Official Last Day of Vacation - Manila Philippines

To break up the trip a bit, I decided to stay in Manila on the way to Singapore and on the way back. I tried to get a tour of a fort in Manila but a tour group had taken up all the seats. So I took a tour of the "old/new" Manila. I was to depart for Saipan Wednesday at about 10:00 p.m. and the hotel was real nice and they allowed me to check out around 6:00 p.m. without charging me for an extra night.

 The 1st 3 photos were of the "Arlington Cemetery" but in Manila Philippines. Of course, the tour guide had to come looking for me. Not sure why but I tend to get distracted and take forever in some places.

 Horse in buggy. When I was in Manila 23 years ago (yeap during my military days), they were all over the place. The horses tended to look malnourished as well.

 This is an old church in old town.

Fort Santiago. I thought this fort was older than that, but "google" tells me that during WWII this fort was the liberation for the Philippines during the Japanese occupation.

The last several photos will be of the area around my hotel and the hotel fountain at dusk.

 This is Manila from my hotel room. I was on the top floor. An upgrade at no extra cost.

 Statute outside the hotel. This hotel is the Peninsula. Apparently 3 or 4 years ago, "bandits" took over the hotel. Now the hotel is guarded on all sides by security. Going in and out you are inspected. A little weird but no weirder than seeing military with machine guns out on the street. When I was being taken to and from the airport I choice to use the hotel drivers as opposed to just a regular everyday taxi driver. I wasn't that trusting.

 This vehicle is a "jeepnie". Apparently back in WWII times, US jeeps were left behind and locals bought them and turned them into "buses" so to speak. When I was at Clark AB back in the day....jeepnies were used to get around town. You would just hop on / hop off. At times you could be packed to the gills in these vehicles.

This is the fountain that was outside the hotel. I thought it was just beautiful.

I have to say that this was a superb trip. It was fun to see a country I've never been to and being back in Manila brought back memories. Believe it or not even though Mrs. Marcos no longer runs the country, she is now a Senator.

Hope you have enjoyed my trip.

My Last Day in Singapore

Whoops. The operator had technical difficulties. I only wanted to delete 1 photo and I deleted the whole post.

This was a sad day for me. When I went to breakfast I went alone instead of having mom and dad with me. I went for a walk to keep busy. I headed back towards the Botanical Gardens. This is what I found along the way.

 The 2 above statutes I probably passed several times while I was in Singapore. I just thought they were rather interesting.

I liked the different fountains that I found along the way as well.

 These "polls" were full of plants. They were up and down Orchard Road. If you look close you can see 1 of the plants is flowering.

 More foliage.

Here are a few buildings I found interesting. The 1 store front had 3D art that looked "metal". Unfortunately I'm not sure if I ever really got a good shot because I was trying to take the photos through the store front window. Of course, 1 of my favorite places. Yeap you got it, Starbucks. We don't have any here on Saipan, but I do have a favorite cafe where they make a decent coffee.

I took off for Manila that afternoon and arrived around dinner time.

Our Last Day in Singapore

This is the last day that mom, dad and I had in Singapore together. Mom and dad left early Tuesday morning where I left Tuesday afternoon to head back to Manila.

We took a boat tour on our last day. The package was a bit confusing. But the short tour around the river was interesting. Many buildings that we saw on the hop on/hop off tours you could also see from the river. We even ate at Hooters that day for lunch.

 The above is a "bronze" of kids jumping into the water. I'm not so sure that would be something I would want to do.

 This is the newest hotel with the casino on the bottom, the observation deck on top, the 3 towers are the hotels.

 I believe, if I remember correctly is an outdoor stadium to hear performances.

 This building (if you look 2 pictures up) is next to the huge hotel. This "Hand" looking structure believe it or not is a museum.

 This building that looks like a space ship is the Singapore Supreme Court building.

This is where we caught the boat, but right behind it is where we had lunch. Hooters. We ate outside looking out at the water. It of course rained....but like here in Saipan the rain didn't last long.

Singapore Vacation

I know I took this vacation back in March and it is now 4th of July....what can I say. I thought I would be alot better at this. So let me get back to my vacation in Singapore. P.S. I still want to go back to last year and update the blog in some sort of order.

On Saturday mom, dad, and I did the hop on hop off bus tour of Chinatown.

This is the Chinatown "street market". The bottom floor of the 2 storage buildings are "stalls" or "shops". As you can imagine after a while 1 shop looked like another because many shops sold the same things. I found a few gifts here for people who were babysitting my loving "4 legged kids" and the folks who are helping me out by watching over my stuff in Brunswick.

As we walked around here are a few more things that we saw that I thought was interesting.

This chair for example:

What I found as interesting is there are 2 "mosques" "temples" in Chinatown that were either Indian Mosques or Hindu Temples.

This is the Jamae Mosque built in 1830. It is the oldest Chulia Indian Mosque in Singapore. I found the color interesting and it is right down the street from this huge Hindu Temple.

This is the front door. Before entering you had to take off your shoes even though the inside was all cement. This is Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple built 1843. When this was first built it, immigrants would stay here while they were looking for work. Once they found work and were able to rent/buy they would move on. Today there are worship services. For $3.00 I was able to take photos inside the Temple...

This a painting on the ceiling. Some of the paintings were of 1/2 human 1/2 elephant.

I found the statutes and other depictions were quite interesting. 

As you can tell I was quite fascinated with this Temple. Can you imagine how long it took them to carve these figures. Then the upkeep with the weather conditions of the island.

The Budha Tooth Relic Temple was built in 2002 though it did not open until 2007. The Museum is on the 3rd floor. This is 1 of the places I would have liked to tour though I did not realize what is was until later. I did manage to get pictures of it though. I find when visiting for the 1st time, the hop on/hop off tours are probably the best. Then on the 2nd or 3rd visit you go to museums and the like.

Here is at least the outside of the Budha Temple.

The whole building wouldn't fit in my camera fewer no matter how hard tired or how far away I got.

Chinatown in Singapore has a lot of history. Today you can tour Chinese flop houses to see how the Chinese immigrants lived when they 1st arrived in Singapore.