Today we decided to walk to the Museum of Asian civilisations. This took twenty five minutes and was alongside the river all of the way, it took us twenty minutes to walk to Boat Quay which had taken about the same length of time in a taxi last Saturday.
The museum was well worth a visit, we paid our four dollars each to enter and spent a little time in a room dedicated to a ship wreck from 830 AD. While we were doing this we were approached by a member of museum staff who enquired if we would like to join a guided tour of the museum. Although the tour director was not awfully keen on the idea we joined the tour and it proved not only to be very interesting but also very educational. The Singaporean government had bought the whole of the ship wreck from the Indonesian government for the sum of thirty two million dollars, and in doing so had purchased a remarkable piece of history, the ship had been trading with the Middle East and was returning there from China loaded with porcelain packed into amphora. The bowls that they now have look remarkably modern and we would certainly have them in our kitchen. After a morning in the museum we decided to have lunch on Boat Quay in a Chinese restaurant and we had prawns and beef noodles which were very good, albeit a little pricey.
We then walked to Raffles City, a huge shopping mall, to see if we could purchase some crackers and a few candles so that at least some elements of the Christmas festivities would be maintained. The tour director is very clear in her thinking that things need to be a bit more Christmas like. Unfortunately six crackers cost twenty pounds or there abouts and so we baulked at buying those and candles were non existent. The tour director was not pleased!!!
We caught the train back to Clarke Quay and walked home, prepared dinner and then went for a drink with some of David's friends, believe it or not back in Boat Quay. A taxi there and back saved us the walk and we had a chicken dinner before retiring to bed.
Christmas is just around the corner and I asked David who has been in the Southern Hemisphere since 2007 if he was now used to the idea that the festive season was in the hottest part of the year? His reply was that he still found it strange and that is exactly where we are.