I have returned. I’m on the S9 heading into Frankfurt. It’s 18:25 on my phone, but 01:25+1day in my head.
A380 was a dream. Quiet and smooth, even through the turbulence. And the landing was perfect.
Here’s a view, somewhere over Afghanistan (or nearby).
Thanks for coming with. I’ll update here with some extra pictures soon. But first: sleep.
Contrary to yesterday, today was a pretty good day. Had a decent breakfast (including warm pain au chocolat 😋).
After breakfast I took myself off to Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. The gardens are 166 years old, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Asia’s “top park attraction” (according to trip advisor).
Which makes it all the more satisfying that entrance to the majority of the gardens is free. You could spend several days here exploring all the different areas.
The one area that is chargeable is the National Orchid Garden. Even this is only S$15 (11€, £10), so less than half the price of the rubbish observation deck from yesterday.
And a million times more impressive.
When I was in school, we were told that an orchid was a flower, singular, and so rare that because we’d never go to tropical South America, we would never see.
Orchids were described to us as some almost mythical plant that we’d only see in textbooks.
Bull. Shit.
Of course, as I grew older I realised that orchids were a broad species and found all over the world. But still, learning about the numbers, distribution, growing and propagating methods, and the sheer variety of them was eye-opening.
Did you know:
And so on and so on. I took so many pictures I’ll put them all in a separate gallery.
Really, I could have spent more hours here than I did, taking photos of hundreds of different varieties that I didn’t know the name of.
However, a) my phone was dying in the heat (the chilly “Cool House” was a blessed relief) and b) I had to find stamps.
Singapore’s national postal service has the most “1980’s C&A Skiwear” brand logo.
Since the MTR station was near a mall with a branch in it, I thought I’d try my luck with stamps there. They had a vending machine that had a couple of options and, seeing no other outlet, I tried it out.
Result: minus S$5.20 and plus zero stamps. The error message was in Chinese so after tapping every button on screen I gave up and went to the counter. “Oh yeah. You’ll need to ask for a refund via this website [points to QR code],” like this happens regularly.
“And we only print standard POS stamps here. You need to go to the GPO where they have a philatelic shop.”
Off I traipse. And the GPO shop is rather nice. You browse the stamps, choose what ones you want and quaintly write down the codes on a piece of paper like you’re in Argos, and then someone fetches them from a cupboard.
I rather went overboard so I hope I’m not fuelling my mother’s habit again. Maybe I’ll drip-feed them to her over a few months 😅
Tomorrow morning I head back to Changi T3. There I’ll board a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380, and I’m not ashamed to say that that aircraft is part of the reason I’m even in Singapore.
I figured that airlines were phasing out usage of the A380 and really only Emirates and SingAir were still committed to them. Seems there’s been a post-pandemic revival in fortune and some are being brought back into service by (e.g.) Lufthansa.
Anyhoo, here’s my chance to fly this super-big-boy plane. And with wifi, so my last post for this trip may be from 10km straight up.
By any rational measure, Singapore should be a near-ideal city/state for me:
And yet. I’m missing something. Maybe I just had a bad day.
I went to a “recommended” cafe for breakfast that turned out to be a Starbucks-like chain, and where my reheated sandwich was still partly chilled.
I took a bus and underground to Chinatown expecting to see some evidence of its historic past, but found a tourist market and some (nice) artwork.
The abundant gold leaf in the Buddhist temple felt a bit excessive next to the pleas for donations.
Everything felt like it was a bit sanitised and tourist-friendly. Except then I decided (against my initial instinct) to do a tourist-favourite attraction, the so-called SkyPark perched on top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel towers.
Roughly, the deck at the 56th floor looks like this, a slightly curved sweep across the three towers of the hotel.
And for S$35 (25€, £21) you can visit, well, a tiny part of that deck, on the right-hand-side here:
All the rest of it is either for hotel guests only (like the infinity pool, fair enough) or for other access uses like a restaurant. You get to explore an area about 30×20 metres. It all feels like a bit of a con. I eked out twenty minutes up there, half of which was trying to shelter from the intermittent rain.
It left a bad taste in my mouth and a general ambivalence toward any of the other attractions in the area (all costing similar sums).
It’s not all bad though, by any means. I had a late lunch at a hawker place near my hotel.
(“What’s a hawker place?” I hear you ask. Basically, a food market, like an indoor market in the UK but mostly with small, independent food outlets.)
I dutifully ordered my food, waited for it to be prepared and then went to pay with card.
