Singapore

Visiting Singapore was a great way to end our trip. We had four days in the city, which we packed full of activities and time with family and friends. One of Sal’s old workmates, Magdalene, now lives in Singapore and was able to get us free tickets to a bunch of attractions. So, at a marathon pace, we checked out the Singapore Flyer, Gardens by the Bay (an indoor, air-conditioned garden – only in Singapore!), the Zoo and the new River Safari. Here are some photos from the Flyer and Gardens by the Bay:

The Zoo is one of the world’s best, and we saw some awesome animals we’d never seen before (and some we didn’t even know existed!) Highlights were the white tigers, the simpang and the bizarre tapir (which looks like a cross between a pig, an elephant and a panda).

The River Safari is a new sister attraction to the zoo. There’s not as much to see as in the Zoo, but we really enjoyed the manatees and the stars of the show: the giant pandas.

We had a fantastic time catching up with Magdalene, and we were lucky to have her show us around so much of the city.

We also had a great time with some of Craig’s family, who kindly had us to stay. They have lived in Singapore for 12 years and have two kids, aged nine and six. Craig hadn’t seen them in years, and we had lots of fun catching up, playing in the pool and going out for a delicious dinner of Singaporean Black Pepper Crab.

On the last full day of our trip, we decided to splash out and go to Universal Studios. We couldn’t believe our luck when a man handed us two free tickets while we were waiting in the queue! He was a season pass holder who had been given extra tickets he didn’t need. We were blown away - it’s not often you’re given a $150 gift from a stranger (we’ve decided Singapore is actually a budget travel destination – as long as you have a constant supply of generous family, friends and strangers!)

By the end of our four days in Singapore, we had covered a lot of the city. As well as being stuffed full of tourist attractions, Singapore has lots of beautiful, interesting neighbourhoods to wander around. There is a lot of nice urban design here: plenty of parks, public art, grand skyscrapers and cute shophouses. The most distinctive building in the skyline is Marina Bay Sands, which has three towers topped by a huge, curved deck shaped like a cruise ship! Excellent public transport and signage also makes Singapore an easy city to explore.

Singapore always felt so far into the future, right at the end of our time away. It’s quite surreal writing this post, knowing that this is our final destination and that our next flight takes us home. Travel has been our lifestyle for the past year. Our routine has been about packing bags, working out transport and sorting out a place to stay. We’ve been getting to know new people and places every few days and have had the freedom to choose how to fill our time.

We’ve joked that we’ll need to find a course to help us reintegrate into society. Topics could cover texting, making calendar appointments, household chores, dealing with sub-30 degree weather and an introduction to the work week.

There are things we are looking forward to of course – seeing family and friends, New Zealand beer, not having to pack our bags and having a sense of purpose beyond ourselves. We will miss the freedom, learning and excitement of travel, but at the same time we wouldn’t want to continue like this indefinitely. It will be good applying ourselves to some new challenges and having some longer term goals again.

We will also arrive back with a greater appreciation of what we have in New Zealand. Exposing ourselves to a variety of places and ways-of-life overseas has helped us understand our own home better. Even after travelling around the world and seeing some really awesome places, we feel very lucky to call Wellington and New Zealand home.

The classic Wellington postcard shot

Thank you for reading our blog. It’s really helped us feel connected to everyone back home and it was nice knowing that we had family and friends following along with our journey. Our blog now weighs in at over 60,000 words!

One of the most frequently asked questions of a traveller (usually just after “where have you been?”) is “what was your favourite place?” So to wrap up the blog we are going to write just one more post, talking about some of our favourite places. It will be a productive use of the “denial” phase of our post-trip grief!

So we’ll see you soon (this time in person).

Comments from WordPress

• Garry 2013-05-30T11:06:09Z

  Welcome home!

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson