Turnover day!  Up early so we can go to the gym – but no!  It is closed with a big sign saying cleaned and sanitized.  No way!  Sigh, well, ok, then it will be our first time walking the outside track, which turns out to be quite nice this morning – cool with a lovely stiff breeze.  We’ll take it!  Then down to the zoo that is the breakfast buffet.  Making quick work of our fruit – we run out of there as fast as we can because it is critical mass in there with everyone leaving the ship today.

Phew, back to safety in our room, we shower and get ready for our day of wandering.  We are heading to the Gardens by the Bay, where we’ve been before, but it is walkable (albeit a 30-minute walk according to Google) and we figure it is the best option for us to get out, wander and then come back without getting too far afield.  The other option was to sit on the ship all day, which we definitely don’t want to do.

The Gardens open at 9 – but instead of waiting until 8:30 to leave, we head off around 8, which was a good decision for the clog in the security line. We both got through immigration fine – and fast, but the security line to check the baggage was at least 10 minutes or more.  Finally outside, we follow the trellis, that we remember from another visit, out to the train station and then hit the path that follows the shoreline down Marine drive.  It is a nice walk, and thankfully shaded, with that great breeze still blowing in from the water, but it isn’t any 30 minutes, thank you Google.  More like 45 minutes as we wind our way past a huge new condo construction project and down Marine Gardens drive to the park.  Thank God for the clouds and the breeze!  And at least we get some great views out to Marina Bay Sands hotel – that iconic place that looks like it has a ship on the top.

Even with the longer walk, we still get to the gardens right after opening.  Being early has its advantages, there isn’t even a line at the ticket booth!  Eschewing the Flower Dome, which has a Monet exhibit which makes the tickets much more expensive, we go for the budget option of the Cloud Forest and the Skytree Observatory (or the Skytree overhead walk).  A nice little walk through the park finds us in the middle of the Skytree garden with the huge superstructures soaring above us.  Its totally cool how they have live plants embedded almost all the way to the top of the trees structures.  And how they have to have huge bucket trucks to work on the plants – fertilizing, trimming, replanting. 

Arriving at the Observatory, we ask the ticket attendant her thoughts on which would be best to visit – the Observatory or the Skywalk.  While she never really said which was better – she definitely leaned toward the Observatory, which is much higher up than the skywalk and has an inside café with coffee.  Well, the coffee sold us, so we followed her guidance and up to the Observatory we went.

We had not visited here previously, it was a totally new experience, and a great one.  Starting out in the elevator that has a video ceiling “showing” your progress through different levels of flowers and shrubbery on your way to the top of the Skytree.

 Exiting the elevator, we are shown to the stairs for the open-air rooftop with unrestricted 360 degree views all around the Gardens and out to the city in the distance.  This alone is worth the price of admission!  With the breeze, it is nice and cool and there are only 2 people up there besides us.  Perfect.  We spend a lovely and peaceful 10 minutes or so just walking around and enjoying the views. 

Taking our leave when more, much more noisy visitors arrive, we head back down to the cafe, ordering a couple of excellent (if not expensive) iced mochas – and marvel at the gorgeous multi-colored chocolates available for purchase (if you are into $4 USD per piece chocolates that is – we know Janice Wong is a celebrity chef and all, but still – man, Singapore is pricey!). 

After our coffees, we head to the outdoor walkway that circles the café, taking more great photos of the gardens and the surrounding city.  Here you can also see just how much taller the Observatory is compared to the Skytree walk.  Excellent choice! Thank you ticket-gal!

On ground level once again, we wander through the park, snapping photos of all the Lunar New Year decorations that still remain, as we make our way to the Cloud Forest – where we have visited before.

Unfortunately our timing was not as impeccable as before – it is after 10 and the crowds are forming – large groups of traveling Asians (and some Farang red necks thrown in as well as those we figure are some sort of cruisers – not ours, but maybe the NCL ship that is due in port tomorrow).  While still amazingly neat, and really cool – literally about 20 degrees cooler than the outside temperature, it is unfortunately jam packed crowded. Ugh.    

We have pictures from 7 years ago and it was far different – there was hardly anyone there. Today? We had to fight to walk through and get any picture at all.  We managed to take a few decent shots of the waterfall and different flora and fauna in between the people though. 

Once up on the canopy walk, it is bob and weave central.  You can see down below on the lower tree walk that all the crowds are up here.  Pooh.  Nothing we can do about it – we just stop when we can, snap pictures when we can and try to enjoy the experience of being in a massive rainforest that is completely contained in one huge dome. 

