So long, Singapore!

Well... this is it. I am going off to the airport in one hour.

I still cannot believe these have been six months! I arrived yesterday!! 

The time here has been amazing (as you all witnessed) I hope I could convince you of how awesome Singapore is.

I still have plenty of pictures so I will continue blogging even if I am not here anymore. In a few hours I will be in Qatar, then Munich and in a week in Cambridge (UK), so I think I won´t run our of material so soon. The adventure continues!!

Family

This Tuesday my labmate Xien organized a farewell-lunch for me and my colleagues and it was so much fun! There were TONS of food. Some of us cooked together the evening before and some brought their food from home. Be as it may, we were all stuffed by the time we were done!! 

I am the luckiest person on earth, I always end up having the nicest labs in the world! First my lab in Munich with my pericyte-mom Nicole ♥ and the rest of the crew and now these amazing people that have become my singaporean family (literally, as you can see, they are mostly locals). I want to send all of them a big, big hug: Karen and Justin (labrats, yeah!), Valerie, Xien, Jean-Pierre, Sandra, Kar Wai, Chai Ling, Lu En, Ben, Sumathy and Xi Lei (this is also a good opportunity for you to see what I had to go through when I just arrived and had to learn all those names...)! Thanks for making me feel like at home for the last 6 months! 

The Beach from The Beach

Even though all of the islands we visited on our boat journey through Ko Phi Phi were stunning there is one that is the equivalent to an island supermodel: Phi Phi Leh. It became famous in 2000 when my future husband, Mr DiCaprio, and his actor friends jumped around this beach and rediscovered life and all those important things, inspired by the beauty of the beach. Well, thanks to this movie the beach is the main tourist attraction of these Islands. Here you have the movie poster btw:

For more information on this movie you can look here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film). It has been a while since I have quoted Wikipedia.

Anyways, the beach is, of course, breathtaking but maybe A BIT overcrowded:

Ok, let me show you a close-up:

Yeah, it looks like a public pool in summer... It was really, really beautiful, the only problem is everyone else seems to think the same. It's definitely a bit fuller than in the Movie where my man was running around basically alone. Be as it may, I enjoyed the beach, because I could bargain some cheaper ice-cream so yay! (yes, there is a hidden hut behind the trees that sells ice-cream). 

By the way, the count-down is on! I am leaving in 4 days. 4 days, people, 4 DAYS!!!! I don't believe it either...

Long Time no Chicken Feet!

 Today I went for Dim Sum with my friends from work to this place that is apparently quite famous. I have written about this kind of food before, but I would like to show you what I had this time, especially since this type of meal can be very different from time to time.

As you can see the only thing that I had both times is my all-time favorite: chicken feet! They really do taste good but, to be honest, it still takes me some overcoming to eat them. Also there is not much flesh on them and I am not a huge fan of just chewing on cartilage (which is kind of the purpose of this dish). Anyway, here is a brief description of what you can see (no names, they all sound the same to me): the small dumplings in the upper right corner are filled with prawn (ANYTHING filled with prawn in this restaurant was incredibly amazing!), next to it the chicken feet, then some pork meat wrapped in rice sheets (seriously I am noticing I have no idea about the names of the things in any language....), the yellow things in the lower left corner were filled with prawn as well but dont ask me what the rest was (but they were really, really good!) and the big balls are some egg yolk lava ... damn there is a name for it! Ok, I'll show you a bigger picture of them to hide the fact that I don´t know what I am eating...

As you can see it was filled with egg and, I have to say, the name "lava" does not come out of nowhere, I actually burned my fingers when I was holding that thing while passing something to my frined and trying to clean up the mess I had already made in like 15 seconds. Surprisingly enough it tasted quite buttery.

We also had some chicken (I am assuming it is chicken although it does not look like that at all, but i remember there were small bones in it so...) on rice, some fried dumplings (with mayonnaise, mhhhh...) and some milk tea (I really like the way they serve it with the ice in a separate bowl, so it is not diluted! :D) 

As usual the food here was really, really good! What am I going to eat in europe!? I cannot eat steak with chopsticks!!

