Letter from Singapore

It’s Christmas Jim, but not as we know it!

Keith Sharp — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:54:06 +0000

Who's that kissing Santa Claus?

So that’s our first Christmas in Singapore drawing to a close. We’ve had a great time, though it’s been more than a little strange. We started the day by pulling crackers by the pool.

Nicky wearing her party hat in the pool

Keith wearing his party hat in the pool

In the afternoon we had our regular tropical thunderstorm.

Christmas Day thunderstorm.

In the evening we went out for dinner as usual and then we wandered up and down Orchard Road watching the festivities.

Us on Orchard Road

There are a few more photos in the gallery as usual.

We hope everyone has a great Christmas where ever you are,

Love Keith and Nicky.

The Land of the Rising Sun

Keith Sharp — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:54:54 +0000

One of the attractions in coming to stay in Singapore for a few years was the ease with which we could travel to countries that we’d only ever read about in books or seen on television. Earlier in December we spent 10 days travelling around Japan. We’ve now been back for a week and I’ve finally sorted through all of the photos, so I can finally get round to writing a blog post about our trip.

We flew into Tokyo Narita Airport and caught the Narita Express Train to Shinjuku where we were staying in the Best Western Hotel. Shinjuku is the very busy, very brightly lit area of Tokyo that is said to have been the inspiration for Blade Runner.

The bright lights of Shinjuku

In contrast to the bright lights and hustle of Shinjuku we spent our first day looking round the gardens of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. You can’t get access to the palace proper, as the Emperor still lives there, except for New Years day.

Nijubashi Bridge, Imperial Palace Tokyo

The gardens and grounds were very peaceful, a real oasis from the noise of the city. On our second day we travelled to the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Harajuku is famous for two things: the Meiji Shrine and the teenagers who dress up for Cosplay, rock and roll dancing, and other strange outfits.

Nicky at the Meiji Shrine

The shrine was very busy with people coming to pay their respects and offer prayers. We were fortunate that there were a number of traditional Shinto weddings taking place while we were visiting.

Traditional Bride and Groom

In a very Japanese contrast to this, just round the corner in Yoyogi Park, there was all modern Japanese youth culture on display.

Japanese Rockabilly Gang

The park was also full of all sorts of other activities such as sports groups, drama rehearsals, photography sessions, artists, musicians, and children doing their homework. For our final day in Tokyo we went round the bay to the Tokyo Sea Life Park. There’s not much to say about this, other than it was up to usual high standards you’d expect.

Tokyo Big Wheel

Our next stop was the city of Kyoto, but to get there we had to brave the Tokyo subway at the tail end of rush hour and then catch the Shinkansen (Bullet train) to Kyoto.

Shinkansen Hikari

I have to say that the Japanese rail system lived up to all our expectations: fast, punctual, clean. They even managed to make Mount Fuji make an appearance for us.

Mount Fuji

Kyoto is the historical capital of Japan so it’s full of temples. We spent an entire day walking round the city viewing different temples.

Kinkaku-ji - the Golden Temple

To-ji

After Kyoto we travelled on to Hiroshima. Sadly Hiroshima is most famous for the atomic bomb that was detonated at 8:15am on August 6th 1945. The city has been completely rebuilt so you would be hard pushed to understand how completely devestated everything was. In the centre of the city there is a Peace Park with the remnants of a building that was 270 metres from the hypocentre – the A-Bomb Dome. There’s also an excellent museum that details both the bombing itsself and the aftermath.

A-Bomb Dome

Our final day in Hiroshima was spent looking round the castle that was destroyed in the bombing, but rebuilt in 1958.

Hiroshima Castle

Of course we took hundreds of photos and I’ve uploaded a selection the gallery:

Not quite a weekend in Largs

Keith Sharp — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:24:54 +0000

I’ve got quite a few blog entries lined up, but I’ll start with the most recent. Last weekend we made our first trip “abroad” when we went to stay at a place called Mayang Sari in the Nirwana Gardens resort which is on the Indonesian Island of Bintan.

The beach at Mayang Sari

We were staying in a fairly basic beach front chalet, so basic the bathroom sink only had one tap and the room came with free geckos!

