Working on a tourist tour

After a sporty Saturday (basket-ball and windsurfing), Sunday is more touristy! A and C are visiting before going on holiday to Malaysia. So I try to improve my tour of Singapore! (after years of taking the same tour in London, it is a bit of work to get the new one organised)

We start at Park view, this amazing art deco building, but once again, the guards stop me from taking any pictures. (I promise to get you some puctures one day) Then we head to Arab street and we cover up for a tour of the mosque (nothing really exciting inside). A refreshing lime juice later, a taxi ride and we are in Katong, famous for its fruits Market and its peranakan heritage. The Peranakan culture is quite typical of Singapore, it is born of a merge between the Malay and the Chinese communities. They have specific food, houses decoration and very colourful clothing.
In Koon Seng road we can admire several houses which are absolutely beautiful, lots of colours, mosaics, painting etc Photos taken with the iPhone probably don't give rights to this street!

Once we have enough of pretty houses we go back to Chinatown to have a look at the Indian temple which has recently re-opened with huge celebrations. We have to pay 3$ to take pictures, but it's worth it!
Everything is so colourful.

That's now a classic but we also pay a visit to the Buddhist temple a bit down the road. Leaving the temple, we hear music from the back so we go to have a look, and there, we discover dozens of Chinese people dancing on what they seem to think is country music. Some of them are wearing the proper outfit, boots, hat and a sort of an Indian looking shirt. One is particularly entertaining, anyway I couldn't help it, I had to film... Enjoy!

On the evening we discover a new area of Singapore: bukit timah and a new peranakan restaurant. It's very local, we get a lot of food for nearly no money but the service is awful. We even try the dessert (we have expert advice from a French/Singaporian girl) I have black glutonious rice with coconut milk. It is not as bad as I thought but I'm not desperate for another one... Other desserts are made of jelly and sugar cane. As some people weren't tempted by these local delicacies, we head towards the ice cream shop. It is amazing! First their scoops are huge! Second their flavours are very concentrated, the dark chocolate is beautiful and the pistachio really taste of pistachio!!!! This is good for some flavour but not that much for others... R has the brilliant idea of tasting durian. Durian is a typical fruit of Singapore, there are signs everywhere telling you not to eat it in public places because it stinks!

It is sold wrapped in plastic to keep the smell in and it is a challenge for any tourists to eat it. I have always thought that the smell must be the most horrible thing and that it probably doesn't taste anything. Allow me to say that was a mistake; the taste is worse than the smell and that's something! We couldn't agree on a description but kerosene and garbage were the most used descriptives. Ok custard and almond were also mentionned, but personnaly, I didn't get passed the kerosene...
Describing this experience to our friend J the day after, he insisted on trying a dessert with durian. He kept on saying it wasn't that bad but as they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words...

A long WE in Western Australia

The weekend is starting early this week. It's Wednesday lunch time when I leave work. It takes a bit more than 2 days to enjoy Australia! So we are taking a 4.5 days weekend and we are making our way south to Perth, Western Australia.
Flight is at 3.50pm and 5h later we are landing in Perth. After a brief stop at immigration because you have to write all of your first names on the visa (and get it right the first time) we collect our car, lovely White (not for long) Toyota Corola. Australian regulations are nice as long as you live together, both people can drive the car without any additional fees!
Tonight we are staying in Northbridge, in Perth. We find a pub for a late night drink by the fireplace! He yes, it's Autumn in Australia!
Thursday morning, we are on our way south, a 3h drive to Margaret river, the wine country! After getting lost a couple of times (signs are rubbish and my co-pilot is asleep...) we do make it to the tourist information which gives us a huge map of all the wineries in the area.
We pick one with a restaurant and head for lunch. Mission of the WE:
no Asian food!
We are at Vasse Felix, a winery which seems to do more or less every grape varieties. We decide for some Cabernet Sauvignon, very nice! It appears that the Australians have developed the same technique as the French, they export the crap wine and keep the best for themselves!
The food is beautiful, this is a good start!
The rest of the afternoon is spent on the sea front, enjoying a walk on the beach, watching a guy training for kite surfing and trying to get to some waterfalls which don't seem to exist...
On the drive back up to the main road, we meet a kangaroo!!!! He is just here, a few meters away from the road, happily eating. We make our way back to Margaret river to check in our hotel and have a nap to be ready for the next food and wine session in the evening. ;-) It is non stop! This time we are going for White wine, we try to delicious Semillion (that's a first, never tried before!), some lovely Sauvignon blanc and some more classic Chardonnay. Food is lovely as well, slightly less posh than at lunch but at least we understand what the waiter says! (the local accent as been a real problem all WE...) Friday morning, the objective is to drive back up to Fremantle enjoying the coast. We find a surfer spot and we spend some time looking at the locals enjoying their favorite sport. The water is fairly cold and the big rocks and waves prevent me from going for a swim...
Next stop is Cape Naturaliste at the north west of WA. We go for a walk near the light house and we get to a point where at the right time of the year whales can be spotted.
A couple of hours later, we are in Fremantle, 20km south of Perth, known for its Market and its prison! So first stop is the Market!
Nothing really exceptional in the market (a small camden town type market) but the town seems lively, we end up in a bar full of locals singing and dancing country music, it's good fun! After being turned down at what the Lonely planet calls the best Indian restaurant in Australia, we decide to go for seafood on the harbour and to put our new knowledge of Australian wines in practises:
another good diner with mussels, scallops and crayfish.
Saturday, we have a huge breakfast outside in the sun before heading to south beach, Fremantle's swimming beach. The place is indeed protected from the big waves but unfortunately it makes it quite boring and doesn't warm up the water! Anyway I do manage to go for a little swim when R decides to make friends with the seagulls. Then we go back to the city centre to have a look at this prison! It's an elegant building made of limestone. The tour is good, the prison only closed in 1991 and it is incredible to see in what the inmates were forced to live in the 90's. No running water, tiny cells, temperature reaching 50C! It's impressive as well to see the execution chamber where they used to hang people. The guide even tells us that he met the Singapore executioner the day before who had executed 28 people in the last 6 months!!!! We better behave ourselves in Sg!

