Friday, July 2nd: Haw Par Villa, Karaoke, A Late Night

Friday was an excellent (and very long, packed) day! It started fairly early for me - I had gone to bed really early Thursday night, and I woke up at 9 Friday without any alarm. For one of the first times this trip, I felt well-rested and energized - I usually feel like I get too much or not enough sleep.

I went down to the canteen for breakfast, and realized I hadn't really taken any pictures of our daily haunts! So here are some pictures of the stall where I get bubble tea almost every morning, and of the canteen in general.

Knowing that we were about to have a day full of awesome karaoke-ing and whatnot, and that we didn't have too many free days left, and that it was a beautiful morning and I felt really good, hadn't showered yet, and didn't mind getting sweaty, I decided to go out on my own excursion!

Being on my own, I noticed much more than I usually do when out with groups. So I took pictures of the courtyard at PGP and the path we walk to the bus stop most days, to give you a better idea of our daily routines.

^^ Courtyard behind the dorms

^^ Path we walk to the bus stop.

^^ The bus stop we generally use is in front of 7/11, and we call it "The 7/11 Stop," even though it has a different name on the route map.

The 7/11 bus stop is on a road called "Pasir Panjang Road," which means "Long Sand Road" in Malay. Our Singaporean guide, Hui Qian, lives on this road, and we ride the bus down it most days of the week to get to the MRT (metro) station. And yet, I noticed so many new things when I was a) walking instead of in a bus and b) on my own. Click here to get to the picture album of my morning. The first 28 or so pictures are of the buildings and fields along Pasir Panjang Road. Go take a look, then come back for the rest of the blog!

My ultimate goal was this crazy park called Haw Par Villa. A big group of people had paid a visit earlier in the trip, but for one reason or another, I hadn't gone with them. Everyone said it was a must-see, so I put it on my bucket list and decided this Friday was the time to do it!

So let me explain a little bit about the park, because it's pretty interesting. It was built by the Tiger Balm tycoon - Tiger Balm is a famous all-purpose cream (I think sort of like Vick's Vapo Rub?) that can supposedly heal virtually every kind of ailment. Anyway, the man who owned Tiger Balm built an amusement park full of statues depicting stories from Buddhist myths and canons for his brother. Especially infamous are the depictions of the 10 circles of hell.

This park probably presents a side of Buddhism that most people are not familiar with - it's not all peace and yoga and nirvana. The park also markets itself as a center of Chinese culture, so some of the myths come more from Chinese traditional stories.

The park is free, and anyone can wander in and wander around at their leisure. For me, the best thing to do there seemed to be to take pictures, so I took far too many (now you can go back to the album and look at the pictures for the park). It was actually really nice to walk around outside and get sweaty and gross in the sun - it can be very stress-relieving.

I got back to the dorm around noon, showered, and then headed back out for karaoke! Almost all of the SEAS kids went, and it was a grand old time! Getting there was a big fat mess, because it was pouring down rain and all of us got thoroughly soaked, even with umbrellas.

The karaoke itself was a lot of fun. We had three rooms for all of us, so we split up and then could move between rooms at our leisure. It was very silly and very funny and very cheap, and well worth the time and the rain we endured to get there.

Later Friday night, a group of us went out to a club on Tanjong Pagar Road (our favorite MRT stop because of the way the intercom voice pronounces it). It was a lot of fun, but we stayed until the club closed and didn't get back to our dorms until around 4. And thus ended a very, very long day for me!