A room with a view

I've been travelling the past three weeks and there has been a real variety of views from my hotel window.

First, I was speaking at a HP Partners conference in Sanya on Hainan Island at the south of China.  You don't really think of tropical island when you think of China but it was very hot and the Mandarin Oriental was a really beautiful five star resort.  I also spent two nights in Hong Kong near the airport but didn't take any photos out the window.

Week 2 saw me back in China after a day and a half at home.  This time to attend some planning meetings in Shanghai.  The taxi trip from the airport to the hotel was scary, doing 150km down the freeway with no seatbelts! The Grand Hyatt is in JinMao tower in the finance district and my room had a great view from level 67.  It was a pretty full week but I did have one evening to myself where I walked down to the river and enjoyed dinner while ships, ferries and barges cruised past.

Week 3 was a shorter one.  I didn't fly out to India until Tuesday night which gave me a few days to enjoy Christine's visit.  First stop in India was the Fortune Select Hotel in Gurgaon, which is outside New Delhi. My view from level 6 was of the metro station and nearby offices. I was involved in delivering a training class and we were there the day that a bomb went off at the High Court, killing 12 people.  A bit scary to hear about but not close to where we were.  That night there was a magnitude 4 earthquake but I didn't feel that either.

From Delhi I flew down to Bangalore to stay at the Fortune JP Cosmos.  Bit better standard than the Delhi hotel but neither could match either my China rooms or views.  After delivering our training day on the Friday, we flew out Friday night, arriving home in Singapore at 6am the next morning.

Ancestral Graves to High Tea

 Mum's visit has had lots of highlight. We've been to Swan lake on Ice, dined at a hawker centre, found my great great Uncle's grave at Kranji War Cemetery, visited Little India, Arab Street, the Botanic Gardens, Orchard Road shops, checked out Raffles Hotel in the colonial district and been for a few swims in the pool.

Today we watched the girls run in their Cross Country at MacRitchie Reservoir. Alice came first in her age group and Felicity cam second in her age group. Both were delighted with their achievement. I've enjoyed spending a week with Mum and our last thing to do is High Tea at Goodwood park. Then  she hops on a plane and tomorrow I start work full time as the MarComm / Membership Manager at the Australian Chamber of Business. So no more playing for me...

Family Time

We've enjoyed visits from Andy again and Tricia and now Mum is here to stay for a week. It's been nice having the family drop by as Matt has had a lot of travel to Hong Kong and Sanya two weeks ago, Shanghai last week and it will Bangalore and Delhi this week. Luckily we get to see him on the weekends.

Mum and I had a day of coffees, and pedicures and shopping and School pick up and drop offs on Friday. After experiencing the expat wife side of Singapore, we went wild yesterday by bike riding around Pulau Ubin and then headed off to the Night Safari. Today is more civilised once again with a trip to Marina Bay Sands for the Swan Lake on Ice Show.

Happy Father's Day to Dad and Bruce and all the other Dads.

Syonan Jinja

Yesterday was another great geocaching adventure with Andy.  This time the target was Syonan Jinja, the ruins of a Japanese Shinto Shrine built during the World War 2 occupation and then destroyed by the British.  The cache is called Yamashita's Gold and has a reputation of being a more difficult and epic cache in Singapore.  We set off from the entrance of the tree top walk about 8:40 and spent just over 3 hours getting in and out.  The trail was fairly easy to follow and it wasn't quite as tough as we'd feared, although I would still not want to be finding my way out in fading light.  It also helped our confidence that we met another large group of walkers, who had done the walk before. Happily for me (unhappily for Alice and Andrew) we didn't see any blue Coral Snakes or Spitting Black Cobras, as reported by some previous cachers.

The ruins themselves were pretty amazing and much larger than I had expected.  The original shrine looked across Macritchie Resevoir (roughly in center of Singapore) to what is now a golf course but the jungle has all grown back now.  We could clearly see the broad platform at the bottom (see 1943 photo below) and then climbed the stone steps up the hill.  At the top was a basin for washing and more stone ruins.  While we could occasionally hear the golfers across the water, traffic in the distance and fighter jets overhead, we were still standing in a pretty isolated part of Singapore, surrounded by jungle.  It was very cool.

Catching Up

We enjoyed catching up with a few friends on Singapore's recent National Day. Our balcony proved to be a good viewing platform for the fireworks and it was nice to have some friends over and wave the flag. This weekend our friend Paul stayed for a few nights. We took him for a fish spa and up the top of Marina Bays Sands for a drink and to see the view. Andrew is also staying with us for the week, but he's gone today to Hong Kong but will be back Thursday. It's been fun hearing the news from home.

Malacca Moments

Last weekend we went on a Malaysian excursion to Malacca with Bruce and Merilyn. This has been a trip we have wanted to do for a long time and it was fun exploring a new place. Malacca is rich in both history and colour with a lively market street and loads of museums. As an important port in the past it has been run by Sultans, then the Portuguese, then the Dutch then the British who have all left their mark on the place. We'll even forgive it for having an obvious lack of safe footpaths because the dodge the traffic game does give the place character. Bruce did manage to score some battle wounds on his leg for failing to negotiate a big hole in the pavement but I suspect that 1 in every 6 tourists to Malacca could probably tell a similar story.

We enjoyed rickshaws rides, markets, massages, museums and the younger Bertrams went to a waterpark while the more mature ones went on a tour of a private Peranakan museum. Now we are back home and we had to say good bye to Grandma and Poppa last night. It's been fun having them join us in the tropics for a while.

Today I put the girls back on a bus to Malaysia for their school camp so the house is unusually quiet...