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Flowers and flu

8/3/2013

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I woke up at 3am after our late night shopping debacle and couldn't get back to sleep. Feeling restless, I decided to go out for a run. There are many cities I wouldn't do that in at that time of the morning but in Singapore, you don' even think twice. It's warm and muggy all day and night - just the way I like it.  As I suspected, I didn't get very far before my heart screamed to me to "Stop!" And they say you must always listen to your heart... So it was back to the hotel and a shower and the growing realization that I might have caught flu from one of the taxi drivers who'd told me all about the high cost of living, in between loud bouts of sneezing and coughing.

We ventured out at lunch time to the Gardens on the Bay. It's a huge eco-garden with exotic plants and lovely flowers and all manner of clever innovations to save energy. It also has the mandatory doomsday video of what the world will look like by the year 2100 if we continue to abuse the earth's resources the way we do. It was quite sobering and made me want to start recycling again. Thoroughly chastened, it was off to the Singapore Flyer, a giant ferris wheel with stunning views over the city and the bay.

We were done by late afternoon and all I wanted to do was to crawl back into bed. But we were right next to the Marina Bay Sands and I thought, "We've come all this way….". It certainly makes a bold architectural statement with a viewing deck in the form a cruise liner atop three hotel towers, 57 stories high. A taxi driver - perhaps the same one who'd given me the flu - had told me to say we were going for drinks then we wouldn't have to pay the $25 charge per person to go up in the lift.

It was really magnificent up on the viewing deck at the Ku De Ta restaurant and you couldn't help but be swept along by the vibe. With skyscrapers on one side and picturesque container ships waiting in the bay on a sheet of azure water, it felt like a fairground with a catchy techno beat instead of an oompah band. There were newly weds, tourists and foreign domestic workers on their day off and dressed to impress. Yes, we did have drinks after all and the bill came to less than the $25 x3 we'd have had to pay if we'd taken the normal lift up to the top. So I guess I should forgive the taxi driver for giving me his flu. 
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