Visit to Singapore

We took our 9 day visit to Singapore and Malaysia to train two new couples who just arrived as humanitarian missionaries. They are Elder and Sister Richard Smith from Provo, Utah and Elder and Sister Davis from the Vancouver, Washington area. They both will be great. We stopped in Singapore for two days before moving to Kuala Lumpur, West Malaysia for three days and then to Bintulu, East Malaysia for another three days. We will prepare a blog for these two visits in a few days. The Service Center and Mission Headquarters for these countries is in Singapore, so we needed to stop in Singapore to do some training and meet some of the leaders here. Singapore is an interesting city-state. It is a separate island on the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, similiar to Hong Kong Island. It has been independent of Malaysia since 1965. It has one of the busiest ports in the world, with hundreds of thousands of large containers arriving each year. It is also a financial hub with many banks and businesses headquartered here. A definite competition exists with Hong Kong as to which is the economic leader in Southeast Asias. The city has many beautiful buildings. English is the major language spoken because of the long British rule. We were able to take a tour of some of the City highlights on one day and also a dragon boat ride in the harbor. We stayed in a lovely hotel in downtown Singapore. The following pictures highlighted some of the things we saw on these two tours.

The "mascot" or symbol of Singapore is the "Merlion" guarding the Singapore harbor. It is intended to mirror the mermaid of Denmark harbor fame. The lion head with the body of a fish comes from a mythical lion that guards the Singapore river that flows through the city. The name Singapore means "City of the lion". A great attraction is the world's largest ferris wheel. It moves slowly to allow riders to view the city from a great height. It takes over twenty minutes to make a loop. We didn't have time to take the ride. Maybe next time.


We stayed at the Royal Plaza on Scott in Singapore. The lobby had many candles burning to welcome us.

View from the 26th floor of our hotel. Many beautiful buildings on the skyline.

Flower ropes used by taxi drivers and others to bring good luck. They hang them from their rear views mirrors.

The bus we took on the City Tour. Anthony was our driver/guide. About 35 on the tour.

We stopped at Little India and visited an Indian mosque. This sect believes that God can take many forms. The statues on the roof are reprsentative of some of the forms he can appear in. All sides of the building had similar displays of statues.

One of our stops was the Singapore Botanical Gardens. Tens of acres. One of the

highlights is the orchid gardens. Our pictures cannot begin to depict the thousands of orchids in the gardens. They were beautiful.

.Our harbor cruise was on this dragon boat. It was sunny and hot. The hat is to protect my head, but the bill wasn't big enough to protect my nose. It was red the next day. Hundreds of ships come in each day loaded with containers that have goods from all over the world.

We stopped on one of the many small islands surrounding Singapore. It is called the Kusu Island, or turtle island. Many of the islands are artificial islands created to build apartments and skyscrapers on. There is even a complex of three large buildings being built for the gambling industry

.Kusu Island is a sanctuary for turtles and houses a religious shrine where people come once a year to celebrate their holy day.

They even have a marble monument dedicated to the turtles. We had a relaxing trip back to our hotel