Contrary to yesterday, today was a pretty good day. Had a decent breakfast (including warm pain au chocolat 😋).

After breakfast I took myself off to Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. The gardens are 166 years old, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Asia’s “top park attraction” (according to trip advisor).

Which makes it all the more satisfying that entrance to the majority of the gardens is free. You could spend several days here exploring all the different areas.

The one area that is chargeable is the National Orchid Garden. Even this is only S$15 (11€, £10), so less than half the price of the rubbish observation deck from yesterday.

And a million times more impressive.

Let’s Talk About Orchids

When I was in school, we were told that an orchid was a flower, singular, and so rare that because we’d never go to tropical South America, we would never see.

Orchids were described to us as some almost mythical plant that we’d only see in textbooks.

Bull. Shit.

Of course, as I grew older I realised that orchids were a broad species and found all over the world. But still, learning about the numbers, distribution, growing and propagating methods, and the sheer variety of them was eye-opening.

Did you know:

• There are around 28,000 species of orchid.
• There are a kind of herb.
• Their seeds are microscopic, and don’t contain enough nutrients to germinate, requiring a symbiotic relationship with fungi to provide the necessary fuel.
• Vanilla extract comes from Vanilla planifolia, a species of orchid native to Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and Brazil.

And so on and so on. I took so many pictures I’ll put them all in a separate gallery.

Really, I could have spent more hours here than I did, taking photos of hundreds of different varieties that I didn’t know the name of.

However, a) my phone was dying in the heat (the chilly “Cool House” was a blessed relief) and b) I had to find stamps.

Singapore Post

Singapore’s national postal service has the most “1980’s C&A Skiwear” brand logo.

Since the MTR station was near a mall with a branch in it, I thought I’d try my luck with stamps there. They had a vending machine that had a couple of options and, seeing no other outlet, I tried it out.

Result: minus S$5.20 and plus zero stamps. The error message was in Chinese so after tapping every button on screen I gave up and went to the counter. “Oh yeah. You’ll need to ask for a refund via this website [points to QR code],” like this happens regularly.

“And we only print standard POS stamps here. You need to go to the GPO where they have a philatelic shop.”

Off I traipse. And the GPO shop is rather nice. You browse the stamps, choose what ones you want and quaintly write down the codes on a piece of paper like you’re in Argos, and then someone fetches them from a cupboard.

I rather went overboard so I hope I’m not fuelling my mother’s habit again. Maybe I’ll drip-feed them to her over a few months 😅

And That’s Almost It 😭

Tomorrow morning I head back to Changi T3. There I’ll board a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380, and I’m not ashamed to say that that aircraft is part of the reason I’m even in Singapore.

I figured that airlines were phasing out usage of the A380 and really only Emirates and SingAir were still committed to them. Seems there’s been a post-pandemic revival in fortune and some are being brought back into service by (e.g.) Lufthansa.

Anyhoo, here’s my chance to fly this super-big-boy plane. And with wifi, so my last post for this trip may be from 10km straight up.