Lets explore outside of the red light district.

26.2.16

We are absolutely exhausted!
I think we’ve navigated most of the map!

We’ve come back to the room to have a coffee and wait for the feet burning to subside.

Had trouble getting to sleep last night. Its the first time in a couple of weeks that we’ve had neighbours or any road noise, let alone pimps shouting and whistling across the street.

We set off fairly early and got a bus almost to Raffles, had a wander round the grounds and the gift shop.
All very impressive, lovely building.

We walked to the river and walked and took loads of photos.
Its very much like London along the river, even got its own St. Paul’s, Jubilee Bridge and Millennium wheel. On a much smaller scale of course.

After a while we looked on the map and spotted a Market Food Street symbol and expected something like the covered open air place last night….
It was opposite One Raffles Place, a huge modern building.
It looked like a multi storey car park but with food stalls and no cars. It was absolutely heaving and so much choice and very cheap.

For 10$ for both (£1 =$2 ) we had 2 huge chicken biriani meals, it was absolutely delicious.
We strolled along to Marina Bay and wanted to see a closer view of this weird building with a huge boat on the top.

As we stood by it a nice lady asked me to take her photo. We got chatting, she was happy to hear another English voice, she works here and said we should continue along and over the bridge to the other side, and we’re glad we did, really impressive.

Its the art and culture area, with live free music every evening, art and science museum, and the Fi stand, and Olympic youth centre.
The Helix bridge is based on the structure of DNA and has some great viewing platforms to capture the skyline

The tall building with the boat on is a massive mall, and the boat is called Sands Sky Park and apparently is a huge infinity pool.

We got confused trying to find out way out to get to the tram and had to go through the expo centre to get to it!

We decided to go to Orchard Road which is a massive shopping area a few stops away.
But when we arrived we realised they weren’t really the interesting traditional little shops we had hoped for.

The huge designer shops spread for ever, we walked for a while and decided we’d had enough but did fancy Marks and Spencer just in case it had a good hall. I was adamant it wouldn’t.
Very complicated to get to, too busy to cross the road so we had to take an underpass which went into a mall, through another couple of sections and finally across the other side
But worth it…. Marks & Spencer with food hall 🙂

And….Hot Cross buns !!!

A few packs of chocolate biscuits, buns and wine gums later we got back on the underground.
At random we chose Chinese Garden on the map as it sounded nice and far removed from big shopping malls.
It was such a long journey! Almost to the very end of the green line.
I told John not to kill me if there was nothing there and off we got.
Wow!!! What a wonderful oasis in this huge city.

We sat by a small lake, and of course had to open the chocolate digestives. Busy munching and watching tiny little yellow birds and admiring the view I heard a loud splash. In the corner of the lake something was trying to get out, I couldn’t get my head round the shape of it and pointed it out to John.
He said they were lizards and went dashing off with his camera.

One of them was huge, about 4/5 ft long and I was a little scared whether it would attack John.
We sat for ages watching them swim. Just amazing.

The whole place was lovely, pagodas, stone work, bridges and a huge lake beyond.

Our original plan was to head off to the Night Safari but by now we were cutting it fine if we decide to go, just didn’t want to rush to leave this place.

There’s a running club and lots of runners were exercising. There’s even separate paths for cyclists, roller bladers and runners.
All very organised, signs everywhere and we liked this one

After a lot more walking we picked up the tram and came back planning to go back out and eat, but really couldn’t be bothered and caught up with Happy Valley instead, well John did, I slept through most of it.
The girls are already in the brothel opposite.
I wonder if people here get paid on Fridays, if so it could be a busy night outside!

Loved our first day in Singapore.