The unifying theme for this whole trip has been good food, and we kept up the tradition tonight. Just hours before our plane left we went to a place Grandma and Grandpa said was know for having the best satay in Singapore. Little did we know that the actual name of the place was “Best Satay.” It was actually just a series of booths in a big hawker center called Lau Pa Sat. By some “accidental” miscommunication we ended up getting something like 60 satays for the kids (the adults had ordered other food). Jacob did his best to eat his fair share, but even with the adults kicking in some help, we couldn’t get it all down. It was some good satay, though…

Last year we spent a lot of time downtown, but this year we didn’t get to wander around downtown Singapore until our very last day. We did walk from Clarke Quay down to the merlion, which was nice since we had only seen the merlion from a distance in the past. Anyway, it was a beautiful day and I used the opportunity to take lots of pictures of the city.

This was our third trip to the Singapore Night Safari. We saw some pretty cool stuff. The bats were great as always (even though one of them pooped on my head). We saw the flying squirrels, which apparently we had missed before. That was an awesome exhibit. The kids did great and it was a good night to stay up late because now they’re partially prepared for the trip home, which starts very late tomorrow night.

The pictures of the Night Safari aren’t that great because it very dark there and I didn’t want to use my flash.

We went for what we thought would be a nice little nature walk. We were chased by angry monkeys, scared by something that looked like a small crocodile and almost beaten by the sun’s heat halfway through the journey, but 5 and half hours later we emerged thinking what a fun time we had. And, other than the first few we encountered, most of the monkeys were actually pretty friendly (maybe a little too friendly, as one of the babies tried to reach out and grab Jake).

We had some pretty busy days here in Thailand, and we decided to take part of today easy, relaxing and doing stuff around the hotel. Our flight is later on today.

While the lazy kids slept in, I went for a walk this morning and took some more pictures of the grounds around our hotel.

We had another great dinner, this time overlooking a lagoon instead of the beach, but with just as great a sunset:

Grandma got to spend her birthday in Phuket, and Grandpa apparently arranged for a little birthday cake to arrive shortly before we went out to dinner.

We had a canoe trip planned that would last the whole day. We were all a little worried when it was raining in the morning, and the rain kept up some while we were traveling by boat to the region we were going to canoe in, but eventually it cleared up nicely and turned into a beautiful day. The early rain probably helped keep things a little cooler, which was nice.

There are at least two elephants that live at the hotel and which sometimes wander around the grounds. At breakfast this morning we found them wandering around with their handler. Fortunately, I had my small camera in my pocket so I could get some cute pictures of the kids posing with the elephants. Beth didn’t want to get close enough for a picture, even though she was riding on (and driving) a much bigger elephant yesterday.

We had an awesome Thai seafood dinner on the beach at a little restaurant we found not too far from our hotel. We had a great view with the setting sun in the background.

We took an hour ride on these elephants in Thailand. We went up and down some big hills and through a fairly deep river. It was pretty fun.

Grandpa’s Pictures

Grandpa definitely outshot me on this part of the trip, so it was good that he was taking pictures, too. Also, poor Lauren got short-changed being with me, since I couldn’t get any good pictures of her when she was sitting so close to me on the same elephant. Here are some of Grandpa’s pictures from the ride:

It was a little questionable whether we would even make it here or not when we got to the Singapore airport and airline desk said they had no record of our tickets. Fortunately, Grandpa got us there and we made it to our beautiful hotel. Here are some pictures I took shortly after we arrived:

We all wanted to go back to Pulau Ubin since we had so much fun there last year. We had another great time, with a lot more bike riding and a lot of hot sun.

We spent the afternoon riding bikes in East Coast Park. Later, the kids played on the beach and finally we had a huge seafood meal at a restaurant on the beach (Jumbo Seafood). Everyone had a great time.

It was hot today as we walked around the Botanical Gardens. Everyone had fun, though.

Here are some of the scenic pictures we got:

We climbed up Bukit Timah but didn’t see any monkeys this year. Actually, Jake and Mommy, who were very slow, did get to see some, but the rest of us missed out.

Last year it was all the fish head dinners that got to us. Now those seem routine, but we saw a couple of other meals that seemed a little hard to swallow.

This was the first time we went to the Singapore Zoo. We really had a great time and saw some excellent stuff. I went way overboard on the pictures, but we were seeing so many great animals up close, that it was hard to limit myself. Here is a massive animal picture flood:

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We’re back in Singapore. The trip over went well and when we arrived it was fairly early in the morning Singapore time. We went out with Grandma and wandered around Chinatown and Little India for a while.