Fort Canning, Singapore, illuminated at night

See the elaborate white grand gates and the giant tree. 

Fort Canning, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I walked past Fort Canning from SIM (Singapore Institute of Management), a complex of university and college departments linked to Bras Basah underground train station by a series of underground corridors. I had travelled to the area by Bras Basah MRT station.

 My new friend had parked her car at a cheaper car park. An uphill walk.However, I was rewarded by passing some interesting sights.

 Fort Canning is the hilltop fort which gives its name to the entire hill and area. We are on the roadside pavement circling the bottom of the grassy slope. Opposite this illuminated gate was the entrance to the museum. I saw two or three grand gates. I took the photo of this gate with my phone, in a hurry to keep up with my friend who was pacing ahead.

 I thought that if the photo was not sufficiently good quality to use, it would still be a useful reminder. I I had noticed only the white gate against the black sky, accentuating the outline of the was pleased with the results. When I I took the picture I was concentrating on the white gate silhouetted against the dark sky. Only afterwards did I notice the orange, green and yellow stripes on the ground.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speakar.

Old Ford Factory Museum, Singapore

If you can't take an old Ford car to visit the Old Ford Factory museum in Singapore, you can take a bus which stops on the opposite side of the road (coming from the Cashew Road MRT).


The admission price is a modest $3 (Singaporean dollars, not American dollars), which is about £1.50 in UK money.

This factory is the place where the British surrendered to the Japanese. Very interesting from an historical point of view. 

Wartime means not just a change of rulers, danger to fighting men in armies, danger of bombing of civilians, but the simple everyday pressing problem of getting enough to eat.

I was very interested to learn how people living in Singapore in wartime survived by growing their own food. (I am keen to know which foods can be grown successfully in each country, and was intrigued to learn that residents of a skyscraper estate in Cashew Road in 2016 have allotments for growing vegetables.)

If you get over-involved in events which happened before you are born, you might find it more cheerful to think about the Japanese surrender, which I read about at another museum in Singapore, at Fort Canning, which signalled the end of World War II.

In the UK, food rationing continued from the end of the war in Europe in 1945 until 1952 when ration books came to an end. When I was a child in the UK my mother queued for the first fresh bananas and fresh peaches imported from overseas.

The museum is open 9-5.30, Monday to Friday.

The website for the Old Ford Factory Museum is:

http://www.nas.gov.sg/moff/


More pictures and facts in my later post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.