Super Saturday
It has been Super Saturdays for me for 3 weekends. Yesterday was the turn to visit the Chinese Gardens near Jurong East. The whole park is so vast that it takes 7-10 kilometer walk to cover it. Attached with this garden is the Japanese Garden.
On Friday night, I had made up my mind to visit this place. The only thing I had kept undecided was the time. As Saturday progressed, I thought that 4-7pm will be a good time to visit. I was in the park by 4pm after getting down at Chinese Gardens MRT.
With a few meters walk, I reached the entrance of the side gate. With sun still up, my mouth started to water once I saw the ice cream cart. "One dollar..", said the vendor. I told him to give me a cone and got to know that he has neither cone, nor the stick. Rather, he prepares it from scratch. I just wanted 'some' icre-cream. So, I said, "ok, give however you want to". He had a family pack kind of a thing inside his cart. He cut a slice of it along with the cardboard wrap, took it out, added two flat wafers on two sides, removed the cardboard wrap from 4 sides, kept this 'sandwitch ice-cream' in a open plastic paper (similar to one had tissue) and gave it to me. I finished this final product in 2 minutes!
Just as I walking in at the entrance, I was searching for Park map. I didn't find any stand with maps in it. As I found one big board containing the map, I took a full photo of that - this was my handy map for the rest of my walk. My ears at that moment were hearing some songs of Mohd. Rafi. Since there was no Visitor Center, this gave me an idea of asking the person listening to this about the main attractions of this park. I was disappointed to see a sleeping security guard listening (actually not!) to music from a local radio channel. May be, he was taking the afternoon nap ;).
The park is very calm and serene. One nice thing about this park is that it is not in the hit-list of tourists. For a 20-square kilometer area or so within the city area, I found 20-30 people. Even if I shouted, nobody would have come to me! It was so lonely. This park is not the place with full of flowers, but, a place to walk in shade and relax.
My visit to Chinese Gardens (and Japanese Gardens) ended at 7:30pm. Next, I headed to Central District for some more walking. Once I landed in that area, I found out that the main roads in that area are closed for traffic. This happens every year during this time of the year because of rehearsals for National Day (Aug 9). There was sufficient crowd in that area who had come specifically to watch the rehearsal. A few fire crackers were also seen as part of practise session.
After a long day, finishing dinner somewhere there and then heading home was ideal. I came across Pastamania. With limited options for veggies, I had to settle with some unknown variety which was better than I had thought.
There is one thing I am still searching for in this city of Singapore - the musical fountain that BSY and is Govt. planned to put in Lal Baag. I can make a movie out of this ;) that goes like this - A simple guy in Bangalore comes to know that Govt. is changing the face of Lal Baag and matching it with Singapore. The guy really wanted to check out what this Singapore is all about. He lands there and doesn't find any musical fountain anywhere!
On Friday night, I had made up my mind to visit this place. The only thing I had kept undecided was the time. As Saturday progressed, I thought that 4-7pm will be a good time to visit. I was in the park by 4pm after getting down at Chinese Gardens MRT.
With a few meters walk, I reached the entrance of the side gate. With sun still up, my mouth started to water once I saw the ice cream cart. "One dollar..", said the vendor. I told him to give me a cone and got to know that he has neither cone, nor the stick. Rather, he prepares it from scratch. I just wanted 'some' icre-cream. So, I said, "ok, give however you want to". He had a family pack kind of a thing inside his cart. He cut a slice of it along with the cardboard wrap, took it out, added two flat wafers on two sides, removed the cardboard wrap from 4 sides, kept this 'sandwitch ice-cream' in a open plastic paper (similar to one had tissue) and gave it to me. I finished this final product in 2 minutes!
Just as I walking in at the entrance, I was searching for Park map. I didn't find any stand with maps in it. As I found one big board containing the map, I took a full photo of that - this was my handy map for the rest of my walk. My ears at that moment were hearing some songs of Mohd. Rafi. Since there was no Visitor Center, this gave me an idea of asking the person listening to this about the main attractions of this park. I was disappointed to see a sleeping security guard listening (actually not!) to music from a local radio channel. May be, he was taking the afternoon nap ;).
The park is very calm and serene. One nice thing about this park is that it is not in the hit-list of tourists. For a 20-square kilometer area or so within the city area, I found 20-30 people. Even if I shouted, nobody would have come to me! It was so lonely. This park is not the place with full of flowers, but, a place to walk in shade and relax.
My visit to Chinese Gardens (and Japanese Gardens) ended at 7:30pm. Next, I headed to Central District for some more walking. Once I landed in that area, I found out that the main roads in that area are closed for traffic. This happens every year during this time of the year because of rehearsals for National Day (Aug 9). There was sufficient crowd in that area who had come specifically to watch the rehearsal. A few fire crackers were also seen as part of practise session.
After a long day, finishing dinner somewhere there and then heading home was ideal. I came across Pastamania. With limited options for veggies, I had to settle with some unknown variety which was better than I had thought.
There is one thing I am still searching for in this city of Singapore - the musical fountain that BSY and is Govt. planned to put in Lal Baag. I can make a movie out of this ;) that goes like this - A simple guy in Bangalore comes to know that Govt. is changing the face of Lal Baag and matching it with Singapore. The guy really wanted to check out what this Singapore is all about. He lands there and doesn't find any musical fountain anywhere!
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