SINGAPORE!

HIIIIIIIIII! Well have you missed us?! Cause we sure have been missing all of you!

Malaysia update since the last blog… Jonathan continued to dive everyday and sometimes even twice a day. He was able to do a night dive which was during the middle of a rain storm, which eventually turned into a lightning storm. The lightning added some excitement because every time the lightning flashed it would illuminate the water for a few seconds. The light reflecting off of fish and coral and other deep sea life…. Of course I can only imagine what it was like, it sounds enchanting but I have yet to dive and time will only tell. I have spent my days reading on the beach and playing in the water!

Jonathan’s dive masters treated us to an amazing fish dinner our last night in the Perhentian Islands. Raeshe (Dive Master) had caught these fish himself and made arrangements with one of the best local restaurants to cook up these fish for us; two sweet lips, two red snappers, and a grouper. What a feast! Our friends, Kelvin and Soohee, also were with us at the feast and have been Jonathan’s dive buddies since we arrived on the island. They were actually our neighbors over on the other island and we decided to take their advice and move to the new island, which we enjoyed much more! Kelvin is from New Zealand and Soohee is from Korea, they are in transit moving from Korea back to New Zealand. They were fantastically fun and we all had a great time together! Soooo…

We are now in Singapore! We left the Perhentian Islands on the afternoon of the 29^th after a day of gray skies and looming thunderclouds…the start of monsoon season perhaps… We were excited to be heading off to someplace new, someplace exciting, and knowing that Catherine, Jonathan’s mom, would be waiting in Singapore! She is in Singapore for Educational tours and conferences to bring all the knowledge back to New Mexico! We decided to take the sleeper train down to Singapore, which was about 11 hours and super easy and relatively restful, well at least better than the bus! This meant that we had to take an hour taxi to a small town, Tanah Merah. Which seems easy enough to pronounce, but when you come from an area that has Spanish as a major language…it can definitely effect pronunciations and confuse the poor Malay taxi drivers, oops. Well we got there and I was starving. So Jonathan and I ran to get some food and in the middle of purchasing the food we realized that we still hadn’t bought our train tickets and we weren’t sure if we are going to enough money left…. So we head back to buy our tickets and it is 94 RM (Malay Ringgit), ughhhhh we only have 93 RM….Using his usual charm somehow Jonathan got the guy to lend us 1RM, so we got our tickets! Than onto the bus to spend our night on our little upper beds with all of our bags….Sleep Tight!

So it is important to say that in Singapore Jonathan’s mom is staying in the Sheraton and we are so fortunate that she is letting us stay with her! So we are living in the super deluxe, we definitely would not have stayed someplace this nice if it wasn’t for her being here! It came at a perfect time to meet up with her. Jonathan and I were both feeling a little homesick and it was really nice to have a little bit of home around! Our first day into Singapore we spent the day looking through the upscale shopping center near the hotel and coming back to the room to see if Catherine had arrived. Apparently we managed to miss her and didn’t get to meet up till later that evening. We discovered a wonderful little Gelato shop to satisfy Jonathan’s ice cream craving and also went to see “Balls of Fury” the new comedy about the Chinese and their Ping Pong, it was absolutely hilarious! Maybe funnier for us because we are out here in a predominantly Chinese city! Finally at about 9:00pm we met up with Catherine! What a small world!

Yesterday Jonathan and I ventured to the National Skin Centre in Singapore. I have had seriously wicked sores and irritations all over my body and have been quite miserable for about two months and was counting down the days till we were going to be in Singapore. They have an excellent reputation in Health Care. So turns out that I was having an eczema flare up. The doctor was great and gave me lots of new information as well as some prescriptions that have been highly successful already. I am a new person! I am curious if any of you reading the blog are eczema sufferers and what things you have found really work and what doesn't? Also does anyone know of a good hypoallergenic laundry soap? Help please!

The health care system here is so organized. Instead of having a triage room where you would normally talk to a nurse, upon registration you receive a receipt with a room number and patient number. You wait in front of that room until your patient number appears on the screen outside the door and you go inside and the doctor is already sitting there in the exam room! Not only are they super efficient but they also have nothing lost in translation, they have a central computer system and prescriptions are put into the computer and appear in the pharmacy. Prescriptions are filled by swiping your patient number/barcode through a reader and all of the services are on a continual tally. This means that you pay for the physician visit and prescriptions all at once! It was so easy for me and compared to my experiences at home, much better in comparison!

I guess I should say that Singapore is quite interesting. We were told that Singapore is a cross between Disneyland and East Germany. The government controls everything. Here there is no ownership for cars or houses, only rent. There is no gum chewing, no speeding, no jaywalking, no spitting, we have been told by a few that there are too many rules. As a result the city is very beautiful, clean and safe! All the reasons why I love this place, and oh yeah I don’t have to carry my own toilet paper!

Last night we went out for a wonderful Arabic dinner with Catherine and wandered around parts of the city. This morning we toured the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where there is a separate Orchid garden. It was beautiful! The Singapore Gardens have also been busy creating hybrid orchids, which resulted in more unique petal shapes, colors and they have even began creating orchids for fragrance! Jonathan and I enjoyed it so much and Jonathan took many pictures; however, there was much more to photograph so odds are good we will return sometime during our visit.

Remember our friends Kelvin and Soohee? Well they are in Singapore! They are actually only here till the end of today and than are flying home to New Zealand. We met up with them in Little India to have a delicious traditional Indian lunch and explore Little India! How cool! They have also said that they are excited for us to visit New Zealand, but the truth is I think we are more excited!

We are in Singapore for….well we aren’t really sure. The visa here is 90 days so we aren’t in a hurry to leave and we are enjoying everything that this city has to offer. We will make sure to update as we start to make more plans, and will continue to update on our adventures around Singapore!

All our love!

Tara and Jonathan

Also we have a few questions: Since we are in a big city is there any really great movies we should see while we are here?

If any of you have been to Singapore are there places here that you think we have to see while here? I just found out from my Grandma that there is a "Cavanaugh Bridge" which just happens to be my mom's maiden name and she had suggestions of what else to see here. We would love suggestions!

Lastly is there anything Jonathan and I can do to make the blog more readable? Is there things that you want to hear about that we aren't writing about? More photos perhaps? Let us know! We REALLY want the feedback!