One of my previous posts might help explain why it’s taken so long to finish recapping my summer holiday and if you follow me on Instagram you’ve probably seen that I’ve only added insult to injury by since taking another multi-island trip to add to the backlog of travel recaps to share. Since I took the first step to unblock myself by acknowledging that I have been suffering from a case of the mehs, I’m now fighting my way through to recovery with these next few posts about my travels, career events and other happenings in my world.

Singapore (aka the cleanest city EVER) was the third and very brief stop on our four city tour through South East Asia this summer, after Bangkok and Bali. We spent barely two days in Singapore and I wish I could have enjoyed it more but I was feverish and sick with tonsillitis; despite this we still managed to see quite a lot in a short space of time. We arrived early in the morning to take full advantage of the first day but my fever and swollen tonsils took me out of the game for half of the day. While I slept, my husband explored the area surrounding the hotel and mapped out a game plan for us to see the city as efficiently as possible…that’s right, via a good ole hop on, hop off bus tour. Once I finally managed to get myself together enough to salvage the latter half of the day we caught one of the last buses and got a good lay of the land.

Since we had such a short time in Singapore, we had planned to take advantage of the entire time, including night time which we don’t usually do since we try to keep the kids on somewhat of a regular sleep schedule. The night zoo tour was a family friendly way to fill the evening and maximize our time in Singapore. Our taxi driver was a character who chatted us up about all things Singapore in a way that only a local taxi driver can. His warmth and sense of humor made us quickly forget that we missed the last hop on hop off bus to the night zoo while we detoured in search of food.

There was quite a long wait to get into the zoo and while I was praying that my ibuprofen didn’t wear off, we were entertained with fire breathing and juggling acts which helped to pass the time in the queue. Once inside we rode a tram around the park past the animals which was a much more intimate experience than seeing them during the day when I’m at times more distracted by the crowd than I am focused on the animals. The animals seemed calm and a bit intimidating as we drove past in silence and admiration.  Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the animals because we were told not to use flash photography as not to disturb the animals and I didn’t want to get eaten.

The next morning, I was still on the struggle bus to recovery but I forced myself to get out and make the most of our last few hours in Singapore. We decided that we had enough time to see two places, one of my choosing and one chosen by my kids. Despite having ridden on the London Eye FOUR times, my kids insisted that we go on the Singapore Flyer so after hopping off the bus to explore the Masjid Sultan Mosque and the surrounding area we took a taxi for a more direct route to the Singapore Flyer. We were starting to cut it close to get our things in order to catch our next flight so that ride on the Singapore Flyer seemed to take forever to get back on the ground but I have to admit it was a nice way to see the city.

Happy that we had seen some of the highlights of Singapore we headed back to the hotel to collect our bags and on to the airport to catch our next flight to Phuket. We crammed a lot into those 48 hours and while touring the city my kid’s spotted the JPMorgan office building and even initiated a conversation about their willingness to live in Singapore. Obviously they were impressed with what they saw and overall it did seem like it would be a good place to live as an expat so you never know….it’s in the universe now.