Hach End festive lights and jollity

 

Reindeer outside Sea Pebbles fish restaurant.

Commemorating Harrow becoming a London borough.

Izgara Restaurant has red, white and green, greenery, baubles and red and white candy canes, an idea making sticks of rock look like a shepherd's crook.

Sea Pebbles fish restaurant entertains with reindeer, blue white and gold baubles and greenery and hanging stars.

Tanna's pharmacy has a white Christmas tree on the door, and a white reindeer of the left window.

The Steak restaurant has lights on the trees by the board proclaiming the lunch offer.

Kiyoto Japanese restaurant has white snowflakes scattered across the windows.

Why You Should See Changi Airport in the Singapore Garden City

Changi Airport repeatedly wins awards and this year with the giant waterfall opened in 2019 it is better than ever.
Even if all you do is collect your suitcase you see flowers and greenery everywhere. Giant palm trees stand over the banks of luggage trolleys. Grennery is apparently on the walls. (In most buildings the inodor and outdoor greenery is on a frame a foot away from the wall for easy of access, watering and maintenance.)
Tubs of plants are along the moving walkways or travelators. Greenery is along the edges of the carousel carrying your suitcase.


Changi Airport Interior. Trolleys and palm trees. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Giant palm trees and a wall of greenery. High ceilings. Space. Abaundance of trolleys.

What to see:

The Waterfall In the Centre of Jewel Shopping Mall
Walk along indoors to Jewell Shopping mall. A giant waterfall about five storeys high. Actually it does down two basements. Feel the spray at the top amidst the greenery. Or dine beside it at the basement where it is encased in glass.



At night on the hour you can see a light and sound show on the waterfall. Free.

The waterfall in the centre of Jewel Shopping Mall, Changi airport, Singapore, at night.

Video by Angela Lansbury.

The Butterfly Garden
On two levels. A delight for children and adults. Huge butterlifes land beside you ready to be photographed on sliced tree trunk stumps, which I presume have some food to attract the butterlies, or are just a convenient flat resting place amid all the surrounding plants.

Butterfly Garden. Singapore's Changi Airport. Free.

On site hotel
Again an indoor walk through the airport to the hotel on one side of the elegant terminal. (Unlike the hotel at Warsaw where you have to drag your cases through a giant concrete floor car park.)

Sculptures.
Strategically placed statues are sccattered around with plaques explaining their significance.

Railway - The MRT
Walk through indoors and downstairs to the underground railway, called the MRT (Mass Rapid Transport). Only one stop away at Expo you find the station has two exits. One takes you to the Exhbititon centre. (Check out what's on.) the other exit is to a shopping mall. Right next to the exit are two bargain stores.

Daeso Bargains
The large supermarket style Daeso is a Japanese company where everything costs two dollars. nearby is another bargain basement store, value. I bought a cheap four wheel suitcases. they also sell hats and chocolate, toothpaste and lots more.

Singapore flags on sale near the checkout at Daeso, Japanese Department store ner Changi Airport, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. copyright.

Daeso. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Free Tour By Bus
If you have about five hours to spare in the daytime, and want a quick view of Singapore, you have time to queue up for the free two-hour bus tour and get back in time for your hour or two in advance check-in.

If you have several hours, take the train anyway. Several stations have attractive sculptures or murals reminding you where you are.

Free evening's entertainment:
Toastmasters Find-a-club.

Useful Websites
Singapore
visitsingapore.com

Singapore Airlines
Singapore.air.com

Airport

Wikipedia
Wikivoyage
Wikitravel
Tripadvisor

See other posts by Angela Lansbury on Singapore, learning Chinese (Mandarin) and more.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Xmas Lights In Singapore - What You Should Notice

The corner of Orchard Road.

Again typical of Singapore, tropical countries, warm whether places to escape winter in Britain and North America, palm trees are there all year but at Christmas the lights all around at night turn the trees into silhouettes.

The curves end in circles. Very pleasing. I must remember that when making Italic signs when drawing on a whiteboard when teaching or training businesses or designing a poster.

In front of Isetan, the Japanese department store, whose name you can see in the centre of the photo left of the illuminated yellow light giant pillars on the curved front of the building. Typically of tropical Singapore, lots of greenery at ground level.

Driving from Tanglin. Rows of lights ahead of you recede into the distance, making a V shape.  Curves and stars are strung across the road.

A couple of years ago, everything worldwide went blue. Blue lights. White artificial Christmas trees in shops. In years to come you will be able to look back and date a photo of yourself taken by the Christmas lights.

Author

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

Singapore's Passion Card Contest asks, What Does Home Mean To You?

Problem
What can I say about my home in Singapore.

Passion Card emailed me with the latest offers and news of a contest.

I wrote down my answer:

Coming home to Singapore is driving from the airport seeing bridges over the motorway draped with greenery and flowers. 

Home is a taxi driver who does his job without expecting a tip. Home is a hot and humid apartment but there's air con in every room, and some homes are designed with facing windows so you get a breeze. 

A Singapore home means a grille over the front door so you can leave it open to cool down. 

Home is an MRT station with trains every three to five minutes. Home is the station with recorded announcements in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, which has encouraged me to learn Mandarin, Malay-Indonesian and Tamil. 

Leaving home is leaving lovely Changi airport which has flowers, fountains and a Butterfly Garden.

