Singapore day 4

 

Another super long amazing day!

We started out our morning with French toast at home. We rode to the MRT and took 2 trains to see where Grandpa & Grandma work.

A monk standing in front of Jo.

Their office is in a super cute historic building. It’s a 3^rd floor walk up with REALLY steep stairs. It used to be the living quarters above the retail area on the ground floor so it has a kitchen and restroom, but because of the age of the building, both are outdoors on the backside of the building. It was really fun architecture.

After the office, we walked over to the Singapore National Museum.

They are revamping most of it to celebrate the country’s 50^th anniversary next year, but the exhibit about the history of Singapore that was open was very informative and interesting.

 They started with folklore about the founding and naming of Singapura in the 14^th century then moved through the British colonial period in the 1800s, the Japanese occupation during WWII, and finally to the history of the independent city-state.

 Random: This bell was given to a local church by Paul Revere's daughter. Interesting to us Americans.  

Not much is known about the period before the British were here and the colonial period was similar to what I’ve read about elsewhere in the British Empire. But the Japanese invasion and occupation was really interesting and complimented what we learned this past summer when we stopped at Manzanar, a Japanese Internment camp in Northern California.

After Japan left, Singapore came into its own and much of what is here today is the product of a master plan that began in the 1960s. More about that in a later post.

After our historical tour, we headed to… the local mall (#6) to grab lunch in the food court. Eating at the food court is much cheaper than a restaurant, but more expensive than the hawker stalls. But we were downtown and there were no hawker stalls to be found, so to the mall we went. Jo & Ky & I had chicken & rice. Sy had chicken nuggets – who knew we could find those?! Scott & Kik had chicken & pork with rice from the “Vegetarian” section. I still maintain they were eating tofu, and Scott doesn’t actually argue it wasn’t, but we’re not entirely sure what they ate. (:

After lunch we jumped on the train to head over to the Marina Bay Sands. This amazing spot has become an icon of Singapore. About 4 years ago, we watched a “Build It Bigger” episode of the construction of this hotel and more. Then, just before the trip we looked for that episode and found instead a National Geographic episode instead. It was so fun to see in real life something we watched being constructed on TV.

We had to take 2 trains to get there and you’ll notice that Kik & Ky are not in this picture. That’s because when we changed trains, they got on and then the doors closed on the rest of us! So my 2 dear middle children were swept away by train in a foreign country with no adult. Thankfully, we were only going 1 stop and we were able to communicate to them by signing through the window to get off and wait at the next stop. So when we got there 7 minutes later, they were sitting nicely on a bench just waiting for us. Phew! And thank you, Lord.

Weird: a tall candy cane and reindeer wanted me to take a photo of them with my son.

Once reunited, we went to check out this landmark which includes: a 1000-room, 3-tower hotel, a science and art museum, a casino, a super-upscale mall (think Chanel, Dior, Gucci, etc), and a ton of beautiful architecture and finishes. It began to rain shortly after we arrived so we walked through the mall. We were waiting to meet a couple other people from the OM office because mom had arranged a personal tour for our family and 2 others with one of the architects who worked on the project and his wife!!!

Jason, the architect, met with us and walked us through the hotel, then the mall, and an overlook of the casino and gave us a ton of inside info about the structure.

Views from the top! (Gardens by the Bay and Marina Bay - where every building has a bank's name on it.)

This was such an incredible opportunity! Even the kids really enjoyed it, though Sy was a bit tired and hungry by the end. We watched the evening laser light show together at 8pm, then headed to the food court (mall #7, by the way) to have dinner. We had yummy Chinese dishes and our tour host even bought us a traditional dessert with shaved ice and longan fruit.

We were exhausted by the end of the meal, but there was more fun to come because we still had 2 train rides and a bike ride before we could rest at home. (:

Seriously. Incredible. Day.