Today was my second all-day solo adventure! I visited fewer places than last week, but I spent more time at each place.
But before I began my adventure, I went to the Pasir Panjang Hawker Centre and got teh tarik (just like I did last week). This time, I took a picture!
Stop 1: Southern Ridges
I arrived to Harbourfront around 8:30am. Behind the Harbourfront MRT stop, there’s a trail that leads up to the Southern Ridges, a 9km trail that connects parks along the southern ridge of Singapore. The Marang Trail leads from the MRT stop to a cable car station on Mount Faber. To get up there, there were SO MANY STAIRS.
The view at the top was pretty nice though! I saw cable cars going to Sentosa, and I even saw the huge Merlion on Sentosa. However, I’ll visit that Merlion another day.
My first stop on the Southern Ridges was the Merlion at the top of Mount Faber Park. This is the third Merlion I’ve taken a picture with. The last two official Merlions I need are the ones at the Singapore Tourism Office and Sentosa.
After the Merlion, I kept walking through Faber Trail and ended up at the Henderson Waves. Henderson Waves is the tallest pedestrian bridge in Singapore, and it connects Mount Faber Park to Telok Blangah Hill Park. The bridge itself was designed to look like a wave, made up of yellow balau wood and steel ribs. The waves form little shelters where pedestrians can sit in and relax.
After I walked across Henderson Waves, I went on Hilltop Walkm which connects Henderson Waves to the Forest Walk.
The Forest Walk was essentially a really long bridge going through the forest (well, duh). There weren’t a lot of stairs (thank gods), and the walk was mostly shaded due to the tree cover. However, I didn’t see any animals, darn.
At the end of the Forest Walk, I ended up at the Alexandra Arch, an 80-metre long bridge that modeled after an open leaf. It connects Alexandra Road and Hyderabad Road.
When I got to Alexandra Arch, I was happy that I had finally been able to reach the really cool bridge! But then I realized that I might have to walk back like 5 km all the way back to the Harbourfront MRT.
But then I saw a bus stop, and being the lazy ass I am, I got on the first bus that came. I didn’t even know where it was going. I ended up looking up the bus route online and got off at the next MRT station it stopped at. I went back to NUS to shower, then went onto part 2 of my day!
Stop 2: Philatelic Museum
When I first saw the name of this museum, I wasn’t sure what it was. Was it a museum about people named Phil? What is a “philatelic?”
Turns out, it’s a stamp museum.
The museum was small, but it had some really cute exhibits. Their special exhibit was on Shakespeare, and there were some commemorative Shakespeare stamps on display, and stamps from all over the world based on Shakespeare’s plays.
But my favorite stamp in the entire museum is below:
That’s right, it’s the lion dance stamp! It’s acutally the cutest stamp I’ve ever seen. These stamps were printed in 1968 as part of a Singapore cultural dance stamp collection. Each stamp celebrates a different culture in Singapore through its form of dance. Of course, Chinese culture is represented by the lion dance 🙂
Stop 3: Peranakan Museum
Like for the Philatelic Museum, I had no idea what a “Peranakan” was before going in.
In the exhibits, I learned that the Pernankans were ethnically Chinese, but lived in southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Singaporea, and Indonesia. This mix of cultures lead to the Peranakan culture, which was of course based on Chinese culture. The museum itself was very interesting, and I feel like I learned so much about Peranakan culture.
The entire second floor was about Peranakan weddings, which I thought was very interesting. The weddings lasted about 12 days, and a different ritual was performed on each day.
The Peranakan women were called nonya, and there were examples of how they dressed in the museum.
I also learned that there is a specific style of Peranakan porcelein. However, much Peranakan porcelein was lost after the 19th or 20th century, since the Peranakans would sell their family porcelein for money.
Stop 4: Book Vending Machine
Last week, I heard about a new book vending machine (by BooksActually) at the National Museum of Singapore. Unfortunately, I had already visited the museum before I found out about the book vending machine.
Today I took a quick stop at the National Museum to see the book vending machine and take some pictures! I didn’t buy any books though, since I had already bought 4 books from BooksActually.
I stopped by in Chinatown for dinner, then got ice kachang at Clementi for dessert. I won’t post about either of those here though…check out my food page on this blog for information about the food!
