Singapore!

Last weekend I was travelling to Singapore. The reason was, that I had to renew my visa. And to renew working visas, you know have to go out of Vietnam and to renew it in an consulate or embassy of Vietnam. Therefore I chose Singapore, as I always wanted to see it and taking the chance to vist my cousin and her family there as well.
Singapore is an amazing city, but with not much history though. It's clean, it's safe, it's organised. And it's even hotter and more humid than Ho Chi Minh City. My hotel was located on Orchard Road, basically, the shopping heart of Singapore:

It is quite busy and you find everything you want, especially luxury brands.

Something nice is Gardens by the bay, located behind the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Really nice huge park:

I really enjoyed the walk in the park :)!

Of course one of the landmarks nowadays is the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. It is massive! But I felt it is more like a luxury tourist attraction than a serious hotel. There is a casino and a huge shopping mall with only luxury brands. Nevertheless it is an amazing building, a must see in Singapore! Been there during day and night time.

The Hotel has an observation deck, which is an public area seperated from the private area which is only for hotel guests. The view from there is stunning:

But you have a beautiful view on the skyline from the ground level both during day and night time:

For getting around in Singapore I mainly used the SMRT (Metro). Perfect service. Extremely clean, extremely reliable, and a station basically everywhere you need it. Excellent!

It was a very nice trip, for sure not the last one. However, Singapore is a bit boring after a while. There are many more things to do, no question. But in my opinion it is lacking a certain charme, which other asian cities have, since everything is so clean and in order and everything works, and there is no real historic center.

Internet down... again...

Well, Vietnam is only connected to the Internet via a few small land lines and one overseas cable. Most of the internet traffic goes through the overseas cable. It's now already the 4th time this year, that the cable is broken. That means that the internet speed is extremely slow. The big internet providers in Vietnam are planning to install another overseas cable, but this could take at least one year, until this is in place. It's a bit challenging, to wait for mails, skype is basically not usable and forget about video streaming.
Interesting to see how depend we are nowadys on reliable internet connections
Last week I've been out during an evening to take a few shots of HCMC. Want to continue and to see a bit far off places of the city as well.

Opera

Ben Thanh Market

Night Market @ Ben Thanh

Skybar view

The heart of HCMC

Nguyen Hue

3 Continents in 3 weeks challenge!

Lately I haven't posted much. That's due to the fact, that I have been travelling home to Europe and shortly to New York City. In to tal I was 3 weeks gone, and most of the time I was travelling. At first I was going back to our Headquarters to Basel, Switzerland. This was planned already for a long time. Had a few meetings with colleagues and customers and was really happy to see some good friends again.

After Switzerland I went travelling through Europe, starting in Antwerp:

I got myself a little mirrorless camera (Fuji X-1M) in addition to my DSLR (Canon EOS 60D). As I didn't want to carry around a big DSLR and respective equipment. And I am pretty surprised about the picture quality of that camera. So far there is still the Kit lens on it, but I will soon try another lens with bigger aperture. Enough Tech talk.
First I visited a business partner of ours and in the evening I met 2 old friends in Antwerp, with whom I was working together during my days I was working in Brussels. We had a beautiful evening together, but was unfortunately too short to catch up fully.

Next day, I was having a quick stop in Rotterdam in order to quickly meet a colleague of mine:

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to explore the city more. Will definitely return.

After Rotterdam, I continued to Bremen. I've already been to Bremen a few times before and I really enjoy the city. It has a very nice and historic city center:

I had appointments in Bremen. First appointment was with one of our closest business partners. As we didn't have much issues to discuss, the colleagues organised a trip to Wilhelmshaven, the latest deep sea port in Germany:

Unfortunately Wilhelmshaven is only called 3 times per week by big container vessels, so we didn't see any of those giants that day. It was very interesting nevertheless.

After my visit to Bremen I continued to Frankfurt, in order to catch a plane to my favourite city: New York! This time it was partially for business as well, as I met one of my agents for dinner in Manhattan. New York is always amazing and even after 8 times, you always discover something new. And as well all the known attractions are always astonishing.

Haven't visited the Highline Park for 4 years. It's a wonderful place to wander around and to discover really beautiful sights and corners of New York:

This time finally I managed to climb the statue of Liberty. Nowadays itr is limited to 200 visitors per day, so you have to book the tickets early in advance. But it was worth it. The view from the statue was a bit disappointing, but climbing those steep stairs is an adventure of itself.

Original Torch of the Statue

Stairs to the top of the statue

View on Manhattan from the ferry

And finally, as during my last visit to NYC, I booked a New York City Photo Safari
Those safaris are a photography lesson with certain themes.
Last time it was NYC After dark and this time it was Central Park at night. See here some of the best shots we took:

My thanks go to Zim, my teacher from last and this lesson. She is originally from Vietnam, so we had a lot to talk about. Next time I go to NYC (which is for sure), I will book another tour with her.
As mentioned, the city is always amazing and inspiring. A place, you can always return to.

That's it so far. Did quite some travelling in 3 week, and now back to business in Vietnam. It was a great trip as I have met many friends and colleagues and my family and got many new impressions. And it was a good opportunity to cool down a bit from the heat in Vietnam.