January 21 to 23

By Pete Larson and Brady Huston

January 21:

Today the majority of the group spent a morning at the Batu Caves in Malaysia. After the Caves, we proceeded to Singapore by bus and made our way to our first hostel (Footprints). We arrived fairly late in the evening, and most of us wandered off a few blocks from the hostel and grabbed dinner at local restaurants.

January 22:

In the morning, we originally planned to go to the Gardens by the Bay, but after hearing that we could spend many hours there, we decided to see some of the key sights in downtown Singapore, and save the Gardens for later. We saw the Merlion statue, which looked exactly how it sounds. After we saw the amazing Bayview Hotel, we checked out of our hostel around noon and made our way to the Little Red Dot hostel, which was quite a walk in the humid heat. After we changed hostels and cleaned up a bit, we went to the Gardens by the Bay. It was breathtaking. The mixture of manmade structures and natural vegetation filled us with awe. The two greenhouses which housed a huge arrangement of flowers and a man made mountain with a waterfall were truly something to behold. I think many of us wished to have as much time as possible to take in the sights there.

In the evening, many of us went to the observation deck of the Bayview Hotel, and even managed to catch the sunset. We had the opportunity to see the lights change from day to night from a bird’s eye view, and it was breathtaking.

January 23:

In the morning the group visited the Institute of High Performance Computing, where we learned about what the instituted does with regards to technology and innovation. They also gave us an interesting tour of Fusion World ( http://www.fusionworld.sg/ ) which looked to be something out of Star Trek, but with realistic modern inventions. 

After that tour, we made our way to a zoo in Singapore which was home to many exotic animals, such as giant pandas, red pandas, an assortment of monkeys, and many others. We went on a brief “river tour” which highlighted some of these rare animals.

After the river tour a small group stayed at the zoo for what was called a “night safari.”  The night safari consisted of many things including a few shows displaying the nocturnal animals of the zoo and dancing (occasionally with fire).  There were also foot paths and a tram ride that took you around to all the nocturnal (or evening) animals of the zoo including hyenas, bats and otters.