Gardens by the Bay

The entrance to Cloud Mountain is pretty spectacular - listen for the troup of Japanese schoolgirls as they ooh and ahh in the entrance just behind me...

The other video is the view of these buildings - and the rest of the Gardens - from a distance.

Durian "fruit"

OK - I put fruit in quotes above because this stuff doesn't taste like any fruit you can imagine. It is disgusting. (More here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian) And it's not only pungent, it's peristent. It's been several hours and I can still smell it. My great fear now is that I might still be smelling of Durian on the airplane...

Below is the rest of the fruit stall, which was very pleasant!

Dinner last night - Traditional Singaporean Chilli Crab! (yes, the spelling is correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_crab)

I also had drunken prawns, who are literally submerged in an alcoholic sauce prior to cooking them. Apparently you can tell they are becoming drunk, and only after they are well and fully sauced do you then boil and eat them. Seems humane to me...

And for a vegetable, we had these perfectly cooked green beans with little teeny shrimp (the only reason that's not redundent is because we also had the jumbo prawns above...). You'll have to look very closely, but the little things that seem like maybe crushed peanuts, are actually tiny shrimp that are dried and salted and used for flavoring.

An evening in Little India

Happy Deepavali! 

It ended a few days ago, but the decorations are still up throughout Little India, and the streets remain crowded with vendors with Deepavali specials.

Dinner last night was a north Indian classic - chicken tikka masala, alloo gobi, mattar paneer, saffron rice and naan.  Yumm!

Singapore's Jurong Bird Park

This is a Cassowary.  The entire park is amazing, with a lot of direct interaction with birds, and tons of color.  When you add in the flowers - since park is basically in a jungle - it can be a bit of a sensory overload.  A few more pictures below...

Seoul subway dancer

I have no idea if there is any meaning to this dance, or the dancer, but I came up from the subway at a transfer point and this guy had a huge crowd gathered around. They apparently found him as entertaining as I did, and I was definitely not the only one taking video...

Out and about in Seoul

I'm packed and about to head to the airport, but I thought I'd post a few pictures from my walkabout yesterday. I ended up spending several hours in the Olympic park, which is massive.

There are places in here where it's easy to forget you're in a city at all. Check out the size of these fields ... and there are quite a few of them, with people walking, biking and jogging all over the place. There are also random sculptures from artists around the world, who were invited to submit them for the Olympic games of 1988.

Notice the persimmon tree - I was told they intentionally leave a few persimmons on every tree, for the birds.

Earlier in the day, I took a walk up Inwang mountain - it too can make you forget you're in a megalopolis.

I think the purpose of this sign is to recommend that you bring your picnic lunch in a paper bag, or if you can't find one of them, a wool sock is OK.

Finally, here are a few of the Gyoengbok Palace, which is where I started my day.

They have a great changing of the guards ceremony, which is a big local tourist draw. Everyone but me got their picture taken with a guard, or with the guy banging the massive drum...