Mumbai to Singapore was super easy. Tauck continued their excellent service by facilitating our transfer to the airport in Mumbai despite us staying the extra days.

Many people told us that two days were enough in Singapore and quite honestly we could have used an extra day. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted. But we filled our two days fully with visits to the wonderful Asian Cultural Museum (thank you Barbara!), the modern waterfront area and iconic Sands Casino Complex, the Gardens By The Bay park, the subways, a food tour and a jazz performance at a French bistro on our last night. We didn’t have time for a harbor boat tour or the visit to the nearby Sentosa Island Island recommended by Doris (our food tour guide). Oh well, there’s always next time. Singapore seems like a good stopover on our way to Perth, Australia someplace we would like to visit someday.

We stayed at the Tanglin Club (a reciprocal club for the Rainier Club) and it is in a perfect location: quiet, a wonderful history, a great pool, and easy access to stores, restaurants and the amazing Singapore subway system.

Our first morning the Tanglin Club hosted a Chinese New Year celebration. And it was great fun! Our first afternoon we enjoyed some quiet time at the pool and a swim and a salad and Diet Coke (with ice!) (remember in India you can’t eat salad or have ice without risking getting the “Delhi Belly” upset stomach).

Singapore in many ways is the antithesis of India. This very small nation state, smaller than Rhode Island, has accomplished so much in 50 years, overcoming its 3 year occupation by Japan in WW2 and third-world poverty. Today, it’s the wealthiest nation in SE Asia, orderly, clean and fun. This progress has come in large part from government policy that targets drug traffickers with life imprisonment (or even death!), a commitment to publicly funded education, and a government funded housing authority that has built a lot of high quality, high rise condos that people buy using money they are required to save from every paycheck (they can also use these mandated savings accounts for “premium” USA-style medical insurance or retirement income).

After our restful afternoon we headed out for an evening food tour with Doris, who we found on TripAdvisor.com. The tour was great fun. I wish we had room to eat more, but she took us to some great places we wouldn’t have found ourselves.

After finishing our tour with Doris we ventured by subway to the light show (the Bellagio is better, but this was still fun) and walking around the iconic Marina Bay Sands Casino, shopping mall and marina district.

The Singapore subways are nicer than Japan’s, immaculate and easy to navigate and with more easy to find escalators and fewer steps. Granted they are newer and cover much less territory. Paying for your fare is super easy: you just tap your credit card on one of the many turnstile gates when you enter, and again when you leave, and you are automatically charged a dollar or two for your trip. If you don’t have a credit card, you can tap your phone, or use a prepaid metro card. This is something Seattle should do with its Sounder Light Rail system, rather than continuing to rely on the “honor” system in which most riders act dishonorably.

Our final day we started early and we headed out to explore the “Gardens By the Bay” marina district and the Asian Civilizations Museum. Both were a lot of fun and the exhibits at the Museum were very well done. Again our “advance team” Barbara and Richard Wortley told us to check it out! As usual there was too much to see in one day at the museum. But the jewelry exhibit was special, showing the jewelry on the photo of the person who wore it.

Our day ended with a lovely dinner at a nearby Maison Gerard, a little local french bistro. We had noticed a poster earlier for a jazz performance on Monday night, so we made a reservation. We love attending these small music performances in the cities we visit and this one didn’t disappoint. We met a married couple at the table next to us who knew the performers. They shared with us that their daughter plays Eponine (one of the leading roles) in the London performance of Les Miserables. They shared videos of one of her performances and it gave us goosebumps. Hopefully, we will meet Jenny and Kevin Ong somewhere in the world someday and watch their lovely and talented daughter Nathania Ong perform on stage.

As we toured around Singapore we constantly noticed the lovely soundtrack that accompanied many places. It was interesting and southing. Certainly different that the soundtrack of honking horns in much of India that we visited.

Our journey home began early in the day on Tuesday 2/20/2024. We left Singapore at 9 AM and arrived in Seattle the same day at 7 AM thanks to the international date line.

Jasmine picked us up at SeaTac and we headed to her house to hang out with Jasmine, David and the grandkids. It was so good to give them hugs and play a bit. Then we headed up to the mountains, retrieved our tons of mail at the little post office and stayed up until about 5 PM before we took a nap, stayed up a few more hours and then went back to sleep. May our jet lag adjustment take less than a week!

It’s been 5 days since we’ve been back and we’ve gotten back into our regular schedule; mail is sorted, groceries stocked, we’ve played bridge with friends, stayed on our boat, visited my sister, attended a bluegrass festival and finalized work on some business projects. Snow is in the forecast for the mountains and we hope to enjoy some good snow skiing later this week.

Jim says we can’t plan our next travel adventure for 2025 until we totally get through the jet lag. But we are thinking Germany/Austria/Switzerland or Croatia/Greece/Israel then of course there is always the option of going back to northern Italy (we haven’t been there since we visited with the kids 20 years ago). These will all be wonderful, but nothing like the exotic and unusual experience we just had in India.

Stay tuned for our yachting blog this summer!