The weekend arrived, partly by surprise as we had both thought we were on Thursday rather than Friday, it is an odd thing that travel can disorientate you in such a way. David was meant to be getting up early to go for a bike ride but that didn't happen and so we had rather a slow start to the day.
After breakfast we walked up the hill to a butcher's to look at gammon. A four kilo gammon would have cost about sis to pounds so David decided on something else, unsurprisingly I thought. We did buy some sausagemeat so that Rosemarie could make sausage rolls. A traditionally British dish in thirty degree heat, who could ask for anything else?
After the joys and delights of the butcher's emporium we were off on the walk to Tong Bahru, a Chineses vegetable market about a mile away. The walk involved crossing several extremely busy roads and led us past countless hotels and into a social housing area of small two or three floored buildings rented out to individual families. There were also the obligatory high rise Housing Development Board houses as Singapore struggles to house it's six point three million inhabitants.
The Chines market was a riot of colour and seemingly pandemonium as customers shouted st stall holders and received replies, or conversed loudly amongst themselves. Shopping here does not seem to be a quiet, peaceful experience.
We threw ourselves into the throng and bought the necessary supplies before setting off again in the heat to make our way home.
After a few minutes we were off again to Clarke Quay with the intent of catching a train to Boat quay to meet an old friend of David's. The walk to Clarke Quay is a pleasant one alongside the river past several restaurants which are predominated by ex pats and tourists. The walk takes about fifteen minutes and by the time we had arrived there, in sight of the station, David decided that we were running a little late and that we should take a cab. We arrived at Boat Quay ten minutes late to find that David's friend and his family were on the train so we wandered up and down the quay, looking at various restaurants and historic buildings until we decided on one which suited us. About twenty minutes later David's friend arrived with his wife, young daughter and his parents so the eight of us settled down to lunch beside the river. I hadn't realised until David explained it that the Singapore authorities have turned the Singapore river into a fresh water reservoir in case their water supply is ever cut off by their neighbour's.
So our view at lunchtime,across the river, was of Parliament House, which looks remarkably like a flying saucer has just landed on a building and of the nineteenth century centre of Singapore.
After lunch we walked across the river and went in search of Raffles Hotel so that Chris and his family could have their photograph taken in front of it. I remember the first time Rosemarie and I came to Singapore we did something very similar, because Raffles is such an iconic building.
Having achieved our aim we then went to the Swiss Hotel where we had a drink on the ground floor, before going up seventy floors to look at the view from the bar on the top of the hotel. The view was a little hazy and unfortunately did not make for good photographs but it was spectacular none the less.
We left Chris and his family at the train station where they we boarding a train to take them to the airport for their onward flight to Auckland. We took the train home and had a quiet evening enjoying a bottle of wine and some cheese.