After saying sad goodbyes to my Mum and Dad, Leon and I boarded the Aeroline to Singapore. This was no ordinary coach; decked with a lower lounge area, cinema (ok not cinema but they showed some recent films), and a lunch of chicken rice, we felt like we were on some rock and roll tour bus than just a coach to Singapore!
The journey was a comfortable one and 5 hours later we were at Harbourfront Centre where we jumped in a cab to Nithya's house off Bukit Timah. Singapore was still as clean as when I last visited, which was comforting to say the least. We reached Nithya and caught up with the entire family who were all home, which is a rare occasion but great to see the whole crew there!
Day one was Singapore Zoo and Asian Civilisation Museum. Singapore Zoo is the best Zoo in the world, hands down. They have made a massive effort to make the zoo more 'open plan', so that instead of depressing, tiny cages, the animals have a lot more room and beautiful landscaped homes....we were pretty envious actually (their homes are probably much more comfortable than some of the ones that we will encounter on our travels!). Highlights of the zoo trip are definitely the feeding of the white tigers (not albinos: fact) and the meerkats because the latter reminded us of Luis and Olly and their obsession with THAT advert.
Now even though the zoo provided shelter the whole way round, it is safe to say that we both stank, having sweated buckets on our tour of the Zoo. Luckily Nithya was home so that we could stop over, have a loovely shower and head out again to the Asian Civilisation Museum. This was also incredibly interesting and I probably learnt more about Malaysia and Singapore in the 2 hours we were there than I have done over the last 26 years. We were also lucky enough to see one of Nit's mum's sculptures that she had lent to one of the art museums (Kumari is a wonderful and pretty well known artist in Singapore and internationally).
That evening we went home to be greeted by what could only be described as a party (!) in conjunction with some work that Nithya's dad and brother were involved in. Angeline and her family served up some peranakan food consisting of Curry Laksa and very tasty popiah - Ishwar also popped open a bottle or two of Pouilly Fume - yes, we were very spoilt in sing sing!
The next day after another sound night's sleep, we decided to venture down Orchard Road which is one of Singapore's famous avenues lined with shopping centre upon shopping centre, and labels galore. Leon seemed pretty chilled about the whole affair, even though he did swear in Malaysia that he wouldn't step into another shopping centre ever again@
We all tried our vegetarian dim sum for the first time ever and I have to say - it was a round of all thumbs up! Even Leon with his phobia of mushrooms managed a beaming smile after lunch.
In the evening we went to Holland Village to see a comedian called Kumar, formerly a man I believe and hilarious! Although I didn't take to kindly to his jokes about Malays being slow and lazy... what's that all about??! All in all we had a great day and went to bed... ready for our final morning in Singapore before we set off for Bangkok.
On the Thursday 7th we took a taxi down to Nithya's mum's gallery (which I would recommend to everyone.. who knew chili's and peppers could be so fun!) and then another sad farewell to young Nits before heading off to Changi for our flight. All in all the fleeting visit to Singapore was fun, relaxing and rather cultural, and next time hopefully we will get to stay longer.
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