Singapore (GMT +8)

Today is a national Muslim holiday here in Singapore: Eid al-Adha. The office is closed down and Roy and I will be hitting the town and heading for the likes of Merlion Park, Chinatown, Little India, Singapore Flyer, Boat Quay (pronounced Key), the old Fort Canning and Hard Rock Cafe - to mention a few. We'll see about getting umbrellas to carry just in case of afternoon Monsoon rains.

Alligator Pear and Pools

Double Decker at the tail-end of a Monsoon pour

Side note: I've been having breakfast everyday down on the 8th floor at the 'Alligator Pear' pool-side restaurant - I'd posted a photo earlier. I've been curious as to why the restaurant is called Alligator Pear. I snagged one of the waitresses and asked the question... she didn't know but vowed to find out and let me know. She did and the explanation:

Jackfruit - Inspiration for the Esplanade Theatre

• Turns out if you view the restaurant/pool area from above, one can almost abstract in your minds eye the fact that the two pools form the shape of a pear.  OK, that shape can also appear to look 'avocado-like'. In these parts avocados have the nickname of 'alligator pears'... hence the name of the restaurant. Who new?!
• Also, I found out the name of the fruit that the Esplanade Opera House/Theatre was designed after: the Jackfruit - a popular delicacy here in Southeast Asia and many other tropical areas such as Brazil in South America (although it's considered an invasive species in Brazil). Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel absolutely despises the taste and texture of the fruit (supposedly smells bad too) and refuses to eat it anymore. The Alligator Pear had some jackfruit out to eat and I tried it - not knowing at the time what it was or that it was the same fruit Mr. Zimmern disliked with a passion. It was orangish in color, moist, I could not detect a smell at all and it certainly tasted different than any fruit I've had before. The texture was hard to describe and I did not finish more than a small bite... certainly wasn't a favorite of mine. :-)

Roy joined me for breakfast around 0930 at the Alligator Pear and we were out the hotel on foot right at 1000 headed initially for Merlion Park in front of the historic Fullerton Hotel. Before departing we stopped at the concierge to borrow a couple of umbrellas - just in case of rains in the afternoon - and have them provide us with an overview, on maps they provided, of where a couple of areas we wanted to visit were located... namely Chinatown and Little India. Armed with that knowledge we departed. We have a pretty full slate of touristy activity planned for the day. Not sure if we'll be able to do it all - we'll see.

Holding up the Skypark

Fun shot

Merlion Park from the Esplanade Drive Bridge

It's pretty hot and very humid and both Roy and I are sweating easily. The sun's out, there's blue sky mottled with puffy clouds to our south and east with more ominous clouds to the south and west. We strolled down past the Esplanade over to the north side of the marina and walked west, climbed up the stairs to the pedestrian path over the Esplanade Drive bridge and made our way to the Merlion park.

Flowers line the Bridge - iconic Fullerton Hotel

Fairmont Hotel and Esplanade Theatre viewed from Merlion Park

We didn't spend much time at the park - our primary destination being Chinatown for some shopping Roy wanted to get done - except to walk around and take some good photos of the over sized Merlion spewing water into the marina. There are some local vendors selling food/drinks/ice cream near and under the bridge, even a Starbucks. Still not quite sure of the origins of this symbol of Singapore or it's significance... having said that it's a popular tourist site.

Me and Merlion

Roy and Merlion

Going under the bridge to cross Esplanade Drive

A close-up flower for Rosie :-)... no idea what this is!

From there we walked under the bridge and climbed up the stairs on the Fullerton Hotel side of the causeway and started meandering our way through the heart of what I call the 'new downtown' of Singapore with all of it's skyscrapers soaring high above and blocking the sun from view. We eventually found our way to the intersection of Upper Cross Street and South Bridge Road where we took a left and walked the 2 blocks to Pagoda St and the entrance to the southeast entrance to Chinatown.  Along the way we saw a couple of Muslim mosques with lots of shoes parked outside their entrances on this Muslim holiday.

A sculpture of a face/sailboat amongst all the skyscrappers

Ornate roof dressing to a Mosque by Chinatown

Pagoda Street (left of umbrella) - SE entrance to Chinatown

As you might expect there are just a ton of all types of vendors lining the streets in Chinatown trying hard to sell you their wares. Most small souvenir-ish items are 1 for $4 or 3 for $10SG.  Surprisingly, it wasn't too busy at all most likely due to the holiday and we had no trouble meandering our way up and down Pagoda Street and then cutting across the center of Chinatown on Trengganu St. over to the Chinatown Complex where the Buddha Tooth Relic temple resides. Turns out that the Singapore Subway, called MRT, has a stop right at the top of Pagoda Street - which we used later to get to Little India. Both Roy and I did some shopping as we sweated and strolled (Roy bought more than I) our way over to the Complex where we eventually bought some water and sat down in the awning covered square there to relax, cool down and watch a bunch of Chinese playing some board game.

