2013 Our first flight in an A380 on the way to Singapore

We can only praise QANTAS for the flight, the food and the service. It was all good. There seemed to be more room in the A380 than in the previous planes we had flown in. The best meal was the slow cooked lamb. As tasty as you'd make at home.

Waiting to leave Melbourne

The tail cam - if you like that sort of thing!

We were headed for Singapore for a three night stay on our way to London. Again we chose the Swiss Hotel - the Stamford with the only down side - no free wifi! Our room on the 56th floor had an amazing view of the harbour and the latest curiosity for Singapore, the Marina Bay Sands Hotel made up of six towers joining at the top and capped off with what appears to be a ship.

The view from our hotel room on our arrival 

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel

Our hotel - Swiss Hotel - The Stamford

Where 'others' stay - Raffles!

As we both love birds - for me the feathered variety :-) - we made for the Jurong Bird Park which has an awesome reputation for educating and preserving species. The staff obviously work very hard with the birds and in particular taking advantage of their intelligence in training some to do some pretty impressive things.

This Tucan and the other parrots just loved being squirted with a water bottle

A beautiful Iridescent Starling in the African Waterfall Aviary

The Flamingoes  acquire their colour from what they eat. They eat algae and crustaceans that contain pigments called carotenoids. For the most part, these pigments are found in the brine shrimp and blue-green algae that the birds eat. Enzymes in the liver break down the carotenoids into the pink and orange pigment molecules deposited in the feathers, bill and legs of the flamingos. Very clever!

These pied hens scratching around seem to be wearing blue scarves

This park handler had the enormous Hornbill literally eating out of her hand

The game here is to see which Tucan is quickest to 'post' the four balls into the hole in the tree trunk.
Quite amazing to watch.

The High Flyers Show was spectacular. Various members of the audience were given rings to hold up and on demand the birds flew through them time and time again. It was no fluke. Hard to capture though, they were so quick.

At the end of the High Flyers Show the handlers brought all the birds out - 125 of them.

The Kings of the Skies Show was equally impressive with birds of prey flying down from high perches - in the open. No aviary. Apart from this magnificent eagle there were sea eagles, vultures, bald eagles and various owls.

These scarlet ibis were stunning

This little cutey was very energetic, rolling, spinning and wriggling in the water for ages.

Next day we thought we'd find the Electronics Expo which we had visited on other occasions but as the centre where it is usually held is being refurbished we had to catch a taxi to it! Bad idea. The exhibition was definitely below par and not worth going to. We had to queue in a sea of humanity to get in, nearly an hour - then when we were five minutes from the entry they opened up all the aisles so everyone just swarmed in! Grrrr!

With that waste of time behind us and it being such a lovely day - although a bit hot and steamy as Singapore is - we took another taxi to the Singapore Botanical Gardens.  This was treat. An oasis in the heat. 

Singapore Botanical Gardens

The Australian High Commission Christmas tree. There were hundreds of these around the gardens.

Laurie relaxing in front of the gazebo

A huge tree base

The swans on Swan Lake

The real swans on Swan Lake

Laurie with one of his 'fans'

A beautiful memorial to Chopin from the Polish Government

Stunning colours

Caption not required!

The orchards are amazingly diverse

Apart from a problem with the pricing of breakfast at the hotel everything has been great. We had eaten the first morning at the Lobby Cafe which was excellent and the next day thought we'd try the other restaurant, the Swiss Cafe for breakfast which had a sign out the front advertising the same breakfast at the same price.  As this restaurant was higher in the building we thought we would give it a try. Because it was so good on the second morning we returned on the third morning.  As we left on this morning we were asked to sign a chit for $88. We thought that was for the four breakfasts we'd enjoyed for the last two mornings however on checking out there was an amount of $176 for the last two mornings breakfasts on the bill! We hadn't been given a chit to sign on the second morning. On challenging the amount we were told the breakfast was $44 each in the Swiss Cafe and that the sign I had seen said that. At $44 per person for breakfast, we would never have considered eating there!

Ah yes on checking it did say in very fine print the deal referred to the Lobby Cafe!  On thinking on this after we'd checked out, I wrote to the hotel expressing my disappointment at the misleading sign and that we had wanted to re-book for a stop-over of two nights on our return to Australia.

After some tooing and froing the hotel catering manager very kindly agreed to giving us a breakfast voucher to the equivalent for our return visit. That was damage control and really well handled.  I will be interested to see if the sign is the same when we return at the end of March.