Singapore Botanical Gardens

Hi everyone,

As Erica mentioned earlier, I am indeed alive! We've been keeping busy every day seeing new sights around the city. Saturday was particularly special as we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens (and as most of you know, I love plants!) Let me tell you, the Royal Botanical Gardens pales in comparison to these vibrant, lush gardens. As we walked into the gardens, we were greeted by tree lined walkways and interesting (yet sometimes bizarre) flowers!

Main path though the gardens

Absolutely stunning!

 

Erica's curiosity is peaked by this 'star trek like' plant

My absolute favourite plant here- Torch Ginger

After walking around the main gardens, we paid to enter the Orchid Garden- money well spent! I have never in my life seen so many branches and buds growing on orchids.

The Botanical Gardens are definitely a must see for anyone visiting Singapore. Hopefully you all can experience it for yourselves one day! Hope all is well with everyone following our blog. I'm sure you'll be hearing from us again soon enough as we're headed to Hong Kong on the weekend!

Erica standing in front of the largest tree I've ever seen

Me, alive and well, hanging out in the gardens

Hello!

Erica here with an update on our visits to Chinatown and Little India here in Singapore. Never fear, Kaelin is still alive and has promised to write a post about our trip to the botanical gardens yesterday. First though you must suffer through my relatively bland account of two very un-bland neighbourhoods.

We went to Chinatown on our first full day in Singapore and this was the view as we stepped out of the subway:

Everywhere we went there was a riotous profusion of colour and neat little nooks and crannies that had all sorts of intriguing things.

These traditional shop houses lined the streets. In the past the owners, who lived above the shop, would put out their wares on the sidewalk under the awnings for people walking by, but it blocked the sidewalk so they're not allowed to anymore. 

A display of kites and fans in a typical store

Weird and interesting jars filled with questionable things. Don't look too close if you're squeamish.

A cat sleeping outside of a clothing store. It had a bell and everything.

These little orange trees were everywhere for Chinese New Year

At the end of one street there was a Hindu temple, which was interesting since it was in Chinatown.

We couldn't take pictures inside without paying, but the facade was incredible

Close up of some of the figures. The detail was just amazing.

We went to Little India two days later, and I've never been anywhere that was so fragrant (in a good way) and alive with colour.

A stall selling jewelry and decorations

Jewelry boxes for sale for a dollar or two each

Bolts of silk and other fabrics for saris

Closer view to see some of the myriad of patterns.

Walking through these neighbourhoods was just amazing. The pictures just don't capture the true essence of these places, especially since I didn't think at the time to take pictures of the fish stalls (with live and recently dead fish), the meat vendors (with cooked whole chickens and rabbits hanging from spits), the flower and spice stalls, or the people selling coconuts by the side of the street. The combination of all of them makes for a truly indescribable experience.

That's all for now, but Kaelin should post soon about the botanical gardens and I'll likely throw up a post about our trip to the bird park, zoo and night safari.

We are alive and in Singapore!

Hello all,

Erica here. We are alive and made it to Singapore tired, but in one piece. We had a 12 hour layover in the Seoul airport, which while horribly long also had some good points:

1) We had a chance to eat bibimbap

For an airport cafeteria it was quite impressive

  2) We got to admire the orchids in the airport

There were tons of them, all with this many blooms. Incredible.

3) We got to speculate about the branding of Korean Air

Korean Air: Sponsored by Pepsi?

It's amazing how green Singapore is, it's really like they built it around the rainforest. I just can't get over how a city of 5 million people can have this much vegetation. Everywhere you look there are trees and flowers and greenery.

Exhibit one: A view of the skyline obstructed by trees

Exhibit two: View from our bus stop

Exhibit three: A courtyard in  Raffles Hotel

We've been in Singapore for three full days now and have been to Raffles, Chinatown and Little India already. I'll save Chinatown and Little India for another post, but will leave you with a picture of us drinking Singapore Slings at Raffles on our first day here.

Yummy and iconic!

Hello!

Erica here, writing the inaugural blog post for our fantabulous travel blog. We set this up since pretty much everyone we talked to was asking if we'd have a blog while travelling and we figured it sounded like a pretty good idea.

It's less than a week before we leave for Southeast Asia, and Guelph has gotten two snowstorms in the past week. I like to think of it as Canada's way of making sure we'll remember it while we're lying on the various beaches we intend to visit on our travels.

"You will remember me!" - Canada

That's it for me until we are in warmer climes, but I leave you with a picture of me and Lola in the snow.

She likes the cold as little as I do, as demonstrated by her presence on my shoulders and her freaked out eyes.