Start of a Longer Journey

A little over two years ago, we started this blog to chart our travels. The first entry, written just as we were embarking on our 32-day honeymoon to Belarus and Ukraine, was similarly titled Start of a long journey. Now we have started on a longer one. Day 1 is today, written in Helsinki as we wait for our transfer to Tallinn.

Below: a thoughtful gift from a colleague, put to excellently appropriate use.

We busied ourselves in the previous couple of weeks packing the house, our backpacks, purchasing the shortfall items and finalising the arrangements for the itinerary (we missed out as a result on several meet-ups and Star Wars).

As the hour of our flight out of Singapore drew near, however, our hearts grew heavy. Mary has never spent such as extended period of time away from her family. And while I spent nearly four years abroad for my university education, it isn't quite the same as being on the road continuously for half a year. I suppose the heart yearns for a harbour to which it can return at the end of a day's travails. Especially for the rest of our trip, our harbours will be each other.

Both our families were there at the airport to see us off. We were there early, so there would be time to both enjoy this latest gathering and do some duty-free shopping (guess whose idea was this). The former we accomplished, the latter was lost to an unexpected brick wall we ran into at the check-in counter.

So the situation was that our return tickets meant we would on paper be spending more than the visa-free 90 days permitted for Singaporeans in the Schengen Area (a border-free zone comprising 26 countries in Europe). But there was no risk of us overstaying, because we are going to be in and out of the Schengen Area (Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Albania) before we even approach 90 days. According to the Finnair staff, my paper itinerary did not suffice for documentation. Asked to produce a ticket showing travel out of the Schengen Area before 90 days was up, I quickly booked us tickets at the earliest possible point (Hungary-Romania) and we were checked in with a minute to spare.

That was the factual recollection of what happened, sans description of the anxiety and unpleasantness we experienced throughout, not to say the very inadequate service which would have averted all this:

1. Service lacked empathy. Assurance that the check-in counter would hold our flight for us came only five minutes before it was meant to close. Earlier stonewalling by the staff ("we are only doing our job, and cannot guarantee that the flight would be held for you" was the line adopted before the volte face) contributed significantly to our anxiety. So with the clock ticking and our 4G network faltering, we asked if there was a computer (or a laptop) we could borrow to hasten this process. The "no" we received was more empathic rather than empathetic (which would have been ideal). And then this particular member of staff added, unhelpfully, that consumers cannot be expected to be spoonfed.

2. Communication lacked clarity. When I completed the booking of tickets to prove our exit out of the Schengen Area (as was originally requested), the same member of staff remonstrated that it wasn't from Tallinn.

3. Staff lacked initiative. Particularly in making executive decisions in urgent circumstances. As I protested the aforementioned lack of clarity, the said member of staff called the border control in Helsinki to clarify what was necessary on our side. Our Finnish friends replied that the Singapore side would have to make the call, whereupon our Finnair staff fell into lethal prevarication. We want to give you peace of mind as you travel there, she said. Your speed is more important than my peace of mind was my response.

You can tell the above is going to form the core of our feedback to Finnair. We were checked in eventually and Finnish customs let us through. But we very nearly didn't make it, thanks to bumbling  ineptitude. And so our adventure began earlier than expected.

The Lord will guide you always. We shall need it.

Christmas by the Bay: A Dam Good Thing

It's the time of year when your senses, dulled by a brief festive freeze on all things productive, are subjected to assault. Night borrows the light of day, and proudly displays them in the redoubled force of neon and fluorescent. Sleigh bells ring if you're listening. The closest thing that's glistening is your wife's eye as she stakes out the next festive discount. It's a good time to sell snow to the Eskimos, because everybody's wishing for a white Christmas. They all seemed to know at least one. It was partly in this hope that we planned an outing to the Bay area. There, we waited out the day on Marina Barrage before heading to Christmas Wonderland at Gardens by the Bay after sunset.

Below: The lights of Christmas Wonderland at Gardens by the Bay which we moths were drawn to.

The dream to turn Marina Bay into a reservoir was the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew's. Yet it wasn't always a bay. Once upon a time (not so very long ago, in fact), the Singapore River emptied into the sea. Reclamation efforts since 1969 progressively created the bay it now flows into. The Barrage was the finishing touch that sealed the Marina Bay area off from the sea, turning it into Singapore's fifteenth reservoir. The Barrage also serves to alleviate flooding in the low-lying areas of Chinatown, Jalan Besar and Kallang, draining excess water into the sea in times of heavy rain.