... and Mountains Surrounded by Glass

A fascinating part of the Gardens by the Bay are their conservatories! At first I thought they would be just like any other: a bunch of plants under some glass. End of story. Little did I know, that the conservatory we visited contained:

a whole mountain!!  And not just any mountain! This one had several floors to walk in and walls covered with flowers. There were cascades and shining minerals, bridges and sculptures and all sorts of plants imaginable in between.

On top of the mountain there is this small lake with some wooden rodents sitting in some kanoes..

The views are, of course stunning. If it wasn't for this Marina Bay Sands blocking the views, as usual!

We only got to see one of the conservatories but this was already pretty impressive by itself! What a beautiful way to set up plants!

Of Glowing Trees...

After this weekend I can check another Singaporean must-see of my list: Gardens by the Bay. They are located behind the Marina Bay Sands and, just like the building, they are pretty stunning:

The big structures are artificial trees that are not only decorative, but also collect solar energy and help to reduce the humidity inside the conservatories. As if this was not enough one of them has a bar on top of it and the rest serve as pilars for a hanging bridge, that looks like this:

The views from the bridge are not too bad either...

The best part is how they use the energy obtained from the sunlight:

The trees are illuminated and the whole park turns into a scenario that reminds me of the movie Avatar.

Of course the lights change colors and sparkly dots crawl up the trunk and spread among the branches. More pictures to come!

Blue Lagoon

After alking among monkeys we were taken to this amazing lagoon where we jumped off the boat and swam around in the gorgeous water (I think I have not metioned how beautiful the color of the water was there...)

This, by the way, is my new desktop background:

If you wonder why the islands always look like spheres from the far, this is why:

The constant collisions of the water on the rock have led to this curious formation. Not to bad for climbing, if it weren't that smooth...

The large stone walls looked very impressive, I wanted to jump off the boat all the time!

:)

The Jungle Blog

Today I went to the reserve around the McRichie reservoir with two of my friends. Although Singapore is not exactly famous for being a large country and one would think that even the last square cm has been taken over by buildings, this is not the case. There are numerous reserves in Singapore, many more than I would have thought and the funny thing about them is the fact that it only takes five minutes from being on a regular civilized street to find yourself here:

As usual the flora is stunning!:

And if you look closely there are a lot of animals, too:

We actually saw a huge lizzard and some squirrel as well and apparently in other areas of this reserve you can see monkeys! (Btw. for those reading, I need to settle this now. Who do you think would win in a fight: a   monkey (regular sized, like the ones from monkey island) or a dog (of the size of a golden retriever (not necessarily this species, but I am bad with dog names...)? Please leave your answer in the comments, so we can settle the discussion we had during the trip (and I am not going to influence you by reminding you of the sharp monkey teeth and its ability to be everywhere in a few miliseconds because I want to keep this fair and I am sure you already thought of those irefutable facts!)

This park also has a huge hanging bridge that lets you walk directly above the incredible jungle.

Some trees are so weird there is no way of telling which way is up!:

Also, I never stop being amazed by the size of the leaves in this country. They can be enormous, I am not kidding you!

It just takes like 3 of these leaves to build a hut, door included...

It was a really nice trip, but it was also incredibly hot! There is a reason my friends insisted on meeting at 7:30 the latest. I was soaked by the time I got to the mrt, so everyone in the vagon loved me ♥.

Hipster Food-pics Time!

Today I went to have dinner with my supervisor Valerie and we had some awesome Japanese food! 

We started with sushi:

I LOVE the salmon, especially with the soy sauce, I could eat kilos and kilos of it!!

Unfortunatelly I forgot all the names, but we also had this:

The meat in the upper right corner is added to the boiling soup together with the mushrooms in the middle and when it is done you can eat it with some amazing rice that had pieces of cooked salmon. We had some more things, like this rice or some other sushis, but my incredibly good phone was shutting down everytime I tried to take a picture, so you can mail all the complaints to him. 

It was a delicious dinner and a really fun time and I want to thank Valerie who invited me to this as a good-bye present (you heard it, I have one foot out the door already! :( )

Good night!

