Laura and Amber at Marina Bay
Saturday morning my friend and former roommate from my semester in Utah came to visit! Amber has been teaching English in Thailand for the past 5 months and had a few weeks after her teaching ended to travel around. Lucky for me her travels have included a week stay in Singapore!
Saturday started out low-key with some local hawker food and a nice walk around Marina Bay later in the afternoon. Amber and I had plenty to catch up on as we haven’t seen each other in almost 2 years. We mostly exchanged stories about her time in Thailand and the silly things she encountered and my short time here in Singapore. It’s interesting to get her take on Singapore after being in a more rural part of Thailand. I give her a ton of credit for dealing with stronger culture shocks as well as living in a country that speaks a completely different language and you can’t count on many people knowing much English.
Sunday Amber, Ethan, and I headed out in the middle of the day to go to Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. We arrived and were immediately greeted with that lovely Singapore heat and humidity. Lucky for us the gardens included plenty of shaded areas to walk through. After meandering through the main gardens and watching locals partake in some silly behavior, we came to the National Orchid Garden. This part of the Botanic Gardens requires a fee to get in but surprisingly was only $5 SGD (the rest of the gardens were all free). It was amazing to see all the different types of orchids. Big, small, white, colorful, spotted, it seemed like everywhere you looked was another type different from the next. Even in the intense heat, the sight and light scents of these delicate flowers was still captivating.
The gardens proved to be much larger than we anticipated and so we ended up getting lunch at one of the café’s. Amber and I split a veggie pizza which was the first she had had in a while (me too). While we were eating I spotted a HUGE lizard out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a komodo dragon and that’s no exaggeration! It was just crawling across the paved path and people stopped and took a peak. Unfortunately in my stunned state of mind I didn’t get a good picture but this is the lizard I saw. I think it must have been about 4 ft long. This lizard was no joke! Luckily Ethan looked it up and discovered it’s called a Malayan Monitor Lizard, the 2nd largest lizard behind the Komodo Dragon. Do me a favor and google the Malayan Monitor Lizard!
After our lizard encounter, we made our way back and I ended up taking a quick snooze. It really is quite incredible how tired being in the sun, heat, and humidity makes you. I’d definitely like to go back to the botanic gardens to do some more exploring or to get my nature fill!
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