Singapura

So once again it seems that the longer we stay in one place, the more time seems to fly! Singapore was so great! There is so much to do with the kids, the people are nice, it is easy to get around and the food is AMAZING! The past few weeks have just flown by…. We have had the time to have some good down days but also completely full crazy days too. We even had a surprise visit from my step-mom, Ruth, on her way to India on a last minute trip to see our friend Khen Rinpoche and meet with the Dalai Lama. It was so fun to see her and the kids were especially excited to see family beside Dylan and me.

After arriving from India and the craziness of just getting onto our flight (apparently you aren’t allowed to have a rubber snake in your carry-on..who knew), we almost didn’t want to leave the Singapore airport! It looks a lot like Honolulu when you arrive – warm breezes and beautiful tropical plants everywhere. Lots of rules to be sure, but when the person explaining them to you is so nice, it feels less constraining. In fact, we didn’t have any run-ins with the law even though Dylan was chewing gum through passport control and we jaywalked multiple times.

We spent the first few days just walking around the city. It was hot and humid (not as bad as Kyoto) and there was some relief from the daily rain downpour. We stayed just a few blocks from the Singapore riverfront, which is loaded with outdoor restaurants and great people watching. In that sense it felt very European but when you turned the corner and found a long buffet table covered with food offerings and incense or a huge Buddhist or Hindu temple that changed. It was an amazing to be in pretty Western surroundings – people’s dress, their attitudes, etc.- and then also have these very traditional beliefs running parallel.

The kids especially loved it. We spent several days at the Singapore Zoo (we had to go back to show my stepmom, Ruth, the animals). The zoo is set in a huge jungle setting along a lake and is really nice – not creepy and depressing. They also have a Night Safari – like a nighttime zoo – that was also awesome. The best part of it was sitting by the tigers (just a few feet away- through glass) and watching them pace around, waiting to be fed. What amazing creatures! They are so much bigger than you would expect. We also went to the Bird Park, which was also very well done, but not as exciting to me as the other parks.

Our big crazy splurge was a day at Sentosa Island – kind of like Las Vegas but with fewer casinos. There are a million things to do, but we decided on the adventure section that included a street luge ride, a ropes course and a very long, very high zip line. We ended the day with dinner on the beach.

The food was definitely the highlight of the trip – it seemed like everything that we ate was incredible. We remembered when we were there that our friend Fabio had asked us to send him pictures of the food, so we think about him at every meal (unfortunately usually after we have eaten something and we realize we forgot to take a picture!) so we are trying to get better J The famous dish in Singapore is the chili crab, which is a huge, very hard shell crab cooked in a tomato-chili sauce that you eat with steamed buns. They also have a black pepper crab with is even spicier. We couldn’t decide which to get, so we got both. They were both very good, but maybe a little crab overload! Aside from the crab, all of the seafood was fabulous and super-fresh, cooked in Cantonese-style.

Two weeks in one place was definitely needed. We didn’t feel so much like we had to race from sight to sight and that we had time to just hang out and enjoy being where we were. Emma and David have been working their schoolwork little by little every day and both are proving to be avid readers. The Kindles are great for them because there is a built-in dictionary function so they can look up words as they go along. They both miss friends, especially Emma, but seem to be really enjoying themselves overall.