Singapore Sling

Yummy!

One of the delights of travelling, as far as I'm concerned, is going into supermarkets and finding out what the locals eat. Here we went into the supermarket more to take advantage of the air-conditioning and escape the humidity. As well as Malays, Singapore is home to large populations of Chinese and Indian people, plus a few Europeans. Hence the huge variety of foodstuffs on offer. And thus at Fairprice Supermarket in Katong we came across this little beauty - Buddha Jump over the Wall. Buddhist monks are vegetarian but legend says that when this super gastro version of shark's fin soup was first devised it smelt so good that Buddhists from the local monastery forwent their principles and jumped over the wall to join in the meatfeast! Not our cup of tea however and unfortunately for us none of the Singaporeans seem to eat porridge so we were out of oats for the few days we were here.

Hup two, three, four!

We had thought that a week in South East Asia would have been a reasonable period in which to acclimatise to the heat and humidity. No such luck though as we found the East Coast parkrun in Singapore just as hard as the Malaysian run last week. This is a very pleasant there and back course through trees parallel to the beach in a busy park full of runners and cyclists - there were large groups of runners in training being paced for the forthcoming Singapore Marathon - as we galloped by their minders shouted "Parkrunners coming - keep to one side!" Galloped is maybe optimistic as far as I was concerned but there were half a dozen runners under 18 minutes so a fast course for some. I managed 27th in 22:13 and Vicky was 92nd in 36:51.

Grand isn't it?

The Bay Marine Hotel is typical of the grand old hotels of Llandudno - strategically positioned on the sea front this fine example of Victorian architecture has hosted thousands of happy holidaymakers over the years. Type Bay Marine Hotel into Google however and you're more likely to be presented with the Marine Bay Hotel in Singapore, an astonishing building that consists of three towers with what looks like a boat sitting on top of it - take a look at the photo below and you'll see what I mean. Tourists who in former years would have been very happy with living it up in Llandudno now travel halfway round the world and pay a fortune for the privilege of staying here in what apparently is quite an ordinary hotel from the inside. Outside it looks good but it ain't half hot!

How did them trees get up there?