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.

After another early start I was ridiculously early to the airport in Siem Reap for a short flight to Singapore.

Relatively few people on the flight, maybe 40% full. Somehow I’d landed first row, 1F so was on and off ahead of the crowd.

Terminal 4 at Singapore’s Changi airport is designed for low-cost airlines but has the look of a modern, high-class terminal. Even something as mundane as the baggage retrieval conveyors are a nice place to be.

The other novelty on entering Singapore is that (having completed your pre-arrival information online) you can swan through an automated immigration gate, never having to be interrogated by border agents. The downside is that you don’t get a stamp in your passport.

The Jewel

A cursory glance at Changi airport’s website will quickly make obvious that it’s not just an airport, it’s a destination.

What this effectively means is that nestled between Terminals 1, 2 and 3 is a huge luxury shopping centre, and the centrepiece of the centre is the Rain Vortex. As “the world’s tallest indoor waterfall”, up to about 40,000 litres of water per minute fall from the glass ceiling to the basement level. It’s undeniably impressive, but not something I spent much more than 10 minutes gawking at.

What I actually found more compelling was the Forest Valley areas, where thousands of shrubs and trees climb terraces around the waterfall.

The rest of the affair is rather pedestrian, just a luxury mall wrapping the fancy waterfall and gardens, and a few pricey tourist attractions mainly aimed at kids.

The Hotel Indigo

Finding a half-decent, reasonably-priced hotel with a window is not easy in Singapore. Only through a clever combination of my employer’s corporate code and being an IHG member did I settle on the Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong. It’s really nice, and that membership thing got me a room upgrade, that looks out over the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the bathroom.

Gardens By The Bay

Another of Singapore’s top tourist attractions, I took a look in the evening after dinner. Again, there are paid attractions to visit, but wandering around is free and I was just in time for the twice a nightly “Garden Rhapsody” which was a medley of opera classics booming while the huge metal trees (designed as ventilation for other buildings) swim in LEDs. It’s ever so slightly on the wrong side of classy.

Still, there’s more to see there so I’ll try to get back in the daytime and have a proper mooch about.