Oops. Only QR or cash.
I don’t have cash (didn’t think it necessary here), and QR only works for locals.
“It’s OK,” says the guy. “Eat your food, then there’s a cash machine just over there. I can keep tabs on you because you’re so tall and also the only white guy around.”
There’s still a place for trust and honesty here 🙂
After another early start I was ridiculously early to the airport in Siem Reap for a short flight to Singapore.
Relatively few people on the flight, maybe 40% full. Somehow I’d landed first row, 1F so was on and off ahead of the crowd.
Terminal 4 at Singapore’s Changi airport is designed for low-cost airlines but has the look of a modern, high-class terminal. Even something as mundane as the baggage retrieval conveyors are a nice place to be.
The other novelty on entering Singapore is that (having completed your pre-arrival information online) you can swan through an automated immigration gate, never having to be interrogated by border agents. The downside is that you don’t get a stamp in your passport.
A cursory glance at Changi airport’s website will quickly make obvious that it’s not just an airport, it’s a destination.
What this effectively means is that nestled between Terminals 1, 2 and 3 is a huge luxury shopping centre, and the centrepiece of the centre is the Rain Vortex. As “the world’s tallest indoor waterfall”, up to about 40,000 litres of water per minute fall from the glass ceiling to the basement level. It’s undeniably impressive, but not something I spent much more than 10 minutes gawking at.
What I actually found more compelling was the Forest Valley areas, where thousands of shrubs and trees climb terraces around the waterfall.
The rest of the affair is rather pedestrian, just a luxury mall wrapping the fancy waterfall and gardens, and a few pricey tourist attractions mainly aimed at kids.
Finding a half-decent, reasonably-priced hotel with a window is not easy in Singapore. Only through a clever combination of my employer’s corporate code and being an IHG member did I settle on the Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong. It’s really nice, and that membership thing got me a room upgrade, that looks out over the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the bathroom.
Another of Singapore’s top tourist attractions, I took a look in the evening after dinner. Again, there are paid attractions to visit, but wandering around is free and I was just in time for the twice a nightly “Garden Rhapsody” which was a medley of opera classics booming while the huge metal trees (designed as ventilation for other buildings) swim in LEDs. It’s ever so slightly on the wrong side of classy.
Still, there’s more to see there so I’ll try to get back in the daytime and have a proper mooch about.
My mother was a stamp collector, but since she downsized there was no room for all the stamp books and related paraphernalia.
She still likes to look at different stamps, so I’ve bought a couple from every country I’ve been to (except Vietnam, since I could never find an open post office).
So that was my only mission today, and completed in about 30 minutes leaving the rest of the day to get a bit sunburnt by the pool and eat a pizza. What cultural highlights.
Early start tomorrow to fly to Singapore. I’m expecting something very different.
It’s hard to start writing about my experiences at Angkor without resorting to trite superlatives. I had no real expectations, other than I knew I would see what’s stated to be the world’s largest religious monument, Angkor Wat. Of course I’ve seen pictures, mostly of stunning sunrises and sunsets.
Nothing prepared me for the scale, intricacy and (to use an appropriate term) majesty of the site as a whole. Angkor is more than just the Wat, prime draw as that is. With a history stretching from the 9th to 15th centuries, it’s a testament to the millions of people who lived across at least 1000 square kilometres, site of the founding of a kingdom and a complex interplay between Hindu and Buddhist religions.
As soon as a good connection allows, I’ll post many (many) pictures I took across two days in a separate gallery, but I’ll summarise here the places I visited.
Completed 961 AD for Rajendravarman II. Dedicated to Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction.
Completed second half of the 12th century for Jayavarman VII. Dedicated to Avalokitesvara, the Buddhist Lord who looks Down.
Accessed across a vast man-made moat, this temple includes five pools, four small at polar points around a larger central pool. The four pools represent the four elements, wind, fire, water and earth, and each is guarded by their representative animal, elephant (north), bull (east), horse (south) and lion (west).
Completed 1191AD by Jayavarman VII to honour his father Dharanindravarman II. Buddhist with later Hindu influences.
Principally an administrative and learning centre, this temple can be considered a university complete with library and study halls.
Completed 967AD by courtiers Vishnukumara and Yajnavaraha. Dedicated to both Shiva and Vishnu.
Unusually for Angkor temples, this is constructed of red sandstone which is easily carved and hence has intricate decoration.
Completed 889–910 AD by Yasovarman I. Dedicated to Shiva.
