Day 12: Gardens at the Bay

After a little walking around in the morning, we stopped at Iggy's Pte Ltd. for lunch. It was a little fusion restaurant tucked away in the Hilton Hotel that served a pricey 4-course set menu. I love fusion and trying eclectic foods, so this was right up my alley. This was the delicious dessert, the 'Kaya and Teh Tarik.' To be quite honest, I'm still not entirely sure what I ate, but the cube on the left was French toast with burnt sugar on top, and on the right was a dollop of some kind of ice cream, covered in I-don't-even-know-how-this-is-food foam.


We walked over to the newly opened Gardens by the Bay, a huge, futuristic botanical garden in Marina Bay where we spent most of the rest of the day. These structures are the Supertrees, massive vertical gardens fitted with technologies that are supposed to get them to act like real trees. Two of the taller Supertrees have a Skyway linking them- the orange bridge you can see toward the bottom of the photo.


The view from the Skyway. The glass dome is the Flower Dome, one of two conservatories in the gardens.


Not pictured two photos above was the Cloud Forest dome, which we visited first. the environment inside mimics that of tropical mountainous regions from 1000-2000m above sea level. We were greeted by the cool spray from these waterfalls.



The Flower Dome was next, though not as impressive as the Cloud Forest.




Supertrees at sunset.

Day 11: Arrival, Take 3

After recovering from our midnight flight to Singapore with a nice long sleep, we headed out late morning to Marina Bay. This was my first time in Singapore, and needless to say, I was extremely impressed. I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie or in a piece of concept art for a futuristic city half the time. It's still hard to grasp that a place like this is real. In downtown Singapore, the buildings shine, the streets are clean, the hedges are manicured, the people are well put together, and everything is very efficient. Such a contrast from Bali, where the buildings are short and rustic, things are a little disorganized and chaotic, and everyone is relaxed. Pictured here in the foreground is the Marina Bay Sands resort complex. On the left are the three hotel towers, topped with the SkyPark that has its famous infinity pool. Next to it in the shorter buildings is the shopping mall, casino and theatre, and next to THAT is the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum.


Singapore is truly an international city, and diverse like I've never experienced. There are four official national languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. It seems that everyone is multilingual, and people seem to be able to handle any language you throw at them. We've used both English and Cantonese with success, sometimes holding conversations using both at the same time.


This is the Helix Bridge over the Singapore River, with a design based on the structure of DNA (you can see part of it on the left in the top photo). At night, lights in the floor shine the letters G, T, A, and C representing the 4 DNA bases (definitely appealed to the biology nerd in me). My dad was much more impressed with the architecture, and wouldn't stop talking about the stainless steel and curved glass for the entire duration of our walk across the bridge.


We took a taxi to Little India at sunset. Quite different from the stark modernism of downtown.





For dinner we went to Lau Pa Sat, an indoor market that is famous for its huge variety of food stalls. The selection ranged from local Singaporean, to Indian, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and everything in between.


At night, we went up to the SkyPark at the Marina Bay Sands to look around at the Singaporean skyline. The National Day of Singapore is coming up on August 9 to celebrate Singapore's independence from Malaysia 47 years ago, so they were rehearsing the light and water show.


Such a beautiful city.

Day 10: Last day in Bali

For our last day in Bali, we took a leisurely hike through some of the rice terraces in Ubud. Definitely not as dramatic as the ones we saw a few days ago on mountainsides, but still pretty nonetheless.






Back in town, we saw women weaving the baskets used to make canang sari.


All of the Indonesian kids we met in Bali have been absolutely adorable and so friendly.


One of our last glimpses of Bali. To Singapore next!

Day 9: In Ubud

We began our first day in Ubud with a walk through the sacred Monkey Forest. The forest and the temple inside of it house a few hundred macaques. Unlike the monkeys at the Uluwatu Temple, these ones are more well-behaved and only want your food, not any of your other belongings. For a few dollars you can buy a bunch of bananas, and the monkeys will scamper all the way up your body to your arm to grab the snack. Here, one of the men who work there feed the macaques corn on the cob.


Me and some monkeys.






We visited the Lotus Temple in central Ubud after playing with the monkeys. Lovely water gardens to each side of the pathway.


Ubud Palace was next, and we saw these girls practicing a traditional Balinese dance, called Legong.


Group of Chinese tourists- most tourists I saw/heard in Bali were Chinese, Australian, French or German.


Another Balinese specialty: pork ribs.

Day 8: Toward Ubud

Today we moved out of Melia Bali and Nusa Dua to get a change of scenery in Ubud, a small town further inland. Agus was with us again in his van, and we turned the drive into a bit of a sightseeing tour. One of our stops was Mas, a village with a specialty in wood carving. It seemed like almost every shop sold wood carvings, including masks, sculptures, and furnishings. We stopped in this shop that had a shelf full of Barong carvings- Barong is a Balinese mythological creature who brings good fortune and health.


The front of the store was a little workshop, with boys and girls helping to polish and sand the carvings.


For lunch, we tried crispy duck for the first time. Agus told us that it's an Ubud specialty, and that we must try it. I enjoyed it, but I think my family is more used to the bigger, juicier ducks that we usually eat Chinese-style.


After, we stopped at a coffee plantation to try some famous luwak coffee. It's the most expensive coffee in the world, because it's made from beans that have first been digested by civets (like this guy above).


The beans have to be roasted by hand for a full hour before they turn the rich coffee-brown that we're familiar with.


We got to sample many of the plantations different drinks that they produce, from traditional Balinese coffee to flavoured coffees like coconut, vanilla and ginseng to different teas like lemongrass, ginger, rosella and red rice. Not pictured is the small cup of luwak coffee that purchased, which I honestly found to be a little too sour for my tastes. I'm no coffee connoisseur though, so I have no idea what really good coffee is supposed to taste like.


We went to the Tirtha Empul Temple after polishing off our coffee. There are temples everywhere in Bali- every household has a small one (or a big one, depending on how wealthy the family is), and there are many village temples and larger public temples all over the place. This one in particular is famous for its pool of holy water where Hindu worshipers go to bathe and pray. Like many other attractions in Bali, it was overrun by tourists when we got there.







Our last stop was a glance at some of Bali's beautiful rice terraces. Unfortunately by the time we got there, the sun was well on its way to setting and it was looking quite overcast. Hopefully I can get some better photos in a few days when it's sunnier outside.