Exploring Exquisite Singapore!

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Well, for the past few days we have been exploring the beautiful and spotless city of Singapore! What astonishes both of us is that over 4,000,000 people live hear, all from various ethinic groups (its extremely multi-cultural), yet the roads are so well maintained, the cities barely have any little at all, and the streets and buildings appear carefully placed amongst a city of trees! You wouldn't relaize that this gorgeous city is home to so many people! The architecture hear of some of the buildings is amazing and the Chinatown and Little India are like hot spots of shopping and culture that appear out of nowhere really.

The night we arrived in Singapore we enjoyed a feast at a Japenese BBQ house, which reminded us of The Grizzly House in Banff, where you grill your own meal that is served to you in raw form. It was a great experience and well worth the slightly more expensive price, given the amount of travelling we had done that day from Borneo.

Yesterday, we spent the day exploring the Botanical Gardens, which are a must see for sure if you ever come to Singapore! Most of us Canadians no of Stanley Park in the heart of Vancouver. Well, think of that but add a pristine section of jungle, one of the largest (if not) orchid research facilities and gardens with over 3300 species of orchids (yes, we thought of you Kevin!), and acres and acres of trails, likely hundreds of water features and flower gardens, and just beauty beyond imagine in the middle of a metropolis city! Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that its all free to the public, except a minimal fee for the National Orchid Garden, which is well worth the price of admission.

We also spent the afternoon and evening at the Singapore Zoo, which were wondering about the whole time, but as far as zoos go, this is by far the best we have EVER seen, and hey, the Toronto and Calgary zoos (especially the latter) are quite well done so we have something to compare it to. We did the day and night zoo and both were well worth the afternoon and evening.

Today, we drag our asses out of bed early and hopped on the Hippo tour bus to get a good feel for what Sinagpore was all about; the history, the cultures, the design, all of which were amazing especially the world's largest fountain, the Fountain of Wealth, created with a Chinese flare indeed, and the numerous historical buildings (many of which had colonial architecture from the British occupation) intertwined with the much more modern architecture of some of the hotels and business skyscrapers (many of which had unique designs that we could only imagine in Edmonton).

Tonight we plan on going on a night tour for about 4 hours, which includes dinner at one of the various stopovers and some shopping and browsing around the city. Its all been a great introduction to Singapore and we're certain we will both be back here in the future to continue exploring.

Tomorrow morning we leave bright and early on Friday morning and arrive at home on Friday evening, which seems so odd, but with the international date line, there you go. So, its almost over, but we have many other adventures and hundreds of pictures to share so this will likely be our last entry until we arrive back home when we will take some time to update our blog one final time by adding pictures and corrections and some other interesting tidbits.

Thanks to all who read and posted replies to our blog. Sorry we haven't been good at returning replies, but we both promised ourselves that we wouldn't spend too much time on the computer while gone. To those wanting more information for their own travelling purposes, feel free to contact us.

Take care all and see you soon!

Love Jon and Laura!

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