Singapore June 2008

Wednesday morning June 18th was the longest day of my life! Brett flew to Malaysia for work on Sunday and I planned to fly over to meet him on Wednesday. Kayleen agreed to watch the girls for us if we took Allden. So I flew for 20 hrs on a plane with a feisty 19 month old boy! My mom dropped me off at the airport at 6:30 am Allden and I were very tired after only getting about 4 hrs of sleep! I had 3 flights one to LA where I had a 3hr layover which felt like an eternity. Then a flight to Tokyo Japan which was about an 11 hr flight on a packed airplane! There were no empty chairs but luckily I had an isle seat so I could get up when I needed to. The hardest part was trying to eat and drink with the little tray and have Allden on my lap. He decided to throw a giant temper tantrum the time lunch arrived and didn’t want any of the food and screamed and I was just trying to keep my food and juice from spilling everywhere. Nobody around me was willing to help and the flight attendants were to busy serving lunch. Finally I just put my food tray on the floor and got up and walked to the bathroom until he calmed down a bit. Then he threw a fit again. I was about to loose it and wondered why I was so crazy to try to fly by myself with this little guy! Finally he took a nap for about an hour and a half on my lap which was pretty uncomfortable but there was no place to lay him down. We survived and landed in Tokyo where we only had to wait in the airport about 30 minutes and then got on another 6 hr plane flight. This was much better because I had empty chairs next to me for Allden to lay down and he was pretty tired since it was late at night so he slept most of that flight. Too bad I can’t sleep too well on the plane so I was exhausted when we finally landed in Singapore. Brett flew in that night and met me at my gate and then we got a shuttle to our hotel. We stayed in the Mandarin Oriental, it’s a 5 star resort and very very ritzy. We had a nice view from our room looking out at the city. It was about 1am Singapore time when we got to the hotel so we went right to bed.
Friday Brett took the day off and we went to explore Singapore. It’s a big city! There are sky scrapers everwhere and no empty land. Everyone lives in apartment buildings and it is a very busy and congested city. It is also very clean and modern. Everyone speaks English and is friendly, Allden gets a lot of attention because he is blonde and blue eyes and cute. We ate breakfast at a little café close to the hotel then we took the Singapore Airlines city bus where you can hop on and off all day. We got to see the city, we got off at the botanical gardens and walked around. It’s very pretty and green here but also very humid. It was pouring in the morning when we woke up but then it stopped and it was sunny all day. We had lunch at a little café and then took a taxi over to Sentosa. It’s a little island at the southern tip of Singapore. It is connected by a big bridge. Sentosa, means peace and tranquility in Malay and is a popular island resort visited by about five million people a year. We went to the aquarium where we were able to touch some big sting rays, Allden was quite excited at first until they came up to him and he got really scared, it was really funny! They were slimy, we were also able to touch some little sharks. Allden liked looking at all the fish. Then we went to the huge shark tank and saw them feeding the sharks fish, that was really fun to watch. We also watched the huge manta rays eating fish. The aquarium was like a huge tunel that you walk through so you felt like you were in the tank with them. I like to look at all the fish! Then we took the Sentosa shuttle over to the dolphin bay where they had a pink dolphin show, the dolphins were grey on top and had pink belly’s. They did lots of tricks and it was fun to watch but very hot and humid outside. We went back to the mainland via cable car it was neat to get a bird’s eye view of the city. We went back to the hotel to freshen up a bit and then headed out on the town for dinner. We had a nice view of the city from our hotel swimming pool. We walked down by the Merlion, it’s a big statue with a lion head and a fish tail and it’s a fountain that shoots water out into the bay. The Merlion is Singapore’s trademark symbol. Singapore has a very busy and active nightlife. There were a lot of people out on the streets and the restaurants were very busy. We ate dinner and then walked down by Clark’s Quay it’s quite the happening place on a Friday night, there are restaurants all along the riverside, it’s really pretty. There is also a huge bungee ride and close to there is the eye of Singapore, like a giant ferris wheel that you can see the entire city. The jet lag was really setting in so we didn’t stay out too late and we had to catch an early flight the next morning.

What a fun day in Singapore!