Lucky break in Melbourne

We leave Singapore tomorrow morning for Australia. First stop is Melbourne and we just found out they will be in the middle of their Food and Wine Festival. Sweet. I was pretty surprised that the flight to Sydney is almost nine hours! Boy Australia really is way, way out there.

Singapore Golf

18 holes, fully lighted, right downtown. It's between the Singapore River (foreground) and the Strait of Malacca. Includes a four story driving range. No idea of the cost for a round but looked pretty nice from what we could see. The picture is a little cloudy because it was taken through the glass on the Singapore Flyer.

Would you eat this?

Venture a guess what this is?

Tandem

We've talked about it many times but Betty finally got her bicycle built for two today. We took a great ride along the beach. Great public beach with beautiful bike and walking paths, picnic facilities, golf and water sports all wrapped into one neat package and literally in downtown Singapore.

Pick your activity

Swimming, group meditation and everything in between. This kid was doing his best but just couldn't hold it for too long. Note the ships in the background of the beach scene. Beautiful beach but I'm not sure about swimming.

Great sculpture

Lots of interesting sculpture everywhere in Singapore, especially in public spaces. This is the same sculpture from front and side views.

Singapore Flyer

Shots from the Singapore Flyer, the largest ferris wheel in the world. It's very similar to the London Eye, but at 42 stories (541 feet) it is 98 feet taller. Each car is designed to hold about 20 people. Starting in the evening some cars alternate between a bar service and a champagne service during the round trip. Once around takes about 1/2 hour. They even serve dinner on some of the cars. I know you are assuming that we did the champagne deal but we didn't. At $69 each which includes one glass of champagne we did not consider it a good Champagne Johnny value. Now had the champagne been non-stop, well.......

River front soccer

Soccer field in the Singapore River, near the Marina Sands Hotel.

Black Pepper Crab

We had a little food tour yesterday and one of the best stops was for black pepper crab, a Singapore specialty. It was delicious. Not sure what type of crab they use but it was huge, with big claws like a lobster. In fact, the waiter told me not to order the really big one. Betty and I shared this one. The black pepper sauce was so good it was ridiculous. A little messy to eat though. Not cheap. This one crab was about US$50.

Ski Park

This is a water ski park in Singapore. It's right on the beach, like a big lake. The tow ropes hang from a cable system suspended in the air in a big loop that circles the lake. All automatic. Not sure what you do if you fall in the middle but everyone we saw was pretty expert so that never happened.

Esplanade - Theaters on the Bay

This is a performing arts center in Singapore covered in aluminum panels, see the close up photo. Very cool looking but looks like a durian - which is an asian fruit - hence it's popular name.

Singapore Sling

This couple is enjoying a "Singapore Sling" at the world famous Raffles Bar in Singapore. Nice at about $25.00 each!

Great sculpture

This is in Singapore, along the Singapore River.

Acrobats

Performing in a mall under the Marina Sands Hotel. Like everything here the mall is absolutely enormous - and beautiful. This is a lot scarier than it might look. Check out the bottom floor of the mall - complete with it's own river and people renting rowboats to row aroun the mall. These people think of everything!

Strait of Malacca

Ships as far as the eye can see waiting to transit the Strait. The Strait, which passes between the Malay Penninsula and the island of Sumatra, is the main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Twenty-five percent of all the world's traded goods and about one quarter of all the oil shipped by sea pass through the Strait. Close to Singapore the Strait narrows to only 1.5 miles creating one of the worst choke points for shipping in the world. It's also only 82 feet deep, not deep enough for the largest supertankers. In fact the biggest ships that can pass are referred to as Malaccamax. If you exceed Malaccamax size you need to take a different, longer route. The sight is really something. Like watching a huge traffic jam of every size and type of ship in the world.

Marina Sands Hotel, Singapore

This enormous hotel and casino dominates the Singapore River marina area. The boat shaped structure spans the three towers on the 57th floor. The entire middle (where you see the palm trees) is a 150 meter infinity pool overlooking the city. The second picture tries to give you an idea of the nighttime view from the pool. It's the best we could do without a tripod. There seems to be no end to the size and scope of building projects being undertaken in Asia. Also visible from the other side of this building are a lighted, 18 hole golf course and hundreds of ships lined up waiting their turn to pass through the Strait of Malacca

What a difference a day makes

The top picture is a view of the Bund in Shanghai taken from our room. The picture on the bottom is the view we woke up to our first morning in Singapore. Nothing a little room change didn't take care of.

