Seychelles     Indonesia

Singapore

5/1/07 - 5/11/07

Singapore was meant to be just a stopover for us to plan out the Indonesia and southeast Asia legs of our trip. We ended up staying for nearly two weeks. Of course, some of this is pure laziness on our part. Singapore is the first world-class city we've seen in 8 months. Istanbul was the last and we stayed there nearly as long. Singapore is home to more kinds of Asian food than I've ever seen in my life. And when we've had our take of local eats, there is a crazy variety of US food chains: Swensen's and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Mrs. Field's and Famous Amos cookies, Carls Jr (mmmmmm), and even Long John Silvers. Mary had a field day shopping in the big malls and her favorite clothing stores; she found 3 Mangos on the same street. We even saw Spiderman 3 a week before it opened in the US. Then there's the electronics malls, but I was good and no new cameras were purchased, after much deliberation. But there's more to Singapore than food and shopping. There are plenty of neighborhoods to check out: Little India, China Town, Arab Street. We made the mistake of also visiting Sentosa, an island version of Marine World USA connected to Singapore. It was just supposed to be a quick "let's see what this is all about". But it turned into a 3 day expedition that involved a lot of getting wet. More about that below...

Scenes from Around Town

We're still pretty bad about getting photos of life in the city. But we do have a few to show us eating our way through Singapore. Not to be missed is the incredible "Crouching Tiger Hidden Bacon" roll from the bread shop.


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Botanical Gardens

Singapore sits just off the equator and must have a perfect climate for growing orchids. We walked through the gardens and its centerpiece "National Orchid Garden". It's huge and has an amazing collection of orchids and other tropical filler. The best part on our 95 degree wretchedly humid day was a visit to the "cool house". Air conditioned and misted to grow really wild flowers and carnivorous plants. We stopped inside for quite a while to cool ourselves down...and look at the flowers.


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Pink Dolphins and Swimming Marshmallows on Sentosa Island

We started Sentosa island off by going to a pink dolphin show. Yes, the dolphins around these parts are bright pink. Mary was picked as a volunteer at the show and got to play with one. At the aquarium, we dove with Gracie, their 400 pound dugong. Dugongs have no teeth so feeding her feels like two pillows massaging your hand. And we went to another dolphin show so Steve could play with the dolphins. Yay!


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