Haw Par Villa

Last weekend we went to the Haw Par Villa here in Singapore - also known as the Tiger Balm Gardens. The Aw brothers, Boon Haw and Boon Par (who made their fortune from the well-known Tiger Balm ointment) opened the park in 1937. It is inspired by Chinese legend and mythology as represented by the display of grotesque and gaudy statues, the coup de grâce of which are depicted in The Ten Courts of Hell. These exhibits feature the ten steps of judgement before reincarnation. The statues are very literal and leaves no room for imagination - VERY gruesome.

This entertainment park was built with the purpopse of teaching and preserving Chinese values and cultural heritage. The park's colorful collection of over 1,000 statues and 150 giant tableaux centers around Chinese folklore, legends, history, and Confucian ideology. Morality tales includes classic battles between good and evil and tributes to Chinese cultural heroes. To me they just bordered on being really bizarre.

Headlines from Asia - posted by Darin

Most of the funny stuff I see in print is simply bad English. These three items are funny because of the content.

This first item about tax evaders in India ran in the Singapore Straits-Times.

Asians love horror movies and this one really sends chills up and down my spine. Can you imagine 90 minutes of a squalling infant? Sounds like every business trip I've ever taken in Coach.

My favorite comes from the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and highlights a growing problem in all societies. Sadly, Ching Cheong's wife is not the first person who has turned to Fok for help.

Won't be home for xmas

Ok, there is good news and bad news: the bad news is that unfortunately, we won't be home for x-mas. The good news is that we have an end date for Darin's assignment which cannot be changed again - March 30th, 2007.

We will probably spend xmas here in our apartment listening to carols downloaded from iTunes.
Here people only get xmas day off, no bonus days etc. Also, Singaporeans shamelessly view xmas as a consumerist shopping holiday with no pretenses of babies or angels to sugar coat things with. It is all about SPENDING MONEY!

Hong Kong, China - Nov 2006

Hong Kong is on the eastern side of the Pearl River Delta on the southeastern coast of the People's Republic of China, facing the South China Sea in the south, and bordering Guangdong Province in the north. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842, until its sovereignty was transferred to the PRC in 1997. Subsequently, unlike Japan, English is widely spoken in Hong Kong which made it really easy to get around.

At first I was a bit reluctant to go to Hong Kong because I was terrified of seeing the bloody slaughtering and eating of dogs on the streets. Luckily, we saw none of this - the grossest thing we saw in a restaurant window (where we did NOT eat) were lungs and other unidentified bodyparts of unidentified animals being boiled in a pot.

On the first day we went shopping - Darin hoped to find some cheap electronics and I was hoping to find some cheap knock-off designer purses. At the Ladies Market (a bustling outdoor market jam-packed with all kinds of merchandise) I found the motherload. (See the display board behind me on the picture). The stalls selling the purses only have a catalogue containing everything from Chanel, Prada, Balenciaga and Chloe purses to Tag Heuer and Rolex watches. At one stall, as we were excitedly browsing through one of these catalogues a "sales dude" (a young chinese man with slicked-back greasy hair who spoke fairly good english) told us that he would show us the merchandise at his "shop" closeby. I started having visions of us following this bloke down a smelly dark alley where we would be mugged at knife point by his cronies, left wallet and passportless to die in the streets of Hong Kong, when my thoughts were interupted by Darin's voice saying "Ok, show us!". I was so surprised that I didn't even argue, and Darin winked at me as we followed sales dude down a narrow walkway weaving through the stalls to a seedy looking building. We entered the narrow building and got to a very old elevator that didn't look very reliable. The three of us got in and sales dude pressed the button to the 9th floor. At this point my heart was beating louder than the creaking of the elevator and I was trying very hard to recall all the self defense moves I had learnt at kick boxing class. When we got to the ninth floor, we got out and sales dude led us to a door that had one of those sliding metal burglary doors on it. When he unlocked the doors and let us in, all my fears vanished as we stepped into a room filled from floor to ceiling with the best made fake purses I have ever seen! Darin made a beeline for the watches at the one end of the room while I just gazed at all the Tod's, Prada and Coach bags dangling in front of me. Sales dude then showed me an adjacent room containing only Louis Vuitton purses and luggage, and another room containing all sorts of wallets. I was thrilled!

Later that day we went on a night tour of Hong Kong. This time we made sure that the narration was in English. We went to a night market (selling more knock-offs) and after that we were whisked to a floating restaurant called "Jumbo" where we were promised to enjoy and 8 course dinner of "fine authentic chinese cuisine". While the food was good, the portions were tiny - served in little saucers - and there was nothing really authentic about it. It was chinese food as we know it in America. But I don't know if I would have been able to stomach authentic chinese food anyhow, so it was ok.

