IT ACTUALLY RAINED IN SINGAPORE TODAY!

We had a great evening last night with our friends, Alfred and Jenny and their daughter, Hannah and her boyfriend, Glen.  They took us out for a buffet meal at a nearby hotel and the food and company were excellent.  Being Singaporean, Jenny was able to tell us all about the local food and it was good to know what we were eating.  The fish, especially the salmon and the snapper, were delicious, but I wasn't so keen on the fruit sprinkled with a shrimp paste sauce and covered in peanuts.  I did try some, despite the "different" smell, but Jenny was worried then because I had told her I was allergic to prawns, but all was well and I left her to finish it!

We chatted a lot about when they had lived in Swindon and also when we had visited Singapore for our Silver Wedding Anniversary and there were lots of sentences that began "Do you remember when.....".  We had lots of photographs taken and I have put a collage in as an extra to show us all.  The hotel was called "Jen" so it seemed appropriate that Jenny and Hannah should have their photograph taken with the cushion!

There is a very different culture in Singapore with regard to parents and children and Jenny said that she would love her daughter, Hannah to live with them when she eventually got married - something that we wouldn't have encouraged with our son.  However, in this part of the world, they take looking after elderly relatives very seriously - not that we feel elderly, but Alfred was keen to explore how well we were looked after by our family.  He was very surprised when we told him that we do our own thing, and even though we live in the same town as our older son and his family, we don't see them that often.  In our culture, we tend to bring our children up to be totally independent and to "fly the nest" once they reach a certain age, but here they seem to want to keep their children very close.  It was an interesting conversation.  

My knee was still a little sore today, but we wanted to go and see The Gardens By the Bay, so decided to take a taxi instead of walking to the MRT station to catch the train and we had a wonderful encounter in the taxi.  When we got in, I thought I recognised Christian music playing and when I asked the driver if it was and if he was a Christian, he confirmed he was.  We then had a great conversation, telling him we were Christians too and we then had a great discussion about Christian songs and he showed me the CD that was playing.  I also told him that we were praying today especially for Chris, our friend in Hong Kong, who was recovering from cancer, and who was going back into hospital today for further surgery.  Roy said he believed that we could pray together for Chris, so as we drove along, that's what we did!  It was truly amazing and certainly not a coincidence, but what we would term a "God-incidence"!  What a great start to our day.

When we arrived at The Gardens, our first stop was for a coffee - and a cool down, as it was so hot.  Then we set off to look around this wonderful place.  The first place we went to was the Supertree Grove, which you can see in the top middle photograph.  These fantastic structures are called Supertrees and are clad with ferns, orchids, bromeliads and climbers - and we have never seen anything quite like it.  Apparently, solar panels are fixed to the top of some of the Supertrees, capturing solar energy that is converted to electricity that supplements the energy required to light them up at night.  These vertical plant displays are truly a wonderful sight, and I have no doubt look even better at night, but of course, it is no cooler here, even when it's dark!

We wandered around amongst olive trees, palm trees and Baobab trees all the while looking for shade, and although there were plenty of shady spots, with seats, we were perspiring very heavily and realised we needed to drink more.  I was quite pleased with myself, because I got quite near to several lizards and managed to take photographs especially for our friend, mindful_life's son, who loves them.  I also managed to capture a dragonfly, but the birds eluded me, although we could hear several calling, but the tree canopy is so dense that it is difficult to see them.

The flowers are amazing and so vibrant, from orchids to hoyas, bougainvillea and many exotic species that we didn't know.  It was interesting to see that plants we use as house plants, such as the stripes tradescantia grow wild and like weeds here, and of course, there were lots of cacti in amongst the stone sculptures.

There were also many other sculptures, and this raging bull in the top left of the collage was huge.

We started to make our way back after a couple of hours of wandering around amongst the trees, but realise we never covered even a quarter of this beautiful garden.

Many of the people seemed to be going into the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest, but we decided that we were too hot to even contemplate that - even though we realised it would be air conditioned.  However, trying to find our way out, we got rather lost and ended up near the Children's Garden - I must say we were temped to go into the water-play area to cool off, but don't think we would have got away with it.

We found a good spot to sit and look over the bay with a lovely breeze blowing.  A group of children had been painting and were happy for me to take a photograph of them holding up their work.  

As well as large bronze and stone sculptures, there are many carvings around the gardens including the masks shown and many carved seats, but there are also many "natural" sculptures such as the tree trunk, which are also beautiful in their own way.

We eventually found our way back to the coffee shop where we had an iced chocolate drink before wandering around the gift shop and then decided to find a taxi to bring us back to our hotel.  What a good job we didn't go on the train, because it started to rain quite heavily, but it only lasted about an hour, and the sun is out again.  

We are now resting in our room with the air conditioning going "full belt";  the clouds are looking rather dark, but the good thing here is that even when it rains, it soon dries up, so I daresay we will go out for a walk later before we have our evening meal.

Tomorrow is our last full day before we will have to pack our cases and begin our journey home.  We are going to Jenny and Alfred's home tomorrow evening for a meal and most of their family will be there, some of whom weren't married 25 years ago, so it will be interesting to meet them again, and also their wives and children.  We are having a wonderful time and thank God for good friends.

Thank you once again for your kind comments, stars and hearts - I am so glad you have enjoyed our holiday adventures with us and hope to get back to commenting once we are home and the dust has settled!  Mr. HCB, of course, is looking forward to getting back to his garden and to planting all his seeds.  M xx