Singapore - Dreams and Reality Exhibition at National Museum of Singapore

OK, back to the Singapore trip after the excitement I had of me winning the NST contest. Right after the seven hours of train ride and before the greatness that is Wicked the Musical at night, we did went to places around Singapore. After all, there was an afternoon to spend and we can't possible spend the whole time preparing for the night event.

National Museum of Singapore

After checking in at the Five Foot Way Inn which I think is quite nice and worth the penny, we went straight to the National Museum of Singapore for the Dream and Reality Exhibition where some of the most beautifully painted and drawn arts are put on display. All these paintings came from Musee d'Orsay, Paris, for a short duration of time so that people of this region will get to see some of these paintings and arts. 

Dream and Reality Exhibition

I must say, the National Museum of Singapore is quite a piece of art by itself. The building gives off a colonial feel and I really like these kinds of buildings. There are a lot of these neo-colonial buildings in Malaysia as well but not all of them are well kept and some of them are left unattended or unused. How sad that the government does not put in enough money to maintain or reuse it. 

Anyway, back to the art exhibition. The entrance fee is SGD $11 but they let us enter for free since we were all 'students' with student cards. We were SGD $11 richer but even if we were to pay for the entrance fee, it is still worth it. 

There are a lot of Impressionist era paintings that we got to see, from masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh to Claude Monet. The exhibition is being categorized into eight categories in accordance to the themes these artists were fascinated throughout the era in chronological order. I'll let the pictures do the talking from here on.

新年快乐！

This Year of the Dragon marks the second cycle of the Dragon Year for me. Being a Dragon myself, somehow, I don't feel any special affiliation towards it other than it's another Lunar New Year. And the fact that it has been raining non-stop (even now, it's raining heavily at the moment!) suggests that indeed, it is the this year is the Water Dragon as claimed by a lot of people. Anyway, the author of this blog wishes all Chinese around the world Happy Chinese New Year and may this year of Dragon brings prosperity and health to your doorstep. Let's look at the three popular shopping complexes in the KL Triangle in their Chinese New Year decoration.

Cherry blossoms blooming beautifully in Time Square

Sungei Wang goes retro with old Chinese shoplots as deco

The mighty dragon conquers Pavilion as the main attraction

恭喜发财！

GONG XI FA CAI!

News Strait Times Savvy Traveller

I just found out that my entry for the NST's Savvy Traveller was selected as the winner for last Thursday paper. I forgot to check the last Thursday's paper to see if I won or not and only remembered to do so today while in the office, staring at empty spaces.

Savvy Traveller is a weekly contest that features your holiday story. All you have to do is just share your holiday adventures in the following five categories: Must Do, Avoid, Good Eats, Top Shops, and Insider Tips. The winning entry will get a 2D/1N stay at the Hydro Hotel in Penang. Guess I'll be heading there soon and stay at a luxurious hotel (I haven't receive any e-mail or call informing me about this so maybe they just send the prize to my home...).

For my Savvy Traveller entry, I wrote about my recent trip to Singapore. I raved about the wonderful Wicked the Musical, the delicious foods they served at Marche and the good base Chinatown served for us throughout the trip. Read more about it here!

Singapore - Wicked the Musical

Here I am, listening to the Wicked soundtrack on my laptop while writing this entry on the fantastic night we had at the Grand Theatre Marina Bay Sands. This is the sole reason as to why all of us came to Singapore in the first place and it remained the best part of the trip, undefeated. As since this was the main attraction for us, I thought, why not recount back my Singapore trip with the best part of it first?

Wicked the Musical was and still is being staged here in Singapore and it was some sort of dream came true thing for us since we had been wanting to watch it after first getting hooked to the songs few years back. While we cannot watch the original cast of the Broadway production (starring the power duo of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth who you might know in Glee as Shelby and April Rhodes), the Australian cast that we went to see did an outstanding performance that truly worth all the money we spent on it.

Ticket to the greatest musical I ever watched!

We were dressed to the nines (in our formal wears) to give off the impression that we were some important guests for some functions or events. Important guests, I doubt we were, but the musical is definitely one grand thing. Our group was divided into two places in the theatre as three of us were willing to spend more to take the front seat and have a better viewing. The rest were at two floors up the theatre.

We still had time to take some photos before meeting up...

Singapore - Train Ride to the Lion City

It was late at night, about 9.30pm. Normally, I would be in my room, watching whatever series I'm following at the moment. But, not tonight. Tonight, I'm out on the KTM on my way to KL Sentral to meet up with the rest of the gangs for our trip to Singapore. We were to take the night train, reaching there about 7am the next day.

For some of us, Singapore is close to being their second country. For me, it was my maiden trip to the Lion City. Even it was just a bridge apart, I had never step my foot on Singapore's soil until now and it was all thanks to Wicked.

