Adventures in Asia: Singapore

This morning we caught a RapidPenang bus from the quay by our hotel an hour south to the airport.  There we flew Air Asia to Singapore--and arrived 15 minutes ahead of schedule!

We decided to eat a late lunch at the airport, and then caught the MRT into Singapore and our hotel, one of many locations of the Singapore budget hotel chain Fragrance.  Ours is called the Fragrance Hotel Emerald.  It was raining in Singapore, the first time we've had rain during the day in our almost two weeks in Asia.

Once settled in, we caught the MRT again to the northern side of the island (almost an hour by MRT).  There, we visited the Kranji War Memorial.

The Kranji War Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission-maintained cemetery for mostly-World War 2 Commonwealth soldiers.  

Its layout is very similar to the World War 1 Commonwealth graves I visited in Belgium and France in November 2015, although, of course, the landscaping manages to differ in ways (e.g., there were no palm trees in Belgium).  

It was equally quiet and tasteful and sacred-feeling.  

Overall the ages of the deceased struck me as much older than those I had seen in the WW1 cemeteries.  The youngest we found was 19, whereas the WW1 cemeteries had plenty of 18 year olds, and even younger.  And there were numerous graves for men in their thirties and a surprising number in their forties.  Another difference was the fact that there were a lot of Muslim graves, and a memorial to cremated Indian soldiers, for whom cremation is preferred to burial.

We stayed at the cemetery far longer than I had planned, and actually past the official closing time of 18:30.  The sun was setting by the time we headed back towards the MRT station and entered the Singapore Turf Club.

To get in we had to pay $6 for a ticket (actually, that's the cheapest one), which is by far the most I have ever paid to enter a race track.  On the other hand, it is the nicest racing facility I have ever been to, and also, by far, the most popular.  

Certainly the number of people there was in the thousands, and possibly over ten thousand.  Nearly all of these, probably close to 90%, were Asian men.  Women, and even men of other ethnicities, were surprisingly rare.  

We stayed for four or five races, which took place each half hour.  All were raced on the poly track, but they have a turf and dirt track as well.  Every race we saw had twelve horses racing (so was full), and many had a thirteenth and fourteenth horse scratched. 

We ate Chinese food and watermelon from the Turf Club's food court for dinner before taking the MRT back to the hotel for the night.