Singapore!

In October our first semester ended and we got a 2-week break. My roommate, Sarah, and I decided a few weeks beforehand to go to Singapore and Bali. Somewhat last minute we booked our flights and hotels and a loose idea of what we wanted to do there (the end of the semester is too busy to carefully plan out trips!). It turned out being a great vacation! For the first 5 1/2 days we were in Singapore. Our friend and co-teacher Jason went with us and we also met up with Ryan, another teacher here at GES who was going to be in Singapore visiting missionaries. The whole time in Singapore was a great blend of hanging out with friends, old and new, and seeing lots of the sights that Singapore has to offer. It was pretty go, go, go, but definitely great. Here are some pictures of the experience:

Singapore is really expensive so we stayed in this hostel.  It was actually pretty decent and served Nutella every morning, which is pretty much all that matters ;)  (This hostel may have saved us money initially but I am now hooked on Nutella, which is definitely not the cheapest spread to put on your toast!).  The picture on the right was a painting in our hostel room.  It is supposed to be of the famous Merlion in Singapore, but we called him Aslandis (I was currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia and Sarah and Jason love those books, so it was fitting).

These are some pictures of the really cool architecture we saw while wandering around our first day.  Pretty crazy!

On Sunday, our first full day in Singapore, we went to the Botanical gardens.  Here is Jason in front of the clock representing Canada (he's Canadian).

On the left is me and my roommate Sarah.  On the bottom right is me and my friend Laura.  Crazily enough, Laura is a friend from Ipswich, MA.  We grew up together in school.  We were especially friends in high school as we both played bassoons in our high school band.  She is currently working in Singapore for six months.  I saw on facebook that she was there so we were able to meet up at the Botanical gardens and catch up.  It was sooo crazy to see a friend from Ipswich, MA all the way in Singapore!  It was so fun to talk about old memories, friends and teachers, and talk to someone who can appreciate Crane's Beach, Zumi's, and the great community we came from.  It was such a blessing to meet up with her after so many years!

We walked through the orchid garden, which was so beautiful and had so many different kinds of orchids. 

Super big leaves!!

More beautiful orchids.  The one on the right is dedicated to Yingluck Shinawatra, the previous Prime Minister of Thailand.

I loved the Botanical Gardens.  It was really really beautiful and peaceful there.  After the Botanical Gardens, Jason, Sarah, Laura and I went to get ice cream.  We then met up with some of Jason's friends for dinner.  Jason did YWAM six years ago and the day before we left for Singapore he remembered he had a friend from YWAM who is Singaporean.  He contacted him and we were able to get together with him and his wife for dinner.  They were the sweetest people.  After that we went out for ice cream (yeah, we ate a lot of ice cream on this trip!).

Monday morning Sarah and I met up with Ryan (Jason wasn't feeling so great) and decided to check out Little India.  We found this one market but everything was pretty pricey (the same stuff you can get in Thailand, just more expensive), so we didn't stay long.  We did end up talking to this one Indian woman about Christianity because she overheard us talking and asked if we were Christians.  I said we were and she said she was too and so we got to talking.  It was really interesting.  After Little India we went to an Indian restaurant that Ryan had heard about.  It turned out to be this fancy place (we were really underdressed) and there were no prices for the food.  The whole thing was based on donations so you just paid whatever you felt like paying.  Crazy!

Oh yeah, here is us eating more ice cream!  They had mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is my favorite and doesn't exist in Thailand, so I was super excited.

That night we headed into the main city.  We saw the Marina Bay Sands, which is this famous building in Singapore (probably because of its unique architecture).  

We went to the Gardens by the Bay.  There are tons of different outdoor gardens but we didn't walk around outside too long.  We were there long enough for Ryan to jump up and peek out of a hole in the rock, but then we continued on to the Flower and Cloud domes.

At the Gardens by the Bay there are these two huge domed buildings, like giant greenhouses.  The first one we went to was the flower dome.  It has plants from all over the world.  Here was the cactus section.  

More views inside the flower dome.  The elephants were covered in real plants and sprayed water out of their trunks.  The tigers were made out of flowers.

