Singapore - The Great Merlion

[Monday Oct 8th]
Today we ventured out and went hiking through the only remaining uncut forest in Singapore. Bukit Timah Nature Preserve. When we got there it was raining and our cab driver, after only charging us $9SGD (~$6USD) for a 25min cab ride, just gave us an umbrella! We ran up a path to the visitors centre. We were talking with a ranger there for only a couple of minutes when we were startled and heard some loud snapping and crashing noises. We turned around and watched a huge tree fall and come crashing down, right along the path we *just* walked on! How freaky is that!? Well now we know that if a tree falls in a forest and there is someone around to hear it, it does make a sound!

After shopping in the sports shop and buying some important bug spray, he hit the trails. We took the rustic trail along up the side of the mountain. The forest was filled with so much diversity. It's said that 1 square Kilometer of the forest here has more tress species than the entire North American Continent! We sure couldn't disagree after seeing all the trees. Some of the leaves were amazingly big!

It was a warm day and since it had just rained, we sure got sweaty hiking up the hill! Finally we made it up to the top and we were rewarded with a bunch of Monkeys frolicking about. We sat and drank our '100 Plus' Isotonic drink and watched the monkeys. Oh so cute. Soon enough we headed back down. We had a lot of fun along the way. Just stopping and hearing the sounds of the Jungle, thinking that not too long ago wild Tigers were roaming here.

We headed to the Singapore Botanical Gardens. They were amazing, we headed straight for the Orchid Gardens. So many Orchids! Just beautiful. We strolled through and came to a 'cool house' What a relief that was, nice and cool. There was a nice waterfall and some more of the exotic plants such as the bug eating flowers. Venus Fly traps, pitcher plants, etc.

Now at this point we'd been walking and hiking around all day. I was wearing my polypropylene hiking shirt. Now I knew that they can get quite an 'aroma' but whew, this was bad... So bad I just had to buy a new shirt! The selection at the Botanical Gardens, was, shall we say, sparse... We picked a winner ;) It got some looks.

We headed to Sentosa Island next. That's an Island just South of Singapore. Its basically a tourist haven with several attractions. We decided to take the conventional mode of transit, a gondola ride/cable car (Adam, Anna thought about you the whole way...totally tingling feeling)! We jumped into our Gondola and rode across the Bay between mainland Singapore and Sentosa Island. We started 15 floors up and we went up from there to the tower spanning the gap. What a thrilling experience that was.

Once we got to the Island we decided to head to the 'Songs of the Sea' show as we had heard it was fantastic. Check out the video! They had a choreographed song and dance, along with a water, fire, and laser light show! After the show we headed to ride the Sky Tower. The view at night was quite amazing, we could see Indonesia in the distance and could take on most of Singapore as well. It was hard to believe the announcer when she said the tower was built in juts 8 weeks in Germany. Our last stop on the Island was doing the luge. I had never done a luge before, yet alone in the dark. Wow, that was fun. Zooming back and forth ;) We took a chair lift back to the top of the Island and took the Gondola back to Singapore.

We headed back to the Clarke Quay for dinner at a Thai place. We had to try a Singapore Sling over dinner. Anna had Pineapple fried rice with Prawn and I had Phad Thai. I must admit, after being in Thailand, it wasn't quite as good as the real thing but my Phad Thai was pretty good.

For dessert we had what turned out to be the best dessert Anna ever had! It was Sticky Rice with Coconut Milk and Mango. Mmm, fantastic! We'll *have* to try and make it back home!