Singapore

On the evening of Sunday 27th November we flew from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, then took an Uber to the 1-bedroom apartment I had booked through Airbnb for 6 nights. The apartment block certainly had an interesting sculpture garden, it looked like something out of the Kama Sutra!

Our apartment was in a great location, up on Institution Hill off River Valley Road. It was walking distance to Fort Canning Park and Clarke Quay. We were up on the 5th floor, you can see my distinctive striped jumper hanging up in the window!

I did enjoy having top-quality badminton showing live-to-air on the telly every night.

We enjoyed revisiting Fort Canning Park which was the venue when my brother Warren married his Singaporean bride Norshidah a couple of years ago.

Since then a whole lot of double swings have popped up around the park. These were great for chilling out and watching the world go by.

I love the frangipani that grows all over the place.

Pretty much my favourite thing about visiting Singapore is the food. You can get amazing meals for very little by eating as the locals do at the cheap and cheerful food-courts that are all over the place. I LOVE chicken rice, and the feast below literally cost me a few dollars.

We've done a lot of the main 'sights' on previous visits to Singapore, so this time it was nice to just wander around and soak up the atmosphere. I do like the bustling area around Boat Quay with all its funky little cafes and bars.

I really like this sculpture

These mirrored sculptures seem to be all the rage at the moment, we've seen them in different cities all over the world this trip.

Wherever you are in the city centre, the landscape is dominated by the iconic Marina Bay Sands complex. 

The Helix bridge is one of my favourite structures in Singapore. It looks equally impressive both during the day and all lit up at night.

No visit to Singapore is complete without a visit to the Merlion park.

Yes, it is cheesy, but it had to be done!

Singapore does do strange animal amalgamations... As well as the Merlion, we also stumbled across a weird elephant/unicorn combination.

One day we took a bus to Zainon's place where we enjoyed a lovely home-cooked meal for lunch. Zainon is Norshidah's mother, and we were also hosted by Zainon's sister, Mel. Below is the post-lunch selfie!

After lunch we walked a short distance to an apartment block where Warren and Norshidah have purchased an apartment. They are planning to move to Singapore from their current home in Hong Kong in the near future, once they have carried out some renovations on the property. Their balcony is the second one from the top in the pic below, up on the 18th floor. I'm sure Zainon and the rest of the family are looking forward to them living in Singapore.

Not far from the bro's new apartment is a sports club/gym complex where Warren had given me the heads-up that they serve some of the better western-style coffee in Singapore. We took Zainon and Mel there for afternoon tea and I had a flat-white that wasn't bad, although was still a long way from Wellington coffee standards!

It wasn't all play during our time in Singapore. Will spent one day visiting a colleague at the National University of Singapore (NUS). While he was working, I checked out the massive high-end mall that adjoins the Marina Bay Sands complex. It is quite liberating wandering the shops when there is pretty much nothing that you want/need to buy. Will met me outside the complex once he was finished. the gardens and lily-pond area outside the mall were impressive.

Having come straight from work, he is rather better-dressed than me in the selfie below!

We had visited Gardens by the Bay on a previous trip to Singapore, but the 22m high Skyway was closed then due to lightning strikes. This time we arrived at dusk and enjoyed wandering the gardens in the lovely soft light.

After some excellent satay for dinner at the Satay by the Bay food court, we purchased our tickets for the Skyway. It just happened that it was the very first day of the Christmas festival in the gardens, so the place was absolutely heaving. The bonus was lots of pretty extra Christmas light installations to enjoy!

We were lucky enough to be up on the Skyway during the nightly sound and light show. The light show was very impressive. You are only meant to spend 15 minutes up on the Skyway, but we spent much longer than that and the staff didn't try and hurry us along which was nice, it meant we took LOADS of photos!

As part of the Christmas festival there was a live band knocking out the Christmas numbers. There was also a whole lot of carnival-style games which the locals were fully embracing.

That sums up our very enjoyable 6 days in Singapore, next stop is Hong Kong, and some time with the bro and sister-in-law.