Then I realised they wanted only one sentence.

Tell me which sentence you think I should submit.

The contest ends soon, 30 July 2018, one minute to midnight. I presume that is Singapore time, not GMT, and Singapore is ahead if you are holidaying or working in Europe or the USA.

To see what others have send and click on the link to the competition, find Passioncard on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/PAssionCard
Details of contest here:
https://bit.ly/2uQ7QSn 
Terms and conditions apply.

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

See the Hospital Of the Future With Greenery in Singapore

Problem
How do you get to the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital?

Answer
During the week and Saturday mornings there's a free shuttle bus from Yishun MRT station (on the red line) every fifteen minutes. On Saturday the shuttle bus is mornings only. We must have caught one of the last buses before 1 pm. Presumably, I thought, we will be told when we get there or the main entrance will be the last and only stop.

We had no trouble getting ready to alight. As the bus went along the main road we  could see the name of the hospital and a grand building, white effect with lots of green.

We got lost on arrival because we were not going there for physical health problems but to a speech contest in the training area. Two hospitals are adjacent. We asked for tower E and got sent to the next building. Clearly no room twith the name we needed.

Is it unusual to have two adjacent hospitals? Back in London, England, the well-known Northwick Park hospital, has a secret twin, St Mark's, the isolation hospital. I discovered this when a family member had cacer treatment. Visitors are limited to prevent the introduction of infection to patients with  reduced immune systems.

I thought about this hospital pairing as I ran from the Yishun hospital to the Khoo Teck Puat hospital.

Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Plants
What strikes you on arrival is the number of plants, some in huge pots; others up the sides of the walls, others in a quadrangle in the open top middle like the quadrangles in ancient times. Seats all around allow you to rest while waiting.

On the ground floor see a large bust of the founder, Khoo Teck Puat. His family's fund financed this development.

Another bust of the man is in Goodwood Park hotel. I took pictures of it years ago when I visited Goodwood Park hotel for their Durian lunch with a Chinese friend. But my laptop only has space for the most recent third of my photos, so I raced to handy Wikipedia, a great source of royalty free photos.

Bust in the Goodwood Park Hotel. Photo by Jack Lee in Wikipedia.

If you return from the hosptial Saturday late afternoon when there's no shuttle bus, you have to cross the road outside for the stop for the bus, just a few stops on a normal bus back to the MRT station Yishun. On the journey towards the city cetnre I commeneded to two friends, one French, that few hospitals in the UK have so much greenery, most are plain barracks type buildlings. My French friend  agreed that France also had older, ordinary buildings.

Greenery, restful greenery, is becoming more and more common in Singapore. It is also seen increasingly in new or refubished buildings in London, England, and other parts of the world.

Back in the centre of Singapore, passing the Goodwood Park hotel, I now have a new interest in the man whose legacy has helped transform health and architecture in modern Singapore.

Useful websites
www.goodwoodparkhotel.com
visitsingapore.com
google maps

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

What Community Clubs' Architects Do To De-Stress and Stress you

Problem
The first problem is that several community centres in many areas have similar names. But drivers, taxi drivers, pedestrians, MRT passengers - everybody gets confused.

When you arrive, however, many Community Clubs have features designed to reduce stress. My favourites are:

1 Water features - fountains and fish.
2 Green walls of greenery.
3 Cafes and snack bars.
4 Changing coloured lights.

Lights
Nee Soon East has changing coloured lights. You can watch the entire front of the building change colour, facing it from the temporary bus terminal, and the road approach from the MRT.

From white

to red

Nee Soon East Community Club also has a stress-inducing feature. If you approach from the left at the back, to reach the corridor to the front desk office and notce boards and elevators you have to walk across the goal end of the open-sided games area, stopping, whilst the players dodge around you chasign balls and throwing them across your path.

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

Gorgeous Greenery and Plants on Hotels And buildings: Milan, Singapore and More

Parkroyal hotel on Pickering. Photo by Smuconlaw in Wikimedia.commons.org

Problem
How do I get away from the concrete jungle? Skyscrapers with solid walls and no windows straight down onto the pavement? No trees in the street!

Answers
GREEN CITIES
A city filled with greenery on buildings - Milan, Italy.
A garden city filled with trees - Welwyn Garden City, England.
GREEN HOTELS
The Athenaeum Hotel, London, England.
A hotel covered with greenery - The Parkroyal hotel on Pickering, Singapore.

Useful Websites
http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20170925-why-milan-is-covering-its-skyscrapers-in-plants
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/06/30/10-plant-covered-buildings-point-greener-future-living-walls-roundup/
https://www.parkroyalhotels.com/en/hotels-resorts/singapore/pickering/stay/rooms.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwsZHPBRClARIsAC-VMPCRysdHV8SG7kvuGtRBEnuc_Vqkoiy7zXOs-Sd1vpWWzizM91KY51gaAh75EALw_wcB
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g294265-d3523347-Reviews-PARKROYAL_on_Pickering-Singapore.html
https://www.athenaeumhotel.com/athenaeum-life/off-the-wall/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I am sorting out photos and topics for a couple of new websites.
My quirky travels and anecdotes will stay on this website.
Focused posts with more specific holidays to book and items to buy will be on
New website: luxurytravelforlessblog.wordpress.com
Forthcoming website: luxurytravelforless.co.uk