Joanna's Singapore adventures

Photos: Marina Bay Sands

2011-02-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

Panoramas

2011-02-01T07:43:00.000-08:00

Turn down the sound, the camera picked up a bit of wind noise.

Photos: Chinese dance

2011-01-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

Photos: Downtown Singapore after dark

2011-01-24T05:02:00.000-08:00

Photos: Pulau Ubin

2011-01-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

Photos: Downtown Singapore

2011-01-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

Photos: Thaipusam festival

2011-01-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

Photos: Clarke Quay

2011-01-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

Strange manners campaigns

2011-01-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

Last time I was here I posted a video that was played in train stations to encourage people to be polite on public transport. They have now updated the video to make it even more strange. Check it out

Photos: Little India

2011-01-17T04:57:00.000-08:00

Settling back in

2011-01-17T04:50:00.000-08:00

Settling back into Singapore has been somewhat strange and surreal.

In some ways it feels like coming home rather than arriving somewhere foreign on holidays. Visiting many of the places I used to visit when I studied here brings back a lot of memories. On the other hand, I've been gone long enough to experience some of the overwhelmingness of arriving in a place where you are not quite sure how things work. I'd forgotten some things like which bus routes go where and what time church services are on. I'm also out of the habit of thinking in Singapore dollar terms when shopping so have walked away from deals only to realise later that when converted into Australian dolars the price was reasonable. Then there is getting used to the weather. While it is nice to escape the excessive rain in Australia, coming back to the humidity is quite a shock to the system.

Photos: Sri mariamman temple

2011-01-14T23:31:00.000-08:00

Photos: Buddha tooth relic temple

2011-01-14T23:29:00.000-08:00

Finally back!

2011-01-14T05:52:00.000-08:00

After a long day of travel I am at last back in Singapore!

The weather in Victoria this morning was crazy. We are probably lucky to have made it to the airport. If the weather stays like it is back home I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is floods.

Clearing customs took longer than I expected so I did not arrive at the gate until the final boarding call. I probably need not have run as we waited almost an hour on the tarmack while they fixed engineering issues. Knowing the plane you are about to travel on has engineering issues is not a comforting thought. Thankfully the rest of the flight was largely uneventful and wasn't too uncomfortable given I was flying with a budget airline.

Despite my tiredness I managed to find my way to the backpackers I am staying at. It seems quite nice. I think I will sleep well tonight because it's been a long day.

Joanna's Singapore Adventures 2.0 coming very soon!

2011-01-11T05:16:00.000-08:00

After a long break, Joanna's Singapore Adventures is coming back to life for a few weeks! I am leaving for Singapore this Friday. I'm very excited to be going back. I am not sure how much I will be able to get posted while I am in Singapore and how much will get posted when I return, but ether way I'll be bringing you more photos and blogs from Singapore very soon. You can sign up to receive them by email by entering your email address in the box on the right hand side of the site

Home

2010-03-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

I've been home for a bit over 2 months now. In that time I have spent a few weeks back in my hometown and then moved back to Melbourne where I have started another semester of university.

Coming back to Bendigo was a challenge because it is so very different to Singapore. The culture shock of coming home was worse than that of going to Singapore. A lot of the shock was little things like getting used to hearing Australian accents again all the time and craving Singaporean foods. Being isolated from my Singapore friends and mostly isolated from my Melbourne friends made it a lonely few weeks.

After yet another lot of packing (my 5th move in 13 months!) I moved back to Melbourne and the hall I had previously stayed at. The weeks since then have been busy with orientation activities, meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones, not to mention plenty of uni work.

Although it is good to be back in Melbourne, I do often find myself looking wistfully at the airfare price board in the campus travel agent's window. Hopefully it won't be too far into the future that I'm able to bring you Joanna's Singapore Adventures- Part 2!

Friends from Singapore survey their new home.

Getting home

2010-01-17T04:50:00.000-08:00

Finally the time to come home had arrived. I got myself up painfully early so I would be at the airport with time to spare. Arriving at the airport I noticed to my dismay on the information boards that my flight had been moved back 2.5 hours which would make me miss my connection. Qantas had not bothered to contact people telling them the flight would be late or to even have staff out by the time passengers started to arrive. For a non-budget airline I consider that really bad customer service, even for a budget airline it would be pushing it. Thankfully even without any scales I had managed to get my baggage just under the weight limit (22.7kg of a 23kg limit) so didn't have any problems with that. Probably a good thing they didn't weigh my hand luggage.

The delay in leaving Singapore meant I had a 7 hour wait in Perth until the next flight through to Melbourne. Thankfully I had family members in Perth who I could catch up with in that time because Perth airport is not particularly exciting. The flight I was rescheduled to from Perth to Melbourne is often known as the Midnight Horror as it leaves very late at night, arrives very early in the morning and is not at all conductive to getting a rest. Since I'd been up since very early that morning but couldn't easily sleep on the plane due to noise from announcements being handed out it was a rather unpleasant flight. Finally I arrived at 6am Melbourne time. By then I was very happy to get out of planes and airports!

Photos: Pulau Ubin #3

2010-01-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

The joys of packing

2010-01-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

Moving out of a uni hall is never a fun experience because there is always a lot of packing and cleaning to do. There is also something kinda depressing about reverting the room that has been home back to a plain, empty room that looks like it was never lived in. When the accompanying move is not to a couple of hours drive away but to another country things get a lot more complicated. Moving nearby you can take most of the stuff that you will use again with you. When everything beyond your airline baggage allowance is going to get charged by the kilo at excess baggage or international freight rates, a lot of stuff has to go. Complicating the matter is that since I don’t have access to scales, I am needing to guess when my bags have gotten down to the required weight limit. To help with that I sent some of my stuff home by mail because even international express airmail which got my stuff to a non-capital city in 4 days costs less than half the per kilo rate for excess baggage with Qantas. For items that were bulky or not worth the freight costs I had to do a lot of finding new owners or throwing out. I tried to avoid throwing out where possible. While living at halls the finding new owners bit was relatively easy- just put it out in a shared space with a free stuff sign and someone is bound to take it. Stuff I still needed after moving out of halls is a bit more complicated, involving lots of texting and facebook messaging to find new owners. Having spent the last month since I had to move out of halls living out of a suitcase and not being able to buy much due to space and weight considerations, I’m looking forward to getting back to a more normal living arrangement.

Singaporean icons

2010-01-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Created as a tourist campaign mascott, the Merlion has ended up becoming one of Singapore's unofficial symbols. It is half fish, half lion. The fish represents the sea. Lions play a role in the mythology of the area, despite the fact they are not found in the wild anywhere in Asia. There is a few statues of the Merlion around Singapore. The one pictured is located by the Singapore river.

The Esplanade theater is one of Singapore's most significant performing arts venues. It is often called "the durian" after the smelly and spiky Asian fruit of the same name

The Singapore Flyer is currently the tallest ferris wheel in the world, with a diameter of 150 meters. The views from it are very impressive on a clear day. I took this photo from Marina Barrage, a popular place for picnics and kite flying.

Photos: Around Kuala Lumpur

2010-01-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

Photos: Kuala Lumpur skyline

2010-01-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Photos: Singapore at night #2

2010-01-03T00:11:00.000-08:00

Photos: Orchard road Christmas lights

2010-01-02T05:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know it is the new year now, but i didn't get a chance to go see the lights at Orchard Road in Singapore until new years day.

Photos: In flight

2010-01-02T05:13:00.000-08:00