Singapore & Kuala Lumpur

Sorry about the last blog but I just never got around to adding the photos from our Brissy trip. So here they are…

Carols Birthday

Madelaine's new Birthday Bike

Carol & Kirsty at the Craft Fair

And fear not, we will make up for it this week as I now have plenty of photos to choose from.   Our trip was great with lots of good memories made, many surprises had, and even a few bargains uncovered in the myriad of shopping opportunities confronting tourists.

Our overall impression of each city was that KL has great shopping helped even more by the current exchange rate and Singapore is the cleanest prettiest city with the friendliest people and the nicest sights for all types of tourists that you could hope for.

The drive in from the airport is so pretty with tree lined roads, flowering garden beds, and no rubbish in sight. We started our visit to Singapore next morning with a hop on / hop off bus ticket which was three tours around all parts of the city and surrounds followed by a few shopping mall visits.  Next day Garry went on a ½ day War History tour which recounted the overrun of the island by the Japanese in 1942 and they surrender by the British General resulting in the Changi POW Camps.  The tour included a visit to Mt Faber which held many cannon placements to protect the harbour from a sea attack.  Off course the Japanese came by land from the NW near Malaysia and captured the island in 70 days.  The tour included a visit to the Kranji War memorial and cemetery which was very moving as the Australian soldiers are held in very high regard still for their efforts in WW2 and the local guides tell great stories of their strength of character in the face of the Japanese brutality.  The Kranji site is beautifully laid out and maintained.  After the tour we got back together for some serious bargain hunting as well as a walk around Little India.  There are some fabulous sites including an amazing temple covered in carvings.

WW2 Gun place on Mt Faber

Kranji War Memorial & Cemetry

Markets in Little India

Temple Little India

Inside Temple

Next day we spent several hours at the Botanic Gardens and Orchid House.  The gardens are very big with lakes, forests, walks and huge trees to be seen but the highlight for both of us was marvelling at the Orchid Gardens.  The orchids they produce here have the most amazing colour, size and shape varieties we could have imagined and there were thousands of them. Each variety was mass planted for display in garden beds, greenhouses,  and on trees and everything was so clean and well presented.   It was pretty special to see. Little did we realise at the time but all the work being done to present the gardens so well wasn’t for us but for a couple of Poms that visited the following day.  Wills and Kate were presented with an orchid named in honour of Diana and also another new variety named for them.  Turns out we couldn’t have visited on a better day.  After lunch at the cafeteria which consisted of some very Asian food which neither of us finished, we headed for some airconditioned shopping and caught up with David John who we knew from our days in Blackwater.  DJ has done very well for himself and is now a VP with BHP and has lived in Singapore for 11 years.  We had a great catch up and enjoyed a good French red.  The next day we caught a cable car over to Sentosa Island and up to the top of Mt Faber.  The island is a resort and theme park holiday spot just of the coast which was nice to see and wander around the beach area.  The cable car leaves from the 15^th floor of an office block and goes even higher across the harbour.  A huge cruise liner was moored and the cable car goes across about 30 metres above its top deck.  You get a good look around.  Mt Faber is now a park and forest and it was good to stroll slowly through it looking over the city and coast.  We then headed to the Marina Bay Shops and had plans to go up to the top of Marina Bay Sands Towers for the sunset but our tired bodies and a short thunder storm delayed that.  The shops are very up market where you can buy all of the world’s top fashion, jewellery, chocolates and even a Ferrari and it is clearly not the ‘bargain’ end of town.  The shopping centre was huge with a massive fountain, an open ice rink, and canals where you can hire a gondola and paddle yourself around.  The Ferrari shop had an F1 car in the window and a new production car capable of over 330kph out the front.  Oh, and they make carbon fibre pushbikes as well but I wasn’t game to go in and ask the price.  We left most of the bargains there.

Carbon Fibre Ferrari pushie

Merlion (part Lion part Fish-sea creature)

Sentosa Island walk

Latest Eyewear ??

Melion at Mt Faber - the other end of the cable car ride

Next day we flew to KL.  The trip in to the city not so neat and the city itself is a bit rough looking although it has some great shopping centres including the Petronas Twin Towers.  We again had a first look around on a ½ day tour of the city which included temples, chocolate, coffee and batik factories, a market and some history sites.  The afternoon was filled with a tour of the Batu Batu Caves, another market and Batik Factory, the Istana (Sultans Palace), and the War Memorial.  The caves are huge limestone caves worn into the cliff face of limestone mountains.  The 2 main caves are more than 50m across and at least that in height. They were spectacular. Then entrance is through a series of Temples, passed a 30m high gold statue and up a staircase of 372 steps which are frequented by many hungry monkeys.  Although everyone is told to not feed the monkeys, many people did and they were jumping everywhere seeking the next morsel.  Very cute but a little unnerving.  

KL Istana (Sultans Palace)

KL War Memorial

Old Railway Station

Batu Batu Caves entrance

Inside the caves - complete with Temple

Mother & Child being fed by the tourists

Next morning we wandered a few blocks up to the tower which overlooked the city and gave great views of the Twin Towers.  Many photos later we set of for the shops under the Twin Towers and spent a lot of time convincing ourselves the prices were so cheap.  We picked up a few bargains and in hindsight we could have got 1 or 2 more things cheaper than Singapore.  The people are friendly but the city is not as clean or pretty.