After a little lunch and a taste of a few different beers at the famous Little Creatures brewery on the harbour we drive up north to Perth. We check in our hotel, close to Subiaco and we go to Cottlesoe for an ice cream on the beach at sunset. The place is known for its fish and chips but really we can't eat anything anymore...

On the evening we go out in Subiaco. We pass the oval where they play football (this is Aussie football we are talking about) and not cricket like at the Oval in London. We get to the main road of Subiaco where there are a few nice bars and restaurant, first we have a drink at Hotel Subiaco (which is not a hotel), I try the Australian sparkling wine, not bad, not bad... and we have dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Sunday. It is finally time to explore Perth. First stop Kings park a huge park with botanic gardens and a splendid view over the rivers. We can already see the cones of the Redbull air race. Because this is the reason we came to Perth: a couple of years ago I fell in love with the Redbull air race in London and when I looked for the ones in Asia for this year, the one in AbuDhabi was already completed and the next one and last one in the area was Perth before moving to Rio de Janeiro.

After Kings park we make, with difficulties, our way across town to the south side of the river to get a better view on the race from 12pm to 3pm. The weather is beautiful, blue sky, 33C (autumn is nice down here!) and no wind. The race is as exciting as usual and we have a fantastic view. Between races there are plenty of demonstration: Quantas planes, old aircraft, the army, it's brilliant!!!

For the end of the afternoon, we have a tour of the main buildings in Perth, this is quickly done... there are only a couple of nice colonial buildings remaining.

To end up a nice WE, we go back to Cottlsoe and have a final ice cream at sun set before heading back to the airport for another 5h flight back to Singapore.

A beautiful WE and a lot of sport ahead of us to shake all of these calories!!!

Night safari

Friday evening at the night safari - It started as a team building but then R got dragged along.
6.15pm we all met at the bar and after a short brief we were off for dinner, it's a huge buffet with great variety of food. I have my first Singapore sling (it was probably not the best place to have it but you have to start somewhere). We took a few pictures of the smelly cows who were close to us and it was time to go for the creatures of the night show.
Very touristic is probably the best way to describe it but it was good fun, we saw some furrets very good at recycling (They were able to put the cans in the aluminium bin, the bottles in the plastic bin and the coffee cup in the paper bin), a wild cat who could really jump, a wolf who could woohoo (technical term) on demand and to finish an enormous python who they pretended to have lost and it was actually locked in a box some of the visitors were sitting on!!!!!! Luckily, not me!From there, our guide took us on a walking tour. He was really good at spotting the animals who were hiding and explaning how they got here. (sorry there are very little photos as flash is not allowed and cameras are crap at taking pictures in the dark without flash...). We admired some flying squirrels (no flying on display that night) some bats and different species of mammals... (I'm sorry I have no ideas how all of these animals were called...)
We then hop on the buggy and saw some more impressive animals: tapir, rhino, hippo, hyennas...We stopped for a second walk to discover sleeping leopards. Another hop on the buggy and we were feeding elephants! By far the best part of the evening: we gave parsnip, sugar cane and bananas to 3 ladies. They are much smaller than their African cousin but when you are that close they are hugely impressive. They investigate everything with their trump and they seem to have a soft spot for shinny white Nike trainers... Then we saw the male who can not be fed by us (he is too dangerous) but his trainer got him to lift his front leg and do a salutation for us! On the final leg of the buggy trip we saw lions and tigers.
To finish, we got shot glasses of the Singapore zoo and the night safari as souvenirs. The private tour may be a bit on the expensive side but it was high quality and our guides were fantastic!