6. Singapore

6. Singapore

We flew into Singapore for a short visit.  We’d been here six years ago and were amazed by the changes in that time.

We had chosen Hotel G in the Bugis area for our base. 

I knew that the rooms tended to be on the small size so had picked a Great King Room. It was still small, can’t imagine what the standard size rooms would look like.

Last time we were here they were constructing “Gardens by the Bay” so we decided to go and visit it.  There are two large greenhouses – Flower Dome and Cloud Forest. 

The Flower Dome had been decked out for Christmas.  You can visit Santa’s log cabin and hear stories told by the elves.

Among the plants and trees there are many beautiful sculptures, some created from driftwood and others in metal and stone. 

In the Cloud Forest you can take the walkway from the top of the greenhouse through the trees and plants that exist at high altitude down to ground level.  They have a waterfall that creates a mist.

The greenhouses are only a small part of the Bay. Outside they have the “Giant Trees” which are huge manmade tree like sculptures which have plants growing through them. In the evening they are usually lit up. 

Stoned again

As it is Christmas time the whole area has been turned into a Christmas Wonderland with carnival rides, ice skating, Christmas market and many lights.  The Giant Trees are lit up during a musical, light show while they play Christmas music.  They even had a short blizzard where snow fell onto the crowd.  It was a bit strange to be watching the Christmas shows in 28 degree heat.

The MRT train system in Singapore is really easy to use and efficient, so we bought a ticket and headed off.  We decided to go to Sentosa – an island dedicated to entertainment. Our choice was SEA Aquarium. 

They have massive tanks filled with every fish you can imagine.  There were divers in the tanks giving them a bit of a clean while we were there. 

Seems that the elves help out with that job too.

We took a walk along the pathways in Sentosa.  They have a long twisting waterway that resembles the Gaudi works in Guell Park in Barcelona.

On our last long trip, six years ago, we were in Hoh Chi Minh City, when we met some young football players and their coach from Singapore’s Home United Football team.  Syd has kept in touch with the coach Bernard Lan, so when Bernard heard that we were coming back to Singapore he said that we should meet up.  The players are all now in their late twenty’s, early thirties and no longer play football, but Bernard got in touch with a couple of them and they came and picked us up to take us out for dinner. 

We had a great time catching up with Ian, Khai and Bernard.  The evening just flew by.  Before we knew it is was 1:30am. 

We had to check out of our hotel in the morning, but our flight wasn’t until near midnight.  We left our luggage at the hotel and met Bernard who wanted to show us parts of Singapore that we probably wouldn’t have found on our own.

Looking at the skyline it appears that Singapore is only made up of high rise building, but we were shown many old areas where the old building that were built at the start of the last century still exist.  They had originally been warehouses for the old docks but have now been converted to shops and restaurants. 

We walked for miles.  From the Downtown area to Boat Quay and on to Chinatown for lunch. We took the MRT to Haw Par Villa where there are gardens with sculptures that tell Chinese Fables. The gardens were created by two brothers who invented "Tiger Balm".

We would definitely sleep on our flight tonight.