So I arrived in Singapore on Friday to stay with Pip and Billy. They are the most hospitable people on the planet, if you look up the word 'hospitality' in the Oxford dic you will find their names and address there.
Pip with James.
Billy with James.
Billy sent a car to pick me up from the airport and take me straight to the Grande Prix. This is me watching the cars whiz round and round, I'm trying to work out which car belongs to which team. I can't believe their speed or the deafening noise, thankfully Billy had brought me some earplugs.
Me and Billyboy.
Adi lady in poll position.
Saturday Pip returned from business so we just hung out in their spectacular house. I had to go and buy yet another camera, I'm on my third since leaving Manch:(
So then I started being a touristo in earnest. First stop the world famous Botanical Gardens, I whiled away 4 happy hours here and took a gzillion photos that I will now bore you with. 3 categories, sculptures, insects and orchids. Feel free to fast forward.
Sculptures:
This is Swan Lake.
Lady with a baby.
Chopin.
Bird on a bike...
And on a swing...
And in a hammock; it's like the tampax ad.
This granite ball rotates like a planet.
Boys playing tig.
Insects:
I was testing the zoomage on my new camera, I think it's rather good.
Orchid Garden:
I'm not big on flowers but even I was impressed with the beautiful colours, form and fragrance. I don't know the names of any of them so just enjoy the images; I wish bloggintons were scratch and sniff.
Colonial house.
I shared my lunch with this chappy.
It wasn't until I reached the gift shop and saw the gold plated orchid jewellery that I noticed how much the flowers resembled lady petals.
And I'm not being lewd, crude or rude as even Pipney Doddington agreed and she's a prude (I don't mean it sweetheart, just keeping the rhyme going).
If you haven't sussed it, lady petals is a euphemism for female genitalia...
If I have any Singaporian dollars left at the airport I'm thinking I might buy a brooch. I fancy some labia lapel art as a souvenir lol!
In the afternoon I went to the Changi Chapel Museum, it is the site of a POW gaol. It was in the middle of frigging nowhere and took hours to reach via public transport. Was it worth it? Yes, if you get a taxi cabbage. More stuff about war atrocities, this time the Japanese were the bad guys and they did some pretty awful stuff.
This image was drawn by an inmate Called Ray Parkin based on a true event. The inmates had begged for their sick to be hospitalised but the Japanese had refused. Eventually they agreed but wouldn't allow able bodied men to help the sick and diseased. They had to support each other to get to the hospital beds.
Map of the Japanese invasion of SE Asia.
General Percival (right) surrendered to the Japanese general (left, can't remember his name).
Pictures of POW, there were many stories of massacres and torture, especially of the Chinese and Indian communities in Singapore.
This quilt is a replica of one made by the female prisoners, the original is in Guilford, Surrey.
More nasty stuff.
The inmates were allowed a chapel in the hospital wing, they called it St Luke's as he is the patron saint of physicians.
5 murals were painted by Stanley Warren, a POW. After the war they were painted over and forgotten about only to be rediscovered in 1958 and an international search was launched to find the artist. Stanley returned in 1963 to aid the restoration project, and twice more before his death.
Timeline for Japanese surrender and the end of the war. The dropping of two atomic bombs seem pretty significant.
This guy was the Japanese equivalent of Schindler, he helped hundreds of Singaporeans survive and took massive personal risk.
And this is a famous chapel and cross but I got kicked out before I could find out why.
So it was a two hour journey back to Pip and Billy's palatial pad and I arrived home just in time to shower, eat and get in the car for the Justin Bieber gig. I will report on that when I have more time... I think JB may just become my new guilty pleasure lol xxx
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