Singapore 2017 : Lost in the cloud

Ezra visited the Philippines last February so we grabbed the opportunity to go on a cruise with her. The last time we went on a cruise together as a family was back in 2015, for our Japan-Korea cruise. This time my parents signed us up for a cruise that would take us around Thailand and Malaysia. It begins (and ends) in Singapore so we had to fly there. We wanted to explore Singapore as well so we decided to arrive a day before the ship was scheduled to leave.

We took an early flight so we were all pretty much half awake at the airport. And it didn’t help that Ezra set her alarm to go off at 1am that morning, and just kept snoozing it for the next hour.

We found this giant golden chicken at the airport because 2017 is the year of the rooster. (This was in February so the Lunar New Year had just ended.)

My parents managed to get hold of Singapore Airline’s promo fare, which included free entrance to Gardens by the Bay. We had to claim our tickets to the park  at the airport when we arrived in Singapore:

Just like all our previous visits to Singapore, we stayed at the Strand Hotel in Bencoolen Street.

We used to get the family room but this time Ezra and I shared a room and my parents stayed next door

One thing we love about this place is that it’s located right across the street from a Kopitiam/food court. This year we learned that it’s now called Food Republic.

Naturally that’s where we decided to have lunch

The place was packed, we had to wait a while before securing a table

I ordered my favorite – roast duck and char siew. We also got some sugar cane juice to wash things down

After this we looked for a taxi to take us to Gardens by the Bay:

Just like the airport, the place was decorated for Lunar New Year:

 The place was really lovely so naturally we took several photos around the area, mostly with the supertrees:

Ezra tried to recreate my Space Needle shot, LOL. At least I’m bigger than my watermark this time.

Ezra found this “giant panghilod”

For those who might be confused, some people use smooth stones that look like this (much smaller of course) to scrub their body and get rid of dead skin cells in the shower. I know we have loofahs nowadays, but in the past people had to be more resourceful :p I remember my mom having one of these back in the day.

Even the trash cans were pretty

There are two domes to choose from – the flower dome and the cloud dome. We decided to go inside the cloud dome (AKA Cloud Forest)

The first thing you’ll see when you walk in is this huge waterfall

The entire dome was temperature-controlled so it was nice and cool inside. We walked around and admired all the plants and displays they had

Lego plants!

(Not really sure if they really are Legos, but they’re something similar)

Mini-map of the area

There’s an elevator that goes up to the Lost World, which basically just takes you to the top of the giant waterfall you saw earlier

Up there you’ll find more gardens and a small pond

My mom loves flowers so she spent a lot of time taking photos of them:

And with them:

Like mother, like daughter:

The Cloud Walk also begins up there:

It’s basically this metal walkway that will slowly take you back down to ground level. It gives you an amazing view of the place as well as the surrounding areas outside the dome, like the Super Trees

Ezra checking to see how high we are

Oops, she noticed the camera

That’s part of the Cloud Walk down there

Again, you’ll find lots of beautiful plants as you make your way down

The Cloud Walk will also take you through the Crystal Mountain where you’ll find these stalagmites (and a few stalactites)

For some reason it made me think of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude

The Cloud Walk will also lead you to an area that has more details about the Supertrees, as well as a mini-theater where you can watch a short documentary about how global warming will affect the Earth. I think it’s called +5 Degrees or something like that. Basically it depicts how something as small as a 5 degree (Celsius) increase in temperature can have drastic effects on the Earth’s ecosystem.

After exploring the Cloud Forest, we went out to look at the shops around the area. We found that the sell their own brand of ice cream:

I wanted to try the durian one but I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish it

We wanted to see the supertrees at night so we decided to hang around and wait for it to get dark

Unfortunately, because we woke up really early for our flight we had a hard time staying awake while we were waiting. My mom actually ended up falling asleep on a bench. Eventually we decided we would just head back to our hotel, grab and early dinner and go to bed. We still had to walk quite a bit to find a taxi, fortunately there were many interesting sights along the way:

(Sadly no otters crossed our path that day)

Back at Food Republic, I ordered the same thing that my mom had for lunch : chicken rice yay!

When we arrived in our room, Ezra and I quickly got ready for bed and got some sleep. We were exhausted from our flight and from our adventures that day. Plus Ezra was still recovering from jetlag because she just arrived from California the day before. Still, we really enjoyed travelling with her again and all her crazy antics. You can watch our vlog below to see how kooky she can be at times: