The Traveling Martens

Stop #4: Singapore

It was a short flight from Bangkok, but Singapore seems like it's on another planet. The weather and palm trees are the same, but everything else is different. We haven't been here long yet, but Singapore is the cleanest place we've ever seen. The people here are Chinese, Malay, and other races, so there isn't one culture, but everyone speaks English. We are the only Americans we've seen here, but there are lots of European tourists, as this is a major stopover for Europeans flying to Australia. Our hotel is on Orchard Street which is full of malls and new, air-conditioned stores full of high-end brand names like a Rodeo Drive. Totally different than the dirty street stalls selling knock-offs in Bangkok.

For dinner last night, we went to a side street here which is full of restaurants and bars with outdoor seating and lounge music playing in the background. We picked a good restaurant- vodka pitchers were on the menu!

This morning, we headed to the zoo. We took the tram and then a bus, so we got to see a little more of the island. The residential neighborhoods are incredible. All of the housing is apparently built by the government in planned communities and then sold to the residents. All the housing is high-rise condos, each condo is painted in matching colors to all of the other buildings in that neighborhood. Each area has its own schools, pool, and facilities. Even the sides of the highways here are immaculate. There are rose bushes covering the guardrails, then a few feet of bermuda grass with trees, then a swept sidewalk, and then ferns past that before the wild shrubs and trees start. The zoo itself is one of the top in the world, and unlike any we have seen. At one point, we walked around a stone wall and found ourselves just a few feet from half a dozen lions. We both almost freaked out, but calmed down after a while. All of the animals are kept in outdoor environments, with just a few feet of water or low fences separating us from them. The white tigers and the jaguars were some of the highlights, as they were playing like kittens. We also had to stop to let a group of orangutans cross the sidewalk in front of us. Our pictures from the zoo will be great!

We also went to the orchid gardens near the zoo. All varieties of orchids grow in the wild here, many of them 15 feet tall, and one variety is the official state flower here. There were rows and rows of different colored and shaped orchids.

Heading out soon for our second night in Singapore, more later!

posted by Mel and Stacy Marten @ 4:13 AM