Shanghai nights

Since Singapore is the land of the eternal summer (with the occasional tropical rainstorm) sometimes it is nice to leave and remember that under most other climes there are different seasons. Winter has arrived in the northern hemisphere and we thought that we would squeeze one last trip in before Christmas. Now that we are both working, planning can be a bit tricky but we managed to book a direct flight on China Eastern and got to spend three whole days in Shanghai.

We stayed in the former French concession in a lovely little hotel called the Old House Inn which besides being very well located and quiet is also very tastefully decorated and furnished with wooden chinese furniture. We spent our first day wandering around the area (before having a nap, never sleep very well in a plane) admiring the houses dating back to the 1920s that the French left behind and enjoying the plane trees which seem to line every street. In the evening we took the subway to the Bund from which we could admire Pudong and its futuristic skyline as well as look back the old buildings built by the Europeans in the early part of the 20th Century.

We then walked back towards the huge People's Square along Nanjing road the main shopping strip in Shanghai. Living in Singapore, I must say I wasn't as impressed as the first time I went to Shanghai five years ago where the density of luxury brand shops has shocked me. (Singapore's Orchard road now has two Louis Vuitton shops within 200m of one another - yet there are still queues occasionally to get in...)

We spent the following day in "Old Town" wandering around in a few antique shops, fighting the crowds around the Tea House and then escaping to the Yu gardens where we wandered amongst the delicately arranged trees and ponds. Water and fish mean wealth in chinese culture but the density of Koi fish in the ponds around Old Town did raise some hygiene issues in my mind.

We devoted a good part of our final day to the Shanghai Museum where they have a very impressive collection of ancient bronzes and ceramics. We then ventured outside the centre of town to Duo Lun Street (Please see article from the NY Times here) where we admired some leftover architecture and lanes from the pre-war era and wandered into a street market. We were surprised by the number of young couples wandering along the street dressed in old fashioned clothes getting their pictures taken until we figured out that these were probably wedding photographs (Couples generally get pictures taken in several different outfits, and the bride changes dresses at least twice on the day itself).

Shanghai is obviously a city of contrasts, very rich and very poor live side by side, gleaming skyscrapers of Pudong and street markets where the butcher cuts his meat on a piece of carboard set directly on the pavement, high end German cars and scrap collectors on bicycles side by side and of course old and new. It's a good place to wax nostalgic about bygone eras while reflecting on the future.

Shanghai was surprisingly easy to navigate. All signs are written in Roman characters (but do pay attention to East and West in the names as generally it will indicate a different street). Gone are most bicycle lanes, but the subway system has probably doubled in size in the past few years. It is brand new, equipped with flat screen TVs along each platform showing the news as well as the time of the next train. Not to mention the Maglev train which links Pudong airport to the city centre - 7 minutes and 20 seconds to cover 30 km - thanks to its Siemens magnetic levitation technology. We were there a week after the end of the Expo and we benefited from all the upgrading and renovation work that was done to receive the world.

The weather was wonderful, 20 degrees celsius and sunshine. My only negative was the air pollution. We did not suffer in any way, but when looking out in the distance it was pretty obvious that the reason things appeared blurry was not my contact lenses....

Christmas under the tropics

Although Christians of various denominations only represent 15% of the population in Singapore, Christmas is apparently a very popular festival, at least with the merchants.

Orchard road is all decked out:

A certain fascination for the concept of a white Christmas:

An ice skating rink in my local mall (complete with a snow making machine):























And of course the food!

Log cakes

















Egg nog






















And pizza! (covered in turkey ham that you can dunk in nacho cheese...)






















Personally I am looking forward to a warm Christmas where I can take advantage of the cheap local seafood!

Merry Christmas everybody!

New pad!

The moment you have been waiting for! Pictures of our new place. After renting a large flat on the 12th floor of a 36-story condo we decided to go for a more cosy option. We are now living in a low-rise condo (4 stories) in a quieter part of town yet more central and closer to the MRT (subway). The flat is a "penthouse" in the sense that there is a very high ceiling in the living room and a huge rooftop terrace. That is what clinched the deal for me. Enjoy the views!