On the walk down, we do stop to watch some workers doing some gardening – hanging from the side wall of the forest canopy!  In a hardhat!  There are 2 guys on the walkway helping – and they have parlay anything the gardener needs on a ropeway that goes from the walkway to the wall. Crazy.

Coming off the canopy walk, we get to the viewing platform at the side of the waterfall which has some great angles, then into a multi-media video exhibit on the trees and flowers that make up the forest. It is fun, for a bit, especially when you jump on marked spots and make things grow on the walls.     

Down on the lower tree walk, there are great views up to the canopy walk, where you can see just how it is suspended out into air – connected to the forest walls only.  Amazing how it holds so many people! There are also nice views down to the orchid garden which we couldn’t visit because they were changing out the display down there. 

A couple more areas, the secret garden, some great wood carvings and we are released out into the real open-air park. 

A nice diversion, even though we obviously just got caught in a clog of people.  Had we waited a bit, it wouldn’t have been so crowded, but seriously?  Looking back at the pictures from 7 years ago – we have all the same shots! Including the incredibly artistic, but no less scary, Sixth Extinction sculpture that visually shows the interconnectedness of humans and loss of biodiversity. This particular exhibit scared us 7 years ago because it was so accurate – it is even more so (scary and accurate) today!

We decided to stay on the Gardens property for lunch, making our way along the waterfront path to Satay by the Bay, a sort of Hawker’s stall with different restaurant kiosks. 

While definitely more sanitized than the normal Hawker’s stalls, there is still a huge variety of food options (even if a few of the stalls are owned by the same people).  Satays dominate, as the name would suggest, and we aren’t going to pass those up.  We have half an hour to wait before they open (even if it says they open at 11 in GoogleMaps), which we spend sitting at a table in the shade, editing our photos and keeping up with the world.  At the appointed time, we order our first plates – fried chicken dumplings from Dumprince (cute, sort of? Or weird?  Can’t decide – and yes we said satays, we’ll get to those), which come out about 5 minutes later, fresh and crispy and excellent.  Next, the aforementioned namesake – satays.  5 chicken, 5 pork which are all quite tasty, with an excellent peanut sauce – just quite small portions. Then again – with all the food we have been eating, we really don’t need much more.

With lunch done, we head back to the ship, making our way through the Gardens, circling past the lily pond to the main entrance and more Lunar New Year decorations.  Then it is a reverse walk back to the pier, in the now hot afternoon.  Fortunately, there is still a bit of shade on our walk, and it doesn’t seem quite as long as it did coming over – isn’t that always the way? 

At the pier, we flash our transit cards and after a bit of confusion and consultation the pier workers usher us through straight to immigration.  Huh?  Well ok, but when do we get our keycards?  We both know this is wrong – but they keep sending us straight to the ship, so…..  Through immigration without a snag (wow, impressive!!!), hand in our passports to the ship embarkation gals (Davina is there again and we chat briefly with her – mostly to tell her that we will be visiting Mauritius at the beginning of next year and to tell her about my mom’s name!)  and onto the ship, where, yep, that was wrong!  Fortunately we go to the line with the real security guy – not the embarkation gals – and he is a delight.  He knows they messed up too – but he just pulls up our old photos, uses mine and takes a new one of Ed – and voila!  We’re back on the ship. We still don’t have cards, but GR can handle that.  Which is where we stop next, actually getting the Captain’s Club concierge to help, and we are back in our cabin in a jiffy.  Phew!

Now we have some downtime before the gym, where we peruse the daily program and information that has arrived. Hmmm, the immigration and port information tells us we need our keycard, digital copy of our passport and our Indonesian Customs form.  Huh?  Has our itinerary changed and we don’t know it?  Communications….just not their forte. As we are hanging out, there is a knock on our door. Fully expecting it to be Ratha checking in, we are surprised by a waiter with a tray of sweets and champagne.  Huh?  A note alongside says with Compliments of the Hotel Director.  And that’s it.  Okaaayyyy.  Hey, we’re happy – a chocolate covered strawberry, awesome macaroon and other treats – but why?  Maybe because we are back-to-back?  Maybe because we are just such nice passengers?  LOL.  We’ll never know (refer to above communications forte), but it was a lovely little welcome back treat!

Next, our normal evening activities begin – gym, before dinner drinks in Rendezvous, dinner with Ketan and in our normal seats, then 6 Feet Under because it is the string duo for the show tonight. Here again, the program and the app say the fly on singer is supposed to appear with them.  So, either she never made it, or it is a cut and paste error.  You choose.