Christmas, Singapore style

As I mentioned in my previous post, Singapore recognizes holidays from several major religions, Christian being no exception.  Shortly after the Deepavali lights in Little India came down, the 'Christmas in the Tropics Festival' lights and decorations went up.  The 27th annual Orchard Road Christmas Light-Up, a major showpiece of the festival, stretched for several kilometers from Tanglin Mall down Orchard Road, and this year's theme of 'Starlit Christmas' was dazzling.  Past themes have included 'A Fairytale Christmas' and 'The Enchanted Garden'.  Eleven buildings this year competed in the 'Best Dressed Building Contest'.

The theme of 'Starlit Christmas' was represented by three sections of lights in pink, blue, and purple to signify peace, joy, and love.  The Singapore Tourism Board website expounded on the color theme:

 "Tiffany & Co. is thrilled to be part of Singapore’s annual Christmas Light-Up which is the highlight of the country’s efforts to celebrate the Holiday season of joy and giving. The blue theme and the blue-accented Tiffany Christmas trees along Orchard Road will serve to enhance our central message of Joy and how Tiffany has sought to enrich the lives of its customers with enduring gifts of extraordinary beauty. All our stores throughout the city will also glow in blue with the thematic window displays, echoing that blue is the color of dreams,” said Ms Hew Yee Min, Managing Director of Tiffany & Co.

The blue section along Orchard Road will see Tiffany & Co.’s three 8 metre-high Christmas trees decked in the iconic Tiffany blue boxes and white bows to mark the magical moments this Christmas.

One night in mid-December, MH and I took our cameras down to bask in the neon glow.  As this was an occasion for both photography and shopping, the Singaporeans were out in force.  After a dinner of delicious dumplings at Din Tai Fung, we strolled along shoulder to shoulder with the locals and enjoyed Christmas, Singapore style.

Deepavali and Life After Death

As Singapore comprises four major religious/ethnic groups, the yearly holiday calendar exemplifies true Singaporean equality by highlighting festivals and holy days from the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist faiths.

About a month before the actual holiday, Little India was outfitted with several kilometers of lights in preparation for Deepavali, Hindu New Year.  As it is known as the Festival of Lights, Serangoon and Race Course Roads were fittingly lined with colorful light arches as far as the eye could see.

Even though MH was out of town, I dragged myself out alone on the eve of Deepavali as I didn't want to miss out on this interesting cultural display.  After reviewing several different bus routes, I settled on the 48.  My bus stop is the first stop the bus makes as it comes out of the terminal, so I always get a seat, and I get to see the ebb and flow of a bus route from the very beginning.

I put on an episode of This American Life to pass the time.  It was called 'Life After Death'.  As I sat listening to the story of a kid who was killed by lightning and of his friend's guilt for thinking he had summoned the deadly storm, the bus filled up around me.  Most of the riders were Indian, people from all walks of life heading to the festivities to celebrate.  Traffic was thick.

The podcast moved on to tell of a young man who struck a girl with his car, killing her.  He was not at fault, yet that seemed only to advance his guilt.  The bus was packed now.  I stared into the traffic, deep in a life and death reverie.  The Chinese woman in front of me held a linen handkerchief over her mouth and leaned into the window.  The bus did smell a little ripe.  However, as soon as the Indian man sitting next to her got up, she put her hanky away.  Maybe the equality only runs calendar deep.

An hour by myself on the crowded bus listening to stories about death left me feeling less than upbeat.  The crowd and heat I faced on exiting the bus did nothing to improve my mood.  The crush of people, Indian men to be more specific, was spectacular.  I stuck out, well, like a white girl in a sea of dark men. Fighting my way down a side street drove away all intentions I had of using my tripod.  At one point I was clotheslined by a guy who was attempting to make passing room for a woman with a stroller.  I sighed inwardly and waited with resigned patience, wondering how it was I had come to be pressed tightly against three Indian men, the door of a stalled car, and a rack of plaid shirts. Cultural enrichment, was it?  The stroller finally passed, rolling over my foot, followed by the woman who trod likewise on the same foot.

I finally made it to the Campbell Lane street bazaar, took a deep breath, and stepped into the current.  Stopping for pictures was out of the question.  'Life After Death' still on the brain, I pictured very vividly how easily this many people could turn into a deadly stampede.  I pushed away those thoughts and let myself be carried along, concentrating instead on the vivid colors and cacophony of lanterns, lights, flowers, scarves, beads and baubles.  I have to admit that the vibrant, eye-popping colors and masses of decorations cheered me up a little.

