Before I get to Singapore I need to tell you about our new itinerary so you can change your copies of it. The word has come down from high that because of the travel advisory of our government there will be no port stops in Egypt. I am thrilled at the change and here it is:

Mar 26 Muscat
Mar 28 Salalah, Oman
Apr 02 Aqaba, Jordan
Apr 04 Transit Suez Canal
Apr 05 Ashdod, Israel
Apr 06 Haifa, Israel

I understand that I may be able to overnight from Ashdod to Haifa and be able to see Jerusalem at a better pace than 14 hours on a day tour so if that is going to be possible I will do it.

Singapore is just as safe and clean as it always has been and since this was my third time there I took no tours, Joan, Barbie and I went to China Town to browse and have a beer and lunch. After browsing the stores became redundant so we went to an authentic Chinese Restaurant connected to an authentic Chinese Hotel. This turned out to be quite an experience.

First, Barbie and I asked for the local Singapore brew called Tiger. This beer was as large as a bottle of wine. Joan asked for white wine and they only had red wine. She then asked for cold water in a bottle and later we noticed on the bill they charged $1.50 for “cold” water. There was also a towelette by each plate and the charge for this was $.03 .

Second, we had some trouble ordering and making a man who seemed to speak English well understand what we wanted. We were going to share family style so we wanted three spring rolls, 3 dumplings, fried seafood rice and a chicken stir fry .He brought us three orders of spring rolls with 4 on each plate, 10 dumplings, and the fried rice. No chicken dish and after refusing two of the spring roll dishes we decided we best not try to reorder the chicken dish.

The second day I did a solo walk around the port which is lovely. This is one of the sculptures along the way. Then I hit the malls by the ship and bought a few items, nothing of importance except maybe the hair spray. Ran into Paul and James and James followed me to a nail place and watched as I had my nails repainted. He had never seen this done and kept up a patter that I was afraid was going to cause the manicurist to ruin her own work. This became his great new adventure of a lifetime.

Anyway, we had to be back on board at 1:00 pm so it was impossible to do as much as I would have liked..
As we were leaving I saw these buildings under construction which are curved with unusual angles.