Busy Day in Singapore

Sunday, April 27, 2008, almost midnight. Up today early to beat the heat. Yeah, right. We were up early, but we didn't beat the heat.

View from J's apartment.

We left about 8am for what turned out to be about a 3 hour walk. J. lives in an affluent section of town. Although most of Singapore lives in public housing, there is also private housing. Since J was going to school, but had a dog with him, he had to live in private housing which is considerably more expensive. He's in a building scheduled to be demolished and replaced with more high end stuff. So the three bedroom apartment has been divided into three different apartments. He and his roommate are still spending 10 times what we paid for our much smaller and less fancy apartment in Chiang Mai.

It was Sunday morning early, so not many people out yet.

I could hear some church sounding music up ahead and sure enough, there in the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd set up in 1849 or so were people at Sunday morning service.

This is old Raffles Hotel, one of the few things I really remember from my last trip to Singapore (in 1968 or 69), but this is now an arcade and not what it used to look like.

Cricket practice was going on not far away.

Singapore has become a very phallic city since I was here last.

The statue of Sir Thomas Raffles reminded me a lot of Anchorage's Captain Cook statue. But there were four signs - one in English, one in Chinese, one in Malay, and one in an Indian subcontinent language.

The Singapore River, a center for tourists. These boats ply the river in the tourist trade.

Kona entertaining a Chinese tourist.

Despite the spiritual dominance of money here, there are still people who hedge their bets with offerings to other gods.



I stepped into a super market to see how much more the mangoes were than in Thailand. I couldn't quite figure it out.
Then we had breakfast in an old little coffee shop that had various kinds of foods. We chose the Indian Roti Prahtas.
All the cars coming into the downtown section of Singapore, if I got this right, have to have one of these meters in their cars because driving into downtown is restricted.
The ERP sign has readers on it, as you can see in the picture below, to record in the car meters every time the enter and exit the city,






When we got back to the apartment there were phone messages from WX, a former student of mine, who now teaches here in Singapore. So we met him for lunch in a giant mall and then he and I got in line for a taxi here while J went back to study for tomorrow's, (well, it's now today's ) final exam.

First Views of Singapore

My son met with me a Singapore packet including some money, guidebook, maps, transit pass with S$25 (about US$20), and a chocolate chip cookie. Here we're changing trains.
Just out of the Somerset train station onto Orchard Road. Then we walked up a street that has 1920's style houses still on it to J's apartment - on the seventh floor in a much more Western modern apartment than we had in Chiang Mai.
Among other things on the bulletin board in the lobby is this wanted poster for Singapore's Bin Laden who aparently escaped from prison while on a toilet break.

These two pictures are the view from the balcony of the apartment building across the road.
We dropped stuff off and then took Kona, the dog, for a walk. It was about 10:30pm (I lost an hour coming from Thailand) on the big shopping street Orchard Road on Saturday night. Here's a girl band in front of a mall.


And J and Kona in front of the visitors center that was still open. We went in and I got some advice on things to do while J's taking final exams.

Bangkok - Singapore

This is the escalator from the airport down to the train into town. We were already 1/3 of the way down.

Chiang Mai to Bangkok

Waiting for the flight to Singapore.

Leaving Chiang Mai

I had everything packed up by 9:00am, including the few dishes, the electric teapot, and left over food. I started taking things down. Pop, the manager of Baan Nai Lek, and one of the sons of the owner, came up to help bring down the rest. There wasn’t that much. I have a small rolling suitcase and my backpack. J took the big roll suitcase to LA (where she did get to see our daughter going to her flight back to Seattle). Pet, Ping, and Bon, were already downstairs loading the pickup.

We took the bike back to the bike shop and then went to the Buddha Image shopping center. Actually I should have gotten the name. It’s on the way to the airport. A market that has Buddha images, chains of all varieties to wear them on, and places that make plastic and glass covers to put the images in.


This is a whole world of its own. Ping is the expert and took me around while we were waiting. Lewis had asked if I could bring him three more images back from Thailand. We had gotten him a Buddha image at the temple near Sanaoom Luang in Bangkok back in 1968 and he wanted enough for the rest of his family. Of course, we got this done on my very last day, in the very last hour before going to the airport.







I had asked Ping to help me with this since this is his speciality. He brought me three images from his collection yesterday and today we took them to be put in covers so you can put them on chains. These are like any collectable item - there are good ones and better ones, ones that have various different meanings. There made of clay, of stone, of various metals, and he showed me one made of the eye of a coconut. In Thai you don’t use the word ‘buy’ when you purchase an image, you use the word for ‘rent’. The three he gave to me include a metal image of Rian Luang Po Chem a famous monk from Phuket, a white one, not sure what it is made of, of a monk covering his eyes, who brings wealth, and a little tiny one, Phra Rot, that protects against harm


While the man was making the plastic cases, we bought three chains for Lewis family to wear them around their necks.

There are so many worlds hidden away in Thailand and here on my last day, on the way to the airport I got to discover one more, and be reminded of how little I’ve seen, though it seems I’ve seen a lot.

I’m trying to treat this like a border run, I’ll be back soon. We’re talking about December - after the election and after the Anchorage International Film Festival. But it’s hard to leave people you’ve grown attached to.

At the airport I learned the plane would leave 45 minutes late, but I should have time to catch the Singapore flight. There’s wifi, but you have to pay for it. There was a coffee shop outside of security that said free wifi. I think I can wait.

11pm I wrote this at the Chiang Mai airport and I'm posting it from my son's apartment in Singapore. I'm in a bit of culture shock. I haven't been in Singapore since 1968 or so. I knew it had changed and all, but coming here from Chiang Mai is like going to NY City from Anchorage.

Songkran - Elder Ceremony 1

I'd totally forgotten about this, because of the land reform meeting at the hotel yesterday and today. But I'd known they were planning this late Songkran festival ceremony where the elders are ritualistically cleansed and asked for their blessings. The compound was totally transformed. It's amazing what one long cotton colored cloth and some umbrellas can do. And the motorized food stand didn't hurt either.

Doc is being the vendor here. Fortunately, everything was free.

Here the elders are being offered scented water to ritually wash themselves and bless the younger ones. The man with the white hair is the head of the board of directors of the Northern Development Foundation.

Then each had the mike for a little while. The man on the right had spoken earlier. He - I'm not sure when - walked from Chiang Mai to (I think) Ko Samui raising money along the way.