Day 6 - February 7th Singapore

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!  Today is the beginning of the year of the monkey and with a significant Chinese population the people of Singapore celebrate it with gusto.  We understand there are a lot of reunions etc tonight.

orchids

After quite a good night's sleep we breakfasted in the Tiffany Room (excellent) and discussed the plan of action for today.  It was raining as we breakfasted and the forecast was for more to come.  It had to be indoors.  Like all good tourists we asked at the information desk about indoor activities and a range were given.  Among them was the suggestion to go back to the Garden on the bay and see more of this.  We got our waterproofs/umbrella together and went by tube to the garden.  Just as we arrived it rained torrents and we decided to take the shuttle bus to the indoor biomes (similar to the Eden Project) which house a wide variety of plants and sculptures.  The first biome contaained flowers with a lot of orchids - magnificent specimens from this area of the world.  

the waterfall

There were flowers from all over the world but one point of interest was that the biome was kept cooler than the ambient outside temperature making it more comfortable for us.  The second biome was called "clouds" and had many trees with the main feature being a very high waterfall.  It is dramatically in front of you as you enter the building and we took a lift to the top and wandered inside and round the gangways gradually descending to  the floor again.  They piped steam into the biome to keep high humidity.  After a very good 3 hours at the garden we took the shuttle and tube back to the hotel (it had largely stopped raining).




part of the Indian decorations

After refreshing ourselves we took some of the other advice and visited the "Little India" area of the city.  It was very busy with hundreds of shops and people milling everywhere.  The most people we had seen here and the Indian population showed how cosmopolitan the city is.  We didn't stay too long but the experience was worthwhile.

Guess what we are drinking and where

We then took the tube back to Raffles and did what you are supposed to do when you stay here.  The rest of the evening we spent having a meal and relaxing.  Tomorrow evening we move on and fly to Aukland - another all night flight which loses us another 4 hours but then we shall OK timewise for 28 days.