Day 2- Singapore

So we arrived last night after a pleasant enough 10 ½ hour flight from Auckland. I see why they call Singapore ‘Asia for beginners’, a lovely, clean and peaceful airport. Easy taxi ride into Heather and Horst’s (Heather is my sister in law’s sister) new apartment at City Lights and up 41 floors to the penthouse. Absolutely gobsmacking view and general tropical wonderfulness. Its so nice to be warm again, and to spend 24 hours without rain!

Lisa, mum and I have spent the day blundering around Singapore enjoying ourselves. Horst drove us out to the Botanic Gardens this morning and we spent a few hours there among the ginger and the orchids. I love the common wildlife you find in other countries (the stuff the locals ignore). Already today we saw turtles, cute ducks, crake type bird with chicks, palm squirrels (?) and some lovely dragon flies and butterflies. All of these animals could be horrible invasive pests for all I know but ignorance is bliss.

We got a cab back into the CBD (via the taxi drivers favourite tailor and manufacturing jeweller (brothers of his presumably) and found nice fresh stir-fry in a food hall in one of the 4786 malls they seem to have here. Back to H&H via the subway system (MRT) where we were generously assisted by a very pleasant uni student when we made it obvious we had no idea what we were doing. Apart from Lisa almost being chopped in half by the rapidly closing doors of the train it was all very easy.

So I’m off to the pool now to do a couple of laps before dinner. Life is tough.

PS Not sure when we’ll get to post again- am doing this courtesy of H&H’s wireless network. Do they have the internet in England?