We were seated at a round table with other tour group goers and this is where we met Katrina and Lloyd - a young couple from Wales who were on their honeymoon and en route to Bali. We immediately clicked with them and chatted away. On Darin's other side sat a Korean bloke who bought an entire bottle of Japanese clear liquor that tasted and smelled like petrol and was very very strong. He happily shared it with everyone at the table - and this is where the trouble started.

After dinner we rode the ferry back and stumbled to the bus that took us to a look-out point to view the harbour of Hong Kong. It was spectacular (the view, not the bus ride). Being the 2 youngest couples on the tour, Katrina and Lloyd and Darin and I decided to head to a swanky nightlife area called SoHo after the tour. There were a lot of bars and many expats and we walked around for a bit. Then we decided to go to a Kareoke bar - something about "when in Rome"... Anyway, this was no ordinary Kareoke place. It was like a hotel where you and your group checked into a sound proof room containing a large screen telly , some comfy couches and microphones. This guarantees you privacy, and no doubt embarrassment from the greater mass of people. Apparently, chinese people have business meetings and corporate events here!

Anyway, the unexplained mystery of Kareoke hit me the next morning when I tried to figure out how adults could possibly think that belting out "Girls just wanna have fun" at the top of their lungs in front of virutal strangers is a terrific idea. I hope that Lloyd and Katrina had a fabulous time in Bali, and that they would contact us when they got back. Perhaps they would be able to clarify the mystery of the missing wallet and the white jacket and also inform us of the whereabouts of certain incriminating pictures taken at the Kareoke place?

If you'd like to see more pictures of Hong Kong:

Hong Kong - Nov 2006

Yokohama, Japan - Nov 2006

We went to Yokohama, Japan - a port city 90 minutes by "limousine bus" from Tokyo international airport. Darin had to be there for work and I tagged along as "complimentary spouse". In Japan, I felt for the first time what it must feel like to be illiterate. English is not widely spoken and almost all signs, menus, directions, instuctions and labels are written in Japanese only. At most restaurants they simply tell you "no menu in english" and we had to resort to pointing at pictures hoping that whatever we ordered was edible and not something very gross. Here I was thinking in Afrikaans, trying to locate the word in English, looking at Japanese and resorting to body language.

All in all, the food everwhere was excellent. Our favorite was tempura (I liked the shrimp and veggie ones and Darin liked the pork) that is served with cabbage on which you drizzle a molasses sauce. You also get a little mortar and pessle in which you grind some sesame seeds to mix into a past for dipping the tempure in. Delish!

Out of fear of being rude, I read up on some Japanese etiquette and learned that blowing your nose in public as well as eating or drinking while walking around is a huge boo-boo. But the bowing still confuses me. I never knew to whom to bow, when to bow, how deep to bow or how many times to bow but luckily I found out that nodding is acceptible for stupid westerners like ourselves, so I nodded a lot.

The not-being-able-to-understand-anything made me get lost a few times - I got on the wrong train, went to the Art Museum and couldn't understand any of the descriptions, wandered around grocery shops looking at items wondering what it was. It felt like I was stuck in that movie called "Lost in Translation". I also went to Chinatown (Yohohama strangely has the largest Chinese settlement in Japan) which was even more overwhelming because here I didn't know if I should even speak the 2 words in Japanese that I knew (hello and thank you).

I found myself thinking of the time with my parents in New York City when my dad (who was obsessed with observing orthodox jews in their environment at the time - don't ask) made my mum and I join him in a quest to secretly follow an orthodox person to his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Our presence in this community was frowned upon, and as we walked down the street, every shop changed there "open" signs promptly to "closed" right in our faces. Anyway, this is a story for another time..



Not that I felt unwelcome, just uncomfortable. One day we went on a sightseeing tour of Yokohama, hoping to see more of the sights without having to find things ourselves. When we got on the bus, we realised that the tour was in Japanese only - the tour guide didn't even speak english. We spent the rest of the day listening to Japanese commentary and being driven around in a bus to destinations we did not know. Each time we got off the bus, she held up a little sign for us with the time at which we were to return to the bus, so it worked out well! We went to a rose garden with a view of the bridge, to Sankeien Gardens (an authentic Japanese Garden) and took some really nice pictures.

To view more pictures of Yokohama:

Yokohama - Nov 2006