last days of the Sing-Era

The last few days of our stay in Singapore were spent seeing a few sights that we had not yet gotten around to. One of these was the famous Singapore botanical gardens, which included a 150 yr old tree and incalculable numbers of orchid species. Singapore has one of the best orchid hybrid production facilities, and it was fascinating to see how they created hybrids and how many beautiful orchids there are. We also spent this time practicing our nature photography skills, and Rachel tutored me (Derek) on photographic technique. We also celebrated our smallest cousin Jonathan’s birthday. One of the highlights of the evening was throwing Derek into the pool. The whole family came together to participate in this warm and loving activity, wherein Derek practiced being a dead weight and the family practiced dragging dead weight 100 m across cement to a pool. We also went to Chinatown with Rachel’s mom and attended a cool Hindu ritual at a local temple. We really enjoyed our time with the family, it was amazing getting to know them again after so many years and we are hoping to come back through Singapore for a week or two before going back to the States.