Away away from India

And so our journey in India has come to a fullstop! It definitely has made us grow in many different ways, enabled us to learn so many different things, made us more aware of our surroundings and so much more - cant put those intangible experiences in words :)

Now we are gearing up for our trip to Beijing, China and i am REALLY looking forward to staying in China. Imagine : Tea!

Well i am not sure if i can use blogspot in China due to media restrictions, but i will defintely try to share experiences by any means possible :)

Namaste!

15 June 2010 : Chinatown and a bit of Clark Quay...

Today i met my friend Abi, whom i have known since collage - maybe 4 to 5 years. Its always a pleasure to meet her and talk to her and share ideas with her. She is specially talented in photography and is an absolutely amazing person. I hope all works out perfectly well for her. We met at chinatown and walked around, went to clark quay (just a few minutes walk from C-town), got some sake (which i just opened to taste, so i guess i need to buy a new bottle to bring back with us..thats totally in order) and japanese wheat tea. It was a fun day out with Abi :D

This is Chinatown Point. One of the many shopping centers.

This shop sold buddhist statues, the laughing buddha and other similar chinese god related statues.

Walaaa! Shopping street!

Poor bird stuck in the cage (actually alot of older chinese men actually have an interest in birds, so they have many types of birds in such cages. Sometimes they come together and you can see so many cages with birds chirping 'lemme out of here'). Thats just a small trivia! :)

And so after taking the train - one stop, we were in Clark Quay! Dont judge us, it was a REALLY hot day to be just walking around.... :D

Thats the route to clubs, restaurants and lotsa alcohol!

This is Central shopping mall, one of the relatively new malls in the area.

You could take a little boat ride...

And this was the end of my day, before i left to go home...and after i saw 3 huskies! OH MY WORD!

14 June 2010 : Arab Street, Singapore

I am back in Singapore after almost a year. It might not be a long time, yet there are so many new buildings. I always find myself looking out of the bus or sticking my neck out as i walk to see a spankingly new building. Amazing. Moving too fast? I am pretty sure theres always a good and bad side to everything. But in a way, its nice to be home, though its difficult to say convincingly 'home' cause i have also spent 6 years growing up in Brunei, and months in other countries.

Today i decided to try taking pictures of buildings in and around Arab Street. Hope you would enjoy my little tour of one part of little singapore!

This is an old building in Arab Street. The current trend is to have a boutique where art stuff, carpets, fashion related things are sold. I like the nice colors added to the building.

This is one of the famous mosque in Arab Street. I thought that it looked quite nice with the sky. As noticed, the area 'Arab street' is the part of singapore that was initally divided by the British for the muslim or settlers from Malaysia.

This shop sold chinese decorations :)

This is a typical building one can see in singapore.

Parkview Square - Mainly consist of offices.

This is actually 200m from Arab street, and its mainly chinese hawker shops. This building style is seen in Chinatown - which i will go tomorrow:)

This is the National Library, it was renovated about 3 years ago. This is the central or main branch. They have other libaries in other parts of singapore.

Nice sunlight effect.

This is where i spent most of my 4 years at - my university's library building.

Asian Civilisation Museum - its just across my university.

Hope you enjoyed todays tour, ladies!

09 May 2010 : Hyderabad Day 2

So after getting cheated with the driver, we decided to go around ourselves. Its a lesson we have learnt over time - if we really want to go around we should just take the tuktuk (although they also end up cheating....*ponders*). Since we didnt really get to check out the bazaar yesterday, we headed in that direction, also so that we could take a few pictures of the Chaminder. All in good timing. Sunday was just another way of saying that the place is going to be packed to the brim. Anyways it was still fun to go take pictures...expect when people start coming up to you asking for an exorbitant price - and trust me, they cant take rejections, they follow you till you literally shout at them saying I DONT WANT IT! Haha i had to do that quite few times cause they would follow 'buy sir buy mdm'... Well i shouldnt complain too much now :)

Check out the dangerously hanging wires... :O

After a long walk in the hot sun and tonnes of pictures from the bazaar, we took the tuktuk downtown to have some real Andra food - spicy! But given the lack of aircon i was sweating while having lunch - ulækkert! :S Since we only had about 5 hours more in hyderabad, we decided to go somewhere abit near our hotel - Public Gardens. It was extremely hot given that it was 4pm, but we managed to find a spot under the shade to sit and relax abit.

Public Gardens

08 May 2010 : Hyderabad Day 1

After being in Bangalore for almost two months we have finally started travelling - f**k the horrid weather. Our first destination on 'exploration India' (haha) was Hyderabad. Our plane ride took us 30 mins while the drive from the airport to the hotel took about 45 mins. We drove on one of the longest highways - 11 km long. We hired a driver & car so that we could go around with ease to many places. Our deal was to pay 1400rupees for 8 hours, and 10rupees per km after 8 hours. We drove past the chaminder, went to the Chowmalia Palace, drove past by Lazar Bazaar and lastly went to the Golconda Fort. All this with high humidity and a temperature of 42 deg.

We had to climb quite a number of steps to reach the top of the Fort in the heat. We were really sweating ourselves away.... But once up there the sight was quite nice.¨ However when we went back to the hotel around 1600hrs he demanded us to pay 1500 rupees instead - all in all highly annoying experience! GAH!

Chowmalia Palace..

Golkonda Fort

I dont understand why people here dont look after their historical sites. Everything has to be written on. It spoils the special value. And why is nothing done to prevent this - fines for example (coming from a 'fine' city myself ;))

View from the top of Golkonda Fort :)

Star for the day!