Tropical Holidays

Happy New Year! Mr R and I celebrated Christmas and the new year in Chennai, with a trip to Singapore tucked in between. We put up a Christmas tree flag, and the caretaker moved a shrub to our door and decorated it for us. We had some small gifts- it's hard to shop here and we don't need to fill this house up with stuff anyway. We called home and spoke to our families in our morning and in their morning. We spent some time in the pool but, honestly, it was a bit too chilly so we really only stayed in long enough to take photographic evidence.

Our Christmas feast was all-American vegetarian coney dogs and chili cheese fries. (Opening our American canned food is a splurge and something we do on special occasions) 

On 26 December we flew out to Singapore. What a wonderful city! Very clean, nice landscaping everywhere, nice streets for walking and window shopping, malls connected to malls, clean subway stations connected to the malls by malls. Food courts in every mall serving every kind of Asian food plus good Western selections. We just walked and gawked for hours, with frequent stops for food and coffee. For all the shopping we didn't really buy anything, but that was not the point. It was just nice to be in the modern environment.

There was a big IT mall- 4 or 5 floors of shops selling all kinds of electronic equipment from PC's to cell phones, cameras, etc. It was so much fun looking that, again, we didn't buy anything. But Mr R is plotting a return trip with only our credit card for company. Hmm.

We got a nice hotel with lounge privileges again. Nothing like thrice-daily drinks in the exec lounge on a high floor overlooking the city.

The city celebrated Christmas (unlike Chennai) so there were nice decorations, carols, and themed Christmas trees on the streets and stores. One of my favorites was a tree of Cup O Noodles containers. We wandered across a Persian restaurant and stopped for Ghormeh Sabzi, which Ms S recommends you always eat at a restaurant (actually, this is our private joke. She says you cannot eat it in restaurants, so whenever we see it we tease her about it). 

Photos.

So we spent two days plus our final morning luxuriating in Singapore, then returned to Chennai. We ran into the M family as we were out shopping one day (nothing like being on a different continent, in a city of over 4 million, and running in to someone you know) and they invited us over for New Year's Eve. It was nice to spend the evening with friends after all our recent solitude. Plus we met a nice family from Caterpillar/Illinois- more people to compare Chennai notes with. 

There were some places advertising New Year's Eve events in town, plus people shot of firecrackers and fireworks. So I would call it not unlike the way we celebrate in the US.