The Mission with a Vacation

Our semester was over, the school has six weeks between semesters and it was freezing in Xi’an. The obvious solution was to GET OUT OF DODGE! Our last exam was January 2. Grades were due on the 4^th. We flew out of Xi’an on the 5^th to Singapore to board a Southeast Asia cruise. We left Xi’an at 19 °F and landed in Singapore at 96 °F. It felt wonderful!

 

 

 

 

 

The contrasts were overwhelming. Singapore claims to be the cleanest city in the world and we believe it. In fact, they have laws against chewing gum and spitting on the sidewalk, two common practices in China! The sky was blue. Just about everyone spoke perfect English. Every street was lined with flowers, shrubs and flowering tropical plants.

Singapore skyline

 

The sidewalk was hot enough to fry an egg and was clean enough to eat off of as well. You can even drink the water! Singapore is only 1.3 °N latitude. It is only 85 miles north of the equator. No wonder it was hot!

 It is a city-republic of about 5 million and has the third highest per capita income in the world. Our favorite activity was to visit the botanical garden and the orchidarium.

 

 

 

 

 



 It was fun to see Christmas decorations in a topical setting. They are up from before Christmas until after Chinese New Year on Feb. 10.

 

 

 

Singapore is the home of some remarkable buildings. One hotel/casino complex is three hotel towers with a casino/restaurant/pool in the form of a 1200 foot long cruise ship spanning the towers.

 

 

 

 

 

The city boasts a large Chinese and Indian population so of course, there is a China Town and Little India. We didn’t need to visit China Town, but Little India was pretty interesting. We spent two days in Singapore before boarding our cruise to Hong Kong. The cruise took us to stops in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before dumping us in Hong Kong for our BYU China Teacher’s conference. More on these sites in the next addition.

Mosque in Little India