Hong Kong / Japan / Singapore... Hongpan! - March and April 2025 - Page 9

Here is Dazaifu station. The total journey from Hakata with a couple of train changes is only about 30 minutes.

Too early for the shrine gift shop street to be open yet, but I will be back later to not buy anything.

This is Kamado shrine, right by the start of the hike. Last chance for the public toilets and vending machines.

OK, this is Kamado shrine, the above was the shrine gate.

The very start of the trail is a trail. You do cross a road twice very early on, and you can walk up the road if you wish, but it is longer.

Threatening clouds in my direction of travel.

The ravine section is already rewarding.

The main trail up to Mount Homan is a whole lot of steps, there is basically no let up.

There is the occasional garden bit with a gate, but also note the steps behind it.

A huge number of steps.

As close as we will get to a view today, dense fog coming right up.

But first more steps.

Probably was a rest spot many years ago.

Here comes the fog.

There are steps cut into the rock, and a lot of fog. It was damp but not raining, thankfully the rocks were not slippery.

A brief bit right near the top of relatively flat rock.

A sure sign you are about to get to the top of anything, a wall and a staircase.

Summit shrine.

This photo normally has a view, I have taken it on both my previous visits. No view today.

It is me, possibly for the last time on this trip. The wetness is all sweat.

I continued past the summit to take a different way down.

A strange bit of the trail, as it is still a section used by a lot of people. There were rusty chains and ropes, but it is just a stone cliff to rappel down.

Just beyond the cliff with chains is this somewhat shielded picnic area. Just me today.

The fog was the thickest in this bit.

Time to head down a different way, this was a brief wrong turn as there are many trails, I doubled back to go a slightly longer way.

Once more below the fog.

The last bit was piney.

It never actually rained, despite those black clouds.

On the walk back down the road I took this little shortcut through a tunnel into Dazaifu shrine.

Here is the main shrine. Enjoy. They built a plastic cover and planted trees on it. Very weird.

The grounds are still quite nice.

There were a lot of people playing dress up having their photos taken here, so I photo bombed them by standing here to take my photo.

Then it was just a short walk down the gift shop street back to Dazaifu station, and the last hike of this trip was over.

An overpass, great for rain photos.

The overpass connects to a conveniently placed shrine, with undercover bits.

I stepped out into the rain to take a photo of their giant demonic collage.

Tonight's canal shot was extra gloomy.

Here is the River Rain Mall by Takashimaya, I believe it is also an art gallery. Some say it opened in 1999, but I also think it maybe reopened in 2021, which makes sense because I was last in Fukuoka in 2018 and I don't recall it being here.

Here is the inside of Kawabata shotengai, longer and busier than I remember, quite a few restaurants.

Now for a couple of shots of Canal City. The fountain show was going on but I had the upper level view point to myself.

There were quite a lot of people watching, down at canal level.

And for my last dinner in Japan... a boring eggplant doria. Almost all places in Canal City had big lines, Ramen stadium (which is just a food court with about 10 ramen restaurants) was way too busy. The doria (burnt cheese on rice) was nice enough, fairly small serve.
Tomorrow I fly direct from Fukuoka to Singapore. Fukuoka airport is walking distance from the city centre, but there is also a subway train that goes 1 stop to the airport. It is a 6 hour flight. Then I have 4 nights in Singapore.

Here is the check in area of the Fukuoka international airport. I have been to the domestic airport here before when I flew back to Tokyo, which was very interesting with 4 or more tiny little non connected terminals. The international side however, much like any other airport.

They have a viewing area, which anyone can go to, even without a ticket. However it is is not as good as the Tokyo ones as it is enclosed in glass. Quiet on the apron at the moment.

The duty free and shopping area is modern but compact.

The food court however, large and great, strangely much bigger and better than the one at Haneda in Tokyo.

Here is my Dreamliner, I can confidently say I think the Airbus A350 is nicer.

Now for my hotel, the room is relatively huge compared to Japanese hotels. It is pricier, because everything in Singapore is, I think I am paying about $170 a night, but it is much much more expensive than that now (I booked a year ago). It is called Hotel Strand.

The bathroom is dated, and very poorly lit.
Now I will go and eat in one of a thousand food court / hawkers, there is a small one right over the road from my hotel.

Yes, we are in Singapore now. Right out the front of my hotel too. Jaywalking is illegal, perhaps someone ignored that?

Here is the tunnel to a staircase that leads to Fort Canning. Those people at the end of the tunnel are waiting their turn to take a photo of someone standing on a stair case with a tree above them. I did not really understand the allure.

The main historic building at Fort Canning. The other side of it is more impressive but the grass area was all closed off for the staging of the Scottish play who's name must never be said.

