Evolution - Botanical Garden Singapore

I remember what I was going to include in the Botanical Garden. We walked through the Evolution Garden.

Hopefully I got most of "evolution" in order. I think these trees are quite interesting. 

Have a great evening. 

Vacation in Philippines and Singapore - 3

I know I'm forgetting something about the Botanical Gardens...I'll get back to that later. I was going to add it here but I can't remember where I left off. I will finish up the Botanical Gardens after this entry.

Saturday we were going to meet up with mom and dad's friend, Kamalah. I can't remember what we were thinking of doing but in the morning there was a heavy rain so we just hung out at the hotel until the rain stopped. The stopped late morning, so we decided to go the Singapore Museum of Civilization. We ate lunch and off we went by taxi to the Museum.

Since we only had a couple of hours, we decided to take the "history" tour which explained the beginning of Singapore before it was Singapore, and on through history. It was real interesting. We got the "headphones" and unfortunately I had technical difficulties and missed out on 1/2 the tour. By the time we got my headphones fixed, we only had about 30 minutes left.

As I mentioned Saturday evening we meet up with mom and dad's friend Kamalah. We met at the "Raffles Hotel". Mr. Raffles was the pioneering guy who traveled from England to Singapore.

Kamalah met us at the Raffles Hotel.

We walked 'across the street' to another hotel for dinner. It is the tallest building in the city. On the very top floor of the hotel "Swissotel" is a restaurant with the most awesome view of the city.

The picture with the 3 buildings and a boat looking piece of architecture is the "new" hotel on the island. In the basement there is a Casino, the 3 tours are hotels, and the top is the "observation deck". I have better pictures of it so I will include them later. 

The other pictures I took are all movies and they take longer than I have patient for to load. 

It was a real nice dinner. After dinner we took a walk and ended up at the end of 1 of the Quays which is filled with restaurants. I'm sorry to say that the whole time we were walking along "restaurant row" I had it on movie. What was interesting about this area was that they had live fish in tanks (all kinds of fish), you would pick which fish you wanted and they would cook it up for you. 

Well, I guess I got a movie in here....Someone will have to let me know how it plays...From the Hotel we walked into a "tunnel" to cross the street. The 1st photo is wall art of the tunnel. The movie, is a photo of what is right outside of the tunnel. 

The actual Mirlion is covered up. We found out later that there is some festival that will be going on in Singapore and the "prime attraction" was the new hotel, so they had to cover up the Mirlion...

This is the old Post Office that was made into the Fullerton Hotel. 

A nice Bronze that was at the entrance of the Quay. Hope you enjoyed the stroll as much as I did. 

Singapore - Botanical Garden

On Friday mom, dad, and I walked to the Botanical Gardens. Unbeknowist to us, we walked right by the American Embassy.

The Botanical Gardens are quite nice. It has been a long time since I've been through any. We walked through Ginger Gardens, past the Symphany area, we walked through "time", and through the rain forest. I have some great portraits of some really good looking folks. 

Yeap Orange Oakleys. 

These vines were really cool. They grew down. And as you can see a couple are right on top of my face. 

Now sit back and enjoy the rest of the photos. 

These photos bring me up to lunchtime. We had a nice lunch at a cafe in the Gardens. Since I have to go to my Tae Kwon Do class, I will pick up the photos later. We walked back through the Gardens and took a taxi back to the hotel. The last 2 photos of the fountains is where we ate lunch. Actually in the last photo you can see the cafe. 

More later. 

Vacation in Philippines and Singapore - 2

Early the next morning I had to get up and get on a plane to Singapore the main reason for the vacation. I met mom and dad there and before I go any further we had the most awesome time. It was wonderful wonderful wonderful. I arrived in Singapore 1st and managed to get mom and dad a room on the same floor as me. My reservations were made in an odd fashion so I managed to have "executive privileges". When mom and dad checked in they too were offered the same privilege. So most evenings we went upstairs to the Executive Suite and had Happy Hour and then back after dinner for a Night Cap.

The 1st day I was so tired that I napped that afternoon. Thursday mom and dad were still weary from their travels so I did the hop on hop off thing to get a feel for the city. I hopped off at Little India.

I got back on and due to time didn't get back off the bus again - that day. I took photos from the top of the bus. It started to rain which made things a little interesting. 

I took several "videos" and they were taking too long to load so I didn't include them here. But here are some photos of my 1st day in Singapore. 

It is now 4:30 p.m. and time for my walk. I will finish this up throughout the weekend. 