That said, I was not really in the mood to hang around.  Even though I was starving and would have loved some Indian food, I just had to get out.  I escaped the bazaar and walked a couple more side streets as purposefully as I could before hitting the bus stop.  Traffic was better on the way home.  I opted for music over another gloomy Ira Glass narrative.  Happy Deepavali.

Singapore Chinatown, Mid-Autumn Festival

It's Mid-Autumn Festival time here in Asia. Known in the western world as the autumnal equinox, this day is the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, the day of the fullest moon.

Here in Singapore, it's all about the moon cakes--people carrying around moon cakes to give as gifts, people carrying around moon cakes they were given as gifts, people carrying around non-moon cake items in moon cake bags to show that at one point they bought moon cakes at the most prestigious moon cake shop, and so on. It's also tradition to light lanterns.

One day in the early days of Singapore life, as I was sitting at the computer and gazing out over our balcony at the beautiful clear blue sky, a ridiculously loud crack of thunder shattered my reverie, propelling me halfway to the ceiling before I realized what it was. Momentarily mystified by this thunder that was literally 'out of the blue', it was not until I peeked out the front door to investigate that everything came clear, or rather, cloudy. While the SE facing the view from the balcony was as aforementioned, the NW facing view from the front door revealed roiling, seething, turbulent black clouds, rain, and streaks of lightning. I have since come to view the weather here as 'predictably unpredictable.'

So as I wandered through Chinatown the other day snapping photos of lanterns and odds and ends, I kept a corner of my eye on the indecisive sky, wondering what it was going to throw at me. At first it just played some games with the sun, but I wasn't fazed. Then it raised it's fists and threatened me, but it the end, it tucked its hands in it's pockets, spit on the ground a couple times, and left me alone. Here are some photos from my walk:

International Ski Festival, Yongpyeong Resort Korea, February 15-17

For the second year in a row, we attended Korea's International Ski Festival. Since my school graduation last year prevented me from actually doing any snowboarding, I was excited to be involved in the full weekend of activities this year.

We arrived Friday night to prepare for a day on the slopes Saturday. When we were picking up our lift passes and banquet tickets, I met the Korean girlfriend of another Danish guy, and she told me she had signed up for the women's snowboard race. I thought that was pretty cool and asked her how many women had signed up. To protect my own image, I will not disclose exactly how many participants there actually were, but there were few enough to get me to consider entering the race myself in spite of a two year snowboaring hiatus. She finally convinced me to sign up, and I was issued a bib and race instructions.

Morten and I managed one gondola run before I had to go to the race start point. Though I had issues (to put it mildly) with the second gate due to extreme ice, I completed the rest of the course in good form.

The award ceremony took place at the Saturday night banquet. The Korean girl came in second, and I finished third. We had both decided to race for Denmark to boost their representation, and even though their only placers were American and Korean, they were very excited to have been recognized in the Alpine events. I did not realize, however, that I would be given a certificate on which I was declared as being from Denmark, and I apologize to any of my American family or friends who are offended by this lack of home-country patriotism--it was not a deliberate snub.

Mud Festival, July 15th

This year's mud festival experience was quite different from last year's (which you can read about in the archived posts). We just went down to Daecheon Beach for the day and enjoyed the sun and water (first sea swim of the year)and mud. The only down side was the five hour return drive which should only have taken 2 or 2 1/2 hours.

9th Annual Boryeong Mud Festival, Daecheon Beach, July 15-17

Apparently going to the Boryeong Mud Festival is the thing to do in July. And rightly so--what's not to love about mud, especially mud purported to refresh your skin and make you glow even brighter than your Seattle tan already does?

Marc had been wanting to get a Korean driver's license, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. Julian helped arrange the rental of a lovely nine-passenger van, and Marc and Bryce gathered recruits. With eight people total, the van fee was fairly reasonable. So with license in hand and me, April, Marnie, Lee, Taylor, Bryce, and Morven in tow, Marc headed the van in the direction of Boryeong early Saturday morning. Boryeong is on the west-central coast in Chungcheongnam province. We figured it would take us four to five hours to get there, and that was about right.

Sleepin' in the van

We drove down the main strip in Daecheon Beach checking hotel rates and settled on a decent looking place with average rates and most importantly, as the festival draws thousands of visitors, available space. We dumped our stuff in our rooms, put on our mud clothes, and made a beeline for the main festivities. The day was hot, overcast, and humid--perfect for rolling in some mud.

Mud Prison!

