Singapore part 1 - dolphin kisses and more!

First of all - photos are at http://photos.andrew.net.au/singapore

We've been in Singapore for 3 days and done so much! I'll try to start from the beginning and add more later probably.

I'm travelling with my mum and aunt Nola from Brisbane and my aunt Vicki who lives in the Seychelles.

We arrived on Wednesday morning (albeit 2 hours late due to an electrical storm in Sydney) and started with a wander down Orchard Road (main shopping street in Singapore) while we waited for Vicki. When Vicki arrived (also 2 hours late because her plane had engine problems and had to turn back to the Seychelles), she took us to other shopping malls around the place and we all marvelled how cheap everything could be with a bit of bargaining.

Thursday we did the tour bus thing. There's currently a deal on where you get 6 (mainly) hop on hop off tours for S$33, so we took full advantage of that! The first tour we did was a city tour that did a general tour of singapore. It stopped down near the river where we got off and did a river cruise. We went for a wander down the markets near where the river boat dropped us back off while we waited for the bus to come back. We jumped back on, went to the botanic gardens which was quite beautiful and went to the Orchid Gardens that are in there. I have a fair few piccies from the gardens!

From there we got back on the bus, and got back off at the starting point which is Suntec City (another big shopping complex). We then got straight back onto the next tour which was the heritage tour. This bus goes through the different cultural areas of Singapore. We got off at Little India and wandered through there and stopped at an Indian place to have some lunch and the food was just amazing. The spices just made the meals taste so different to what you get in Australia. We also discovered Tiger beer. Tiger beer is wonderfully refreshing, and I'm not much of a beer drinker, but the Tiger beers go down very well! I've had a head cold for the past week or so, and the Indian food completely cleared out my sinuses!!!!!

So we kept wandering through Little India, through the huge 24 hour Mustafa Centre where once again everything is very cheap. I saw some Lindt chocolate for about S$20 and I remarked to mum how that was actually quite expensive, and she showed me the chocolate side on - there was actually 8 big blocks in there for $20 (about AUD$18 I guess)!!!

By this time it was getting late and we had another tour bus to get so we left Little India and kept on the Heritage Tour bus through other cultural areas and back to Suntec. From there we caught a Moonlight bus which goes to Sentosa Island to see the musical fountain. We had no idea what to expect but it was awesome!! It had a big spray of water going up into the air, and they had a laser show firing into the water which was just amazing! It's hard to explain, but in my photos, there's pics of it, and also a couple of videos I took - gives you an idea of what it is as it's very hard to explain!

When the musical fountain finished we got back on the bus and went back to Suntec via Orchard Rd which is lit up with christmas lights and looking beautiful. We got back to our hotel and mum and I were a bit peckish as we hadn't eaten since lunch and it was 10pm by then (lunch was very filling though, and we weren't exactly starving). There's a little open area next to the hotel which has lots of little shops all selling the same sort of food all trying to get your attention as you walk by. We grabbed dinner from there - just take away rice, steamed vegies and sweet and sour pork for me, and it was S$2.50!!! It was more than I needed, but the guy kept putting more food in the plate when I kept saying it was plenty! So cheap, and very yummy.

Thursday was a big day - we left the hotel at 9am and didn't get back until after 10pm! We slept very well, although were woken up about 6am to a cracking thunderstorm. It was so loud (and the double glazing keeps most noise out really well) that I thought it was multiple explosions happening!

Today was amazing as well. We caught a taxi (also very cheap!!) to where cable cars go across to Sentosa Island so we could get a birds eye view of the place which was good fun. At Sentosa Island we did a nature trail and dragon walk thing. We were in trees and saw some gliders and Nola pointed it out, so we all looked then she yelled in excitement at all of us to look which of course scared it away. I shushed her telling her she scared it away, then we heard rustling and there was another one! So I got my camera all primed, then mum squealed in excitement and scared that one away!!!!! Sheesh... :-) There was quite a few running around, but they moved fast and stayed pretty high. We were going to stay for a while to watch them, then a group of schoolkids came by yelling and screaming so it wasn't worth it.

