Singapore

We started our South East Asian odyssey in Singapore, with Kit’s relocation the initial inspiration for this holiday. The flight out via Zurich with Swiss Air was on time (as you’d expect with the Swiss) but we had an uncomfortable first 3 hours with quite a lot of turbulence, which rather interrupted both our evening meal and the first part of the night’s sleep. Anyway, we arrived safely and after a seamless passage through Changi airport and a taxi transfer made it to Kit’s flat (or condo, as they call it out here!) at about 7.15pm. Time for a quick shower and then out to a local restaurant for supper.

His flat is small, but well laid out with one central living space, a bathroom, a double bedroom and a balcony. It’s all newly built - he’s the first occupant and the whole complex is beautifully maintained, with lots of lovely planting, a 50m swimming pool, a gym and a tennis court. A few photos below.

Kit had sorted us out with a lovely itinerary for our weekend in Singapore. Having visited in 2020, we had seen many of the more touristy sites already, so this was an opportunity to see another side of Singapore, and get a better sense of Kit’s life here. On Saturday, we started with a short ride on the MRT (tube) to the Botanic Gardens, and had coffee and a croissant in Cluny Court, before crossing the Botanic Gardens on foot - as beautiful as we remembered.

Then on to the Tanglin Trust School to see where Kit is working. We were able to do a full tour of the school, see Kit’s classroom and office etc, but I will just include one photo here - this is Kit in front of a mural displaying the names of the eight school houses, all places/road names etc associated with Tanglin over its 100 year history. Kit is in Winchester house.

A Korean barbecue lunch in Tanjong Pagar followed, with two of the friends Kit has made since arriving in Singapore - Sam(antha) and Lauren. Then back to Kit’s flat for a rest and a swim before heading out for dinner at Candlenut, a Peranakan (Chinese/Malay) restaurant in an area called Dempsey. This is definitely not on the tourist trail, but is a wonderful area of restaurants and bars created out of buildings which were once a British army barracks. For those who are interested, you can see more at https://www.dempseyhill.com/. A couple of photos of our delicious food below.

By way of contrast, on Sunday morning Diana and I visited the Changi chapel and museum (Kit had marking to do). This is quite a long way from Singapore downtown and had been closed when we visited Singapore in 2020, so it was high on our list to see this time. We have been boning up on Singapore history over the last few weeks, and had also recently read/re-read James Clavell’s King Rat, so it was fascinating to see more about this terrible period in Singapore’s history. The museum is very well set out, and there is a replica of the chapel the prisoners created in the camp, shown in the photo below.

We then travelled back into central Singapore and met Kit in the Orchard Road shopping district, where he wanted to look for a jacket he could wear to a wedding here in two weeks’ time; he found a nice one in Ted Baker (yes, all the usual names can be found on the ‘high street’ in Singapore!). Then back to the flat for a rest and a swim before heading down to the centre again for a drink in one of Kit’s favourite bars - the Lantern Bar, overlooking the Marina Bay Sands. It was lovely sitting there watching all the lights come on across Singapore’s iconic skyline as the skies darkened. Unfortunately, no decent photos of the Lantern Bar - the dark skies and bright lights were obviously too much for my iPhone!

Kit then had a surprise in store. He’d managed to get us access to the Singapore Cricket Club, which is set right in the heart of Singapore on the Padang. He has a few friends who are members there and one friend, Lina, was kind enough to come across to sign us in. We had a quick supper there and a tour of the club. The first photo is a quick snap of the Merlion, symbol of Singapore, with the Marina Bay Sands in the background - very much the same view as we had at the Lantern Bar. The second is of Stumps Bar at the SCC.

Kit left early this morning (Monday 4th) to go to work and rejoins us in Penang this coming weekend. We made a more leisurely start, with a taxi arriving at 09.30 to drive us across the Johor Strait and into Malaysia. It took just over an hour to get from Kit’s flat across the border and then about another 3 hours to Malacca our next stop. More on Malacca in the next blog post.