Sunshine every day, clean streets, tap water you can drink, normal toilets and currency I can get the hang of - this is definitely Asia-lite, but I like it a lot.
Everywhere is heavy on the air-conditioning, which is not very eco-friendly, but it is so nice to come inside and stop overheating. It makes for fairly ugly buildings though. All the air-con units in each room or apartment have their own outlets so the buildings can be covered in these fans.
Today's plans started with a visit to Chinatown. Round the corner from us is a great museum, the Chinese Heritage museum. It uses two shophouses and in one of them, it recreates the living conditions as they would have been in the 1950's. It is unbelievably crowded, with the floors divided up into cubicles that equate to slum housing. JP suggested putting this photo up with the title "we ate here", but I don't think that would convince anyone. The little cubicles seen at the back of this tiny kitchen are actually the shared toilets - two buckets for about 20-30 people :(
Next stop: the Botanic Gardens and the National Orchid Garden. These are beautiful, but as usual we were walking about during the hottest part of the day, so we didn't make it through all of the gardens. In the orchid garden were lots of places where there were thoughtfully placed "photo spot" signs, so of course we had to make use of them - JP is seen here, modelling the classic Japanese photo pose of v-signs. We've seen Japanese tourists all over the place doing this.
Another thing we've seen lots of is Asian couples posing for their wedding photos in gardens in every city we've been to. The poses are really staged, and these couples must be taking time off work to get their photos done in advance of the wedding. Given that the dresses and suits get dirty and messed up during the photo shoot, I think they hire the costumes for the day as part of the deal. There is always an assistant in tow, to provide sunshade or appropriate lighting, plus the photographer, so it makes for some entertainment for us.
Everywhere is heavy on the air-conditioning, which is not very eco-friendly, but it is so nice to come inside and stop overheating. It makes for fairly ugly buildings though. All the air-con units in each room or apartment have their own outlets so the buildings can be covered in these fans.
Today's plans started with a visit to Chinatown. Round the corner from us is a great museum, the Chinese Heritage museum. It uses two shophouses and in one of them, it recreates the living conditions as they would have been in the 1950's. It is unbelievably crowded, with the floors divided up into cubicles that equate to slum housing. JP suggested putting this photo up with the title "we ate here", but I don't think that would convince anyone. The little cubicles seen at the back of this tiny kitchen are actually the shared toilets - two buckets for about 20-30 people :(
Next stop: the Botanic Gardens and the National Orchid Garden. These are beautiful, but as usual we were walking about during the hottest part of the day, so we didn't make it through all of the gardens. In the orchid garden were lots of places where there were thoughtfully placed "photo spot" signs, so of course we had to make use of them - JP is seen here, modelling the classic Japanese photo pose of v-signs. We've seen Japanese tourists all over the place doing this.
Another thing we've seen lots of is Asian couples posing for their wedding photos in gardens in every city we've been to. The poses are really staged, and these couples must be taking time off work to get their photos done in advance of the wedding. Given that the dresses and suits get dirty and messed up during the photo shoot, I think they hire the costumes for the day as part of the deal. There is always an assistant in tow, to provide sunshade or appropriate lighting, plus the photographer, so it makes for some entertainment for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment