Singapore, November 2019

We decided to try and make the most of the stopover in Singapore on our way to New Zealand and spend a couple of nights exploring the area. This didn't quite go as planned as we ended up with only one night after our flight was delayed by over 24 hours, but we tried to fit it as much as we could with our time there. We weren't able to do a couple of the things we had originally planned to do, but something I definitely learnt during this trip was that you can't control everything, and sometimes you just have to be able to make the most out of a less than ideal situation! I would definitely be keen to explore Singapore again on another stopover later in life, so I do feel like another visit could definitely be on the cards at some point in the future. It has been a while since I have visited somewhere so humid which was really interesting to experience again, and although the skies remained grey for most of the time it still felt very tropical, even experiencing a huge thunderstorm which lasted barely half an hour but with the biggest raindrops I've ever seen! 

The mix of architecture around the city was really interesting, with loads of huge modern skyscrapers mixed together with colourful religious shrines and buildings, along with busy food markets. The highlights for me were the beautiful marina area and the Gardens by the Bay. The grove of supertrees, the man-made, light up trees, were as spectacular as you can imagine. I was surprised at how huge the Gardens area was, and if I was to go back I would definitely spend more time exploring all the different areas here. The city felt so much busier and modern than I expected, with honestly so many different things to keep you occupied with despite it being so small in size as a country. 

On our second and final day, we spent the day visiting Singapore Zoo and the River Safari which were both brilliant. The Zoo is huge and has some incredible animals that you can see and learn about, and different experiences to feed some of the animals like the giraffes and rhinos. There are even two other parts of the Zoo which are the Night Safari and the Bird Park, but there wasn't enough time to visit those as well.