We walked down to where Underwater World is, had a quick stickybeak, caught a courtesy bus to the Dolphin Lagoon on another part of the island and got off there to see the pink dolphins that reside there. We passed some time until the next show by going to the Southern most point of Asia (got photos!) and had some lunch, then went and staked out what we thought would be the best spot for the show.

It was a good show and they had some otters doing some tricks, then put the dolphins through their paces. They were very very good and obviously enjoyed their "work" and didn't do a thing wrong! They knew every command very well.

The girl running the show asked for a volunteer for something so I through my hand up as did mum and I didn't really know what I was volunteering for, but I figured it would be interesting! I got picked for it (YAY!!! I never get picked for things!!), and I had to hula hoop (with someone else who got chosen) and try to do it for longer than the dolphins who were spinning a hoop on their noses! We both failed dismally....

I thought that might be it, but then I got taken down to the water, and got to pat a dolphin, and feed it some fish and ask it to sing which it did!! I thought that was pretty cool, but then the trainer said I was to join him in the water. I started rolling up my pants further and he said I'd be going in to chest deep. Hmmm. I was fully dressed!!!! I had 3/4 jeans and a white top - jeans dry very slowly and a wet white top is not good on girls... Oh well! So in I went up to close to my neck, where the dolphin came up and gave me a big kiss on the cheek!!!! It was soooooo cool! The dolphins are just gorgeous. Apparently they start out grey and turn pink as they mature, but are pink of pink with grey speckling. Beautiful creatures. I felt like the luckiest person in the world at this stage :-)

The dolphin lagoon entry included underwater world entry, so we figured we might as well go there (luckily mum had some boardshorts with her I could change into!). It was very like any sort of underwater world, but it was still good and I got some great pics of some of the creatures. If you see pictures when I put them up you'll notice I love the mouths of things, especially sting rays!!! :-)

From underwater world we got a cab back to the hotel where we rested for a bit before dinner. Dinner was awesome. It was an international seafood buffet down in the hotel restaurant. In the way of cold food there was sushi, prawns, oysters, crab, mussels, LaH LaH (also known as cockles), raw cuttlefish, salmon sashimi and probably more I've forgotten! In the hot stuff there was lobster cooked in something, sweet and sour fish, seafood kebabs, seafood mixed with steamed vegies, duck, chicken and lots more! It was all just divine, and I think we all had about 4 helpings (the plates were small I swear!!). The price including good French wine was the equivalent of about AUD$25. We're definitely going back there again!

So now it's late Friday night and I'm madly trying to upload photos while we have internet connection in the room!

Plans for the last 4 days include a red lantern tour (last tour in the package), a Night Safari, the zoo, Juronga bird park, Singapore Sling at Raffles, a drink on the 71st (second from the top) floor in the bar of the highest building in Singapore (and 4th highest in the world I think), maybe the chocolate buffet (mmmmmm) at one of the hotels and shopping. I don't really need anything but the shops are fascinating! I saw some beautiful prints on parchment sort of paper I'd like to go back and get but that'd be about it for me I think. I'm not a big shopper!

A few things we've noticed:

- Singapore is very clean - there's always people cleaning buildings and repainting everything to retain the look
- There's no bugs. At all! No mosquitoes, cockroaches, flies or anything. This is quite surprising considering all the food left out uncovered
- While things look quite unhygienic (we try not to think about it...), the food is very good, and we haven't gotten even the slightest problems in the tummy, despite eating at what by Australian standards would be very dodgy!
- The buildings are fascinating. They try to make the buildings unique, so all the skyscrapers, apartment blocks, everything has something different about it. One building I quite like has a section "cut" out of it halfway up where they've grown trees! The buildings are also very colourful. Very different to Brisbane and sydney where everything looks the same.
- Taxi drivers may not accept your fare.... I asked a guy to take us to Sentosa today, and I thought he said sure, and turned to mum and Nola to let them know they could get in and when I turned away he drove off!!!!! We were killing ourselves laughing...
- It's nice to travel with family - I swear I haven't laughed so much in a long time! I think we were all in need of a break, so we're all very relaxed and having just so much fun. Although I do wish Andrew was here to share it with me, that would make this whole adventure perfect.

Will add more as I think of it - this is enough for now :)