Sunday, February 25, 2024

Davillas in Singapore Part 2

We spent some time in the jungle with the Davillas. Above is the tree with the house inside.
They were quite good at jungling.
Although at one point, Mark seemed a bit scared of the "Avatar Trees".
Tammie found secret overgrown stairs.
We saw the Colugos, including a baby inside the mother's patagium. You can see the patagium being lifted here on the left, and now I've succeeded in using the word patagium three times.
Tammie tried durian, and I would share the face she made, except that shockingly, she liked it, so here is a picture of some durian.
We went to Haw Par Villa to learn some moral lessons and teachings. The Davillas enjoyed emaciated Buddha, even though he has a tree growing from his feet and appears to be sitting on dentures.
There were no moral lessons discouraging sumo belly touching.
16 years later, and I still haven't fully mastered the Thai dancing pose, but I think I did better than Tammie.
The Haw Par Villa hells have reopened, and they remain gruesome. Some of the "sins" for which you can be punished have been altered. "Stealing of Library Books" has expanded to all "Mistreatment of Books", to my dismay.
My favourite many-headed deity welcomed us as visitors. All twelve faces look calm, despite surely being very uncomfortable.
Here's Mark, with a temple lion.
Here's the Sakya Muni Buddha, and we went inside his bum, since you can. But we nearly got stuck in there by a praying man.
After all of this, the Davillas became slightly more Buddhist, I think.
And definitely more Asian. Here is Tammie picking up individual sesame seeds with chopsticks.

Davillas in Singapore Part 1

The Davillas came to Singapore, so we helped them to get oriented.
We introduced them to our friends, and took them to Chinatown.
We made sure that they had enough to eat, because jetlag can make you hungry.
We took them to visit 12-pack guy, whose abs are only overshadowed by his eyebrows.
He lives in this beautiful Buddha Tooth Relic temple.
There, we posed with our horoscope animals. This is how Barry chose to do so. 
See if you can spot us here in front of the glowy dragon.
There were dragons everywhere.Including in the sky! This is the drone show, which I'm hoping happens again!
We got many pretty pictures for Chinese New year.
As usual, I was especially photogenic.
Since I still don't know where to look for selfies, Tammie's kids would call us Boomers, even though we're clearly Gen X.
Tammie became a bigtime of Maneki-neko and imitated the cat but with only 1 of her arms.
Speaking of booming, here Tammie shows why you can't use panorama mode when there are people walking.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Mosques, Forts, Amusement and Corn

The mosques of Muscat are best photographed at night. Fun fact, the Grand Mosque, above, lets non-Muslims in, which is a rarety.
Outside of Muscat, we saw different styles of Mosque. This one, called Jamea Al Islam, inspired George Lucas, I believe.
Low-key town mosque.
Shorter Mountain Mosque.
Speaking of small towns, most of them have forts!
Some were in better conditions than others.
We mostly couldn't go inside, but I bet the best parties happen down here.
They seemed to be restoring this one. Tricky.
I like fort ruins, but one thing I love is an abandoned amusement park!We found this one by accident, and struggled to know if it was abandoned 2 or 30 years ago.
But we did learn that Omanis eat corn at amusement parks. Not popcorn, but seasoned corn.

Axils and Breaks

Welcome to my new favourite restaurant: Loaloat Yemeni Happy. It never seemed to actually open, but the name is fantastic.Shopfronts in Oman were curiously descriptive.
I made Barry back up a bit for this double whammy of axils and breaks.
This one says "Sale of Boats, Sell Tours, Equipment and Fishing", but no boats were spotted.
We found an Irish presence in Oman, but my Irish friends tell me they prefer the 3-leaf clover.
In addition to the shopfronts, I was also a big fan of the doors.
Well, hello little guy!
Such great doors.
The houses, not so much. This place likely says: Fake rose water factory only open for tour buses.
These ones are my top choices for updating our home door.
This door was in a castle we went to see. You can see the regular-sized door at the bottom that we could not pass, not being sufficiently royal.
This last door is so nice that no roof was required. It doesn't rain much in the desert.
Final thought, how many types of dates do you know? The grocery store had 10 in bulk, and many more packaged. I tried several, and got happier but more confused.