6 Week Gap Year

Botanical Garden



Wednesday 30th May
Eventually went back to sleep around 04.30 and we awoke at 09.00and gently got ourselves back into the land of the living. It is absolutely throwing it down with rain and really windy so looks like a troublesome day for brolly owners. We are eventually ready to face the world about 10 and visit the 99 Centre just around the corner from the Excelsior. It is a mini food mall and offers many styles of food for incredibly cheap prices. Oh and by the way (btw) the rain and wind have both gone, and as we step onto the almost dry street you wouldn’t know it has been raining! The heat hits you like the curtain of hot air you encounter when going in and out of shops at home and the humidity envelops you like a hot wet towel! We choose a breakfast of fried rice, diced pork and cabbage, tofu and mince. SG$4.5 or £1.50 crazy price and a complete contrast to yesterdays dinner cost!
Off we go to Orchard Road and shopping heaven as referred to in my previous report on SG. We visited Tangs, one of the oldest department stores and Lu had great delight in sifting through hundreds of handbags all reduced in price in the great SG May June and July sale. We moved on to Lucky World centre which is one of the centres the locals are more apt to go as prices are a little lower and some of the outlets sell, shall we say “genuine articles of doubtful provenance!” We had a little success here as Lu had forgotten to bring the cable which connects her camera to the laptop to download her photos. We managed to pick up a USB adaptor for the memory card to plug into which in turn fits the laptop and lets you download the images. Even haggled him down SG$10! More window shopping in the Paragon Centre and then caught a #123 bus (you can also catch 77, 106 or 177) from Orchard Boulevard to the Botanic Gardens on Napier Road and spent best part of 4 hours very slowly walking round. The Gardens have an orchid cloning unit used to propagate and grow hundreds of thousands of orchids for display in the gardens and also for retail. The Orchid is the most numerous varietal plant in the world with literally thousands of types being grown. The humidity seems to have increased and the sun is out and fearsome. We dodge around in the shade as much as possible and in and out of the air con parts of the gardens. Take a great walk through the orchid gardens again but have to cancel the walk to the visitor centre as it is too far to reach in this humidity and have to walk back. Next visit we will only see the parts not yet explored! Visited Swan Lake which I missed last time and watched in fascination as one swan washed and preened itself in the slightly murky waters just in front of the great swan statue in the middle of the lake. Also discovered a turtle swimming around with only 3 legs! We expected to watch him swimming in circles! We caught a bus #174a or 174 back to St Andrews Church, North Bridge Rd and walked back to the relative cool of our room.
This evening we took the MRT to the famous Newton food hawker centre at Newton Circus on the Bukit Timah Road. Modern hawker centres are the result of the SG authorities rounding up all the original street hawkers and relocating them in cleaner and more hygienic centres with running water, gas and electricity facilities. Whilst obviously safer for the customers it has lost some of its original authenticity, charm and to a degree atmosphere. Now of course it is still a dining experience not to be missed and a good meal can be had from SG$2.5 or 80pence a course! We had tom yam soup (mixed seafood of prawns, mussels, squid and cockles in a lemon grass and oyster flavour) cracked black pepper crab, fried rice, pak choi in oyster sauce and SG style Chinese spring roll. We followed with mixed fruit platter of pineapple, water melon, pau pau, lychee, mango, apple, guava, star fruit, melon for SG$6 or £2! The experience of eating here is al fresco style but being able to sit anywhere and order from a variety of units. Most of our food came from The Ocean BBQ at unit 16 which is on the outside of the triangular courtyard arrangement of Newton and next to the bus and car park.
By now it is almost 10.30pm (but the centre stays open until around 5am!) so we head back to our hotel. We decide to have a cold beer nightcap at the mini food centre 99. 2 tiger beers of 633ml or over a pint is SG$10 or £3.60. We drank al fresco again at street tables watching the world walk past and feeling the humidity rise! It’s now 1.00am and time for bed. Sentosa island tomorrow.

Labels: Bukit Timah Road, Ocean BBQ unit 16 Newton Circus Hawker Centre, Orchard road Singapore, Orchids, Peninsular and Exelsior Hotel singapore, Singapore Botanical Gardens, Tangs Department Store