The sleeping capsule

11pm and we were all by our capsule-like beds. The train had been picking up speed as we chatted away. Tiredness were all over our faces as all of us (except a certain person) were working on that day itself. Not too soon, we were all sleeping amidst the slight bumpy ride.

*TO BE CONTINUED*


Sharing is caring. A word of advice and a piece of information.

Train rides from KL Sentral to Singapore are quite frequent, with the latest time being 11pm. It takes about 7 hours to reach Woodlands, Singapore. For the seating couch, it is RM 35 per person and for the one with bed, the upper bunk would be RM 40 while the lower one is RM 46.

Kuching - Sunday Market

Before we went to the Sarawak Museum, that Sunday morning we first made a stop at Sunday market off Jalan Satok, about ten minutes ride on taxi. Apparently, this Sunday market starts around Saturday afternoon and lasts until Sunday afternoon and according to the receptionist of 360xpress as well as the information I can find from the Internet, the market is very huge and it takes hours to actually finish walking the whole place. How true is that, I had no idea for we didn't really manage to explore every corner of the market.

We woke up very late in the morning, about 10am or so if I remembered correctly, as it was too comfortable to sleep. After finishing everything and had our breakfast, you can actually imagine it was about 11 plus to 12pm when we reached there and with the blazing weather we have here in Malaysia, walking around in market at this time of the hour was definitely not a child play. Plus, being with my family who are well known for their datin-ness, suffice to say, after about half an hour, we went to the opposite shopping complex (my sister refused to acknowledge that as one!) just to enjoy the free air-conditional.

However, with that half an hour, at least I got to experience the atmosphere of the Sunday market. Other than what you can normally find in the wet market such as vegetables, fruits, and so on, there are also souvenirs for you to buy as well. Nothing much special with the souvenirs; pretty much cliché items such as key chains and so on. Do remember to scout around first and haggle down the price and never to buy immediately for you might find the same thing at a much cheaper price at another stall.

I guess that's about it with this Kuching trip of mine. Pathetic little trip, isn't it? Kuching, and Sarawak as a whole, has more to offer such as Cultural Village, Mulu National Park, Niah Cave, and so on but all these takes time and money, the former we don't have, the latter my father too stingy to spend. And I think I had enough travelling with my family. They are too money-minded and fussy about pretty much everything. Too expensive, too hot, too this, too that. Headache to my brain. Wait till I'm financially well-off so that I can treat them all (and told them to stop minding the money thing, haha..).

NEXT STOP, SINGAPORE!

2011 - Year in Review

It had been an eventful year, to say the least. In fact, eventful is a bit of an understatement considering how globe-trotting (or more like Asia-trotting) I have become. When this blog was created back in April, I just came back from my first oversea trip to Hat Yai, a city in Thailand popular among Malaysians. Since then, I had been flying here and there, visiting one country after another, gaining more insights into the life I want to lead. It became clear to me that I am not going to lead my life where the goal is to earn money and then use the money to earn more of it. Of course, earning money is definitely one thing I need to do in order to feed my travelling bug but money will be secondary when it comes to priority. World exploration is something I want to do and will try to achieve in this new year.

Right now, I just want to summarize what I had done in this one short year of 2011...

March - First oversea trip to Hat Yai, Thailand. It was a short 2D/1N trip but very memorable for it was something spontaneous and lack of plan (yet full of it). It was also the month where I made my first passport! In fact, within days before my Hat Yat trip. This just show how 'snap-of-fingers' fast it was.

April - The birth of the blog. We share the same birthday month.

May - I bade farewell to the Pearl of Oriental as I was finally finished with my degree study. Goodbye, study world. Hello, uncertainty. I also went to Cambodia which was a place worth visiting, at least once in your life, especially Angkor Wat. The sad thing about the trip, it was too fast, too furious, until we didn't have time to catch our breaths.

June - Another totally spontaneous trip to Thailand, this time Bangkok. Before Bangkok, I went to Hat Yai for another round with my family and relatives, came back Malaysia only to fly in a week time to Bangkok. Crazy, right?

July - This time around, I went to Hong Kong and Macau, two S.A.R. countries of China. I loved it there, especially Hong Kong. In fact, I wish I can just stay there and not coming back. But, reality has to hit me hard in the face.

August - I was officially broke. Job hunting began.

September - As my family and I went to Kuching to send my sister for her degree study in UNIMAS, I, on the other hand, was in my convocation ceremony, graduating with a second upper class bachelor degree in applied sciences. Oh, yea, I also received call that I was hired and expected to work next month.

October - A new chapter of my life, this time, set in the working world.

November - Nothing exciting happened. November, the dull month.

December - My last trip of the year which was the neighbouring country of Singapore. Even though it was just a bridge away, it took me 23 years to finally visit this Lion City and the main draw was Wicked! the musical. I guess I will talk more about the trip next year.

With today being 1st January 2012, the year 2011 was finally all wrapped up and red carpet is being spread out to ceremoniously welcome the arrival of 2012. Happy New Year, everyone!!!