Singapore Sling

You've heard of the drink the Singapore Sling-- well by the end of the day I felt like I'd had one too many of them, even though all I had was juice and Tea, oh yeah and one coffee with breakfast. I plead lack of sleep, only 4 hours on the plane. But it was a wonderful day touring the city. I was fortunate enough to have a co-worker who really insisted on taking me around Singapore. She picked me up at the airport at 6:45am on a sunday, wow-that's dedication. We went for a nice outdoor breakfast at the Botanical gardens.
After a leisurely breakfast of Eggs, Sausage, and toast (yes I was hungry, I didn't have dinner the night before), we went to see the Orchid garden. It was huge, with orchids from all over the world. By now it must have been about 9:30 am and it was already getting hot. It was very nice to go into the "cool house" where they had mist and air conditioning for the orchids from cooler regions of the planet.

After touring the gardens, we went up the 'mountain' and saw the view of the city from there. They also have a statue of one of the icons of Singapore-- the merlion. It is a beast that was seen on the beach which looked like a lion, but was assumed to have come from the sea, like a mermaid. Therfore a merlion. Singapore is a real contrast to Bangalore, China and Taiwan. The streets are pristine, everyone speaks English as their first language, then most likely chinese or one of the other south east asian languages from the countries near by. The traffic is very orderly. And it seems that here in this small Island State, people of many races and religions get along very peacefully. In China town , there is a real sense of the old Singapore, but very well kept up. Buildings are old, but painted regularly and maintained otherwise. In front of all of the buildings there are extended shops onto the street. And I could feel the air-conditioning by walking close enough.
Then I came around the corner and all of a sudden I felt like I was in India again. There was a temple with a ceremony in progress. Traffic was briefly stopped while they came out into the street, turned around and went inside again. No honking of horns, or upset faces. In the market area, there was a definite sense of commercialism and some touristy items, but no-one accosted me to buy anything, it was very nice. They seem to be very into Christmas, according to my co-worker, and had decorations up already. I didn't get a shot of the christmas trees on the patio up on top of the mountain, but I did get one of the snowflakes hanging in the trees downtown.

After that we went for a nice lunch of Dim Sum and other Chinese dishes. The table was literally covered to overflowing with food and I felt stuffed by the time lunch was over. I was taken back to the airport where I basically had just enough time to document our meeting (it was a business stop), and then I was too tired to do any reading or writing, so I just zoned out and watched cricket on the TV till it was time to board the plane. I arrived in Shanghai at about 10:30pm and since we were just a bit late, there were several other plane loads of people going through immigration. About an hour later I managed to get through, find my luggage and driver and off to Hangzhou by car. I fell asleep in the car, luckily, as I arrived at the hotel at about 1:30 am and had to be up by 6 for another meeting. More about China later.