Day 44: Singapore

We had a fabulous first day in Singapore and managed to cover a lot of ground today. Our friends gave us a drive-through overview of the city and then we had a fantastic Thai lunch. Unfortunately, that lunch spot was in a mall called the Funan Centre, which is filled with all the tech-y stores you could think of - Frank was in heaven and I had to keep pulling him away from monitor displays and rows and rows of laptops.

Then we spent the afternoon walking around the city (in the 90 degree heat, which we are still loving because of all the cold and rain in NZ recently). Here are some of the sights from our wanderings...

This is an old fire house, now painted in fabulous rainbow colors:



This is Victoria Theatre - I really liked the colonial style of a lot of the buildings in the Historic District.




My favorite area was along the Singapore River - this is a view of Boat Quay.




This is the mall that Frank is obsessed with. We walked by it again and I made him stand under the sign.




We stopped at the famous Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel for a mandatory Singapore Sling. The bar was cool - we liked the ceiling fans (called punkahs) - but we didn't love the drinks (I thought they tasted like cough medicine).




Then we went to an area called Kampong Gelam which is the traditional center of Muslim life in Singapore. The area was given to Sultan Hussein and his family as part of his agreement to turn Singapore over to Sir Stamford Raffles, who built a settlement in Singapore for the East India Trading Company. The Sultan built a palace (now the Malaysian Cultural Centre) and the Sultan Mosque (pictured below). Arab Street is known for its shops which sell all sorts of things, including cloth and carpets.




This is a random picture of two people sitting outside near the Sultan Mosque.




The Sultan Mosque:




This is the Sri Veerama Kaliamman Temple in the Little India section of town, where we wandered after leaving Kampong Gelam. Apparently gods were placed on top of the temple when there were castes that were not allowed access to the inside, but they could still then pray without having to enter.





We got a chance to experience the Singapore subway system - called the MRT - and traveled from Little India to Orchard Road, which is known for being the shopping hub of the city. It was a beautiful tree-lined street with tons of high-end shops and gorgeous vertical planters with orchids growing out of them.




After meeting up with our hosts, we all went to get foot massages at a reflexology place. What decadence! Frank decided we should do that every day...

In the evening, we were taken out for the famous pepper crab, which was fabulous.

More exploring tomorrow!

ILM