Happy Pi day!

By the way, before I forget! A happy Pi day to all of you out there!! You dont believe this is a thing? Wrong!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day

Yay!

ระวัง! ลิง!!

Island number three. I'll let you guess the name (if you have not already guessed by the title of this post).

No, it's not "Boat Island" or "I-cannot-believe-the-color-of.the-water Island". (Talking of which I have to show one last water picture. Look at this!!: )

I'll give you one better clue, though:

Exactly, Monkey-Island. Not only was this island incredibly beautiful, there were monkeys running up and down the beach!! 

How cute are the babies?!!! You were not allowed to feed them but some people ignored that, which was pretty stupid since these things can actually be very dangerous if they want to.

Now we all know where Chris' monkey came from (and why he is always so grumpy, btw. If I went from this beach to a teenager's closet, I would not be in a much better mood...)

The surroundings were amazing as well. Look at the small island in the background! Why does not everybody live here!?

Ducking awesome food!

And from Thai food we go to Singaporean delights. Today I went to have lunch with my friends from work and we decided to try a place nearby that is famous for its duck chicken. This is what it looked like:

As my friends well observed I was the only Ang Mo there (a term they use for caucassians over here which literally means "red-haired"), so again I blended in perfectly, even better when I started taking pictures of every square cm there.

Ok the quality of this one is very crappy but I did not want to stay 10 minutes taking pictures of their dishes. This is actually in the same room then the tables and it's a very common way to wash the dishes and the chopsticks found in all the hawker centers here. They basically put it in a huge bowl with water and wash it there. The fact that plates and cuttlery are usually made out of plastic makes it much easier to handle and clean. 

This is the actual duck and it was REALLY good! (Speaking of REALLY god, how about the picture quality of my friend's phone camera (At this point I would like to thank Karen for lending me her phone so I could take pictures of everything!)). Anyways, this is what we had:

I am not sure what the vegetables were, but the thing on the left is tofu which was also amazing and of course we had rice as a side dish.

This is what it looks like from the outside. You can see how this guy cuts up the duck with a knive and a velocity that you have to wonder how frequently they have to exchange the man...

Good night!

Thai food

I can't remember having actively been to a Thai restaurant in Europe, so I was not sure what would expect me, but after only 2 days in Thailand I know that I love it!! A lot of recipes that I knew from other asian restaurants turn out to be Thai and the new ones are incredible as well.

The thing in the bowl is green curry, which was amazing and the rolls are Thai spring rolls, also very good. They have a strong taste of lemongrass which I was not used to in the beginning but I really liked in the end. The thing in the front is a fish salad which I enjoyed a lot as well.

There was a lot of cut up meat with vegetables (like cashew chicken, which is amazing!) that we ate with boiled rice. In this restaurant next to the beach they serve it like this:

I am so sure they used one of those sand-moldings for this! 

So they DO exist...

I have introduced you to the first two islands we visited during our tour around the Phi Phi islands in my last two posts, so I guess it's obvious what has to come next... exactly: 

Japanese toilets.

I have always heard those stories about how weird they are supposed to be and how the have more functions than all apple gadges combined (notice the lower case "apple" as I am, of course, referring to the fruit and can therefore not be sued in any way). Be as it may I always though those were the toilets they might present in Japan at some fair but not actually use. Well, live to learn, this is what I walk into as I go to the toilet in Narita:

So far, it does not seem TOO strange, untill we take a closer look:

I don't know which of the buttons is more confidence-inspiring: The mysterious blue sign, that is disturbing no matter how you interprete it, the pink one, that makes you wonder what the hell the previously mentioned blue button is for, the flushing sound button which, not being random enough on it's own, has some volume regulating buttons or the water pressure buttons that might influence all or none of the previous functions. In case some of you still have any doubts everything is perfectly well explained in Japanese, Chinese and English (thank god for this last one).

Of course I was ultra curious, but I only dared to press the sound button since I was too afraid to get showered by the other two. After giving it some thought though, I have come to notice that there is no regulation for the temperature of the water. What barbarian circumstances are these!?