Tag: photos

From time to time I transform into a camera-toting tourist and take pictures. Then I post them using this tag.

Phnom Penh (September 2016)

My husband Aquinas and I went to Phnom Penh, Cambodia during his break week.

While there, I drank a Kingdom Pilsener. The label says:

Cambodia’s lush, mysterious jungles hide more than the splendours of Angkorian majesty. Deep in these green bastions rare beasts roam wild. The elusive clouded leopard, the strange plated pangolin, the stalwart kouprey—if not mythical, at least immensely difficult to find. Kingdom Pilsener, Cambodia’s first truly premium beer, celebrates this enigmatic empire. Singular in flavor and a little hard to track down, Kingdom’s rare quality is well worth the adventure.

On this trip to Cambodia, we forwent the Angkorian splendours. We did not see any clouded leopards, plated pangolins, or koupreys, stalwart or otherwise. I don’t even know what a kouprey is! (Google says it’s a forest-dwelling bovine—you’re welcome.)

We visited the royal palace, the national museum, a Buddhist temple, and the Art Deco market; we patronized a spa and a couple of handicraft shops; we relaxed in the hotel cafe and ate at two of the best restaurants in the country (one French and one Cambodian). That’s it!

Below are 25 photos, mostly from the palace grounds.

Continue reading Phnom Penh (September 2016)

Singapore Changi Airport T1 Cactus Garden

When you think of Singapore, you don’t think of cacti, and an airport is pretty much the opposite of a garden, right? Yet Changi Airport boasts a cactus garden.

How do cacti even survive outdoors in Singapore? My guess is they’ve worked out the right kind of soil to drain water away from the plants, but what do I know. My thumbs are about as green as a fire engine.

Below are 10 photos I took of the cactus garden at Changi Terminal 1 while waiting for the gate to open for our flight to Phnom Penh.

Don’t make fun of the “wildlife” tag on this post. Obviously, this garden is the opposite of wild. I guess I’m just using the tag as shorthand for “plants and animals (and mushrooms, which aren’t even plants)”.

Continue reading Singapore Changi Airport T1 Cactus Garden

Maine (July 2016)

My husband Aquinas and I flew to the US together for his brother’s wedding in Maine. We stopped overnight in Beijing on the way there and the way back to avoid the utter misery of traveling for more than twenty-four hours in a row. The weather for the wedding was amazing, and I enjoyed meeting and talking with the new in-laws of my in-laws. While in the US, Aquinas and I also visited some friends in New York, had a couple of nice dinners in Portland, and walked part of the Freedom Trail in Boston.

See below for a selection of 100 photos from the trip, including snapshots of NYC skyscrapers, empty Maine landscapes, and a spectacular sunset.

Continue reading Maine (July 2016)

National Orchid Garden at the Singapore Botanic Gardens

The National Orchid Garden at the Singapore Botanic Gardens is my favorite local tourist attraction. It’s centrally located but feels like a universe apart from the skyscrapers and shopping malls.

Below are 23 photos from my latest visit.

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Haw Par Villa

Since moving to Singapore and reading about Haw Par Villa in the Singapore Lonely Planet Guide, we’ve always been intending to go. It took us more than seven years, but we finally paid it a visit.

It’s known for the Ten Courts of Hell attraction, a graphic depiction of a quasi-Buddhist Chinese afterlife of judgment, punishment and subsequent reincarnation.

The park, whose attractions are in states of repair that vary from recently repainted to cordoned off, has itself died and been reborn several times. It was fairly quiet but not completely empty when we went.

The park parts of the park are kinda nice if you can get over the creepy didactic sculptures, but I’m not eager to go back anytime soon.

Learn More about Haw Par Villa

Below are 25 photos.

Continue reading Haw Par Villa

Tropical fruit sidewalk plaques

I walked down Orchard Road and took photos when I got to a bit of sidewalk that featured matching repeating pairs of these seven tropical fruits.

mango
pineapple
banana
starfruit
pomegranate
rambutan
mangosteen

Did you think that first one was a durian because of the texture and because durians are so famous in Singapore? That bean shape seems wrong for a durian, though, as do the attached leaves. I’m betting it’s actually a mango.

The pineapple has leaves on both ends, even though canonical representations only have leaves at the top, but let’s assume this is realistic. In fact, some pineapples are reddish on the outside like the paper ones people hang up during Chinese New Year!

I have eaten all of these, though I may never have peeled a rambutan myself. (I like to think of rambutans as velcro fruit.) They are internally similar to lychees and longans, which I also like.

I think the mangosteens are the strangest of these seven.

Bangkok (March 2016)

Below are two dozen photos of a weekend trip to Bangkok. We stayed in Chinatown, tolerated the inevitable traffic, ate good Chinese and Thai food, visited the Suan Pakkad Palace Museum and window-shopped.

Out the window, I glimpsed a Ronald McDonald statue making the traditional Thai greeting (pressing his hands together); a business sign saying “Creative Accounting” that my husband finds particularly amusing; and a mural depicting two aliens in a lotus pond, one of whom looks like a wookie and is holding a popscicle (?!).

Fortunately, I spotted the alien mural while we were at a stoplight and took a photo, so you can see it, too. (The longer you look at it, the weirder it gets.)

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Chasing JM Ice

I admit to a level of interest in the vehicles of Singapore that I cannot easily explain. Arguably the focus of this strange fascination is the fleet of about forty numbered ice trucks belonging to JM Ice, I suppose because the trucks are very distinctive and colorful.

I kind of assume that each JM Ice truck has its own territory (truck 37 seems to hang out in Chinatown). The ones I haven’t seen are probably ones that go to parts of Singapore I’m not usually in. The highest number I’ve seen is 38. Sometimes I get photos, but it’s hard when the trucks are on the move!

Below is a record of the ice trucks I’ve seen (including a couple of trucks belonging to JM Ice’s competitors).

Continue reading Chasing JM Ice