Good bye to Shanghai and our mini-me statues

They will regrettably not be making the trip forward. There isn't a piece of luggage large enough to justify carrying back these little statuettes. Chris, this pic is from the little 3 story cafe on the Bund just up from our hotel. Once the weather got nice they opened the rooftop, threw on the cushions an set up a nice bar on top. Sweet views and about mid 50s and sunny with no wind. Nice!

Halfway Point

We've reached the halfway mark in our trip. Do we look like we're ready to kill each other? We think not. We leave Shanghai tomorrow afternoon for Singapore, then on to Australia and New Zealand. We miss you all but it has been great.

Beautiful Hangzhou

We rode bikes around the lake in Hangzhou. So beautiful we could not believe it. This is a huge tourist destination in Asia and was pretty crowded even on a Monday. With the weather finally clearer and temps in the 50s it felt like an early spring day at home.

Hello!!

One of the oddest thing that has happened on this trip is the number of people who have approached us and asked to have their picture taken with us. It's happened everywhere we went, with people of all ages and both sexes. This lady saw us having lunch and asked for a picture, so we decided we'd get one back. During this entire day in Hangzhou I'm not sure we saw another western face amoung the tens of thousands of people we saw. Virtually everyone stares at us as they pass, often whispering among themselves. But they're all very friendly. It's also fairly common for people to get a huge smile as we approach and give us a loud "Hello" as they pass. It's often one of the only words they know in English, and there is nothing to match the delighted look they get when you give them a return "Hello" and they realize they made contact. Sometimes they want to practice speaking English and sometimes they just want to chat "you're from Washington DC?!!!! Famous capital!!! Abraham Lincoln!! George Washington!! We love Obama"" and anything else they can connect. When Chris was with us we even got invited to a tea festival by 3 young strangers from Xian who could not have been more thrilled to be chatting up a storm with us on the street.

Renting bikes in Hangzhou

Hangzhou has the type of bike rental system that allows you to pick up and drop off bikes at many places throughout the city. Bikes are stored at various locations, locked in racks. You have to get a card at a central location, then you use the card to unlock and relock the bikes. You can drop off a bike at one place, then pick up a different one somewhere else. This picture is of one of the main rental centers. Elizabeth is about to tackle the rental process. The rental forms were completely in Chinese so she just guessed at what they wanted and where it went. The rental agent's English was about as good as our Chinese, so all went well. Total rental cost for the day was about $5USD each. It was tough to find one with a seat high enough for me!

MagLev to the airpot

And we weren't going to the airport! But it is a way cool ride at 430 km/hr. The ride that took an hour (late night with no traffic) took about 7 minutes and much of that was slowing down for the station.

Year of the Rabbit

Many kids had these little plastic rabbits with wheels. You pulled them and their eyes lit up while they rolled along. VERY popular.

Tea House

Traditional tea house insde, mayhem outside. More New Year fun.

New Year

Chinese New Year came to an end and it was a combination of Christmas Eve, New Year, and 4th of July all wrapped into one. Big crowds, great fun, everyone very happy.

Censorship

It appears we are having some censorship issues in China. We can only access our blog on Elizabeth's iPhone. I thought it was odd that every time we tried to connect we got a message that we had lost out internet connection, even though most other websites work just fine. Then I had an idea to try things like Twitter, Facebook and some other blogs. None of them worked. Always got the same message. Not sure why the iPhone works except it is using a different server. Whatever the reason, the iPad has limited use for blogging in Shanghai.

Sent from my iPad

Mid-levels Escalators, Hong Kong

This picture shows a portion pf the mid-levels escalators in Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong is extremely hilly, this series of escalators and moving sidewalks is designed to carry people up and down the steep hills to get them both to and from work. The system consists of three moving sidewalks and 22 escalators, running for a total distance of around 1/2 mile. This is the longest outdoor escalator sytem in the world, rising 443 feet over the total run. More than 55,000 people use the escalators every day and the system actually reverses direction twice a day. It runs downhill from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM and back uphill from 10:30 AM till midnight. There are a lot of restaurants and other servcies running next to the escalators so in addition to providing basic transportation its become a major tourist attraction that's a lot of fun and pretty cool to see.

