Singapore Day 6

Tanis and I decided to take a bus tour of Singapore to orient ourselves (a complete map might help, too). We boarded the bus at the Marina Bay Cruise Terminal, one of two cruise terminals in Singapore. This was just opened last year, and is built on reclaimed land. Singapore is very crowded, so making new land was a priority. This a full kilometer from the former shoreline, and is rapidly being filled up with buildings. There is actually no more room to expand further south, as Indonesia is very close and some of the small islands that Singapore uses for manufacturing and oil refining are “in the way”.

Our first stop on the tour was Mt. Faber for the view. Since many many of the towers in Singapore are higher than Mt. Faber, it was definitely a cityscape view. Virtually all Singaporeans live in government apartments (which they buy) or condominiums (privately funded apartments, also owned) as the land is so dear. From there is was on the the Botanical Gardens.

Tanis (R), orchids (L)  ;-)

At the Botanical Gardens we visited the National Orchid Garden, the world's largest collection of orchids...and what a collection it is! I knew that the orchid family was diverse, but I never realized that it is the largest plant family. We saw orchids no wider than a pencil to ones that were bigger than our hands, and in colors ranging from grey to the more normal yellows, maroon, purple, green and white. Truly worth the visit.

From there we drove east on Orchard Street, Singapore's top shopping street, to Chinatown. Chinatown is no longer residential, but all commercial. We stopped here and walked down the street, just looking. While there we saw the Sri Mariamman Temple, built in the south Indian style, with lots of statues of people and animals on the outside, but did not go inside. Since your skin is permanently moisturized here (lots of humidity, with an 83 deg temperature) we decided to go back to the ship for lunch.

Lots of people finished the cruise here, to be replaced with a totally new bunch. This will be us in ten days. Off to a day at sea tomorrow, then Jakarta.