Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Our final stop had us in Singapore before we would be taking in break in Korea over the Christmas holidays. We arrived early in the morning and made our way through the city by public transit to our hotel. We were a little disappointed to be leaving Australia and all its western comforts behind but Singapore turned out to be a good way to ease back into Asia.

We spent a couple of days while we were in Singapore wandering around the city checking out all of the different districts. We spent some time in Chinatown, Little India, Arab Quarter and the CBD. It was nostalgic to be wandering through miniature versions of countries we had been visiting over the last few months.

The part that always caught us off guard was the level of English in Singapore. With so many different ethnic groups in the city, they all use English as their common language. All signs, menus, brochures, tickets and maps were in English. Often times it felt like we were in some kind of English theme park.

My favourite part of Singapore turned out to be Sentosa. It’s a small island off of the southern coast attached to the mainland by a causeway. They’ve turned the island into a beach/theme park/resort/hotel. We spent the better part of two days sitting on the beach sipping Singapore Slings. Even though it was quite a bit smaller than most beaches we had been to, in some ways it was much nicer seeing as it was clean and well taken care of.

Since we were at the end of the trip and Australia had taken a lot out of our budget we were running low on funds. We did however splash out once more and took a ride on the Singapore Flyer. It is the largest ferris wheel in the world, it looks out over the harbour and the CBD. We went at around dusk, and the view was breathtaking. We had the car to ourselves complete with a cocktail, peanuts and music.

Singapore was a nice way for us to ease our way back into Asian society and culture. We really enjoyed the time we had in the city. It is an amazing mix of culture, language and people.