Day 3

Im sitting in Singapore airport now so I might aswell write about today, and if anything worth saying happens on the plane ill letcha know on the next post..

Today I woke up around 8 and it was raining cats and dogs so i decided id go back to sleep again :). Slept until about 9, at which point i headed down for my morning feast at the restaurant (had some weird yam-cake things today!). It was still raining stupidly hard so I went to my room for a while and watched some T.V just so i could say i did, and then caught a bus into town (not walking in that weather :) ).

In town i wandered down Orchard road for a while again, and visited some more amazing malls, and there were some cool market-type stalls up again. After a while the weather had cleared up a bit and I thought id go visit the chinese (and japanese) garden. It was either that or visit china town and little india (not enuf time for the zoo). And i figure i can see a china town in Sweden if i really wanna, so might aswell do the gardens. I caught the train out to the relevant stop then walked down a pathway to enter the gardens.

The gardens were really stunning, there were a few awesome pagodas, and it was all surrounded by this big serene lake (with turtles in it!!!! - aswell as some big as fish). It also had a statue of confucious and some awesome white brides across parts of the lake to get to another island-part of the garden.

One part was a Japanese garden, and even though half of it was closed for renovation, the banzai garden out front was spectacular! there were trees there up to 200-300 years old, and they were all so amazing to look at! Ive never seen so many banzai trees before, it was great!!

I then found this place that is aparently in the guniess book ofm world records for having the biggest turtle collection.. so i thought, why not!! And it was so worth it! Inside was firstly a whole lot of turtle memoribilia, kinda like a museum, then you could go out to the main area and see all the turtles. There were SO many varieties it was crazy! I took some photos of some of the stranger ones (but there were too many to take pics of even some of the oddest). One that was really amazing was the only 2-headed, 6 - legged turtle in the world. (yes there will be a pic of that coming :).) Aparently it is 1 in 10 million turtles that have a birth defect, and those usually die within days. But they found this one, half-dead and all infected, but nursed it back to health.. and there it is!!

Anyway the highlight of the turtle place was the feeding! For a dollar you could buy a cucumber and feed it to the turtles for a while. (the lady gave me one free which was nice!). This was hilarious ay! Turtles would go crazy for a bite of cucumber! You would get this seething mass of turtles climbing over each other.. getting higher and higher, bidding for a bite. or if you fed the hundreds of regular (terapin?) turtles in the little lake in the centre, the water would just be this seeting mass of turtles, making little thrusts up to grab a hold of the cucumber with their mouths.. there would be turtles over balancing, falling over and all sorts :) hilarious!! Although some of them had some seriously large mouthes and major strength.. even the little ones would make you nervous!! So i kept a very careful eye out for my fingers (especially when in the lake and turtles would climb out and walk along the bridge to you ha ha!.

Anyways, ive got some cool mid-bite shots of some turtles that I hope to put up (seems to take ages, but hopefully Ill get lots of photos up soon tho!). After this i finished walking round the garden (my foot hurting alot again by now! - its gone all swollen and stuff.. pain in the butt!) On the way out i struck up a good conversation with one of the rangers on a pushbike. So that was cool, he he he thought i was from the Netherlands tho.. so go figure? Was gonna say its the hair (orange.. netherlands...) but its still pretty black.. so know knows!

It was then back to the YMCA via my jem of a discovery.. MOS Burger (droool!!! It'll change ur life!! ha ha) to pick up my bag and head off to the airport. Which I did WITHOUT a stinking cab, even tho it took a while and had to cram into packed bussed and trains lugging around this huge bag ha ha! And yeah, basically now here i am! Just a few minutes ago I saw the world cup going on in a bar so went in to watch. (Argentina - Mexico)... but it was a smoking bar.. so now all my stuff STINKS! Plus a coke was like 5.50 and a handful of spring rolls was 6.65!! But the quoted prices were less than that.. who knows.. either way it was daylight robbery.. but i wanted to watch the game so never mind ;). I was lucky to get in! It was really snooty, and i was in a singlet and boardies ha ha!.

Alright.. better go.. 14 hours of flights are ahead of me... I can barely contain myself for the excitement... And this time round im flying during the time i should be sleeping.. so knowing me i wontb get any sleep, and ill be shattered by the time i get to Stuttgart. Anyways, its so long to Singapore. Totally loved it and I am SO coming back to here and the surrounding countries asap and for a much more prolonged stay!! Europe here I come!