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Published: January 20th 2009
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Margaret Thatcher's Orchid
Dendrobium - named after Baroness Thatcher during her visit to the Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1985 Another trip, another blog to get on with. I'm writing it well after the actual trip as there wasn't that much time to do it then and I do want to make sure I remember it all, so here it goes.
We flew to Singapore via Dubai. The moment we sat down on the plane, my sister started to receive visitors in a form of different crew members asking her to fill out some forms (presumably for skywards) - she kept on writing Polish names of places, so they kept on coming back asking her to decipher things… The moment they realised there was a Polish passenger on the flight, they passed the message on...to a Polish steward who happened to be working that evening. Arek - that was his name - turned out to be a rather hilarious bloke who got so excited he met fellow citizens that he couldn't stop chatting to us, mainly telling us about different flights and what happens on them. To give you an example, he said he doesn't like certain destinations as some passengers coming from there don't quite know how to use toilets, as in they do things next to it rather
than in it. Or even better, they do it on the seat itself… Now, that was enough to put me off from ever thinking of working as a stewardess! Arek quickly reassured us that seat covers on Emirates planes are washable so we should be alright. I didn't even want to know…
As for Singapore itself - we flew there for New Year's. I didn't expect much from this little city / country apart from the fact that it was going to be very clean and civilised. And it certainly didn't disappoint. That didn't stop Chessy to find probably the only chewing gum in Singapore and step in it - I call that skill! It's even more skilful when you know that selling chewing gum is forbidden over there and so there aren't that much of this stuff hanging around. She carried that "souvenir" at the back of her Birkenstock for the most part of the trip but it was eventually washed away by the very many monsoon rains we've managed to encounter. It was almost a sad moment to find out the Singaporean gum was gone!
Anyway, the whole place seemed very well ordered. Switzerland actually springs
to mind here and guess what? It turned out that the Singaporean government sought consultation with the Swiss when organising matters at home. Really, no surprise as the place runs pretty smoothly, is safe and generally very civilised - you almost forget you are in SE Asia!
When in Singapore, one must visit the Raffles Hotel and have High Tea or something rather. It's quite a cool experience as you can almost travel back to colonial times and see what it was like then.
Apart from pretending to be an English colonialist (of which I'm neither), we took a walk around botanical & orchid gardens which actually was a great thing to do when jet-lagged. The heat certainly wasn't helping but the thought of escaping cold London definitely saw us through the stickiness and over 30 Celsius. One thing I learned from the gardens is that Ms Thatcher has her own orchid! Nice work Margaret!
Another thing to do in Singapore is getting a cable car to Sentosa Island. I must admit, that was a rather disappointing experience mainly due to the awful sight of the construction work that completely spoiling the view. It almost looked like
Dubai only without the skyscrapers. Just terrible. The island itself has quite a few amusement areas, of which we visited the Underwater World but it turns out London Aquarium is much more exciting than that. The beaches didn't seem that nice either, so overall, it was a no-no for Sentosa. On top of that, it was all quite expensive too, so really, not worth the effort.
The New Year's Eve was quite fun. We went by the marina, not far from the Asian Museum, where a lot seemed to have been happening. It was also the place to be for fireworks, so that sounded like a winner. Since we couldn't be bothered with the crowd and felt quite hungry, we decided to nestle in a Thai restaurant by the waterfront with friendly lady boys - I realised I actually missed seeing those from when I was travelling around Thailand. We ended up treating our palates with a lot of spice, which was interesting and not exactly what we tend to do back at home. I had spicy tom yam soup which was so good but it also burnt my lips that evening. But then again when in Rome...
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mary
non-member comment
cute haircut!
you and your sister can definately pass for sisters. love xoxo m