Singapore

Yes, we are “halfway ‘round the world” right now! We spent a full day sightseeing (and trying not to drop from exhaustion from jet lag). We were staying in Chinatowm…

… and the mix of old and new was very interesting.

The majority of our time was spent in Gardens by the Bay, which is actually a “world renowned” botanical garden that is massive (250 acres) in the heart of Singapore. I mainly wanted to go here to see the Supertrees….

… that I had seen so many pictures of on the Internet.

I hadn’t realized that they were making living “walls” of the trunks, and work is ongoing. They were first completed in 2012. There was a walkway that we could have paid to walk around near the tops of several trees in the “Grove”, but we just wandered ‘freely’ among the grounds.

Sorry the pictures aren’t brighter, but it was a cloudy afternoon, after raining all morning. Very nicely hot and humid! ;-)

The Marina Bay Sands hotel is pretty eye-catching…

… but we didn’t have time to visit this time. When we return to Singapore at the end of our trip (in mid-June), we’re going to try and visit the casino at the top, and at least have a cocktail and take in the views.

There was a wetlands area that we wandered through, and it reminded us of our recent visit to southern Georgia -

I thought the chick was kinda cute…

… and the Water Monitor kinda fearsome -

Apparently his bite is toxic, so we gave him a wide berth.

Downtown Singapore:

I don’t have a great closing for this post. I just wanted to get a little bit out while I have a day off from diving. The next post will feature our day trip around Makasaar on South Sulawesi island in Indonesia.