So long Singapore...

The last few days here have really flown by in a hurry.  A couple of nights ago Wilma and Hector took us  and Hector's bosses son to a Asian Basketball League game with the Singapore Slingers and a team from Manila.  They are each allowed to bring in a couple of ringers (ex NBA types) and it wasn't hard to pick them out as they had at least a foot on their teammates but surprisingly, they weren't the best players!  Singapore had this little captain who scored 16 points in the first 5 minutes - every one of them from beyond the white arc where shots are nearly impossible.  The manila team finally shut him down by over covering him but it was a fun game... and close right up to the last second.  This was the only game we've ever been to where the home fans were outnumbered 2:1 by the away fans!  Singapore took an early 12 point lead and held it for a while and the crowd was quiet like at a Canadian game.  But then everytime the Manila team rallied, the place went nuts!  I guess there must be a lot of Philipeno's working here!

The other cool thing that happened was that Shawn and Hunter got tagged (fornone of them) to go down to the court at half time and try to put some baskets in.  Shawn, of course declined in favour of Hunter but Wilma, mentioned to the girl who was picking them out that Rachel plays Basketball so she got to go down at the 3rd quarter and race another girl dribbling a ball to the other end, shooting a basket and then putting on a full uniform and then dribbling to the other end and putting in one more basket.  She took three shots to get in the two baskets but had trouble getting he uniform on with her flip-flops.  She won a lot of loot as a consolation prize (maybe 3 seconds behind) and was pretty chuffed.  She'd been bugging us all trip about how she was missing basketball and other sports (she's going to be competitive and good at sports like her older Sister Kirstie) so this was really good.  We were quite proud of her going down there in front of 6000 people and scoring two out of three hoops under that pressure!

Rachel putting her game face on (with flip flops!)

Proud father... missed the shot she sunk!

Hunter, Hector and Wilma after the Slings won!

Hector is on assignment to manage the stadium and also gave us a tour of the new stadium they are building to replace it.  There is nothing wrong with the old one but the new one will put the Skydome to shame.  You have to see the construction here to believe it.

NONE of this was here when I was last here...  amazing.

This boardwalk goes for miles around Marina Bay

This is the ENTRANCE to the shopping centre (at Marina Sands)

Hey Gina... look what I've found! (A Louis Vitton signature store)

The Marina Sands Shopping Centre, Hotel and Casino

A theatre

A boat (and a skating rink) in the mall... no shortage of money here!

That's a large infinity pool and observation deck up there.... ($27 for a drink so we didn't sample)

Raffle's here we come!

It covers the whole (square) block like this.... its huge and over 100 years old now.  Must have been quite the presence back in its heyday in the 20's-50's. 

The new stadium being built... they don't even stop at night.

Clark Quay at night.

Hector putting one in...

Then we did some more shopping and I even took Rachel and Shawn shopping in Chinatown myself!  Today we went to Sentosa Island and rode the monorail, walked the beach and went and watched iFlySingapore.  That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  Its basically a huge vertical wind tunnel in which you get to fly with just your body as if you'd free fall out of an airplane.  For $90 you get about 10 minutes of experience.  That's enough so that you could basically hover.  They were also training an instructor so we got to see how hard it is to be really good at it.  She was learning to basically fly in any attitude and do rolls and flips.  I (and all of us) really would have loved to try it but it was a bit too expensive for our current budget.  They sell packages for 100 flights for about $4000.  If I were Bill Gates, I'd have one in my back yard!  I hope they bring it to Toronto so we can try it when we have some money again!  I thought of one of our friends (Blair Thompson) who has become an expert parachutist and has done hundreds if not thousands of free falls...  I could definitely see the attraction.  This to me would be be even better as the air is 30 degrees Celcius instead of 10 degrees or worse!


After that we went over to Wilma and Hector's apartment for a swim in their beautiful pools and shared a few beers.  We've really enjoyed meeting them which became one of the big highlights of our Singapore visit!  I'm definitely jealous of the city and their setup here and hope to host them when they come back to Ontario after their assignment.  We've made some new friends and that's always good!

One of the other highlights was the Night Safari at their world famous zoo.  Admittedly, coming off 9 days of heavy safari in the Serengeti, Ngorogoro, Tarangira and  a private game reserve kind of spoiled us but it was very cool seeing the same animals at night which we weren't able to do in Africa.  The lions are definitely less flat cat there and they had some Leopards we got to see from inches away (versus 50' in a Jeep).  They also had some Tigers and things we didn't see in Africa.  Our biggest challenge was that it started at 730pm and we were all beat!  We took the city bus and the MRT there and back for under $3.00 each!  (The safari tickets were considerably more than that but well worth it).

Yup... it's a bat.  This one is tiny.... they had some that had 2' wingspans and looked like small house cats with wings!

A flying squirrel although by the size of him, I'd call him a flying ground hog.  You'd never think he could fly by the size of him... had to weigh 4-5 kgs.  

We've loved this city and have sampled only a bit of it. The place is so clean, the people are polite yet friendly and the MRT is the best in the world that we've seen.  If Toronto had one like this and covered the city like this one does, nobody would take cars anywhere.  Best of all, its dirt cheap.  Our ticket to the airport tomorrow will be under $2.

Sentosa Island from Singapore.... we walked across on a causeway/boardwalk and came back on the monorail .

Singapore's Merlion... a mythical creature

Sentosa Island Park

One of the three beaches at Sentosa Island...  notice all the ships in the  background?  You can almost walk between them.

The great subway cars... made by Bombardier... now if they could sell some to the TTC!

No jumpers can kill themselves on this system... notice the doors (and how neat it is)!  

The Golden Tooth Budda... 460 kg's of solid gold!

 
We fly out of here tomorrow for Phuket at 9:30am on an el cheapo ticket on Singapore Airline's discount carrier Tiger Airways.  The bag charge is 1/3 of our ticket price!  We are unsure where we'll end up tomorrow night as this is as far as the planning goes.  We'll probably spend a couple of days in Phuket before taking a boat to Ko Phi Phi for 5-6 days but we're flexible.  We'll miss Singapore but we're ready to move on.