The KL Tower we went up

Petronas Twin Towers

at night

Back to Singapore for a couple of intense days.  By now we had decided what we wanted to buy and set about hitting the shop in earnest. We both found new shoes, sandals, runners, scuffs and socks that we wanted.  At one place we got 4 pair of shoes including a pr Reeboks, and a pr Nike plus 3 pr sock for $125 Aust.  While Carol hit the fashion shops Garry made a trip back to the electronics shopping malls and got some new tech gadgets including an MP4 player with 4GB music, FM radio, colour photo viewer, eReader, and voice recorder for $16 Aus. It is not an iPod but looks so similar. Let’s hope it works.   As we were separated, Carol had the sole pleasure of passing Raffles Hotel at the time of Will and Kate’s arrival.  She got to see them in the flesh and helped an elderly dumb and deaf lady get her message taken in to them via a media person and a Raffles employee.  That story made the national paper the next day so Carol was very proud of her efforts.  The hotel food was expensive so we wandered around the corner to a small restaurant/pub and had a few pints and a good steak.  Next morning we braved an Asian food mall and got 2 eggs, 2 slices of ham, 2 pieces of toast, and a big cup of tea for $2.  It was so good we went back for tea and had a large meal of crispy chicken, rice and 2 veges for $3.80.  We set off to see the Gardens by the Bay which is a new garden area near the Marina.  The Gardens were just spectacular with 2 huge domes containing international gardens and one of the biggest vertical gardens and manmade waterfalls I will ever see.  The plants, flowers and the structure had us walking around in awe.  Outside they have built a grove steel trees with suspended walkways between them. The trees are more than 30m high and the trunks are covered in orchids, broms, and ferns and one had a restaurant at the top which open soon.  Great views of the Gardens, the 3 tower boat building (Marina Bay Sands), the highest ferris wheel in the world, etc. 

There are many wooden carved seats around the gardens

Inside Dome #1 - note the Boab Garden on top of the conference room

Inside Dome #2 Waterfall 6 stories high

One of the walkways so you can look back at the gardened walls

Its a big structure - those are fully grown palms in the foreground

Artificial trees with their trunks planted with orchids, broms etc. Cafe on large tree.

Miniature orchids growing on trees

Wandering amongst the branches 30m up

  

Just to be more 

impressed we went up the tower to the bar on the top deck.  The views were special but the sunset was a little spoiled by the haze from fires in Indonesia / Malaysia.  It is hard to not be impressed by the building and the views over the edge from 57 floors up.  The 3 towers are hotels and they share a pool on top which has no edge on one side – no good if you are scared of heights.  Next morning we grabbed the last few bargains and wandered around the city taking in all the great old style buildings and spectacularly designed new ones.  We had time to go through the Museum with Garry seeing the history of Singapore from more than 800 years ago while Carol checked out a Wedding Dress exhibition.  This included Gwen Stefani’s Dior dress, and dresses from Vivien Westwood, Vera Wang, and Norman Hartman who designed QE2’s wedding dress.

The Singaporean F1 Grand Prix happens in a couple of weeks so there was plenty of prep going on.  While shops had F1 themed displays, we were interested in the number of Ferarri’s, Lamborghini’s, Aston Martin’s, etc and even a new Roller driving around the city streets.  I would have seen 10 Lambo’s and even more Ferarri’s so there is obviously wealth in Singapore.

Art & Science Museum on left and a Floating Soccer Stadium  R/Cntre

Looking over Gardens by the Bay

Tree Grove 200m below

An awesome view off the edge of that pool!! 

Worlds highest 'Eye' with F1 Pits behind

One last comment regarding Singapore.  They have a booming economy with construction going on everywhere, excellent fast cheap subways (driverless), 0% unemployment (importing foreign workers), 0% homeless, with public housing provided to everyone to purchase or lease (ownership granted after 30yrs of leasing), very low crime, low taxation (7% GST), excellent roads, beautifully maintained parks and gardens, no dole, compulsory 18 months Armed Service, the fastest internet, no natural resources, no one sue-ing each other, unlimited water (12 major dams), etc, etc and we call ourselves the SMART STATE!!! Plleeeaassee – our politicians should be ashamed of themselves.  Australia is blessed with natural resources, spare land, water, high taxes and our Governments have us massively in debt.  If the boat people still want to come to Australia by going right past Singapore who is crying out for labour, then I can only conclude it is because they don’t want to work for their money and they don’t want to pay for a house (over 30 yrs with no deposit).  What am I missing???  Everyone is happy, healthy, housed, and fed and while there are major differences in both religious and cultural upbringing, there is no in-fighting, workers don’t have to hate bosses, party politics are invisible (or non-existent and certainly do not take up news space), and everyone respects everyone else (no greed or envy obvious).  What a contented and well organised nation of people.

Anyway, that’s over with and we are back in sunny Darwin.  Our day has been spent tidying, packing, and preparing for our move to Kakadu on Sunday and then on towards WA next week chasing the cooler weather which appears to have left without us.

p.s. I will do a separate post with photos of the orchids from the Botanic Gardens soon.