Singapore! Day 2

We again woke up pretty early and started our day with breakfast at the hotel. We showered up and made sure we were presentable and hopped in a cab to head to the US Embassy in Singapore. We had an appointment to meet with the Ambassador at 11:00. It was so much fun. The embassy was huge! Ambassador Adelman was so nice and gave us a lot of information about Singapore and the US’s relationship with them. We really enjoyed it. Sorry, no pictures from this, they held our camera the whole time!
Then we went to the National Botanical Gardens of Singapore. They were GORGEOUS, so many beautiful plants and trees! We saw a few swans, some beautiful flowers and a really unique bonsai garden! We enjoyed it, but it was EXTREMELY hot, so we cabbed back to the hotel for a change of clothes. We ate lunch at our hotel which allowed us to explore some of the different tastes of Singapore. We had things like BBQ’d Stingray, Fish Curry and Satay. We liked most of it! After lunch, we went over to Chinatown to see some of the most famous Hindu and Buddhist Temples. They were absolutely beautiful. I had to wear a shawl on my shoulders and around my waist. The Buddhist temple was very big; it had four stories with a beautiful orchid garden on top. After that, we walked around Chinatown shopping a bit; there are so many interesting small shops! We headed down to Marina Bay to see this REALLY neat building we had seen the night before. Our cab driver said it was a hotel, but we’ve never seen anything like it! After the bay, we headed to the famous Raffles Hotel, which was named for Sir Raffles, an Englishman who was considered to be the father of modern Singapore. Here, there was a bartender who invented the Singapore Sling to be a drink for the women of Singapore and now is the most famous drink of the country! We had to go get the original. After drinks, we went over to Arab street, another interesting small area representing a group of people. We ate Moroccan food for dinner which was delicious. After a full day of sightseeing, I fell asleep at 8:30 pm! We had to be up bright and early the next day for our trip to…..Phuket Thailand!