My mom was an incredibly adventuresome Singapore traveler! While I was at school, she visited the National Gallery, the National Museum, the Chinatown Heritage Museum, the Peranakan Museum, and the island of Pulau Ubin. Together we visited gardens and nature reserves and parks. We shopped in Kampong Glam and Little India, the latter of which was was all decked out (and crowded!) for Deepavali, the Hindu Festival of Lights:

We ate all sorts of food, from Thai-Indonesian to fancy Chinese dumplings to Malay hawker stall fare. We feasted at my friend Ritika’s house and had a four-hour brunch with two of my colleagues, Andrea and Lisa, at Mezza9 at the Grand Hyatt. We drank mango lassis at Springleaf Prata …

… and had lovely cocktails at Spago, on the 57th floor of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel:

That location gave us great views out over the city:

We also strolled along Marina Bay, looking up at the lights illuminating the ArtScience Museum:

Mom stayed there to watch Spectra, a huge water, light, and loud music show that includes images that are projected onto sprays of water in the bay. It’s pretty cool.

For Mom’s last night in Singapore, we took a ride on the Singapore Flyer, a giant Ferris wheel that was the world’s tallest until Las Vegas went and built something bigger in 2014. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a Ferris wheel of any significant size, and I always enjoy them.

For this Ferris wheel, you ride in large pods with a group of about eight people.

This is what you see when you first get on:

The view out over the Marina Bay area and downtown is amazing…

… and the lights changed color as we looked down:

The ride on the Flyer takes about half an hour — and you do just a single rotation, which means that you move very, very slowly.

It was sad to say goodbye to Mom — I saw her off at the airport, and the farewell was really hard (though here we’re getting over-tired and silly…).