Singapore - the final installment

The last blog ... kinda sad, huh? We were so sad about coming home. Kathryn and I both thought we could stay another month or so.

We flew back into Singapore and went straight to the hotel. It turned out to be a very nice hotel near the airport. The staff was rude, but the rooms and facility were nice and we were on the club level so that was a nice bonus as well.

At the beginning of our adventure, Singapore felt so foreign and exotic, but coming back this time we all felt like we were home. It is such a western city with western ways. They obey traffic laws, have a similar standard of living to us, etc. Cori even made the comment to grandma in an email that she thought she would like to live there. I think the pancakes that morning for breakfast put her in love with Singapore because they tasted like home.

After getting in around noon, we went to subway for lunch and then checked into our room. Our other room wasn't ready yet so we decided to go to the pool for a little while to relax. It was cloudy and sprinkled on and off, but we didn't care. Since we were on the club level, after we got cleaned up we went to the free happy hour from 6-8 and eveyone filled up on the heavy appetizers and fruit from our room. Everyone but Kathryn and I called it a night and went to bed early.

Kathryn and I went down to Chinatown to finish some shopping. Since we were staying near the airport, it took about 20 minutes to get into town and on the way, we had a very chatty cab driver. He talked about eating dogs and cats and snakes and rats. He said not to eat the rats in Singapore because they were poison .. ok ... point noted. He also said to never eat cats because they were poison. He let us know that sea snakes were really good eats and we should have some. All the way to town, talking and talking until we were ready to throw up by the time we got there.

Much to our surprise after being in Vietnam and Cambodia, Chinatown rolls up the streets at 10pm. Everywhere else we went markets got really busy about 9pm I think because it finally had cooled off enough to want to shop. We bought a handful of things and sat down to an ice cold coconut milk before heading back. On the way back, our cab driver was also very chatty and told us that in the area we were staying in there were a lot of man ladies. He said they were so pretty until they talked...vey interesting again! He also drove so incredibly fast through the winding streets that we thought we might just die in Singapore. We made it safely back to the hotel and went to bed.

The next morning, Kathryn and Chuck were up early so they went to breakfast and then came back and woke us all up about 9:45 as breakfast was ending at 10:30. After berakfast, we got all cleaned up and headed down to Orchard Road to do some shopping while Chuck and Cori went to check out the local fire station. Orchard Road is the Singapore equivalent to Rodeo Drive in California so needless to say we didn't buy much. Next, we met Chuck and Cori at the Merlion and took some pictures. The Merlion is the most famous image of Singapore and is a statue of a mermaid/lion cross that spits water into the harbor. It was nice.

The girls then headed to lunch and the hotel while Chuck and Chase went to lunch in Chinatown. Chuck hadn't been to Chinatown in Singapore yet and Chase was wanting a ring from there. We had lunch at a hawker stall near the hotel and then went back to the hotel to change into our swim suits. Against our better judgement, we walked down to the beach which was only a 5 minute walk from the hotel. The beaches in Singapore aren't that great as it's such a busy port. We had to walk past a ferry terminal to get there and as we were walking we saw something in the water. Kathryn thought it was a snake, Caitlin and Cori thought it was a turtle and I thought it was a lizard. It made it's way to shore and it was about a 4-5 foot long moniter lizard. It came up to within about 4 feet of us and stopped to check us out. After this encounter, we did not feel like going to the beach anymore so we turned around and headed back to the hotel.

The hotel had two pools - one on the roof and one ground level. We hadn't been to the ground level pool yet so we decided to try it out. One wall of it was acrylic so you could see right in it. That was super cool to the kids. The weird thing about it was that you had to walk through the restaurant to get to it. We knew dinner started at 6:00 there so we left at 5:50 to relocate to the roof top pool. It felt a little odd walking dripping wet in a towel through the restaurant to the front elevators to go upstairs ...

We went back and showered and met up with the boys. None of us was really up for much so we tried to go to bed early for our long trip back.

Saturday morning, we took the 6am shuttle to the airport and started our journey back. It was a 7 hour flight to Tokyo. We had about an hour in Tokyo which was just enough time to walk down to our gate and then it was an 11 hour flight home. The flight was packed and a little bit hot so we didn't sleep well. We were so glad to see mom and dad (grandma and grandpa) and get in the suburban to go back to their house. Mom made tacos by request and they were so good!!

We were all in bed by 9pm and then Chuck and I were up at 4am this morning. Hopefully we will be all back on schedule by tomorrow in time to go back to work.

Hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventure as much as we enjoyed living it!

Until next year ...

Love, Kristen