I spent 16 days on holiday in India and Singapore from 24 October to 8 November 2018. India is a colourful interesting place, bustling with people. Spiritual and mysterious. Sacred and smelly. Noisy and peaceful. So many contrasts. I found the people are generous, friendly and family oriented. Wifi and internet speed is wonderful. 
We explored the “Golden Triangle” – Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. Which covered a small part of the huge desert state of Rajasthan. We arrived in New Delhi, flew to Udaipur and spent 2 days in the beautiful city, and only one night in tiny Ranakpur, 2 days in the town of Pushkar (see Part 1); 3 days in Jaipur city (see Part 2). We drove to Agra and stayed there for 3 days. We spent the last 2 days in New Delhi (see Part 3). After my India trip I spent 2 days and one night in Singapore on the way back to Australia (Part 4).

Singapore

Wednesday 7 November: We flew from New Delhi Airport to Singapore. The others went on to Auckland and I stayed in Singapore. It was very hot and humid there, storm clouds were gathering…

I checked in to The Inn on Temple St in Chinatown to stay overnight.
I met a friend from Melbourne who just happened to be in Singapore at the same time! We went to Clarke Quay for dinner at Fremantle Seafood which was next to Crazy Elephant which had great live rock music. I enjoyed my first seafood for a couple of weeks – delicious Octopus Salad and my companion had pizza, with tall wet beers. There was a sudden thunderstorm with lightning and heavy rain for couple of hours which cooled down the temperature (and delayed the departure of the plane to New Zealand).

I got back to the hotel at about 10pm. I had a shower and slept.

On Thursday 8 November I slept in and got up at 8am and tried to upload photos to Facebook. It took me all morning! The wifi was very slow and kept dropping out. I left my hotel room about 1:30pm!!
I walked around, exploring Singapore – Temple Street, I found a Hindu Temple and mosque but couldn’t find Buddhist Temple with Google Maps.
Finally I gave up looking and took the MRT (Metro Rapid Train) to Bayfront station to see the Gardens at the Bay and Super Trees.

Gardens by the Bay

I spent all afternoon there, enjoyed walking in the gardens by myself, at my pace. I went up on the Skywalk and watched the sunset, taking lots of photos of the gardens, trees, orchids, flowers, sculptures, including some beautiful big dragonfly sculptures in the river, the big wheel, and the Skywalk.

Then I took the MRT back to Chinatown.

I finally found the Buddhist Temple, just as it was closing, so I went in and gave a quick thank you meditation to Quan Yin and the goddesses for a great holiday and safe trip home. I had dinner at a nice Korean restaurant on Temple Street and enjoyed sweet and sour chicken, steamed rice and beer. They charged my phone for me because it didn’t fully charge last night attached to the USB port of the television set and I flattened both my power banks today!

I took a taxi to airport from hotel and arrived at the airport about 9:15pm, wandered through and caught the Skytrain to gate.

Singapore Airlines back to Adelaide

I sat next to a writer on plane. Prayaag Akbar is from Bombay and going to Adelaide for the Jaipur Literary Festival. He wrote a book is called ‘Leila’.

(Leila is a 2017 dystopian fiction novel written by journalist and debutant author Prayaag Akbar. Akbar was awarded the jury Crossword Book Award in the fiction category for the novel. It was also shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize. In February 2018, Netflix announced that an original series will be made on the novel. Produced by Deepa Mehta, the series will star Huma Qureshi and Siddharth. (Wikipedia))

On 9/11/18 I arrived home safely in Adelaide. Enjoyed unpacking my beautiful marble table top and making up the table frame to put it in, with LED lights to make it glow.

Two weeks later my beautiful Pashmina throw arrived and I could put it on my bed!