Beach front chalet at Mayang Sari

We spent a very pleasant three days doing nothing more than lounging around on the beach, soaking up the sun.

It's a hard life!

We did find time to pay a visit to the elephants, as previously mentioned it’s best not to compare to UK animal welfare standards (these elephants are all rescued from areas where they are agricultural pests and would be killed by villagers).

Not the most comfortable seat

Even though it’s now getting into monsoon season here, the rain held off despite looking quite threatening at times.

Clouds over paradise

As always there are a few more photos in the gallery, and I’ve updated the map to show the location of Bintan.

We’re all going to the zoo tomorrow

Keith Sharp — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:34:10 +0000

Well, actually we went to the zoo yesterday.

Crouching tiger, hidden ... what?

After our, previous, aborted attempt, we finally made it back to Singapore Zoo to spend a whole day.

Free range parrots

It took an entire day to look round, and I’m sure that there were many things we missed.

The real crouching tiger!

In contrast to zoos in the UK the emphasis seems slightly more skewed towards entertainment rather than conservation. There are a number of shows throughout the day where the animals perform, if this was a UK circus there would be protests outside.

Elephants demonstrating their strength and coordination

There are a huge range of animals that you can view, from indigenous monkeys:

Mother and infant

Through Orangutans from nearby Borneo (definitely on the travel list):

Nobody likes a show off

To the completely absurd:

Even with a den which has air-con, it's not right!

The Polar Bear is called Inuka, and some what surprisingly he was born in Singapore – unsurprisingly he was the first Polar Bear born in the tropics. For some reason the zoo is proud of this!

A Komodo Dragon from Indonesia

Most of the animals do belong in a tropical climate, some like the Komodo Dragon you don’t want to mess with, others are just cute and harmless:

It's the two on the left that are cute

I’m running out of pithy comments to allow me to include more photos from our trip, so I’ll just direct you to the gallery, as usual, where there are ten pages of photos (and that’s only the ones I deemed good enough to upload). The zoo’s location is on the map, it’s in the north of the island which meant a S$20 taxi ride to get there.

We will follow Thistle

Keith Sharp — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:28:01 +0000

Moving to Singapore has meant that I’ve had to give up following Partick Thistle FC, so I’ve been looking for a substitute. Singapore has it’s own football league imaginatively called the S-League. On Friday evening we went along to Jalan Besar Stadium to watch the Super Reds take on Albirex Niigata (Singapore). The games was televised, and to our surprise admission to the stadium was free! Even with that price incentive there were only around a 1000 fans present to watch the game.

Super Reds vs Albirex Niigata (Singapore)

The standard was probably about the same as the Scottish 2nd Division, though the levels of fitness were far higher. The game finished two all, with some comedy goal keeping from my new team, the Super Reds. There’s only a couple of games to go in the 2009 season and it looks like the Reds will finish comfortably mid-table. The 2010 season starts in February, here’s hoping we make some big name signings in the close season and push the title next year

Where ever I lay my hat

Keith Sharp — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:32:44 +0000

Last week we moved from the Orchard Parksuites serviced apartment into a place of our own. For the next two years we’re staying in a condominium called Richmond Park, which is just off Orchard Road.

Richmond Park

As with all condos in Singapore it comes with all amenities: pool, BBQ area, tennis court, squash court, and gym.

The pool and BBQ area

The apartment is just over 1200 square feet and has two bedrooms:

The master bedroom

The guest bedroom

The master bedroom has an en-suite bathroom with his and hers sinks! The main space is a large open plan living/dining area:

Living/dining area

There’s a small kitchen, at least compared with the one in Glasgow:

The kitchen

If you come to visit, don’t worry there’s even accommodation for your maid (though we’d need to clear our junk out first):

The maids room, yes really!

Finally, the view’s not bad either:

By day ...

... and by night

There are lots more photographs in the gallery, including those that Nicky took during the viewing. I’ve also updated the map so that you can see where the apartment is located.

As we’ve said on many occasions, guests are more than welcome at anytime. Come out and see us and Singapore; use Singapore as a base to travel to other parts of South East Asia such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Indonesia; or stop off on your way to somewhere further afield. Just drop us an email and tell us when you will be coming.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.

