Gardens By The Bay – Heritage Garden & Others

Inche and I visited the Flower and Cloud Forest dome earlier. After that, we promised to come back to explore the other free areas, maybe the following week. Due to one reason and another, our return visit was delayed for more than a month =__='' Well, at least we made it, finally.

Gardens by The Bay - Map to the Adventures!

Wanting to capture both the afternoon and evening scene, we decided to go there just few hours before sunset. We reached Bay Front at around 5pm, and started to walk around Garden By The Bay. Not long afterwards, so we decided to stop at a nice shelter and had our sandwich with panoramic view of the Dragonfly Lake (which coincidentally, sponsored by EM :p) We continued to walk full steam after the nice picnic.

Worry that no decent food around, we packed Subway all the way from home XD

The nice view while eating :)

First pic together! Afternoon scene :)

Ever since I stepped to the garden, I got a feeling that I would be lost, and we indeed did ^^; It's either us or the map. The map looked simple, but the real location wasn't anywhere near what the map depicted. Even the signboard was kind of misleading :s very rare for me to get a chance to complain about Singapore. Haha. I do see some parts of the garden which are still under construction. Hopefully it will be better after the construction is completed.

We walked until some Waterlily Pond... and then declared that we're lost

We started walking from Dragonfly Lake and continued walking around the way. Honestly, all the location looked the same for me ^^; everywhere we go, there are the Supertree, Dome, and Marina Bay Sands in the background. Don't ask which part were we at. We really didn't know too.

The process flow explaining the whole Sustainable energy thing 

With Marina Bay Sands Background! :D

The Almost-Sunset View of Supertree + Marina Bay sands

Another view with Supertree + Dome background. I guess we're around The Canopy Area

I like jump shot!! But I always look weird v_v

If you can tell the difference in color contrast... well, it's Inche's Canon S95 

One of my favourite shot! Again, with the Supertree Grove as the background

One of the areas I wanted to visit is the Heritage Garden, where it shows the different garden theme for different race in Singapore!

Started with Indian Garden!

Playing at Chinese Garden's Wall - Inche's Idea 

Malay Garden! With MBS as background... Traditional vs Modern 

.... I believe this is part of Colonial Garden, hopefully.

Stephen joined us right after we finished exploring the Heritage Garden. Soon, we had the evening view of Gardens by the Bay :D

Love the lights! Credit to Inche's Camera!

Taken during the lights show at Supertree Grove. I tried with my camera and I got pitch black 

After the show, we walked around and realized that there is actually a canteen-like place within the garden! It's actually more of restaurant since you actually have to wait to be seated. Not like kopitiam where you can just chop a seat and eat everywhere.

Supre Tree Dining and it's restaurants

Texas Chicken - the only decent food we found. Super crowded. Suddenly felt lucky that we bought our Subway 

Beside canteen is the souvenir shop. The Udders Ice Cream looks really nyummy

After walking around few more areas, we decided to call it a day and head back to MRT. I had great time :) The evening view is really breathtaking with the play of lights. Personally, I will still prefer the afternoon view - I like to take pics and my camera just not good enough for evening (face) shots T_T

Ending this post with Supertree Grove shot!

Till the next visit! Which I believe I will still be lost,
ED

Ice Cream Making Workshop + Buffet @ Ice Cream Skool

It's yet another event organized by our Rec Club. I signed up 5 minutes after I received the invitation email few weeks ago. People who know me would guess in an instant that my priority was on the buffet instead of the workshop :p (which is a pity, because the $30 of the $40 cost goes to the workshop and $10 on the buffet). I joined 2 ice cream workshops before and always re-convinced after the workshop that buying ready-made ice cream is so much more hassle-free, tastier, and maybe cheaper.

Anyway, back to Icecream Skool. Will full determination, I woke up at 7am on a Saturday and traveled all the way to Tampines for the workshop at 10am. 

Ice Cream Skool @ Tampines

We spent the first 15 minutes learning the key ingredients to icecream (butterfat, sugar, emulsifiers, air) and different types of "frozen dessert". There are Sorbet - 0% fat, Sherbet - 2% fats, Gelato - 7% fats, and Ice cream > 10% fats.

The "Lecture Notes" and "Lab Equipment" - 10 people in each group!

Our first dessert of the day was...  Mango Sorbet. She did the demo for us, and it looked really easy - simply mix mango puree with sugar water and then froze and stir for 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours of stirring. The instructor gave us some to try afterwards. It tastes quite good. But two hours of stirring? I prefer ready-made, thanks.

The pro doing mixing the Mango Puree with Sugar Water

Mango Sorbet in two hours! Only if you have the right frozen equipment.

Second dessert of the day was... Milo Ice Cream! Ok don't ask me about the details. Throughout the session, my mind was just counting down to the buffet :p My partner, Aakriti, was really busy taking notes and asking questions, while I was trying to follow the instruction and getting it done with ^^; Have fun taking pictures of others though :D

The big can of Milo is really tempting

Start mixing and stirring!

