Singapore: Late December

En route to our Bintan vacation in between Xmas and New Year, we spent a couple of days in Singapore. One of my friends/work colleagues lent us her apartment - the swimming pools there were the size of a small lake!

The boys had fun being dragged round the City-State with us.

We'd been looking forward to spending the first evening at Singapore Zoo's famous Night Safari - unfortunately, the rest of Singapore was there too! Despite having pre-booked the tickets, we queued to get in for about 2 hours - it was December 29th (evening) and the heat/humidity were unbearable. The tour was quite rubbish actually - loads of mangey looking bored animals sadly trying to get some sleep (and failing because every 30 seconds a tram load of Asian would pass by). Waste of time, energy and money in my opinion!

Next day, we took them to Raffles Hotel, where Joss treated them to the "most expensive bloody round of soft drinks I've ever bought!". Two ginger beers, one coke and a tomato juice - not much change from £25! Still, it was an experience. (Glad I was not paying!). Then lunch in a sausage bar/micro brewery which I seem to end up in every time I go to Sing. Then a tour of the Singapore canals on a riverboat. That night, we treated the boys to 'Black Pepper Crab' at Singapore's famous East Coast Seafood centre. "Alaskan crabs the size of your head!". YUM.

The following day, we took it easy and leisurely walked round Singapore (boys found this boring of course). That night, we ate at a famous Indian restaurant ('The Banana Leaf Apolo') where, as the name suggests, the food is eaten from a banana leaf 'plate' using your hands - both of which the kids found fascinating.

M