Ho Chi Minh Ville

We spent the long Hariraya weekend in Ho Chi Minh Ville (or Saigon, not to be confused with Hanoi). I hadn't been since 1994 and this trip made me realise that Vietnam will always be my "madeleine" (ref to Proust) in Asia. It was the first country I ever visited and I will probably never experience quite the same thrill again. (I will post some pictures of that 1994 trip at a later date).

Enough nostalgia! It was kind of weird going to HCMC for the weekend, I guess I am still getting used to living in Singapore. We got a great deal to stay in the grande dame of hotels, the Hotel Continental (meeting place for journalists in the 70s and seen in the 1992 film Indochine). Very well situated with a beautiful facade just opposite the renovated opera, it is a leftover of the French rule, along with the town hall, various churches and markets. We spent our first afternoon finding our bearings and ended up having dinner at the Ben Thanh market where street restaurants sprout up every evening at nightfall. It is popular with visitors and locals alike apparently and was arguably our best meal of the weekend. I can't tell you the name of the stall we stopped at but it was the busiest one.

The next day we wandered a bit further visiting Notre Dame, the "reunification palace" that hasn't been touched since 1975 apparently and a few museums. It is ironic that the Vietnamese government devotes most of its museums to their wars of independence and the horrors that the country endured as the only people who visit are foreign tourists and the majority of the country is now too young to either remember or care about it.

We took a day trip to visit the infamous Cu Chi tunnels (seeing how it has become a major tourist attraction is pretty mind boggling) and the main Cao Dai temple (a religion with about 2 million devotees it takes a bit of something from all other religions and venerates Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and Victor Hugo is a saint which made this religion very popular with the French rulers way back when). The rest of the time was spent walking the streets, crossing the streets without getting run over by the swarms of motorcycles (helmets were only made compulsory a couple of years ago...), shopping and eating! The centre of HCMC is very pleasant to wander around in thanks to the tree planted sidewalks. It is actually quite green with a number of parks.

I have fallen in love with the Pho soup and with Pho 24 a local restaurant chain. It is a noodle soup (all Asian countries have one) the distinction is that it is made in a beef broth (most other Asian countries don't raise beef) and complemented with thin slices of raw beef that cook in the steaming hot broth. It is delicious and as for all these noodle dishes the secret is in the broth and is generally much too much effort to make at home.

Vietnam also has an authentic coffee house culture. They drink it very strong, are big producers and have the equivalent of cafes all over the place. They are very big on ice cream too.

Another great weekend, very exotic compared to Singapore. It is also fun to be in a city where people's living conditions have so massively improved over the past 15 years. We saw several international private schools... Next time Hanoi!

Bangkok

A couple of friends of ours were holidaying in Thailand in April. We decided to join them for a weekend in Bangkok, about 2 hours away from Singapore by plane. Time to return to a grittier par of South East Asia compared to civilised Singapore!

Both Fabien and I have been to Bangkok a couple of times, so it was nice to simply enjoy the food, the atmosphere without feeling we had to visit at least three temples per day.

Besides enjoying the company of our friends, we went to the huge weekend market in the north of the city. The plan was to take the skytrain but we were mistaken by a station in construction so opted for a taxi instead (it was hot!) and got to experience Bangkok traffic. You can find everything in this market from antiques to tropical fish, clothes, food etc. However it is difficult to find your way around and I think we actually went round in a relatively small circle. We did see a surpisingly large number of stalls selling clothes for animals, dogs in particular....

We went back to the centre of town and had lunch in the brand new Paragon mall (did I mention how much I love thai food?) and then spent a leisurely couple of hours visiting the Siam Ocean World complete with sharks and mermaids. After such a day, a massage was a must and dinner of course.

The next day, our friends left for the beaches of the south, and we decided to take a tour of the klongs or canals of Bangkok. Bangkok was originally full of canals that were used as a means of transport. Modernisation has meant that a lot have been covered to make way for roads with congestion being a huge issue for the city as a result. There are some left however and it was a charming experience. There are still a lot of people living near the klongs and using boats as their primary means of transport. We stopped in the equivalent of a floating hawker centre. I got the impression that it was a favorite eating spot on sundays for locals. Definitely not a re-created floating market for tourists that you can otherwise find. We were sorry we couldn't stay for lunch! Another great weekend.

