Travelogue 2

Don’t ask me what Drossel is doing on a Nendoroid Travelogue header!

Anyway, part 2 of me and comrade Alafista‘s Nendoroid Travelogue adventure took place in the busy city district in Singapore. We started out at Suntec Convention Hall, which was where STGCC was held and where I met up with other Nendoroid and Figma enthusiasts before the night shoot in the afternoon. Previous pictures of our meet up can be found in the previous post. As a result we had comrades zh3us and Maverick from the meet up joining us in this photoshoot.

Anyway, we took a quick bite at Burger King to fill out stomachs before heading out at around 7.30pm. Our first stop is the fountain of wealth. It’s basically an oversized water fountain in the surrounded by the city’s skyscapers and sprays water coupled with bright and colorful light at regular intervals.

As you can see, the structure with the huge ring behind Drossel is the Fountain of Wealth. The mist like background is actually the water being sprayed with light emitting from the sides. It was quite a spectacular sight!

Most of the lights are emitted from the bottom of the fountain, from little sources such as this. Water is sprayed from the center of the circular platform in the background!

Your hosts for the day, Lousie and Shana.

Our next stop was to cross the busy roads and head to the World War 2 War Memorial. This memorial was built to commemorate the loss of the many lives during the Japanese Occupation during the Second World War.

Louise and Shana stand on some lamps along the path way which made beautiful lighting, while Kyouka and Shana tried to look cool with the background lights.

We went close to the War Memorial obelisk. The thing is really massive and tall. Reminds me of some Gundam weapon for some reason.

The thing with city roads is that they are extremely busy and my suggestion to jay-walk across them was always rejected by the others. So we had to take the long way of using underpasses. Our underpasses are operated by escalators, Kyouka-sama takes her time getting down to the underground from the hand rails.

We arrived at the Tan Kim Seng fountain by around 9pm. The Tan Kim Seng Fountain is located at Esplanade Park near City Hall and it was built to commemorate Tan Kim Seng’s contribution towards Singapore’s first public waterworks. So if you want something to be named after you in Singapore, be the first to do something.

After that we walked along the perimeter of Esplanade Park and arrived at the Padang. The Padang is an open field just in front of City Hall and the Former Supreme Court. Our National Day celebrations used to be held here on this big field a couple of years back. On a lazy Saturday like this, you can find lots of people sitting on the grass and just admiring the cityscape. At this point of time, I swapped lens with comrade zh3us. His lens was a little dirty but it was certainly powerful and I continued to use it till the end of the photoshoot!

A shot of Drossel and Monotaro taken in front of City Hall with the head lights of vehicles buzzing behind and past them. The huge dome which you see at the back is the former Supreme Court of Singapore (最高法院大厦). The build stopped being the Supreme Court building in mid-June 2005 and the Supreme Court relocated to a more interesting building behind it which we did not take a picture off. Perhaps next time!

Also located at the steps of City Hall is this huge electronic count down clock for the Youth Olympics which will be held in Singapore next year. Who knows what I might be doing next year or how big my Nendoroid army might be by that time? ^^

A close up view of the Supreme Court entrance.

We walked quite a bit to reach our next destination which was the Victoria Theatre and Memorial Hall (维多利亚剧院及音乐会堂). The guy in the black statue is Sir Stamford Raffles, known to be the grand daddy of Singapore. He made the little island into the bustling British Colony after colonising it back in 1819. Which is why many places in Singapore are named after him. Raffles Institution, Raffles Place, Stamford House, Raffles Hotel, Raffles Boulevard; there’s even a flower named after him.

Forgot what was the name of the landmark structure where this shot was taken. The background is the light that comes from Fullerton Hotel across Singapore river.

We were very exhausted by this time. Taking night shots was a really draining activity. We walked towards Singapore river and got a closer view of Fullerton Hotel at the other side. Louise and Shana are a little sad because they would have to part after this shot.

The lights at the right side of the picture is Cavenagh Bridge, and according to Wikipedia:

Cavenagh Bridge is the only suspension bridge and one of the oldest bridges in Singapore, spanning the lower reaches of the Singapore River in the Downtown Core. Opened in 1870 to commemorate Singapore’s new Crown colony of the Straits Settlements status in 1867, it is the oldest bridge in Singapore that exists in its original form.

Parted ways with comrades Alafista and z3rus and crossed the bridge with comrade Maverick because we took different modes of transports home.

Fullerton Hotel behind.

Lights on the bridge.

A view of the skyscrapers at the other end of the bridge.

The last shot of the day.

As mentioned earlier, this was a very tiring photoshoot! Night shots are a pain to take. Thankfully today we had comrades Maverick and zh3us to accompany us and helped to carry some of our stuff. Lugging a bag of nendoroids and carrying a tripod is quite a handful without some people to help! Couldn’t have done it without them. Thanks loads! I’m sure they took some pictures of us taking pictures, so check out their entries for some sneaky paparazzi action!

Hope you enjoyed this week’s travelogue! (though I realised I don’t have pictures of Alafista‘s Nendo Sebestian XD). Comrade Alafista’s post should be up soon as of time of writing, so check out his site later in the week!