The seamless integration of the barrage into the city's recreational landscape has also seen it become, since its opening in 2008, a firm favourite for Singaporeans looking to enjoy a slice of the outdoors in the heart of the city. The turfed roof of the pumphouse next to the Barrage is the principal recreational space. The grass is typically littered with mats and lounging torsos, and the sky above with kites. Beyond the pumphouse, the entire bay area is ringed by a pleasant path which is frequented by cyclists and joggers alike.

Below (top to bottom): the Marina Barrage, dam, flood control, bridge and jogging track; the panorama from atop the pumphouse, perhaps we could call this the Singapore Swipe.

By the time we got there, however, the trash bag was half-full and curry-stained. The family had already sent two kites into orbit. The weather was perfect - an overcast sky which provided deliciously cool conditions delivered no more than just two droplets of rain. The ominous promise of more to come (it never did) meant there was plenty of running space in between the invisible tethers that bound our paper sputniks to earth.

Below: the turfed roof of the pumphouse sees plenty of action. Most times, only the kites seem to be moving.

We ate, lazed, caught up, ate some more and watched people around us launch all manners of kites into flight. I was surprised by variety of shapes and sizes that could fly. One, shaped like a many-masted galleon, floated briefly in the air each time before plummeting back to ground. Some had long streaming tails like dragons. They unfurled magnificently in full flight, but thrashed unpredictably about like a whiplash when approaching terra firma. Others waited until it got darker before putting up broad-winged kites lined with flashing lights. It was like a scene from Wars of the World.

Below: Red sky at night, a last Sunday delight. Red sky in the morning, Monday mourning.

We left our spot on the lawn just before the sprinklers came on. On the path to Christmas Wonderland trudged the weekly columns of reality-dodging refugees. Much of these made their heavy-footed Monday-bound way towards the Bayfront area, where cars had been parked and buses and trains were to be caught. En route, the overwhelming waft of overpriced food floating out from Satay by the Bay stayed those whose hunger overruled, as it often does, prudence. Christmas Wonderland laid just beyond.

Below: the playground at the children's garden, so if you've never played in the rain...

Memory served as eyes in the evening gloom. It wasn't hard to find the way, for all followed the light like moths. We walked right into the midst of the nightly lights show (we might as well have walked into a wall). When the laser-entranced cameras were at last loosed from hypnosis, the procession around Christmas Wonderland began.

Below: A metaphor of Christmases in our time - a Christmas tree dwarfed by even larger trees, all of them artificial.

Mary always liked her Christmas markets. But the stalls in this one held little interest for us - imported markets meant imported prices. The main draw for us were the spallieras, intricately-carven wooden facades of Italian extraction. These, and the snatches of Christmas songs we managed to catch above the chatter of the crowd, about the only imports we could afford.

Below: The Italian spallieras, lit up like so many anglerfish in the ocean deep.

We were happy to go when we could. Go home, I meant. There was little to see beyond one round of walking. We couldn't complain. After all, we had chosen to come. Like fast food, many of us crave the apparently succulent morsels of Christmas.

Even if these flatter to deceive, we could each at least say, well I've had it.

Batam Montigo Resort: The Secret Lives of Sparrows

My last trip to the Riau islands took place nearly two years ago. The arrangements were put together by my best man Nardev, and was meant to be my stag's night. We boarded our Bintan-bound ferry, and imagined a sedate, resort-like day of seaside strolls, mall rambles and lots of other Singaporeans. While the day turned out to be as deliciously languid, we found ourselves, upon getting off at Tanjung Pinang, transported forty years back in time. We wound up spending most of the afternoon at a warehouse-like shopping centre with the ancient name of Ramayana Mall. It was quite surreal.

Below: Question: what could be more exciting than sunset from your uncle's shoulders? Answer: attempting to steer him by his ears.

This time round was no less surreal. Arrangements-wise, this was once again one of those rarer occasions when I need not lift a finger. Two villas at Montigo Resort in Nongsa were booked for two nights. Mary was so excited she started packing nearly three weeks before the trip (I was a happy on-looker). It meant that on the morning of our departure, we were Batam-bound, uniquely, without book or boot.

Below: A resort holiday in September. Rarity.

