I wanted to start the post with something like this…

The last time I was in Singapore, it was the early 1990s, and I looked like this:

(I’m the kind of angry looking one on the right. My sister, Ariel, is the cute one.)

But, as it turns out, this statement is a lie. I was actually in Singapore again back in 2000, for a short stop-over on the way to Italy.

Here’s a charming be-fringed pre-teen Tegan, displaying her resplendent taste in shorts (yes, those are shorts):

Beautiful eh?

Anyway.

This time around I was 29, and looking something like this:

Sweaty. Because Singapore.

Tired. Because Scoot.

And the city, looked something like this:

 

Planning the PerthVisit’18 was a bit of a challenge, because I wanted to be in Perth to meet my new cousin (first cousin once removed?), celebrate my 30th birthday, celebrate the birthdays of my other cousin and my father, see two of my friends who were over in Perth for single but separate weekends, and make it back to London in time to see another Perth friend plus meet up with some of the gang to watch Hamilton (hooray!).  Oh yeah, plus I didn’t know what was happening with my contract (thanks boss!), and only had exactly 13 days of holiday to spare. All in all, it made for a pretty tight window of travel options.

And as we all know, tight travel windows means expensive flights. Which is unfun, when standard flights from Berlin to Perth typically come in over 1000 euros. Enter ‘Scoot’ airline- Singapore’s new budget airline, which offered me a one way flight to Perth for under 400 euros.

It also landed me at Changi Airport at 3 am local time (roughly 9 pm Berlin time), and left me with 8 hours before my connecting flight.

Great!, I thought, I shall see the city!

And so I did!

I stumbled out of the airport onto the MRT (Singapore’s underground), and then walked my way slowly around the Marina Bay, taking many-a photograph of the eerily near-empty city.

Ultimately, I made it to the Gardens…

… arriving just as the sun was rising over the Supertrees.

 

Impressive eh?

This guy likes it:

Although I arrived way too early in the morning to get into the greenhouses, I was still suitably impressed by the Supertrees: massive metal structures superbly decorated with insane amounts and types of plant species….

 

This in itself was something that struck me about Singapore. On the way back to the airport, in a taxi, I was stunned and impressed by the huge amounts of ferns and friends clinging to – and thriving on- the roadside trees.

I wonder if I can find a way to keep my bathroom humid enough to grow ferns, without also growing mould?

I sat. I stared. I drank a tonne of water to compensate for the sweating and the whole ‘not-being-able-to-drink-water-while-on-a-budget-airline thing’.

 

And then I headed around the bay, in the general direction of the Merlion.

Meeting a cute little fellow, who pretended to be branch, on the way.

In the end, I made it to the Merlion, took a few awkward selfies, and then, in a fit of exhaustion, summoned a taxi to make my way back to Changi.