As usual, we have limited internet, and won’t be able to add pictures until we’re somewhere with better internet, so probably not for a few days.

Today was our last day in Singapore, and also the last day of our trip. It’s Sunday where we are, and we arrive back in Minneapolis on Tuesday morning. This means that, given time zone shifts, we would really be Tuesday in this time zone, making our total travel time somewhere around 48 hours. Even though we are not looking forward to our return trip, we are both looking forward to being home again.

We started our day with a trip to the Botanic Gardens. Surely there are interesting things to do, see, or eat downtown, but in this moment, I wanted to enjoy the beautiful tropical rainforest environment.

The park is host to a number of gardens. I was very interested in seeing their orchid garden, but they also had a fragrant garden (devoted to nice smelling flowers), an evolution garden (where the path traversed through plants that were common at various times during the four-and-a-half billion years of planet earth), a bit of rainforest (where we encountered a monitor lizard), and a ginger garden (where we encountered two monitor lizards!). It rained lightly for ten minutes or so as we were leaving.

From the Botanic Gardens, we took the subway to the Gardens By The Bay, which is home to some of the shinier attractions of Singapore. The park itself is adjacent to the Marina Bay Sands: three hotels connected at the top by a curved boat motif, known for its famous infinity pool. Also in the gardens were a series of “SuperTrees,” which are large structures which plants grow on top of – one of which houses a restaurant. At the north end, there are two domes: Cloud Forest, which contains the world’s largest indoor waterfall, and presumably some foresty stuff, and the Flower Dome, presumably an indoor flower park. Both of these large structures were beautiful, but as we were low on time, we skipped them.

On our way back to our hotel, the rain started again, this time much heavier. Compared to some other tourists, we felt like geniuses for always having umbrellas with us. After walking in the rain for only three blocks, we returned to our hotel, where we had left our luggage, hired an Uber, and then made it to the airport in time for early check-in.

We had purchased these tickets forever ago. Since then, Japan Airlines had entirely changed their ticketing system, and our reservation number was reassigned without telling us. Any attempts to use their web site have always ended in aggravation and despair. No matter what we did, it didn’t recognize us as on the flight out of the USA, and it took talking to my credit card company to get things worked out. This time around, it was the same, except for the phone. Instead, we arrived early so that if something went wrong, we would be able to respond to it.

We arrived even earlier than we had hoped- before the ticket desk, or any Japan Airlines representative was available. However, there was an early check-in desk that was able to help us. The moment of truth! The man at the counter was able to find our full itinerary to Chicago, and was about to print out our boarding passes. He groaned, and winced, with a look of disappointment. Did they overbook? Were we not going home? Our hearts sank. He had some bad news.

They had placed our seats across the aisle from each other. I could feel the blood flood back into my fingers! What a relief! We were going home!

I love Singapore. It’s beautiful, full of lush parks and greenery, world class museums, clean streets, a well thought out public transit system, lovely people, delicious food, and a glorious melting pot of people and ideas. Even with all of that, I’m ready to say goodbye. This city is not my city, and I’m excited to return to my home, my friends, and my family!