View looking North up Pagoda Street

Chinatown MRT stop NE4 located at top-end of Pagoda Street

View looking south on Pagoda Street

Roy ended up buying a very cool box chess set for his son for the bartered price of $30SG made of Chinese figures and with that, we headed back to the MRT on Pagoda Street to try out Singapore's subway system. The train station stop is named NE4 Chinatown. We need to get to the Little India stop, NE7. Singapore's subway system is actually quite straight-forward and color coded - makes sense once you take a bit of time to study it and/or ask the attendants. :-) The cost for a 1 person train ticket is ~$2SG. You get these tickets - which are actually plastic cards the size of credit cards - out of machines lining the train station. The interface screen is a touch screen and all you have to do is touch the colored coded stop you want to get to, enter the number of tickets and, presto, out comes recyclable tickets.

Common area at the Chinatown Complex for gaming

Pavilion area attached to the Chinatown Complex

Entrance to Buddha Tooth Relic Temple across from Complex

Interesting way to dry one's laundry

A happy Roy after another successful bargaining session!

Note:  Once you use the tickets, you can and should return them into a slot on any machine you purchased the ticket(s) out of for a $1SG rebate. Pretty cool. Very reasonable mode of transportation.

Took us 7mins to get from Chinatown to Little India - would have taken alot longer to walk.  Departed the train and made our way out of the subway tunnel up and out into Little India. You come up right by a food court and we made our way there. Walked around some and, mostly due to the heat, decided not to eat anything and have a couple of Tiger beers for midday refreshment. Roy and I had a nice chat about families and life. He's a good guy and I will miss his company when he departs the pattern back to the States this Friday. (Btw, Roy reminds me of a favorite personality of mine: Carl Sagan... noted astrologist, astrophysicist, author and cosmologist who made the natural sciences interesting, fun and a noble pursuit. Not only does Roy remind me of how Carl Sagan looked but also, how he sounded.  A calming unmistakable mellifluent voice :-) I really hope I used this adjective correctly!! )

On the MRT to Little Indian stop NE7 - no doors between cars, cool!

Left the food court and headed out to the streets of Little India. We really didn't get too far.  Walked up to a food stand that had some jackfruit and snapped a photo. Went into a bazaar area to look around and both of us found some very pretty gifts for our better halves. :-) Clouds are starting to gather as is typical of the weather here in Singapore and we decided to cut our Little India trip short and hit the MRT once again. I want to train to the Hard Rock Cafe and pick up some pins and t-shirts... Roy was game and we decided to do a 'blue haired' dinner there upon arrival.

One of the entrances to Little India

Entered the subway system at NE7, Little India stop, found an attendant and asked a few more questions about the MRT system. Turns out that for $12SG you can buy a train pass that can be kept and renewed as needed to ride the system - much better than buying individual passes each time you ride - and I'll do that when I get back to Singapore from Key West. Bought our passes and went to board the train. We had to change lines at NS24, Dhoby Ghaut, onto the North South line and take that 2 stops over to NS22, Orchard, in order to make our way to the Hard Rock. Once we arrived at Orchard, we asked an attendant how to get to Hard Rock and he said to follow the signs to Wheelock Place. Not very precise direction giving.  We had to pay attention to the signage throughout the underground until we rode up two flights of escalators and out onto Orchard Road. We asked another person how far away the Hard Rock was, he said about 300m, and off we went. The skies started to sprinkle some, not bad, and we did have umbrellas we didn't use. The distance was closer to 1000ms but, who's counting?

Enjoying a cold one in Little India food plaza

Never let a friend drink alone

As we approached the Hard Rock, it looked closed and under construction but, there was a sign out that said 'business as usual,' and we climber the stairs up into the restaurant. It wasn't packed at all, certainly more folks than I saw at the Beijing Hard Rock, we sat down and placed our orders: water all around, beef nachos to start and a SOB burger for Roy and the Original burger for me. It was a nice change to have a burger - haven't had one in over 2 weeks since I arrived in theatre.  Afterwards, while Roy picked up the tab, I went up and bought 2 T-shirts and a handful of pins... I was happy. :-)

Smallest 7-11 ever! On Orchard Street headed to Hard Rock Cafe

HRC under rehab but, open for business. There are 4 HRC's in Singapore - who knew?

Left the Hard Rock and made our way to a taxi stand just off Orchard. Jumped in and a relatively long ride later in heavy traffic on this holiday day, got dropped off at the Fairmont for about $6SG - pretty cheap. In the lobby Roy and I divided up our booty and parted for the evening. Time ~1700.

Another great day! We didn't get to the Singapore Flyer, Boat Quay or Fort Canning... always another day.

Back to work tomorrow. I have alot to do including setting up my trip to Malaysia next week.

Photos later....