If we needed any reminding of Singapore's location at the heart of archipelagic Southeast Asia, the unexpectedly short ferry ride (half an hour) did so. Arriving amidst mangroves in Nongsa, Batam, felt very much like getting to Pulau Ubin, Singaporeans' favourite offshore rustic retreat. But here we crossed an international border, thanks to the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 (remember that in your history textbooks?) which partitioned the region and laid the territorial foundations for today's Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

Montigo Resorts was stretched out along a hillside on the shores of northern Batam. Each three-storey villa came equipped with an infinity pool (the rage in resort architecture these days) and overlooked the sea, perhaps three or four storeys below. We were told that at night the bright lights of Marina Bay Sands could be seen glittering from our villas. But the ongoing haze obscured distant horizons and agglutinated both sea and sky into a single dull and dusty sheet.

Below: The typical vew from a villa at Montigo. Colourful swim rings sold separately.

While admittedly standards of luxury weren't stratospheric, we encountered levels of comfort which we were hardly used to. At check-in there was a welcome drink and a warm towel. Movement to and from the villa (namely to either of the two restaurants on site for meals) was by hired buggy. Breakfast was a bewildering spread of pastry, bread, cereal, both local and the standard Western fare and fruit. The barbeque which we ordered (and paid for, of course) on the first evening came with the full complement of a chef and two serving staff, whose wonderful service denied me the satisfaction of starting my own fire. At mealtimes, the antics of curious sparrows provided welcome relief from blissful inactivity.

Above: The secret lives of sparrows in the main restaurant offered welcome relief from the unthinkingly gratifying cycle of eating, sleeping and zoning out.

Below: Watching the children play at the OLO Kids Club, which I frequently misread as the Old Kids Club. Spot the odd one out.

Below: Life goes on around the resort. The beauty of sunsets were burnished by long hours of inactivity. We couldn't wake up in time for sunrises.

Our most vigorous activity involved chasing after, and being chased by, our nieces and nephew in the villa pool. On our second evening, we roused ourselves sufficiently to take a walk out to the edge of the resort pier. It was low tide, and I was keen to get down to the beach to check out the intertidal pools. In the end, with the steep rocky descent to the shore and three children in tow, we contented ourselves with peering at the pools from the pier above. There, passers-by heard the squeals of city folk at the movement of a tiny algae-encrusted crab.

Above: The villa pool was a very convenient facility. You can tell from the bottommost photograph who was the most excited about it.

Below: On our second evening, we went for a short walk. The steep, rocky descent and three capering children prevented us from exploring the intertidal pools at low tide. But we made do with squinting from the pier and squealing excitedly at very well-concealed crustaceans.

These resorts seemed purposefully designed for its guests to have a real holiday, defined by whether one needed a holiday when it ended. Indeed, we had shelved our cares so successfully - even that of our health - that shortly after we caught a bug.

Aboard the ferry, the Batam coastline faded as quickly into the haze that hung in the air as our memory of the resort. Our time there had been wrought shapeless by its unhurried passage.

Gardens by the Bay: Cool Conservatories

It was the start of the Jubilee Weekend, during which we would celebrate our country's 50th anniversary of independence. All of 2015 has been packed with celebratory activities and commemorative give-aways. We capitalised on the discounts on offer to visit Gardens by the Bay, one of Singapore's newer, more inventive and pleasant attractions.

Above: My favourite spot in the conservatories.

Below: Dragonfly Lake in the Gardens grounds, which we didn't have the time to explore fully.

The focus of our visit to the Gardens was to the two cooled conservatories, entry to both of which was charged, and half-priced on account of the weekend festivities. We hope the reader will forgive our extolling the landmark's engineering ingenuity over its botanical splendor. We really aren't engineering buffs. But the conservatories really do stand out for welding within their design the practical and the prudent to the aesthetic.

The cooled conservatories: engineering marvels

The design follows a gridshell structure, which is roughly a lattice network shaped gracefully like a shell. This combines elegance and structural strength, and removes the need for supporting columns which would reduce planting space and block precious sunlight. Ribcage-like arches hold the glass pieces in place and protect against strong winds. No detail is spared, with the curvature of the gridshell and the cross-sectional shape of the external supporting arches calculated to maximise light while minimising heat.

Below: the engineering marvels that are the conservatories.

