First day waking up in Singapore. Our matchbox sized hotel didn’t have a restaurant so we cleverly bought soy milk and cereal the night before to have for breakfast. We decided to have a museum day to learn about the history of Singapore. Our first stop was Singapore National Museum. Obviously lots of the best bits ( stuffed animals) were closed for refurbishment so we went straight to the boring interesting bits about archeology and an exhibition about 700 years of Singapore.
We actually thoroughly enjoyed sleepwalking this part and learnt a lot. Clearly the British had a lot of influence here also from 1700’s, although unusually we were given it as a gift (Singapore) rather than invading it.
At the end was a quiz about what we had learnt. Let’s just say we didn’t score zero therefore we had learnt something!
After this we went upstairs to find a very interesting art exhibition had begun not just here but all over the city. We admired one piece about an artists insight after his father had a stroke. He had taken 1000 photos on an iPhone and printed them out in polaroid sizes and hung them on string in a cage that you were invited to walk in and take a photo you liked. We obliged and took our favourite photo.
After the museum we got to a subway and got on a train lunch. We walked some more and ended up at ‘Fort canning park’ another large green space with some historical attachment… But we mainly enjoyed the lunch. After this we wandered on through the park, past a pond with turtles in, and omg we spotted one graffiti tag..!! After this shock we carried on towards the river. We ended up walking along the river besides the bars and shops, similar to those found in London’s southbank., but obviously cleaner, quieter, nicer. Very pretty imitation colonial style buildings next to glass skyscrapers. We half considered some chili crab at jumbo crab restaurant but at 45 dollar a kilo we just about enjoyed a 3 dollar bottle of water from 7-11 each for lunch! If you ever travel on a budget (or any budget at all!) Singapore is not the pace to come! Whoops lol..We kept walking on and ended up at ‘Chinatown’ a rather large district dedicated to all things Chinese. Highlights included a dried animal shop pretending to be a health food shop. A dried animal store pretending to be a restaurant. And a dried animal stall pretending to be a gift shop!
After denying ourselves crispy lizard, shark fin, crocodile oil or bird nest soup we carried on. Not before however we had explored the local supermarket. Highlights were Tinned limpits and fruit of haw.
After this went back to the river running through Singapore and strolled alongside it. We found the ancient civilisations museum but it looked closed for maintenance so we carried on. We got to a footbridge and over it came to the Fullerton hotel including Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s at the entrance. Back over another bridge we spotted the ‘Merlion’ fountain, a popular tourist attraction.
Back now into the quayside in front of the marina bay sands hotel we eyed up some dinner at the hawker centre near the theatre. Instead of frog porridge! Some traditional Indian food and iced lemon tea refreshed us (a little before the spice kicked in!) From our city walking tour.
Meandered back to our matchbox shop hotel, and caught up with our new favourite hospital drama ‘you can be an angel too’ ( think ‘Casualty’ or ‘E.R’ but no actual medical emergencies or injury just very nice, friendly, medical emergencies)