Now I did not take their photo, but there were a bunch of LARPers playing around in front of this gate doing something Harry Pottery with plastic swords. The victory speech Lord Merciless gave was epic enough for me to hang around until the end listening in just out of site.

The park surrounds are nice and green.

Apparently, an ancient wall... in Singapore?

Here is the National Museum, covered in 3 different kinds of plastic.

Basically everywhere is a shopping mall. At one point I walked into what I assumed was a mall and it was a legal library... with a mall.

I found the drain!

Here is the start of the main bit of Orchard Road, nice sunset.

This is called Cuppage road, and had no customers, and every place had a tout.

Not every shopping mall has shops in it.

I headed to a semi legit food hall... semi legit because it is in a basement rather than above ground, and had air conditioning.

Time for Char Kuay Teow, and it was $6... yes $6. On my way back to my hotel I passed a steak restaurant (think outback steakhouse or hogs breath but it was not called that) and the price for a steak dinner was between $12 and $17 depending on size, I assumed it would start at $50. The flip side of that, in the 7-eleven a pepsi max is $3, which is at least twice the price of Japan.

OK, one more shot of Orchard Road, I almost stayed out until it was properly dark!

I took the subway to Caldecott station, from there it is about a 20 minute walk to the starting point of the hike.

There is a big change room / toilet / shower setup with some vending machines and a weird cafe, but surprisingly no convenience store.

Today I will go all the way around the reservoir, and beyond.

It is also a canoe / kayak lake, a big inter school carnival was happening, I deliberately moved away before taking a photo of school kids... this is Singapore. Note the surveillance camera in this photo, there are hundreds of them!

Time to start the boardwalk walk, the floats in the lake are to separate fishing from rowing / kayaks.

The boardwalk was great quality, and never too busy.

There were a lot of monkeys, but dont mess around with them, and do not open anything food related near them, a hundred will appear.

Nice fake lake, I believe it was engineered in the 1860's.

After leaving the boardwalk, an actual trail, with a lot of crushed concrete and brick.

Every few hundred metres there is a little spot to sit, but be aware there are not many toilets.

Occasional bits of stairs.

This is the ranger station about half way around, and one of the only sets of toilets. The old folks here are basically fighting off monkeys while they try and eat their noodles.

At this point you make a choice, go along a bit of road to the one way only tree top walk, or go along a trail to bypass it. The road bit is only a few hundred metres.

Here is the start of the tree top walk, you can only go along this if you do this hike anti clockwise, there are guards.

The tree top walk, sponsored by HSBC, is a bit weird, here is the view.. of basically nothing.

After the little bridge, more stairs and monkeys.

The longest stretch of stairs is down hill.

Next up, an observation tower. Looks like a fire spotters tower in Australia, but you are allowed up this one.

Here is the view from the top, interesting cloud, it was about to get very dark, but never rained.

Bonus tower shot. I do not think many people bother going up the tower, it is a couple of hundred stairs to the top. There was no way I was going to miss out.

The next section had the best views, helped by the dark sky.

I was sure there was going to be a torrential down pour, but it never happened. By the way, there are 3 surveillance cameras in this photo, one in the lake floating (of which there are many) and two on the shore on the right. They have seen me urinating. I expect to be flogged soon.

Part of the hike is up against a golf course, no one walks, they all use a golf cart, lazy.

Photo of the day!

Last one of these with the dark middle of the day light.

And then.. I was back at the start, sweaty, but not soaked. So now that is probably the last 'hike' of this trip?

On the corner of this big building it says Adelphi Lifestyle Mall. I thought I would go in and investigate the flying saucer bit. But no, it is not just a mall, it is also the supreme court! Great clouds!

Meanwhile over the road from the Supreme Court, a giant mall, this one has a rock climbing wall (not that unusual) but also a bike lane running through it, a terrible idea, however no one was using it.

Here is the Singapore CBD. From this angle it looks a lot like an Australian city, specifically Perth, who's large companies divert all their income to Singapore to dodge taxes. I suspect BHP and Rio Tinto own some of those buildings.

There are a lot of unusual buildings, this one is a hotel. It not only has trees all over it, but a gap in the mid riff, with giant bird cages. Perhaps at night nude girls dance in the cages?

Here is Chinatown, it is very touristy.

It was not overly busy.

Parts of it are very fake, those windows are just drawn on.

There are a lot of temple looking things around.

This is the Maxwell food centre, it appears busy (I found the busy bit), but as mentioned above, a lot of places were already closing.

The CBD area has some quite tall buildings, not China tall, but still quite tall.

Boat Quay is for westerners looking to drink and watch football. All the places had touts. I hated it.

And so, I went down to basement level 3, and paid more than I thought (about $10, which is still cheap) for ma la tang. It was suitably both ma and la. I like that you can choose lots of vegetables, probably sneezed on, but hopefully the ma la kills off any pathogens.