Singapaul

Wednesday the 21st of January
Despite our attempts to correct his pronunciation, Alex is convinced we are in Singapaul, so we're just going with it now! As Kate mentioned the flight out was pretty awful with it being a day flight, made worse by landing in the morning in Singapore. After a bit of plane spotting geekery in the hotel room, we had a 4 hour nap, thinking that it would be wishful thinking trying to wake Alex up after a deep sleep. To our surprise he jumped out of bed and off we went into town. We very impressed with the MRT train system which was clean, efficient and full of very considerate polite Singaporeans who went out the way to let us sit down with the babies when it was busy. We started out by having a walk around the old quarter by City Hall. Similar to Kuala Lumpur, it consisted of a number of Victorian empire away from blightly buildings complete with bowls green and playing fields. These have since been dwarfed by high-rise commercial buildings that are threatening to swallow these colonial relics up like a venus fly-trap. We then walked along the river to Clarke Quay which is Singapore's equivalent to Liecester Square. It was very pretty and clean (as you would expect in a city where it illegal to even chew gum) but aimed at tourists. We had a bite to eat and let Alex run off a little steam around the fountains, with predictably hilarious results. Back at the hotel, jet-lagged child syndrome returned with a vengeance and we had a fairly awful sleepless night.

Thursday the 22nd of January
After a lie in we thought the most entertaining and efficient way of seeing the highlights of the city was to do a river boat tour. We managed to find a company that had amphibious buses. We captured the delighted expression on our 4 year old's face as it drove into the water to complete our tour of the harbour. After a spot of lunch we took a trip in the Singapore flyer, essentially the equivalent of the London eye for a panoramic view of Singapore. The population explosion that Singapore is attempting to curb is clearly evident when you see the scale of high rise construction in progress on vast swathes of reclaimed land.

On the Singapore Flyer

To round off our day, we headed to the Ion Mall on the Orchard Road to have dinner with my cousin Gunish and his lovely wife Puneeta.

Gunish, Puneeta and us 

Friday the 23rd of January 
Our flight out to Brisbane was at 1am on Saturday. undeterred by this, we headed out to Sentosa Island with the boys for some child-friendly fun. The island's original name was "Pulau Belakang Mati" meaning the Island of Death from Behind. In the interests of commercial viability the Singaporeans decided to change it to "Sentosa", meaning peace and tranquility. Wise choice... We got the super-hero cable car over to the island from the harbour. Alex was extremely excited, but beside himself when daddy took him luging once we got there. He was very obedient and promised to not tell mummy how fast daddy drove! After dinner on the beach, we slowly made our way back to the hotel and had a relatively stress-free check in to the airport. We were sad to leave Singapore. It exceeded our expectations in many ways. On the surface as an outsider, the ethnic groups seem to harmoniously co-exist with the English language being their common bond. Despite this, they are bi or even tri-ligual and retain their cultural traditions. they are polite, courteous and have a great sense of civic pride. They also love cooing at cute little babies. I'm sure they have their fair share of problems, but it is a place I would love to spend more time in.

On the superhero cable car to Sentosa Island

Luging at Sentosa Island