Singapore: Where Are We?!?: August 2012

A while ago while taking the MRT to the Jurong Bird Park I saw the Chinese Gardens and definitely wanted to take a trip back. It took a bit of courage as the Chinese Gardens are more on the outskirts of Singapore so even though it's still safe I find the people are a bit different. I summoned the courage and hoped on the MRT for the ride out to the Chinese and Japanese Gardens. To give you a better idea of the location of the gardens here is a little map of Singapore with a few of our recent adventures..

The trip in total took about 40 minutes to get to the gardens and it's the one part of the MRT that is above ground so I was able to check out the scenery.

The MRT plops you out right at the entrance to the Chinese Gardens so it was impossible to miss. The Chinese Gardens had tons of buildings and sculptures, which were quite interesting. I didn't realize that there is an upcoming lantern festival that they were starting to decorate for.

Entrance to the Chinese Garden

Muddy looking rive

Map of the Gardens

Dragan Man

View from the Walkway on the Tower

A further back view

Cool statues in the garden

Another view of the tower

Lanterns in the Trees.. guessing for
Lantern Festival

Some Dragons waiting to get set up

Clearly no idea what the sign said

A look across the river

Main Gate into the Garden

Koi Pond

Bonsai Garden

Walk over to the Japanese Garden and stumble across this very odd Garden. It had statues of all the different signs.

A look at the entire garden.. sadly you
can't see all the crazy statues

Bridge or Romance cracked me
up because it had a broken railing

Up close and personal with one of the statues

Now onto the Japanese Gardens. To get to the garden you go over this large white bridge

Bridge to Jap. Gardens

In the Garden

Singapore signs crack me up. The Lake was 2 inches deep
and apparently if you are a swimmer you are huge!

Finally got the self timer to work.
One and only time I got it to work

Nope I didn't forget the video just took me a bit to put it together.. again still getting used to the new camera so excuse the shakes

Nate headed off to Japan so I headed off to the Botanical Gardens. I have wanted to visit the Gardens for a while and figured it would be a great time to check it out and also to figure out how to use the new camera. Nate is the expert with the Camera and I am quite determined to hit expert status as well. I was rather pleased with how the pictures turned out. The movie could use some work, but all good things take time. I spent about 2 hours in the park when I started to hear thunder, so I thought it best to head back to the MRT. Oddly enough thunder has no effect on the Singaporeans. As I high tail it back to the MRT I look around and everyone looks as though it's sunny and bright out as they continue their leisurely stroll without seeming to notice the black clouds approaching. I guess when thunder is a daily occurrence and a lot of the time doesn't actually produce any rain it loses it's intimidation. I however still feel the intimidation of thunder and run for cover. Just as I got back into the apartment the rain came, so my fear was warranted. Sadly though my gardens tour was cut short so I didn't quite get to see everything, although I think I saw all the "good stuff".

A Map of the Singapore Botanical Gardens. The MRT station is right next to the gardens (On the North East side that big white mark is the MRT) They are doing some construction on the gardens so a bunch of stuff was closed off and I am not actually sure which paths I covered as I was sort of just going where ever things looked interesting :)

I have to admit I was a little let down by the gardens as I have heard they are beautiful, but I found the MacRichie Reservoir to be more impressive. The gardens had areas that were impressive, but for the most part it wasn't anything too great. A few of the highlights:

The big lake- it had turtles everywhere and a gigantic catfish.. at least I think it was a catfish it only surfaced briefly, but what other fish has whiskers?
Evolution Gardern- Probably my favorite part as it had these awesome trees. They looked as though they should be in a swamp as they had a "creepy" feel to them.
Healing Garden- I didn't really take time to read the signs of all the healing power of the plants, but I was a fan of the water features through out it. I didn't find the actual healing plants to be all that impressive, however that's probably because I didn't read the signs

Pics from my initial walk into the gardens and turtle lake (not sure of the real name)