The need to recreate climactic conditions to house plants from montane rainforests and semi-arid regions meant, expensively, cooling and dehumidification on a round the clock basis. The solutions were remarkably simple. Branches lopped off by NParks in their regular pruning of our roadside flora provided the bulk of the fuel needed to run the conservatories. These were brought to the Gardens and converted into energy in in-house furnaces built underground. What of the exhaust produced by the burning then? If chimneys were required as vents, wouldn't this mar what was surely meant to be verdant vistas? The way to graft this industrial requirement into the garden landscape saw the chimneys artfully disguised as Supertrees. More than just chimneys, the Supertrees also capture energy with in-built solar panels and support plant life by functioning as vertical gardens. Above all, they have become the Gardens' most recognisable feature.

Below: Who would have thought these to be chimneys?

Both conservatories run an air displacement system where only the air in the occupied zone (up to about the height of the tallest plant) is cooled. This reduces the amount of energy required, as compared to if the whole conservatory is cooled. The cooling is done by running chilled water through pipes built beneath the pavements.

Elsewhere, little goes to waste. Air that remains cool is recycled and rechanneled through the pipes. The liquid dessicants (substances used to absorb moisture in the air during the process of dehumidification) is recycled by applying the waste heat generated in the burning of the biowaste to it. This removes the absorbed moisture in the dessicant and enables it to absorb yet more in a renewed dehumidification process. Rainwater collected goes to water the gardens.

The Cloud Forest: bringing heaven to earth

But Gardens by the Bay wasn't an engineering field trip. I shall indulge my own bias here - I really went to see the waterfall in the Cloud Forest, the world's largest indoor waterfall. It is very pleasant if one doesn't stray too close (afterspray) or look either all the way up or down over the rail at its base. In the latter two instances, the falls resemble respectively an enormous faucet and an eternally flushing toilet.

The falls tumble from an artificial mountain - a miniature cloud forest planted vertically on a concrete frame. At appointed times throughout the day, the vegetation is watered by mist released in the upper reaches of the conservatory. This is what gives cloud forests their name - the very fact that in the natural world, they are very often enveloped by clouds. The pathways installed around the artificial mountain is a veritable stairway to heaven, in this case brought very much closer to earth. A stroll on this pathway (and a leap of the imagination) when the misting takes place puts one above the clouds, just six storeys above ground.

Above: The artificial mountain in the Cloud Forest.

Below: Carnivorous plants, real and fake.

The Flower Dome: a hidden world

Mary and her mother found the Flower Dome more appealing. As its name suggests, they were drawn like bees to the flowers on display. While the Cloud Forest felt, however artificially, more like a habitat, the Flower Dome we laid out more like a conventional garden. Cacti, baobabs and palms - other less-heralded inhabitants of semi-arid biomes - jostled with flowers for visitors' attention. But the main draw was still the Discover Singapore Stories exhibition, a series of floral displays comprising mostly orchids and some anachronistically bizarre sculptures hailing from Singapore's folklore. Amongst the latter was a unnaturally muscular Merlion made to look like Neptune, the Greek God of the Sea.

Above: Baobabs, palms and...

Below: ...flowers. In the background, Sang Nila Utama comes ashore to look for a lion.

Cultural kitsch aside, the world of plants was truly a different world. It was a hidden world of extravagant colours and surreal shapes, often passed over by the unaided eye as mere detail. My passport to this world was the Super-macro setting on my camera, which I only discovered that very morning. It was almost like using the Pym Particles from the recent Antman movie - stamens became towers, petals became kaleidoscopic throne halls and panicles transformed into horned hydras.

Below: Eyes, towers, throne halls and mythical monsters - welcome to the hidden world of plants.

Singapore has always been known as the Garden City, and would still be so without having Gardens by the Bay. But Gardens by the Bay is no mere garden. It is a vision of the future planted in the present - a vision of growth made sustainable against the odds.

In most places the world over, soil has been made sacral to a nation's identity, as if there was something in it that was incorruptibly primordial and hence indisputably native. The soil on which the Gardens stand, reclaimed, is of more recent vintage. That they also nurture, within the conservatories, plants originally from 'foreign' climes seems to show that botany recognises no nationality. A very different sort of language is spoken by this and the nod to sustainability - the language not of an inalienable national soil, but of transcendent internationalism.

