booked our airline and hotel reservations for the end of this month and managed to get some fairly good deals.  I did screw up a bit, however, in that we fly out of Phuket the morning of October 30 — the day after my current visa-on-arrival stamp expires.  Rather than risking the overstay fine & passport notation (may or may not be imposed), I think I'll try to get an extension at Patong Immigration the Friday before our trip.  Having an overstay on record could possibly be grounds for them to deny my Non-Imm visa application (depending on the mood of the officials on the day I go to the embassy); getting an extension (which is in no way guaranteed) is cheaper and easier than changing the reservations.  At least that's what I've been advised...

At any rate, Tim and I are looking forward to visiting someplace different.