Gwen

Vacation in Philippines and Singapore

Well, I have had technical difficulties with e-mail that hasn't seemed to stop me on the blog...so I start again. 

The last time I was in the Philippines it was in 1988 (23 years ago). When I was there I was in the military and there for 4 months due to 4 Americans being killed right outside the gates of Clark AB the biggest AB in the world...Marcos was just voted out of office in 1986 and Aquino was in power. Americans weren't too welcome and in a couple of years the leases to the 2 military bases (Clark and Cubic Bay) were coming to an end. Even though some times have changed not all. After taking this photo my co-worker/driver mentioned that I needed to keep the camera inside the car or the kids would snatch it from me. 

My co-worker's wife is being treated for breast cancer in China. 1 of the things that has been recommended to her is that be a "vegan"...so they took me to a restaurant where everything that is made is grown there. The food was good.

This is in Tagaytay Province in the Philippines. In this province is the world's smallest active volcano. I'm sorry to say I didn't get any photos because the fog was just too thick and you couldn't see it. We did however stop by Starbucks....YUM. My 1st Starbucks since leaving the continental U.S. 

We then went on to Cavite Province to see the "Shrine" to General Aguinaldo who declared independence again Spain. (History note: on a tour I had on Wednesday the tour guide mentioned that as the Philippines were fighting Spain the US came in at some point and assisted in the defeat. It was at that time the US set up in the Philippines. The US introduced the English language and apparently the toothbrush.)

Here are some photos of the "shrine". 

Hope you have enjoyed a few of the photos from my 1st day of vacation. I want to say this is the 1st vacation I've had since I've moved from Ottawa ON CA through Brunswick GA onto Saipan MP.

Computer Issues

Before I send off a message about the wonderful trip I just got back from I will catch you up on what has been happening.

My loving Apple laptop had a computer meltdown....My hard drive failed. I tend to get more than my fair share of computer outages and I dumb dumb me did not have a battery back-up to save my computer. 1 time while my computer was plugged in I had a power outage and ever since that day...my computer was acting funny.

1 of the guys I work with was going to Guam, so I asked him to pass it to a co-worker in Guam. The guy in Guam took it to the Apple repair place. The only thing I ended up paying for was the shipment of my computer back to me. Thankfully my computer was under warranty.

Now that I have it back I've been having some technical difficulties. I'm hoping once I change from cable internet to DSL, I will be able to get all the technical issues taken care of.

Gwen

Out of Order

Up until this last time my blog was going in the order I had taken pictures. This time that didn't happen. Oh well, what can I say, maybe I was delirious. I'm still behind but I think that is the way of island life. Things just kind of move along. It doesn't matter if time passes you by.

It is now just after the New Year. Both Christmas and New Years were passed in a low key kindof fashion. If being on Saipan has taught me anything - it is not too rush anywhere. So I don't. Except to work. I like to be on time.

Yesterday, I went to Managaha and then to a Philippine 18th birthday celebration (which will come later) so I had decided that I wanted to take today easy. I just finished coming from the restaurant my friend works at.

Just after my birthday this friend (Liu Yan a.ka. Sarah) asked if I could take her and 2 friends to Bonsai Cliff, Groto, Bird Island and Suicide Cliff. I, of course, agreed. Here are some of the pictures we got that day. (The 1s that have been posted before will not be inlcuded.)
This is Liu Yan - the 1st person I met on the island. It's too bad she has to work all the time. We don't get to hang out all that much. In this photo we are on top of Bird Island. The Chinese and the locals love to give the "peace sign". I do believe it means something else here though. I've asked but have forgotten.

The girl is a co-worker of Liu Yan. I think her name is Wen (which is the short version) and her boyfriend. This is close to the "Last Command Post". 

The steps to the Last Command Post and some sort of gun from the WWII era. 

Here we are inside the Last Command Post. 

The island people here are very superstitious. If they find any type of artifact, they leave it where it is. They don't want to disturb any spirits. Just like some of the waters around the island. They say, if you make too much noise you can get swallowed up by the waters. 1 such place is Grotto (which I didn't know because there is lots of noise down there.)

This is the 4 of us from Bird Island. In an earlier blog entry all have seen Bird Island before. So no reason to re-post. 

This was the 1st time I've been to Suicide Cliff. Here are some photos from the top. 

I was surprised to find this cacti all the way out here on this humid island. So of course I had to take a photo of it. 

Suicide Cliff concluded our tour. I hope you enjoyed it. This month we have another 3 day weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to do another update then. 

Hope everyone had a good and safe holiday season. 

Gwen