For my two-day stay in Singapore, I decided to give myself a treat, and therefore checked into the famous Raffles hotel.

This Singapore “grande dame” lives up to her reputation, with imposing colonial architecture, impeccable service that recalls the style of the last century, and suites inspired and named after personalities such as Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward or Somerset Maugham.

The only flaw was the bathroom, which unfortunately also seems to be imported from the last century. The plumbing definitely needs to be revisited.

Singapore is famous for hawker’s food, but has also an extensive list of good restaurants. My friends took me to two excellent ones: One is The Long Beach Seafood Restaurant, a very casual Chinese restaurant with extremely fresh seafood. Among the numerous dishes we had was a memorable black-pepper crab, and also steamed clams with garlic and vermicelli. I must say that we have similar restaurants in Hong Kong, but the quality and the freshness of the produce simply cannot be compared.

The Tippling Club, a spot opened by Australians, is another treat.

This is a new kind of nouvelle fusion cuisine, where the portion sizes are decent enough for human consumption, and despite the nouvelle label, the dishes were tasty, and you can even tell exactly what you are eating.

Although my stay was short, I managed to spend some time at the Orchid Garden, which was absolutely stunning, with a huge variety of orchids, which are my favourite flowers.

Nature is amazing, as is human creation. There are almost 25,000 species of orchids, with about 800 new ones added every year. In the same way as in music, using only on few notes, an important number of masterpieces have been composed, and more are being created in various genres.

The human imagination is infinite, let’s use it to preserve the world and make it a better one.

Photo credits: travelmodule.csiadmin.co.uk