Tuesday, June 9, 2009

H.P.V = Hot day + Photographs + VodaVoda?

I haven't been to Haw Par Villa in a very long while already... Last time I went was more than a decade ago, and apparently I got frightened after the boat took a nose dive down this steep slope!

So I decided to go again, this time with 2 of my friends, one of whom I've never seen in about 3 years already haha.

The entrance sure hasn't change, but that's as far as I remember the place. I can't even remember if there used to be any other entrances to the place. During the 90's, this place was renovated and refurbished into an amusement park by the name of 'Dragon World'. Needless to say, who would want to 'have fun' at a place that has already been plagued with images of death and suffering?

It's also interesting to note the different names this place took since it's construction in 1937. It started off with 'Tiger Balm Gardens', which was the most obvious choice since the brothers that constructed the place were developers of Tiger Balm, an effective ointment that I myself use for mozzie bites, aches and such. In 1979, the place was sold to the Singapore Tourism Board, who then renamed the place to Haw Par Villa in 1985 before reopening the place in 1990 as 'dragon world'. This would shock you a lil' but they used to charge SGD16 just to get in!

That's all for history! Once we set foot on HPV, everyone started snapping away - Me and Wei Choon with our DSLRs and Gladys with her cute lil' T77.

The place is so quiet and remote that even bees decided to build a nest inside one of the decorations!

Don't know why, but when I was taking this shot, I felt a sense of uneasiness. It was as if there were people looking at me...

We spent about a dollar to enter the 10 chambers of hell. In earlier days, parents would bring their children here to see the kind of punishments people would get for doing wrong, some of them included things like having your innards dug out (cheating in exam) as well as dismemberment (plotting murder).Dragged to hell

For a $1 entry, the place was reasonably entertaining. Taking pictures inside the place was a pain though; the place was coloured only by ambient light and using any form of flash would give you a brown picture everywhere!

We then headed out of hell and towards more gut pleasing attractions such as:

A misplaced statue of liberty


A very disturbing set of figures
...

Last but not least, a very scary looking bird thing
Garuda?

That's all, until next time :)

3 comments:

Goh Wei Choon said...

I was scrolling through the post and I spurt out my milo when I saw the statue of you and sujith lol.

Unknown said...

strange... i thought that was u and sujith...

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