We’re underway! We arrived in Singapore last evening after a pleasant flight and celebrated our arrival in South-East Asia with a Mexican dinner. Today we were out and about – walked about 10kms and also tried out the local Hop-on Hop-off bus to get to the more distant places. We visited Little India, Arab Street (visiting the Sultan Mosque, where John had to don a full-length robe to cover his ugly bits – Elizabeth’s words, not John’s) and Chinatown, visited several mosques and temples (repeatedly removing our shoes before entering) and a couple of Christian churches, including St Andrews Cathedral. The Chinatown Heritage Centre was fascinating with its many, many photographs, dioramas and other recreations of the lives of the Chinese who emigrated to Singapore in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We stopped for a delicious dim-sum lunch in an air-conditioned business centre, just to escape the 32o C heat. We eventually succumbed to that heat about 4pm (after visiting more temples and mosques) and hopped on the air-conditioned hop-on bus for a full one-hour circuit of Singapore before returning to our hotel for a cold drink and a shower. We’re heading out shortly for a meal at one of the street-stalls down the road, then tomorrow: early breakfast, then to the brand new “Gardens by the Bay”, a 101 hectare verdant wonderland of a quarter of a million rare plants, constructed at a cost of 773 million dollars. We also hope to have a swim in the hotel pool in the afternoon. Then off to Germany Saturday.
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