Singapore, SIngapore - Oct 29, 2014

Singapore, the island City, State and Country and a global economic superstar. Singapore is at the crossroads of the world as it is the second largest shipping port in the world (second to Shanghai). In fact one third of the world's goods are shipped through Singapore. Along with Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing and Seoul, we love Singapore. This is our fifth visit to SIngapore so for all you following along with our past adventures I won't get into the details of Singapore as you probably already know the Singapore basics. I will launch into our current visit as it was, in a word, amazing...

I know I use this word amazing a lot but just can't help myself as I am truly amazed at the many sights we do see around this incredible world. So our fifth time here and I feel that we are pulling back yet another layer from the amazing onion of Singapore.

After a great sail in we docked at about 10 am and then waited on board for our travel agent sponsored half day tour with Ensemble Group - thank you Carla at WD World Travel. Our tour was entitled "History and Heritage of Singapore" and it was a great tour that commenced at 1:00 pm - fine for us is that it gave us a chance to kind on relax on board pre tour. As our pictures show we toured around the many areas of Singapore where, for us the highlights were the visiting of a local family in their home and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum.

The family we visited offered their home to HAL and the Ensemble Group and we are talking a true local family, I was pleasantly surprised as this was not a pre-made up visit. We visited a family of four, living in 1200 sf apartment in a middle class area, cost about 400 to 500 thousand USD, and we saw how they really lived - hats off to Ensemble for doing this. Yes, we toured around and saw all the standard sites we had seen in the past and of course, all great. The hawker market was great as we where able to sample some local food without having to figure out what to order, yes some of it was unusual but delicious.

The Buddha Tooth Temple was definitely a highlight as we had wanted to visit here in the past but it was always closed by the time we actually got here, so this time great as we not only saw it but we were also guided through it. In short, the tooth displayed on the fourth floor (no pictures allowed) is that of Buddha and way back when, when the two passing monks had identified this as Buddha's tooth it was agreed that in order to keep this tooth here they would have to build a temple around it. True or not it does not matter as on the fourth floor here this tooth is displayed amongst solid gold flooring and stupa - again, amazing.