This is inside the cloud dome, the second of the two domed buildings.  This was just one tall structure in the middle covered with real plants and with a huge waterfall down the front of it.  The top right picture is the walkway that goes around the cloud dome.  You can go all the way up to the top of the structure and walk around it as you go down.  Pretty unique.

After the Gardens by the Bay we got some dinner and went on the Flyer, the huge ferris wheel right in the city.  

This is a view from near the top of the ferris wheel.  You can see the city, the bay, and the double helix bridge (the blue thing near the bottom).  

Some more views from the ferris wheel.  The top left and bottom right pictures are what the containers looked like that you were in.  It was so crazy because you went over the top of the ferris wheel, where normally you just go under the wheel.  The top right is a crazy sculpture that we saw before getting on the ferris wheel.   The ferris wheel ride was probably 30-40 minutes long and the view was amazing.  It was a great experience.

The top left is a cool sculpture in one of the subway stations.  We took the subway everywhere.  It was pretty cheap and super convienient.  The subway is so well laid out and so easy to navigate that we were able to get around really easily.  Tuesday we went to Chinatown.  The top right picture is what happens when tall people try to take the selfie ;)

In Chinatown we went to The Noodle Man.  My friend Laura suggested this place and it was great.  The noodle man (pictured above) makes the noodles right there.  He takes a ball of dough, stretches it, twists it, stretches it twists it, etc. and next thing you know, you have noodles.  It was so fun to watch.  The dumplings and noodles were delicious.  Here are Sarah and Jason enjoying the noodles, and Ryan trying to be the noodle man.

After Chinatown we went to the Science Center.  It wasn't super exciting but we did get to see a fire tornado, which was pretty awesome!

That night we went to Clark Quay and met up with Jason's friends again.  They took us to a traditional Singaporean meal, which was delicious.  After that we went to Lockdown.  Lockdown is this game where you are locked into a room and have to solve all these clues in order to get out in less than an hour.  We were put into handcuffs, and put in a locked jail cell inside a locked room.  We had to get out of our handcuffs, out of the jail cell and out of the locked room within an hour.  We were able to quickly get out of the jail cell and fairly quickly get out of our handcuffs but we weren't able to solve all the clues in time to get out of the room, but it was so fun.  One clue led to the next and it made you feel like Sherlock Holmes.  (Just one small example:  To unlock one safe you needed the three numbers, x, y, and z.  In a notebook it read "The clue for x was written in a book at home".  We found a dish that said "Home is Where the Heart Is".  On the wall were tons of pictures and license plates.  On one picture there was a heart and Big Ben and the word London.  We looked up London in the encyclopedias and there was a clue that said add this number to the first numbers on this license plate.  And that was just one number to unlock one safe!  So crazy!)  It was super fun though and we got to work together to try to figure it out.  After that we got gelato and sat by the Singapore River.  A great night :)

Wednesday, Jason, Sarah and I took the monorail to Sentosa Island to go to the biggest aquarium in the world.  It was really really cool!

Some of the really neat fish we got to see.  The leafy things are actually sea horses!

The top left picture is of a fish that would change colors.  We watched this guy for a while as it went to being angel white while swimming in the water to a dark gray when hiding among the rocks.  It was crazy to watch its color change right before our eyes.  And we had a bit too much fun with our complimentary hammer head shark hats!

Wednesday evening was our last night in Singapore so we went into the city to see the famous Merlion and the the light show they have every evening over the bay.  It was a beautiful night.  The top left picture is of the Esplanade building that is a theater.  It is shaped like a durian, which is a smelly fruit that some love and other's hate.  The town I live in in Thailand is actually famous for durian.

Marina Bay Sands and the Merlion

A few more random pictures.  Sue Fern, Sarah, Sam, Jason and me after our time at Lockdown.  Ryan, me and Sarah having fun in a maze of bushes outside a mall.  Beautiful light displays over the street to celebrate Deepavali (a Hindu festival of lights celebrated by the Indians in Singapore).  Jason, me and Sarah on our last night in Singapore.  Great great trip and lots of great memories.  So glad I got to see this place and spend time with all these great people!!