Keith Sharp — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:30:55 +0000

Happy Deepavali

Happy Deepavali (aka Diwali)! Following our theme of participating in the festivals of every culture we come across, on Saturday evening we went to Little India to see the lights and join in the celebrations of Deepavali.

Deepavali lights on Serangoon Road

This was the first time we’d been to Little India, it’s utterly unlike anything else in Singapore. We had been warned that it normally very busy on a Saturday night because the majority of the migrant workers from India have a Sunday off work so they go out to socialise and meet friends on a Saturday evening, and the Deepavali celebrations just made the crowds bigger. In contrast the majority of Singapore, Little India is much more like the footage you’ve seen on TV of South East Asian cities – it was very noisy, full of people, had the most amazing smells, and lacked the Singaporeans usual adherence to the rules – rubbish piled in alleys, random crossing of roads, walking on roads not pavements, and many other activities that would see you fined elsewhere in the city.

Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple

While the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple was incredibly busy, you should have seen the huge, jumbled, pile of shoes that the worshippers had left outside, it wasn’t the main attraction:

Watching India's version of Pop Idol

The crowd in the photo are all intently watching what looked like India’s version of Pop Idol on a 17″ LCD panel hanging from the roof of a stall that was sellingCDs and DVDs.

We’ll definitely be heading back to Little India soon, it had the most amazing array of cafes and restaurants which we plan on sampling when it’s a little quieter. There are a few more photos in the gallery, and I’ve added the location to the map.

Incredible balancing elephants

Keith Sharp — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:24:49 +0000

On Saturday we planned to head out to Singapore Zoo for the day, but after we’d been there for an hour Nicky starting feeling unwell so we headed home and had a lazy day by the pool instead.

I know humans who couldn't do that!

There are a couple more photos in the gallery, and we’ll definitely be going back for a proper look round.

It’s Sunday so it must be Munich

Keith Sharp — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:15:04 +0000

Since we’ve been in Sinagpore we’ve seen, or taken part in, a number of different festivals and celebrations – mid-Autumn Festival, Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, and Hari Raya. this weekend it was the turn of the Germans. While out for an after dinner stroll we came across am authentic Bavarian band setting up to play in the cafe of the Swissotel at Clarke Quay in celebration of Oktoberfest.

No big horn jokes please!

The Singaporeans were trying to get into the spririt of things, but we felt sorry for the waitresses:

Someones idea of German national dress

There are a few more photos in the gallery.

Scream if you want to go faster

Keith Sharp — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:49:36 +0000

The 2009 Singapore Grand Prix was held over the weekend of 25th/26th/27th September, and given that we’re here we felt it would be rude not to attend. Unfortunately we could only get weekend passes for the Marina Bay Grand Stand which were quite pricey. These turned out to be excellent tickets as not only did they given use access to our seats in the Grand Stand, we could also walk around most of the track area to view the cars, eat a variety of food and drink and view the entertainment.

As some of you will know the Singapore Grand Prix is the only night race on the F1 calender, so once the sun sets:

Sunset over the Sinagpore Grand Prix

the atmosphere builds and the racing begins:

Singapore Grand Prix - Night Racing

On Friday night there were two practice sessions for the F1 drivers along with a number of practice sessions for the support races. Until you see F1 live you don’t appreciate quite how loud or fast it is. Armed only with our trusty Canon point and shoot it was quite a challenge to get a photo of a car:

It's a Renault - no idea which one!

One of the advantages of going on the Friday was that it was relatively quiet so you could get close to the action. In the above photo we’re about 8 feet from the barrier that’s supposed to protect us from debris in the event of a crash.

Saturday was an amazingly hot day so after spending the morning by the pool we headed down to the track.

Shades and earplugs are mandatory

but not for Nicky, already deaf from to much loud music!

The whole event is much more spectacle rather than spectator sport. You don’t see much live action so you have to follow on the big screens or rent a kangaroo TV set. For those that are interested the race was won by Lewis Hamilton, but Jenson Button kept his championship hopes alive by finishing in front of Rubens Barrichello.

The real winners of the 2009 Singapore GP

There are a few more photos in the gallery, and finally in Singapore even the fire engines are go faster:

Go faster fire engine