Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Singapore!

What does an architecture major do while in a foreign country? GO SIGHTSEEING, of course! :) I just realized that I can't post all the photos of everything that I saw, so I'll just post some of my favorites. :)

I took 3 days off school for this vacation, and wow I missed a lot but it was all worth it. My mom and I were lucky to have been shown around by architect who worked with us for 7 years, and in that time eventually became our friend. :) Since she now works in Singapore, she's taken part in constructing some of these buildings! How cool is that?




After lunch, we around a little and ended up in Wheelock Place by accident, but it was a good thing because we could see Ion at Orchard right across! It was the first thing that Mae wanted to show us. :)

Wheelock Place was pretty impressive too. The cone was so interesting! :) This is a photo that I took from the escalator going up to the ground level.




Of course one of the places that we had to visit was the Marina Bay Sands hotel. The Marina Bay Sands is a 7-star hotel that stands at 57 storeys high. People who aren't staying at the hotel can go up to the skypark on the top floor for to view the whole city. It's the largest public cantilevered platform with a 67-meter overhang! It also has a 150-meter pool so its lad is incredible. It must have been a nightmare for the engineer to create. But whatever happened to them, they gt the job done and did it so well!


We were also able to visit the Esplanade, which locals call the "Durian." It was so cute and reminded me so much of my hedgehog back at home! :) Sorry for the poor quality of this photo. I'm still trying to get the hang of night photography.


What I really loved about Singapore is that they're so green. Everywhere you look, it's all trees! That's part of what makes it so clean. Imagine, in our world today you can drink their water out of a faucet! Even in the States you can't drink tap water anymore. Singapore is a little gold mine :)



Another thing that I really liked was that their government passed a law that the oldest structures cannot be changed with regards to exterior design. The structures in Chinatown haven't changed, but they're allowed to paint the buildings different colors and transform them into little side shops. :) The next photo is an old abbey called Chijmes, and now it's a strip of restaurants :) It was so pretty in there. One of my favorite places in Singapore :) It doesn't show but this facade is Gothic, but in the inside it shows some characteristics of early Christian architecture. Very interesting! :)

In five days I saw so many things, and I'm pretty sure that's not even all of it yet. Here's to more trips to Singapore! I promised myself to return when the green house is finished. :)

1 comment: