Singapore Part 2

Continuing with the first day...
After we visited the Singapore Flyer, we took the Hop-on-hop-off bus (again, free passes!) and went around the city until we got off at the Botanical Gardens. We wandered a bit in there before going to the orchid gardens they have inside (another coupon!) It was just gorgeous... since the Lunar New Year just passed, everything here is still decorated for the celebration, and they had large sections of the garden geared toward the new year and the year of the horse. Horses are everywhere here!
We had also stopped and gotten a little snack. With the heat and fatigue, I didn't want anything heavy, and there was a dessert cart serving shaved ice. The man there told me what was good (again, I had a coupon for $5 free) and got me a dish of shaved ice and a Bird's Nest drink. I have no idea what it was - it tasted a bit like lemongrass, but it had small pieces of a gelatin like substance that were a bit odd. The shaved ice wasn't bad, the flavors were quite different from what we're used to in the states. It also had corn and black beans and more gelatin stuff on the bottom, and then condensed milk and corn on the top. I liked that part, but the beans were weird. Anyway, it was a fun experiment, and fortunately water and ice are pretty safe here (I had visions of the shaved ice scene from the movie "Outsourced," but fortunately I didn't get sick.)
Last photo in the post... on my second day, I went down to breakfast in the hotel and while we were there, there was a lot of drumming going on and then this dragon came through the room. I'm not sure if it was part of the new year's celebration or what, but it was pretty cool!
That's it for this post (still trying to figure out why the Typepad app only lets you use 5 photos... and why I can't insert them and type around! Surely they can improve that, but until then, I'll keep breaking them up like this.)