My husband and I are back from 9 days in Singapore. We went for vacation and a good friend’s wedding. The wedding was wonderful! We watched the solemnization ceremony, which was nearly identical to the civil wedding ceremony my husband and I had, and we went to the dinner. The dinner was sumptuous with a little bit of theater. Our good friend put on a great party and my husband and I were honored to be invited :).

Singapore, as usual, is nice. Our vacation started off a little bumpy, though. Upon arrival to our hotel, we found out that our room wasn’t ready, so we went to the hotel’s restaurant for some lunch. We were pretty ragged looking from the plane ride and looked quite out of place. To make a long story short, one of the ladies at the table sitting next to us purse went missing and she blamed my husband and me. We went through a couple of rounds of questioning with the hotel security staff and the police before being left alone. We were quite displeased. I personally was very scared because breaking the laws in Singapore carry heavy penalties and I didn’t know what our rights would be if we had been formally accused. After that it was pleasant warm days of walking around, eating, and shopping.

We visited the Singapore History Museum and the Asian Civilization Museum. Both museums were quite large and we could not finish them in the time we had. I really recommend visiting the History Museum coupled with a visit to military fort on Sentosa island to get a good feel for the history of Singapore. It’s an interesting history and I think through experiencing these sites, I understand better why Singapore is what it is. It’s a careful balance between many cultures that could be easily warring with each other. The element of geography also plays a great importance to Singapore then and now as a trade port and at the center of mix of countries in political turmoil. These aspects of Singapore I found very interesting :).

The last full day of our stay we visited the Juroung Bird Park. The Bird Park is a compact bird zoo and it takes about 3 – 4 hours to see everything along with a few shows. The selection of birds is good and the park is good condition (the flamingo habitat was being renovated while we were there). There’s not much in the way of food though. We were most impressed with the falconalry exhibit. There were 20 or so birds of prey on display in open falconalry cages. I’m always amazed to see how big the American Bald eagle is. We took the MRT out to the bird park and along our 1+ hour journey we got a good look at alot of Singapore and there are an unbelieveable amount of people living on that small island. Most of them are densily packed into high rise structures that rise out the land much like tract housing at home — but much taller. It’s overwhelming to think about. This too was quite interesting. We wondered what all the people do.

To summarize, it was a good trip with good food and some fine siteseeing. Despite this being our 4th visit we still haven’t seen all there is to see in Singapore and since the city-nation is always in flux, I imagine we will not run out of things to see there in the future.