We got food first which took way too long as no one could decide on a place to eat, and in the end we just ate at GS Mart anyway. Then, though the mud was calling us, the large waves of the Yellow Sea (much different from those of our own East Sea) called louder, and we went for a good frolic in the waves and taught a few of the lesser educated of the group the finer points of chicken fighting.

THEN we were ready for the mud. We found the main center of activity and jumped right in. There was mud surfing, mud wrestling, mud painting, a mud slide, and a mud prison, to name a few of the choices. We opted to throw ourselves in the mud prison and started flinging mud at each other with savage intensity. A 'jailor' also periodically hurled a dipper of mud into the prison, adding to the chaos and muddy mayhem. We spent several hours running back and forth from the sea to the mud, engaging in general foolishness. I nearly lost a contact in the mud wrestling vat but escaped before it got lost in the grime.

'Do you have a license for those guns?'The next Orbit gum commercial

I warily eye a prawn and view fireworks on the beach

April, Morven and Taylor sing their hearts out

After the sun went down, we schlepped back to our rooms to clean up for dinner. We girls abandoned the boys for some prawns then later met them down on the beach to watch the fireworks. We left the boys again as well as the beach this time to check out the carnival where we rode the Viking Ship. And finally, we ended with some late-night singing at a noraebang.

Late the next morning, we met under cloudy skies to grab some food before heading east. We ate hamburgers and fries at the 'foreigner restaurant' and waited out a downpour under the restaurant umbrella. During this time, we got word from another east coast friend who said traffic was terrible, roads were bad, and buses going east were cancelled. It didn't sound good, but we had our own van, so we loaded up and started out of town. It was about 3pm. I fell asleep, so I wasn't completely aware of what was going on, but when I woke up, I couldn't believe where we were. They told me that it had taken two hours to go something like three exits.

Everyone was quite weary, so we stopped for dinner to regroup. We had been on the phone with several tourism offices as well as a couple of our directors to find out which roads were open, and as we started driving again, the boys kept their eyes glued to the maps and the scrap of paper with the supposedly open route. By 8pm, we were to Wonju, the halfway point and the point that marked our detour from the regular highway. We took our turnoff but decided we went the wrong direction, so we turned around. Having determined that we were now going the right direction, we watched for the next turn. We found the sign for the right highway, but none of the cities matched the cities on the map. We stopped the van in the middle of the road, Taylor and Lee ran around in the dark checking various signs, and we eventually just decided to go north on the small winding road even though the map didn't match the signs. We stopped again in one of cities that didn't exist according to our map to get some drinks and snacks. The little shop owner in small-town, middle-of-nowhere Korea spoke great English, and he strongly advised us against proceeding. As it was now nearly 10pm and we had given it our best effort, we took the man's advice and threw in the towel, following his directions to some places to sleep up the road.

What we found was a lovely little mountain resort. We checked the rates even though it had big bucks written all over it, and sure enough, it wasn't cheap. In the meantime, April and Marnie had run up the hill to check a more modest establishment. They came back reporting rooms for 40,000 (roughly $40). That sounded great to us, but when the resort fellow heard we were taking our business elsewhere, he told us to wait, that he wanted to ask the owner if he would match the rate. Taylor, being the tactful, gracious, smooth-talker he is, oversaw the whole deal and came back with the incredible news that we were getting really nice resort rooms for 40,000 each. Most of us had a Monday holiday or didn't have to work until later in the day, so it ended up being a really fun surprise way to continue our weekend adventure. We patronized the outdoor restaurant and tried the natural water 'hot' tub.

In the morning, we got word that the main highway was open. We drove back down to Wonju, and along the way, we saw the insanity we had driven through in the dark the night before. The river had risen far above its banks, taking with it trees, bridges, houses, and roads. Once on the main thoroughfare, we saw why it had been closed. Whole hillsides of mud and rocks had collapsed into the road, taking out all four lanes in several places. The river had swollen such in other places that the road had simply crumbled into it. The countryside was slashed and scarred by impromptu rivers and mudslides. Our province was the worst hit by the rains, and many people died. As we drove through the destruction, I felt very blessed to be alive and well in our little van full of crazy foreigners.

We rolled into town around 1pm Monday afternoon, delirious and completely sick of each other but closer for all the weirdness we'd just gone through. I had a great time, and I'd do it all again given the chance. Cheers, Kang-sters!

Thanks to Marnie Recker, Photographer, for letting me steal some of her beautiful pictures.
Thanks also to Marc, Lee and Carey for the muddy pictures as I did not take my camera into the fray.