For the next two days, we co-worked together in a meeting room at a co-working office across the street from our hotel. Our days were made up with a mix of discussions, presentations, laughs, rants, and just taking advantage of being in the same the room instead of just on our computer screens and video calls.

We stayed at the Hotel Waterloo Singapore. It is quite new and was perfect. The elevators were fast. The staff was plentiful and friendly. The breakfast was extensive (a full buffet spread across breakfast foods and hot supper foods). And the robots were plentiful too!

The food all week was amazing! I am the least cultured person for food, probably because I’ve never lived in a big city or in other countries. But because I have this annoying shrimp allergy now, I had to be very careful to avoid shellfish. My team was so helpful, asking the staff at restaurants if there were things that I could eat, and deciding only to eat where I could.

One great adventure was The Coconut Club restaurant. Here is one of the signature dishes – Signature Ayam Goreng Berempah. They made it without the anchovies for me, because of cross contamination risk I think. Everything is coconut-flavoured, and those are roasted peanuts! This was a very delicious dinner. (Do you think I ate the egg?)

Hopefully my team won’t mind me sharing this. Here we are:

By the way, have you ever seen Singapore currency? It’s neat looking and colourful. Smaller than Canadian bills.

We were able to get good walks in every day. One day I did over 18,000 steps! It was hot and humid and the air was thick, but every building had air conditioning so it was easy to take breaks to cool off.

Singapore has embraced the “Garden City” declaration, planting trees and plants for shade and cooling, and because it makes a city so lovely!

We were in SO many malls! Malls are everywhere! Multistory, sometimes with the metro station in the basement, and usually a food court with high-quality food vendors (not the typical North American fast food mall court cuisine).

Look what we spotted in one of them! Can you see it in the distance!?

You couldn’t believe what else we saw in a mall!

Robot dogs! They were kinda scary? A bit aggressive!

Me just casually riding an escalator outside in the jungle.

We went out to Sentosa Island to ride the Skyline luge on our last day! The ride up was on a chair lift. There were big fancy birds around in the trees, and the view behind us was unreal!

Our tickets gave us 4 runs down the luge track.

Afterwards, two of us went over to the Gardens by the Bay to tour through the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome before the rest of the group, because we knew we were into plants and trees more than most and would probably need the time to see it all.

We got to see the water lilies again too!

Still didn’t spot an otter though.

There is a floating Apple store here, in that glass dome! Behind it is the financial district.

There are some beautiful buildings in Singapore!

Back to the Cloud Forest! There were dinosaurs in there! They kept the kids busy while the rest of us looked at the neat vegetation.

I saw so many cool plants I had never seen before!

There was a totem pole from British Columbia in there too!

I think this is my favourite picture of the trip!

In the Flower Dome, our visit was timed with the tail end of a tulip exhibit, with Delft pottery and paintings from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

One night we went to a dumpling place and it was a joy having a Chinese teammate who shared some of her favourite dishes, and she was able to talk to the staff to make sure I was eating safe things. I couldn’t have any dumplings, but the steamed pork buns were okay. This teammate would NOT let me order the safe bowl of steamed rice. No no no no. It was so amusing. My coworkers thought it was probably the same as if someone came to Canada and was going to order boiled potatoes. hahaha.

A coconut pudding was also safe!

It was pouring rain after our dumpling dinner, but since we were in the basement of a mall that had its own train station, we travelled on the air conditioned metro until we were just a few metres away from the hotel! Here’s a sign from inside the train car:

I’m on my way home now. I will carry fond memories of Singapore with me for the rest of my days. It’s clean, affordable, easy to get around, the people are friendly and kind, English is one of the official languages, and it is very safe. You should go visit!