30th August - Singapore

Kuni left for work at 7.30am so didn't see him in the morning. We still got up reasonable early and took a brief walk around Arab area nearby. There was a nice mosque we'd have liked to visit but there were too many school groups milling around so we gave it a miss.


Instead we took the MRT to the Botanical Gardens. They were huge, with lots of different themed sections so we walked through the 'healing' and 'evolution' gardens. We tried to go to the 'toxic' garden but it was only accessible with a guided tour. We saw lots of plants and enjoyed reading the information, especially in the 'healing' garden but there weren't actually many flowers in bloom. I did get to shout at some annoying naughty kids though so that was fun!

We walked around lake and were followed by hungry fish and terrapins looking for food and then to the ginger garden. I had no idea there were so many types of gingers or how pretty they were, nor that bananas are from the ginger family. We thought about going to the orchid garden but time was getting on and we wanted to get back to Marina Bay Sands so we could go to the top so we headed back to the MRT through the climber trellis garden.

Marina Bay sands is like a different world. Expensive, classy shops set in an almost impossible looking building. We were going to take Kuni's advice and go to the bar on the top of Tower 3 instead of paying for tourist access but the dress code had kicked in.



Instead we headed to the newly developed Garden by the Bay. It stands on an area of reclaimed land and is already huge but more development is planned. In it stands a number of 25 - 50ft tall 'supertrees' - vertical gardens with conical tops and a Conical towers with vertical gardens - some of which are linked by a sky walkway.

We were hoping to see te 'Garden Rhapsody' light and sound show but were a little early so took a walk around and crossed the bridge back towards Marina Bay to get some pictures of the landscape, including the Singapore Flyer (like the London Eye).

The Garden Rhapsody was pretty corny but is was still interesting to watch the Supertrees light up in time with the music and giggle at the music they used.

Back over at Marina Bay Sands we caught the end of their light and water show. It was much more modern but even more cheesy. Fountains created arcs of water that looked like snow-shakers while images were projected into them. We were there just in time to see the images of two young pop stars warbling 'What a wonderful World' before streams of fire were shot into the sky. We decided we'd like to see the whole thing and so went to amuse ourselves in the shopping centre for a while.

Many of the shops were too classy for us to feel comfortable in so instead we played for a long while in a shop selling massagers. I had a viscious foot massage while Matt messed around with the 'world's first' hat massager and the head massager that looked like a brain control device. There were also weird goggle eye-massagers (awful sensation), iphone massage chairs and one that you plugged into the computer. We weren't hassled at all and they only payed attention to us when we were stood my something stealable so we were there for quite a while.

We couldn't afford the food court so we sat on a bench eating cut-price sushi and watching fat ladies on the vibration machines trying to wobble themselves thin in 5 minutes. I was really glad we did when I suddenly realised that I had left my bag in the massage shop. This was the first time in 7 months so it wasn't bad going for me and at least a did it in one of the most crimeless countries in the world.

We were back outside just in time to watch the 9.30 water, light and music show (check it out on Youtube) and were lucky enough to sit by the bubble-making machine.

After that we spent some time looking at the crazy water feature outside the the mall. It was basically a giant, transparent, perspex sink where you can watch the water swish around and drain through the 'plughole' into the shopping centre below, creating a waterfall inside. It also carried conversations so we giggled at the intentional and unintentional snippets of conversation that we heard from several metres away.

We took to circuitous route back to the flat round the bay, past busy bars, and via the war monument and just generally took in sights of the city.

We were dog tired but just had the energy to top off the day with some fruit shopping so we's have a nice breakfast before tomorrow's explorations.