Singapore
Tuesday–Friday May 19–22, 2009
We flew from Solo airport on Java to Singapore to see the Botanic Gardens and to have lunch in the open air Food Centres.
We arrived at quiet Changi Airport (due to the influenza pandemic, it would seem) and were through immigration and customs and inside a taxi in almost no time. Even the Swiss would be impressed.
The taxis are of course clean, the drivers are polite, and their infrastructure puts American taxis in the shade. For instance, there is no radio with a frenzied voice shouting “Fulton and Fifth, Bush and Van Ness, 2310 Buchanan....” No, there is a quiet chime and an electronic note comes up for the driver to read.
We arrived at our hotel, unpacked and set out for the subway station about four blocks away. Everything in the city is clean and shiny. The bus stops have signs informing waiting passengers of when to expect the next bus and vending machines with cool drinks.
At Orchard Station we bought transit passes, good on the buses and trains, and in taxis, too. A bit ahead of what we have at home.
We went down into the subway and took a train to the center of the city for dinner. British English is the preferred pronunciation, and as the train pulled into each station, the last announcement was always “please mind the platform gap.” Unlike at home, the announcements were easy to hear, too.
The next morning we got up early and went out to Jurong Bird Park, which has a good collection of rare southeast Asian birds. The bird that really caught our attention, though, was a fat snow owl from Canada. The bird park has an African exhibit with large trees and a waterfall. The walk in enclosure is 114 feet/35 meters high. The park reports there are 1,500 birds in the exhibit.
I coaxed a Cassowary to walk from the back of its pen over to me. I like these calm, giant flightless birds (6 feet/2 meters tall), with the blue and black feathers and the red neck. The “casque” on top of its head is distinctive. Notice the size of its toes!
There is a nine–story high walk–in “lory” exhibit where the birds are happy to pose with the visitors.
We took a bus and train from the bird park to the oldest part of Singapore for lunch. The first Hawker Centre experience was at the Lau Pat Sat Festival Market, with food from South and East Asia. The food at this stand looked tempting, but I settled on Malaysian rice instead.
We failed to count the number of food stalls inside the large iron structure, but would not be surprised if there were more than 60.
They get a good crowd at lunch at Lau Pat Sat Festival Market.
Click on the map to expand, or change the view to satellite. The airport is to the east, and Jurong Bird Park is to the west.
After lunch we walked over to the Asian Civilization Museum, which “centers on the material cultures of the different groups (who migrated to Singapore) from China, Southeast Asia, South Asia and West Asia.” The museum is definitely worth a visit for anyone interested in Singapore’s history.
The next day we were up early again and walked a few blocks over to the Singapore Botanical Gardens, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary. It may be the best botanic garden in the world. There is a 14 acre/6 hectare rainforest exhibit that is an original stand of trees and plants native to the island. Turning into it, the insect noise really gets loud, and the light is weak. This shot (1/10th of a second) had to be made by putting the camera on one of the boardwalk posts.
Inside the Botanic Gardens is the spectacular National Orchid Garden. A few photographs are in order.
We went to lunch in the Botanic Gardens’ Food Court, Taman Serasi. Then it was on to Chinatown for a walking tour. The highlight was a Buddhist temple.
The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple was built in 2005 to house a tooth of the Buddha found in 1980 in Myanmar. It is beautiful building in red and gold. Inside a group of monks were chanting—very uplifting.
Singapore, like Hong Kong, is wealthy. Everything is clean, and things just work. We were glad to have made the visit.
Next—a long flight to San Francisco (16 hours in the air) via Narita. 7,341 nautical miles/13,596 kilometers.
The map below shows an approximation of all the flights we took (although we actually flew from Solo (SOC) not Yogyakarta (JOG) to Singapore). The flights totaled approximately 20,500 miles!