Raised high on a hill, symbolising Mount Meru, home of the Hindu gods, this is perhaps the second most-popular site for watching sunsets in Angkor.
Completed 1150 AD by Suryavarman II. Dedicated to Vishnu, the Hindu God of Preservation.
Obviously the most famous, this is a simply enormous temple, surrounded by a 5km lake and with outer walls 3.6km. It rises on three levels with five towers at its centre.
Completed 1186 AD by Jayavarman VII to honour his mother. Dedicated to Prajnaparamita, the Buddhist principle of Perfection of Transcendental Wisdom.
Most famous as the “Tomb Raider” temple, this was abandoned when the Khmer empire collapsed, and was left to decay as nature reclaimed the site. Enormous thitpok and strangler fig trees have grown over the site.
Established late 12th century by Jayavarman VII as the capital of the Khmer empire.
More a city than a temple, likely to have sustained around 100,000 people, one in every ten-thousand people alive at the time lived here.
Completed late 12th century by Jayavarman VII. Dedicated to both Hindu and Buddhist deities.
Famous for having around 200 carved faces on 49 towers, this site also features vast gallery walls depicting everyday life and historical events from the Khmer empire.
Having left Chiang Mai behind, it’s Siem Reap for a few days. My flight from Bangkok was delayed and I was a bit worried about getting through visa processes and immigration in time for my booked transfer from the airport (the new airport is quite some distance from the city), but all worked out.
… is not quite what I expected. Yes it has a night market and a “Pub Street” but also a smattering of rainbow bars, one of which (Bar Code, familiar to some from Europe) had an entertaining drag show going on.
I don’t have the time or patience right now to add pictures (since it’s already a day ago when I’m writing this), but will do later.
(Edit: here you go)
Tomorrow (today, actually), is first day of two in the ancient city of Angkor and its surroundings. I’ll do a joint post for that with about a million pictures.
Hmmm. I tried again to find the hipster street west of the old city. But I went via the Lanna Traditional House Museum. This is an area of the Chiang Mai University grounds where there is a small collection of wooden houses from across many years, typical of the kind found in northern Thailand.
It was pretty interesting (not super interesting, because for each house there’s only a short paragraph about when and how it was built).
Obviously the houses were not all conveniently built in the grounds they’re in now, but it illustrates how (relatively) easy it is to deconstruct a wooden house, and move it elsewhere. I’m not actually sure if you can do that with a Huf Haus but still.
When that was done I thought about the hipster street, decided I was already too sweaty (very humid here the past two days) and went back to my hotel.
For there I needed to shower before my most important activity of the day: a 90-minute traditional Thai massage. Thai massage (I learned) is considered by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage and ninety minutes of it sure did something tangible to all those muscles I’d grittily tightened during eight days of riding around Laos. It was so good. Normally I’d hate going to a fancy spa-massage place but this was lovely and good use of 40€.
Of course one can get a massage from any number of roadside establishments for a lot less but I felt I needed pampering and indeed I was.
Final night in Chiang Mai so nothing crazy this evening, just a nice meal (two dishes, actually) at this local place I like and the chance to talk briefly with a very solid piece of German manliness, who told me that while he was on Koh Phi Phi he’d drunk twelve beers and then taken part in an amateur Muay Thai fight.
Reader, I was smitten (but he was straight so y’know, I’m not married yet).
Despite Because of my second-place win at the pub quiz last night I’ve been feeling a little under the weather today.
And looking at today’s post number, it’s rather obvious why: I haven’t had a day since I started all this when I haven’t had at least one beer.
Oops.
I’m not turning into a raging alcoholic but I rather forgot that I’m on a six-week journey not a week in the Canaries.
So I’ve had a day off today, and will do tomorrow and probably Friday (which is a travel day anyway) and give my processing organs a rest.
I eventually dragged myself out to get some food around the corner and then remembered about the “canalside night market” about twenty minutes walk away.
Twenty minutes sweaty walk; it’s really humid today.
Wasn’t really all that special, a rather grotty canal with various stalls and cafe bars alongside it.
But also some more aloof cats (I know, all cats are aloof but Chiang Mai cats are the aloofest).
I’ll be brief because it’s late. Came second in a pub quiz, so all the beers I drank cost me only a net 80 Baht (€2.30).
Also turns out then when I turn 50 I can get a retirement visa to Thailand for only 800,000 Baht (€22,700) and now I’m reevaluating my future.
