豚カツうまっ！！

It’s kind of late to write about Christmas and New Year now, but I had a great time with my family and I want to share some pictures I took from our trip.

We went to Singapore, departing from Jakarta, on December 25. We were actually on a tour to Myanmar but had intended to stop by in Singapore just to celebrate Christmas (and New Year’s Eve when we came back from Myanmar).

As you can see in the pictures, Jakarta Airport was decorated with flowers and banners to celebrate the joyful event.

After checking in, we went straight to the airline lounge to grab some refreshment and waited until our flight get called.

After spending 1:30 hours on the plane, we finally arrived at Singapore! I must say the service in business class in Singapore Airlines is very good. I don’t mean to be fussy, however, I think Emirates airline has improved a lot recently and probably has better seat (i.e. bigger screen, higher resolution and more sophisticated remote control, etc) than Singapore Airlines.  We fetched our luggage and had someone from DBS fetched us at the airport and drove us to Mandarin Oriental hotel.

 

That night my mother’s friend had invited us for a small gathering in her apartment. Before going there, we decided to take a walk around the city and enjoy the Christmas lighting on the streets. The street was filled with people from different countries. We saw a lot of Indonesian, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean and lots of western people (couldn’t really tell from where). Most people came to Singapore around Christmas and stayed there for a week or so just to shop and enjoy the city.

Shops were giving big discounts to attract customers. Everywhere was so crowded that it took us 15 minutes just to go from a store to the store next door. However, the lights was very beautiful; we could just look up and enjoy the scenery while waiting the line to move. After doing sightseeing for awhile, we went to our friend’s apartment in BLVD and had great time playing cards, music til night.

 

The next day we departed to Myanmar. But, that will be covered in the next post. Here I want to share the some good pictures I took after we came back from Myanmar. Before going back to Jakarta, me and my family had a day transit in Singapore to celebrate New Year’s Eve (and see fireworks!). My father had booked a room in Fullerton Hotel (the left one below).

The hotel was fully booked as Singapore is usually flocked by tourists from all over the world around this date. It is also nice that the hotel reserved a special place just for the guests in the backyard from where we can clearly view the fireworks. This is probably one of the reasons why the room was fully booked.

Fullerton is located beside a river and here you can see the view of the other side of the river. Pretty isn’t it?

 

This is inside the hotel. Some people were already dancing to a band playing on the stage on the left.

 

If you look up, you can see thousands and thousands of balloon being trapped on a huge net; ready to be released exactly at 0:00 AM midnight.

 

Now, to the room… Not bad. I was expecting a little bigger room though for a 5-star hotel. But, hold on. Look at the size of the bathroom!

 

NHK was playing Kouhaku Uta Gassen that time. SMAP was singing “Sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana”. The song they have been singing for years in Kouhaku.

 

If you look outside the room.. and look up, you can see a better view of the balloons on the net. And if you look down.. you can see some people are starting to gather around and dance. Me and my family decided to join in the fun and head downstairs to the hotel lobby.

 

The band was playing club songs, hip hop and some late 80’s like Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer. I could not remember the band’s name but I could notice a heavy Australian accent in the singers.

Hotel guests were all spruced up, men in tuxedos, ladies in dresses; ready to party and welcome the new year.

20 seconds away to midnight. People were screaming with joy.

The band stopped playing. Countdown began.

10.. 7… 5.. 3.. 2..

 

Happy new year 2010!!!

Balloons were dropped from the ceiling. Everyone went crazy.

People were holding cameras to capture the joyful event. Couples kissed each other.

Some tried to catch the balloons and burst them.

After awhile, people began to rush outside to see the fireworks. You can see lots of different expressions here: smile, amazed, serious, melancholic.

 

2009 might not had been a good year for everyone. Some businesses went bankrupt. Some people got laid off.

But, one thing for sure, we are still lucky enough to be able to get over all those predicaments and see this beautiful day.

This new year is going to be a new page for everyone. This is a good time to reflect on the goals we haven’t achieved last year.

Let’s achieve them this year!!!

 

After enjoying the beautiful fireworks, we decided to go outside for a supper.

 

We saw a cart selling ice cream and bought one for myself. It was yummy!

 

Restaurants were also packed with people. I guess people got very hungry after dancing around and waiting outside for hours for the fireworks. We had troubles finding seats in the restaurants. Some restaurants had also ran out some of their menu. We finally managed to get into one.

Look at the view I took from our table (bottom right)!

 

After we had a meal, we went back to our hotel and took a good rest. It was a long day for us, since we just arrived from Myanmar that afternoon.

The next day, we checked out from the hotel, did lots of shopping around and went back to Jakarta.

This is the picture I took inside the hotel before we checked out. A cute little girl was trying to find her mother.

 

And the pool. Sweeeet.

 

Related posts:

1. 2009.12 From Dubai to Jakarta