We no longer own a boat so, after seven years of not worrying about stuff like this, we needed somewhere to live. Luckily friends from Germany are living in Johor Bahru in Malaysia so we turned up on their doorstep, begged a weeks accommodation and filled one of their suitcases with clothing before they left for Christmas in Germany. Thank you Johanna and Kevin!
Next we took a taxi to Singapore and moved in to an appartment in downtown Singapore. The flat was ours for three weeks over Christmas and New Year in return for looking after two cats, feeding the fish and watering the plants. Not a bad deal at all. Thank you Anne & Christoph.
You may think that after our six weeks in Singapore a few months ago we would have seen everything. That just shows that you have never been to Singapore which has interesting places, events and people around every corner. Last time we were living in a house out in the jungle and needed our bikes to go most places. This time we were living in the middle of the city and could walk everywhere and if we ended up too far from home, there was a bus stop and an underground station just round the corner.
One day we were in the middle of a housing estate and decided to take the lift to the top floor of a 43 floor appartment block to look at the view which was incredible. We then read that there was another housing estate with a 500 meter long sky garden on the roof above the fiftieth floor so we visited that next. We received a tip that the CapitaSpring building had a garden at 280 meters and a vertical garden on three floors at about a hundred meters. We spent a few hours there as it offers such amazing views down on to Singapore and the gardens are so relaxing. Definitely a “must do” in Singapore.
Singapore is (for some people) about earning lots of money and then spending it as ostentatiously as possible. Big handbags, expensive cars and designer labels are on the program so in the run up to Christmas the place went crazy. We took one walk up and down the main shopping street – Orchard Road – and decided we had seen enough Christmas. On Christmas Day we walked up the Singapore River away from the tourists and ate Greek pan bread for Christmas lunch.
New Year saw us down at the river for a drone show at eight o’clock. The drones danced to the music and created a variety of motifs and shapes with their multicolored lights. It was impressive and left me asking “how do you even start to program something like that?” We then made our way slowly through the crowds to the harbour where we and another half a million people watched the fountains dancing, the lasers beaming and then the fireworks exploding. The music had a bass that made the floor move. 500 000 people from all over Asia and the only disturbance reported was a fight in the poshest hotel in town 🙂
We visited temples, museums, the botanical gardens, light shows, dancing fountains, the jungle, Little China, Little India, markets & parks and walked 14 km along an old railway line. We were not bored and, walking everywhere, got pretty fit between feeding the cats and the fish.