SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE, Part 1

Half a world away from Denver, we landed in Singapore early Wednesday morning, after narrowly making  our connecting flight in San Francisco, due to high winds and stormy weather, something we’d managed to avoid on our home turf, never imagining the possibility for San Francisco.  It’s a long haul across the Pacific, but fortunately an uneventful one for us.  We stayed with friends in Singapore, making it possible to spend our first stop in the city—we return on our way back home—in the hands of residents, even if they are relatively new ones!
 
Our first day took us downtown into Fort Canning Park, where we walked through the shaded park until coming to the viewpoint over the Singapore River.  We made our way down into the Clarke Quay area, crawling with all manner of restaurants, bordered by a wall of glass and steel banking towers of the commercial district.  We ate, walking further along the river past the landmark Fullerton Hotel to the more open Harbour area, where some of the city’s signature buildings loom large and imposing on the horizon.  Most notable, the three towers with what looks like a  ship, dry-docked on its collective roofs, better known as the Marina Bay Sands, and the large lotus-like ArtScience Museum. We weren’t able to see the famed Merlion, symbol of Singapore(part fish, part lion) as it was being cleaned.  Perhaps upon our return.

Our second day took us to the lush tropical Botanic Gardens, perfect for a leisurely walk with the dog, and a stop in the eye-poppingly gorgeous orchid gardens.  Stunning colors and varieties in a labyrinth of emerald green paths with streams and waterfalls adding a layer of auditory peacefulness.  Later in the day, we took the efficient and wide ranging underground down into Chinatown, wandering the streets originally planned by the British, but then lost to, among other things, a large and apparently none-too-savory Red Light district.  Now, it is a mishmash of largely Chinese businesses, shops, endless reams of eating establishments, the imposing Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, complete with its grand hall for prayer, a museum about the Buddha, and a lovely rooftop garden with a giant prayer wheel.  With the celebrations for Chinese New Year coming to an end, roosters(it's the year of the rooster!) are everywhere, in all sizes and shapes. Celebratory foods, especially meats(Bak Kwa--thinly sliced slabs of salty sweet dried meats) still have customers of every ilk, lined up for a last chance to snack on this annual specialty. Garish golds and reds are everywhere, chains of paper lanterns festoon building facades and hang over alleys, so the large Indian pagoda we stumble upon is oddly out of place.  After a quick meal, we head back home, readying ourselves for our impending departure to Myanmar.

Check out the link below to see some of the photos from our days in Singapore.
https://goo.gl/photos/5FQRupuPeEdo9jep7