Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sightseeing

Bryan and I have done lots of sightseeing since we got here two months ago, and I thought it was about time to share some of the stuff we've seen. We've been to the riverfront a few times, and it's a great place to eat lunch. There are a bunch of outdoor restaurants, and it's great to sit outside by the river and watch the little tour boats go by. The only annoying part is that when you walk along the riverfront, you have to walk by all the restaurants and at most of them, someone walks up to you and tries to get you to eat there, showing you the menu, telling you the specials, and generally just being relentless. This is especially irritating for me, because I'm usually making a beeline for the vegetarian-friendly Indian places, and I don't want to be harangued by places where you can point at a fish in a tank and they'll cook it up for you- that's not my thing. Anyway, to the left is a picture of the riverfront. The photo on the right is Bryan at the riverfront. Behind him is the Fullerton Hotel, which is also below- see the American flag on the left?
Not far from the riverfront is the Esplanade, a huge arts complex that's designed to look like a gigantic durian. You can go up to the roof of the Esplanade and see downtown Singapore all around you. That's what we did, and of course as soon as we got up there, my camera battery died. But the view was fabulous, and I'd like to go back sometime with the new and improved camera and a full battery.We also made an excursion to the Asian Civilizations Museum. The museum was great, but it was huge and we didn't end up seeing all of it. We did show up just in time for a performance of a traditional Indonesian tribe's dance performance, so that was pretty neat. The museum has a huge collection of Buddha figures, and we liked looking at those- it's always fascinating to me to see how many different depictions there can be of Buddha- the laughing Buddha with the big belly is in sharp contrast to the thin Buddha adorned with jewelry and all sorts of ornaments. There were also exhibits of traditional attire from a number of different Asian regions, and some of the jewelry was really intricate and beautiful. My favorite exhibit was the one on loan from Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research- it was a lot of animal specimens collected in and around Singapore, many of which, like tigers, have since gone locally extinct. Below are a couple pictures from the museum- a statue that I really liked and a washed out one of me and Bryan that I think is neat because of the weird reflection of my face that you can see in the upper left corner.So that's some of the sightseeing we've been up to- I'm sure there's more to come!

1 comment:

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