Hygiene

Found in our local hawker centre...

A bit of light reading..

I had the pleasure of discovering the work of JG Farrell through his excellent Siege of Krishnapur, a fictionalised account of the life of a British community during the Indian Rebellion in the mid 19th century. His last published novel before a premature death was The Singapore Grip which "completed" his colonial trilogy - his first novel Troubles being situated in Ireland during its war of independence.
Singapore is a pure product of the British Empire, being founded by Sir Stamford Raffles as a trading post and gradually becoming thanks to its strategic location the most prominent of ports in South East Asia. It is therefore a great interest to read a novel relating the final years of effective British rule in Singapore.
The Singapore Grip relates the sorrows and travails on the British trading elite as well as recounting the siege of Singapore in 1941. It is obviously partly parody - some of the characters do seem very caricatural of English colonial types - but the novel does a very good job at creating an atmosphere of "the end of an era" as well as a historically accurate account of the siege, and the belief that the Japanese would never breach "Fortress Singapore".
As a resident a contemporary Singapore it is also interesting to recognize place names and even some businesses (Cold Storage!). A lot of these places have drastically changed obviously, the three Quays (Clarke, Boat and Robertson) now only harbour revellers in their many restaurants and bars and would never have been large enough for today's container ships.
A thoroughly good read, old boy! Recommended to even non Singapore residents.

Penang, Malaysia

A few pictures from our weekend in/on Penang in Malaysia. The smallest of the Malaysian states, Penang is a small island of the western coast of peninsular Malaysia - linked to it by a bridge. Its capital Georgetown was founded by the British as a trading post and was fairly important at least until Singapore overtook it. Historic Georgetown is protected as a UN World Heritage site (a good thing considering the number of condos being built just outside the city limits) and has some very pretty buildings to visit, with a style specific to the region - the mix of Chinese, Malay, Indian and British influences - sometimes called Peranakan. The Chinese influence does seem to dominate...
We were also able to take advantage of the beaches not far... a very nice weekend.

Low crime....

does not mean no crime. However Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world (will keep a discussion about crime&punishment for another post) and compared to Paris I am becoming very lazy about paying attention to my belongings.... An accident waiting to happen when I visit back home.

Advice from Big Brother

One of the biggest shocks of moving to Singapore (after the weather, the food, the people.....) is the pain the Singapore government takes to advise their citizens how to act and what to do (and I come from France). Government concerns range from preventing Dengue fever (useful) to how to us public toilets properly (really?) and the importance of being courteous.

This generally translates into a variety of signboards around town (a few examples here) all sponsored by a government agency or another or full blown campaigns such as the Singapore Kindness Movement and its mascot "Singa the Kindness Lion" or the current campaign in the MRT (subway) to allow alighting passengers to get off the train (a problem in most urban environments). Currently due to concerns about swine flue (don't forget they had bird flue here a few years ago) a lot of emphasis is being placed on hygiene, as you can see a hand can be full of germs depicted like furry scary monsters.

I haven't yet figured out if people actually pay attention to these campaigns or if they are even needed. Sounds a bit to me like a nagging parent (sit up straight!, don't scratch your nose!). In the meantime I have decided to be amused and collect this advice for the benefit of this blog.

The Great Singapore Sale is on!

June is a pretty important month in Singapore. It is the summer holidays for schoolchildren, it is the hottest month of the year and it's the month of the Great Singapore Sale. I assume it was originally set up to attract even more tourists to Singapore, so they would actually come into town when on their way to Bali, Thailand etc. The first weekend of the sale is pretty hectic with coupons and fliers for deals being handed out at virtually all street corners.

I didn't really take advantage of it this year, and it's a shame as I'm pretty sure discounts were particularly radical due to the recession etc.

Anyway, this poster is not actually about the Singapore sale, but for a search engine promoted by Singtel, the local incumbent telephone company. I still felt it illustrated well some aspects of the sale.