The Bund, Shanghai

Looking up The Bund in Shanghai near our hotel. It is very cold here, like in the 30's at night, but the views are incredible. Our hotel basically looks straight up The Bund and the river, then across to the Pudong side which always looks like a giant carnival. This is a beautiful city. Very modern, extremely clean and fantastic architecture.

This is food?

Our flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai served "cow heels" and some gelatinous and indescribable chicken (which only one of us was allowed to order). No offense Shanghai Air but worst food ever. They were very nice though.

Chris closes the loop on her napkins

At the shipping outlet sending them off to Tulsa. Everyone was sorry to see it go.

The Year of the Rabbit dessert

Marshmallow bunnies with coconut sprinkles.

Bamboo scaffolding

In many parts of Asia construction scaffolding is all bamboo. It doesn't look like much here but you should see it at 30 stories. All delivered as individual pieces, then they start to build it. Guys climb up with what are basically 4 foot long cable ties in big bundles hanging from their waists. They lash it together as they go up. Pretty amazing to see.

Peking duck

Being prepared outside in the rear of this restaurant. Ah what goes on behind the scenes! After they were hung you could see the guy go in and clip out the tongue. Duck tongue is very popular and served in most Chinese restaurants.

Happy Valentines Day

Bouquets waiting delivery at the Flower Market in Hong Kong on the morning of February 14th.

Lantern Festival

Chinese lanterns along the Kowloon side of the Hong Kong waterfront.

Star Ferry

Maybe one of the most famous ferry rides in the world, the Star Ferry crossing from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. Spectacular views of the harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. Betty and Cnris are doing their best to capture it on video while enjoying the ride.

Toto toilets

This is the wall control panel for our toilet. It can do everything but give you an Internet connection. Very sorry to leave this behind - no pun intended.

It's raining, it's pouring

I don't know what it is about us and Hong Kong but the weather is miserable and supposed to stay that way for several days. Unfortunately, the same appears true for our next destination; Shanghai. We're just hoping they are wrong. This is the driest season of the year!

Dafen Art Village

This is the entrance to the Dafen Art Village about 20 miles outside Shenzhen. Dafen is where about 70% of the reproduction oil paintings in the world are produced. Unfortunately, mostly junk but Christine was able to find a few things. Prices are very low but we did find something we really liked only to be told the price was over $400,000 USD!!! A real stunner because you could probably buy everything else we saw combined for less than that. Anyway it was fun and certainly interesting.

Tablecloths and napkins

Christine came to Thailand on a mission to buy some fabric to use for tablecloths and napkins for a big fundraising dinner for her kids' school. This turned into a major production as she searched for just the plaid she needed to match the school uniforms. She finally found it and purchased 125 yards in Bangkok. That just started the fun. Next she needed to find a tailor to make them. That turned into a nightmare and she had to lug these two huge bolts of cloth to Shenzhen where the search for the tailor continued. This picture shows her coming out of a drapery shop where she finally got someone to do the work at a reasonable price.The finished product is supposed to be delivered to our hotel in Hong Kong on Monday. Then she'll have to find a way to ship it home without spending a small fortune. It has caused many laughs but this was a real moment of triumph. At least we were able to unload the 40 pounds of fabric for a few days.

Peking duck

Chris is trying to decide whether to give this a try. This was a lunch stop during our Shenzhen shopping extravaganza and it was delicious.

Success

This is the look of the happy and successful shopper.

Luo Hu Commercial City

This is the main train station in Shenzhen, China. Most people entering China from Hong Kong pass through this station on their way to shop the incredible bargains you can find in Shenzhen. To make it as easy as possible for you to part with your money, you can exit the train station and walk about 100 yards to the Lho Hu Commercial City, essentially a huge mall with over 700 stores. Walk down the aisles and all you hear is "Sir, you want watch, purse . . . " . It's all here at the heart of China's well known knock-off industry. This shopping is not for the faint of heart. Be ready to bargain and bargain hard.