Ailsa and Andy’s Travels: Day 32 Big Trees and Dinner by the Bay

Oh my gosh Singapore is HOT and humid! Nothing quite prepares you for it as you step out of the lovely air conditioned buildings and within 20 seconds, become a dripping hot sticky walking blob! 🥵

This morning, Andy and I went for a stroll around Chinatown and headed over to the Singapore Botanic Gardens which were absolutely beautiful, in fact, I think they’re probably the best botanic gardens we’ve ever been in. The gardens are enormous, with several lakes and many different tropical plants and trees of gargantuan proportions. We loved it there even though we were both over heating somewhat!

We travelled using the Singapore Metro which was fantastic. It’s like the London Underground, but better! Everything is air conditioned, super clean and everyone follows the rules : no eating or drinking or it’s a £500 fine. Singapore is spotless - it’s a really beautiful city and very safe to travel around. The taxi driver was telling us that if you drop a piece of litter it’s an instant $500 fine (he had missed a bin with a cigarette butt once and had the pay the penalty!). The system works we haven’t seen once piece of litter the entire time we’ve been here.

After coming back to the hotel to cool down, we scooped up Dougal and Chloe and went for an explore of some wonderful food courts. The most famous food court in Singapore is called Lau Pa Sat. There are dozens of food vendors selling all sorts of foods under one giant sized Octagonal roof. Dougal, Chloe and Andy all tried several different things, from Singapore fried “buns” to chicken dishes and an oriental type of pastie! All went down a storm.

This evening was a bit special…Andy was meeting a friend he hadn’t seen for 40 years so a special venue was needed for this meet up. We caught a cab to Marina Bay and headed up to a restaurant called Lavo which was on the top floor (floor 57) of Marina Bay Sands which is a relatively new sky scraper down on the bay. The view was stunning, looking out over Singapore at night. Dougal opted for the house speciality starter, which was a 1lb Wagu meatball! Apparently it was delicious! Andy blethered with Stuart about what he’d been up to over the past 40 years and we all had a jolly nice time. Chloe was most impressed with her Wicked themed pink cocktail - it did look delicious. Andy may have ordered some Whisky at the end of the evening, without his glasses on, and got a slight shock when the bill came - note to Andy….put your glasses on before ordering drinks 🤓!

The restaurant has an inside dining area and an outside area with a glass fence so you can have uninterrupted views out over Singapore. After dinner, we all spent quite some time taking in the view while Stuart explained about all the different areas we could see and how Singapore has changed over the bast 30 years. It was wonderful at 11 o’clock at night to be outside and warm! As quick as you could blink, the weather changed and we found ourselves in the middle of a lightning storm and huge downpour, so that was our cue to head back inside and home for the evening. It was a really special night.