Bangkok: Mall and Mall

Bangkok was the much anticipated denouement of our trip. With the exception of Chatuchak Weekend Market, it was a cumulative tally of mall and mall. Mary had, uncharacteristically, drawn up a hit list of restaurants and shops to visit before leaving. She had also taken a very personal interest in the choice of accommodation in Bangkok. (The last time this happened was in Hobart - we ended up in a motel 6 kilometres from downtown, in a city where the buses stopped running at seven in the evening.)

Below: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit.

Her strategic decision-making this time was vindicated. The Berkeley Hotel, Pratunam, adjoined a mall, with one of Bangkok's main shopping district a mere five minutes away on foot. Many of our compatriots went through the same decision-making process to end up there. There were times when we felt like we never left Singapore - except when we were crossing the road.

Below: Elbow room on the road - there wasn't much of it as vehicles spent a lot of time stationary bumper to bumper.

As was to be expected, much of our first day (in fact, of our entire Bangkok stint) was spent in that airconditioned belt between Central World and Siam Discovery. Occasional forays took us to A&W, long since wound up on our shores, but we never strayed far from the aforementioned stretch of malls. It wasn't the first time we ended up with most of our time in a city indoors. Nearly four years ago, we hardly stepped outside the Green Belt and assorted SM Malls on our trip to Manila in the Philippines.

Below: What Bangkok was for us - a view of Centralworld from Kinokuniya at Siam Paragon.

So Up There: Park Society, Sofitel

What I did differently this time, however, was to arrange dinner at a posh restaurant. (I don't often do this, because I never quite grasped the strange arithmetic of fine dining - basically how presentation is made to compensate for paltry portions.) Dinner at Park Society, Sofitel, was meant to celebrate our five years since the day I asked Mary to be my sunshine, on a wintry summer's evening in Berlin. The restaurant looked north over Lumphini Park to the Pratunam skyline, and was one of the many top-floor eating establishments for which Bangkok is known. It was also indoors, because I expected rain (rained it eventually did).

Below (top to bottom): So Good, the views from Sofitel Park Society, of glacial traffic that inches by day and glows by night; and of bright lights in a city that hardly seems to sleep.

The witty people in the Sofitel branding department had decided to take a pun on the hotel's name. The result was So and So, the adverb attached as prefixes to form catchphrases for nearly every service provided by the hotel. Park Society was dimly lit, and not too crowded on a Friday evening. Service was excellent - we were served by this young French chap from Strasbourg, who was surprised I've even heard of his city. He didn't know it was because I played Championship Manager many seasons ago.

Below: Before the main courses were served. Mary liked the food. I liked that she liked her food.

Chatuchak Weekend Market

The following day was a Saturday, and so we took a day trip to Chatuchak Weekend Market. Chatuchak was a window to another world. People flock there for the often knockdown prices and the range of products on offer - from food (cooked, uncooked, hot, cold), to flowers (artificial, real and miniatures), to fashion (of various shapes and sizes), to all manners of utensils, to home decor and furniture (of different makes and material), to even pets (with rights to photograph the animals peddled too). The market could have very well been a country unto itself. It lacked nothing - except perhaps aircondition, walking space and general navigability. We tottered out of the market blinking and bleary-eyed when glut became tedium, and when all the alleys and display shelves looked the same.

Above (top to bottom): People Parade in Chatuchak Weekend Market; Banana Brigade out in force.

Bottom (top to bottom): ceramic receptacles, miniature artificial flowers and straw roosters, just some of the stacks and stacks of unthinkably interesting items on sale in Chatuchak, through tactics of similar creativity.

Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit is the Thai capital's full name. City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra's behest. But Thais know the city as Krung Thep, City of Angels. That these names have been both forgotten and drastically abbreviated represents just how many modern experiences within the city are bereft of any historicity. It was the same for us. We were drawn here to shop, and to eat, and to feel good doing nothing else but the above. At the same time, it seemed like all things in the city yielded some margin of profit. Many taxi-drivers tried to charge us higher flat fares. Firm insistence got us on the taxi meter. It also got us sullen silence the rest of the way.

On our last evening in the city, upon entering the departure hall in Suvarnabhumi Airport, we were greeted by gilded statues of demons and demigods churning the milk ocean with the sinuous torso of a giant naga (pictured above). For a time, these set aside their differences for a chance to obtain the elixir of immortality which the toil would reward them with. Mortal folks today have not stopped seeking after the same prize.

For some, eternal life is a leather bag with an Italian label.