Blog 27 - to Singapore

The last leg of our journey and finding it hard to tear ourselves away from New Zealand and our friends I personally was feeling little but indifference to this bit I have to admit. The journey of 3 hrs flight to Sydney, a hour or so's wait there and 7 hrs onwards to Singapore arriving 3am NZ time was not something I particularly relished. In spite of my cold crescendoing to dramatic heights in all possible ways and presumably being generously donated to other passengers sharing my airspace and a tortured drop into Singapore as I hoped my eardrums would stand up to the pressure we arrived safely and a luxurious taxi ride to the hotel helped to smooth us down.

I have to admit that I am really enjoying Singapore. I spent yesterday morning bobbing along gently beside Richard in a little cloud of bemused fluff as we strolled towards the waterfront, visiting St Andrew's Cathedral (simple elegance and lovely interior), passing the English Cricket Club, the Law Courts and the Asian Museum (all classical and elegant buildings) and at the waterfront being confronted by the strange mix of restaurants in Flemish style old buildings standing in front of the towering high rises behind.

But somehow the spaces work, the flowers and trees are beautiful, all is spotless and thoughtfully restrained and my muzzy head began to enjoy just being here. It is comfortably warm and the air conditioning is generally refreshing rather than freezing contrast. From the waterfront we decided that a river cruise of half and hour would mean fresh breeze and little effort and that proved to be a perfect choice.
(this elegant Renaissance-style building houses the internet cafe from which this comes)
We rested back at the hotel and refreshed went to walk in the beautiful park at Fort Canning. It is exotically tropical but has a series of noticeboards along the walk giving really interesting details of history and flora. To our surprise we found a cottage built for Raffles in his last days at the top of the hill. Unpretentious but with lovely views and setting. We descended the hill on the other side to get to the Chettiar Hindu Temple and found to our pleasure that there was a festival of some sort in full swing. You could tell by the deafening cacophony coming from its doors; a mix of bagpipes and animal slaughter would perhaps best describe it. But it proved to be two trumpeters (of sorts) and two drummers - and I think the idea of going at it full blast was to leave the brain unable to think of worldly or any thoughts and get into the mood of focusing on what was going on. Anyway it seemed to work and as we watched the ritual of a stone cow (I think) being washed and then covered with red flowers or berries and later a white powder and then rewashed as a flaming dish was held up now and again to mark the need for worshipers to raise their hands in prayer the sounds seemed to follow a change in ritual, either guiding or following it. It was in fact mesmerising (though maybe I was semi-mesmerised anyway) and the rich colour and sense of devotion was very impressive. The outside of this temple, open at the sides with pale green columns, was covered with colourful figures beautifully depicted.

Change of mood as we stopped off for iced teas at Hooters at Clarke Quay - most of the restaurants (and streets for that matter) seem pretty deserted during the day time, maybe because this is officially the rainy season -though thankfully not today. Hooters describes itself as 'delightfully tacky, yet unrefined' and Richard certainly enjoyed the mini shorts and tight tea-shirted waitress.

Back to rest again and then we decided to eat at Little India but popped in to check out Raffles Hotel on the way to see if we would need to book for a meal. It is far more lovely than I'd expected. A creation of white colonnades and total elegance, set around open courtyards. It is dressed for Christmas in the most sumptuous swags of gold and red and the prices for meals look affordable so we'll head back there for Friday evening I hope.

We changed the tone completely by going to The Banana Leaf Restaurant - where food is slapped down directly onto the place mats/plates of banana leaves. It is eaten by hand (or spoon and fork if you feel cowardly) with gusto and was absolutely delicious, though by that point my cold which was relieved by the curry, but not giving me much eating space admitted defeat on finishing all the goodies. We walked back thankfully through the lively night market of Little India and had another wonderful night's sleep.