Heated Yolk + Milo added to Cream + Milk + Sugar 

Getting some proof that I'm doing something

The third dessert of the day was... Cookies and cream ice cream! I like this one the most! I think it's the closest we managed to make to the ice cream sold outside. It tastes similar to the Oreo's icecream sold at Fairprice, but of course... erm. the Fair Price's one taste 10 times better.

The ingredient for Cookies and Cream Ice Cream!

"Massaging Ice-Cream" - alternative to egg in ice cream to cater to vegetarian

The end product :s

Looked better after taking it out from plastic and spring some oreos on top (relief)

The fourth and last task before the buffet was making a waffle. This one was really easy :D We're just asked to mix the ingredients and then they baked it for our ice cream buffet ^^

Our Waffles mix!

It was almost 12.30pm while we were waiting for the waffles to be ready. All of us was pretty hungry and started to discuss on what to have for the first scope. I wanted to go for Peanut Butter, but changed my mind half way when I saw their Dark Chocholate. It's so thick I'm sure it's delicious.

First Scoop! Dark Chocolate! - Thick but not the best

Second Scoop! Rum and Raisins + Peppermint

Third Scoop! Peanut Butter + Caramel - The best :)

In my wild imagination, I would tried every single flavor they have. In real life,  I'm quite full after the second scoop ^^; I ended up finishing three scoops and tried a spoonful of some other flavours. The ice creams are definitely better than our creations, but nothing special compared with other ice-cream pallor.

Ice Cream Skool Workshop - Group Pic! - Instructor is the one in black

The class ended at around 1.30pm. The instructor was busy preparing for another session at 2pm, so we rushed off not so long after. Good that we still managed to take some group pic beforehand :) It was a nice session afterall. I'm full and satisfied! Worth the 2 hours travel!

Happy to have my first ice cream buffet :D
ED

Singapore Night Festival 2012 + Dinner at Nihon Mura, Dhoby Ghaut

Singapore Night Festival is an annual event organized by National Heritage Board. I believe that it has started at least 5 years ago, but I haven’t really got a chance to visit it until this year.

We went there last Friday after office hour. I went directly after my presentation training from ORQ, and reached Dhoby Ghaut around 6.30pm. I almost can’t believe the crowd I see at Plaza Singapore. There are so many people who have life after work! XD

I met up with Inche and Tomy. After some discussion, we settled for dinner at Nihon Mura. It wasn’t crowded when we went in at 7pm, but long queue formed when we left at around 8.00pm. The food was decent, but I really like their stick-ordering concept. I tried to take some pictures but then got told off T_T

Just pick the menu stick and send to cashier to order. Paperless! :D

Our food! I ordered some Udon. Winson's Onion Rice looked really delicious

Friday's 1 For 1 Mango and Kiwi Tempura Ice Cream

With happy tummy, we then declared the start of our adventure. Hi, Night Festival! The first installation was right outside the Cathay, infront of Singapore School of Art.

Children's Dreams - from Department of City of Lyon, France 

For the events, all the museums are open until 2am in the morning, and entrances are all free! We were literally doing museum hopping. I broke my own record of number of museums visited in a day.

#1 - National Museum of Singapore

"Scaling the Dome" @ NMS, the Rotunda

Shadow Puppet Craft Making - Wanted to try! But priority given to kids.. so... T_T

The lights kept swinging from one end to another during the circus show - reminds me of some SEGA video games XD

Nestle 1930s Street Stall - Must go place for free coffee, kitkat, milo, instant noodle, etc!

#2 - Singapore Art Museum

All the front side of museums look the same @.@ Love the lighting effect! 

Went in and confused of where to go - resting while trying to figure out the next step

#3 - Sam at 8Q - I love this museum the most - lots of interesting arts!

The exhibitions were so random... and we just kept snapping pics

An exhibition full of boxes. And you're allowed to add to the art! I lol-ed at the "Call Me Maybe"

Was trying to find an empty boxes for ourselves, but found nothing... So add on to people's art - We're Here - Winson Inche Tomy Erlin :p

This is called "Grow a garden in the dark". We can do our own origami and put it to the garden

#4 Peranakan Museum - last museum we visited at 11pm - lots of story about Emily of Emerald Hill

Trying out their Nyonya dress! :D 

Ending the day with a sweet free ice cream treat :p

I loved the overall experience. As I said, four museums in four hours is a new record to me. I had lots of fun and spent *count count* - 0 dollar for the whole night of fun ^^; free museum entrance, free exhibitions, free coffee, free water (museum comes with water cooler), free kit-kat, free ice-cream and many more (... I sound really cheap =_=). The point is! I want to thank Singapore for the whole nice experience. Would have been perfect if I wasn't wearing high heels.

Till next year :)
ED