Singapore

I think of all the places we’ve been, Singapore is the one I would recommend you go. It’s extremely safe, clean, everything is written in English and some people speak it, and the national sport is shopping. This way when you go you won’t have some catastrophe you blame on me for recommending it, and to be honest most of you are princesses who would whine about the lack of hot water and AC in most places, like I do constantly.

Derek and I met up with a friend of Pat’s, Pete, who moved to Singapore a few months ago with his wife Kaodi. We swam in their enormous pool and went bar hopping, stopping in a jazz bar where Pete ‘jammed’ on guitar with a straggly group of characters who eventually turned it into a 70’s lounge music party, causing much eye rolling with Pete and Derek, but I thought it was hysterical. Kaodi made us two pizzas from scratch, and they were absolutely delicious. I hope one day Derek and I live somewhere interesting enough to visit so we can return the favour.


We ended up staying a week, partly because I was sick for a few days (damn you Derek! And Matthew! And whomever originally gave it to Matthew!). The highlights were Dr. Fish (which earned its own post) and the Night Safari, which is a nocturnal animal zoo. I would have killed to go there as a child, you run around a rainforest at night lit with tiki torches. You can walk right into the giant flying squirrel (GFS) AND the fruit bat enclosure. The GFS’s were huge, larger then most cats, and just adorable. We got to see three of them gliding a few feet above our heads. The bats were even better, mainly because I love me some fruit bats. They had flying foxes and some little species, and the fruit was hanging right by the walkway so they were fluttering around our heads, brushing us with their wings. If you think bats are ugly you have never seen a fruit bat, they are just adorable with little teddy bear or fox faces. They don’t do the sonar thing like the bug eating ones so they have large eyes to see at night with.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos, obviously it was night out, they spent about 10 minutes telling us in 8 different languages to NEVER USE FLASH, but I did get a decent video of the serval cat jumping 10 feet into the air: