On day 3, we had a coffee by the river and found a fault in Singapore's armour - some poor service. It took a reminder from us before the barista realised there was an order on his screen that our waiter had electronically taken. We decided not to pay the 10% service charge that is automatically added!
We also walked around Clarke Quay, benefited from the cheap lunch sets the many restaurants do there and strolled around Fort Canning Hill. At the top was some interesting archaeological excavations and The Battle Box. This is the bunker where the British military command was based trying to co-ordinate the defence of Malaysia and Singapore when Japan attacked during World War 2. The museum in the bunker recreates the last few days with models, audio-visual etc. Nicely done it was interesting and I learned that even before the military had been defeated, the British had to surrender because the Japanese had seized control of (or destroyed) the reservoirs that provided drinking water and the the food supplies. It would be three years that Singapore was occupied for and 50,000 were killed during the occupation.
My mum (who was in Singapore on vacation and the reason I came here) and I also went to some of the galleries ('Singapore Living') in the National Museum and were blown away with the design, layout, content and technologies used to make the exhaust truly interesting and a joy to view, read, listen to or watch. Rooms on fashion, cinema, family and others were very well done (and free in the evenings). There was even a special exhibit on black dresses which was interesting (at least for me, that not being a topic I am overly familiar with). In short it was everything almost all Mainland Chinese museums are not (HK has some good ones). The only half decent museum I've come across on the Mainland is the Overseas Chinese Museum in Xiamen which of course is funded and created by Singaporean Chinese (mostly)!
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