We went to see The King’s Speech last weekend (excellent, and with a fun audience that laughed at the jokes), and in the interminable round of advertisements before the movie began, pride of place (just before the movie itself) was given to the Singapore My Home music video. This is a full-on production with all […]
It’s just tobacco, nothing more exotic. The tobacco is in a reservoir under the tray at the top, on which they place burning charcoal. The temperature of the tobacco is thus maximized without its burning to a nasty stinking cigarette-like smoke. You go to a cafe and rent a hookah, for a smoking session of […]
A grandmother and her young charges. The kids are very cute at this time of year.
We have finally gotten around to exploring this part of Singapore; it’s where the old Malaysian rulers of Singapore used to live, next to the Sultan Mosque, below: There’s a network of streets with traditional shop houses on them (very long houses about half a block deep, that are/were shops or warehouses on the first […]
Who says pink clashes with red and orange? These are the decorations at our local giant mall, and I like them! In fact, I’m trying to design a house in which I’d have light fixtures like this in every room. Chinese New Year is a 15-day period in which you stage many family reunions and […]
Monkey Forest Road in Ubud terminates at the Monkey Forest Reserve – well actually it doesn’t terminate, but joins Jalan Hanoman (the monkey hero of the Ramayana) and swings back into town. But at this southern end of the town you can enter the reserve, paying a modest price to do so, and with the […]
In Ubud, you can go to a different dance performance every night of the week. They’re given in the public spaces of the temples, and are sacred, but that doesn’t mean they object to selling tourists tickets. The dances seem to be generally concerned with retelling the Ramayana, or parts of it, so they’re intimately […]
Like so many Asian countries, one of the wonderful things about Bali is that people wear traditional costumes as well as the ubiquitous T-shirt and jeans (or shorts). Herewith, some pictures of people in Balinese garb: This man is wearing the Hindu turban (as opposed to the Indonesian muslim skullcap), with a peak at the […]
I went to this temple in 1993. It’s still there, but there are a lot more Buddha statues. Now the whole trail up the mountain (some 460 stairs) is lined with life-sized gold-painted Buddhas in astonishing variety: These are the ones you can see from the main pavilion about two thirds of the way up. […]