LifeInContrast.com

Just got back from the magical land of Singapore yesterday, and MAN is it different from Bandung. So much cleaner, more efficient, more entertaining, convenient, easier to communicate… and yet… a little “colder” than Bandung. Not colder in the temperature sense. In fact it was super-hot and we spent most of our days drenched in sweat, as it was probably in the low 90s with extremely high humidity, and we were walking everywhere. No, it was colder on the friendliness scale, which is to be expected in such a Westernized city. In all big cities, you get blank stares when you smile at people, and people don’t just say “Hello” for the heck of it. But in Bandung, even though it’s a city of 2 million people, we still get “Hello” in the street, and smiles given yield smiles in return. Just interesting to note.

But back to the adventures. We visited Chinatown just in time for the big gala unveiling of a massive new Buddhist temple during the Vesak day celebrations. There was a parade of dragons, dancers from many SE Asian countries, and lots of lights and sounds. Beautiful Chinese lanterns down Pagoda Street. Cheap goods all around.

(Clicks thumbnails to enlarge)

Then we went to the Singapore Night Safari, which is a zoo that you visit after nightfall to see all the nocturnal animals. We rode on a silent tram in the night, and saw lions and tigers and antelope. Leopards and zebras and hippos illuminated in the darkness. Unfortunately none of the pictures turned out.

We went to Arab Street and had all kinds of wonderful meats on skewers. Here’s me at a Turkish restaurant, obviously happy to see the food. Then we walked around and stumbled into this massive and majestic mosque.
 

We also went to the Jurong Bird Park, which is the largest bird park in all of Asia-Pacific.  I forget the exact number, but it’s some insane number of birds and bird species.  Denise was a falconer for an afternoon - I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it on her blog.  I fed the lories (parrots) and felt the wrath of their claws as they got progressively more animated and aggressive with each other.  I was caught in the middle of a parrot battle.  Ouch.

Okay, that’s it for now.  Lots more pictures to come, in a different format.  We have a ton of pictures, it’s just hard to upload them to the blog, so we’ll have to figure something else out.