TAIRVLYN: Singapore - Day 3 (25th Dec 2008)

BLESSED CHRISTMAS! JESUS IS THE REASON WE CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS! :)

We had a good night’s sleep. Rachel slept through the whole night! :)
After a hearty breakfast at the YMCA café, we headed to the Presbyterian church located next to YMCA to attend the Christmas Day service. The church was so packed! They had to open up their community hall to cater for the huge crowd.
Church service ended just before 12pm.
Praise God for the fine clear weather! We decided to go to Singapore Zoo today since we didn’t get to go yesterday.

After church service, we headed to the MRT station, boarded the MRT to Ang Mo Kio and then took a bus to Singapore Zoo. Rachel napped during the MRT ride and then woke up just before we boarded the bus. She took her lunch in the bus. When we got to the zoo, goodness! the crowd there was just crazy and there was such a long queue at the ticketing counters. (I think the queue reached all the way to the bus stop!! Yeah it was THAT crazy! ) We were all starving by then, so some of us went to KFC for lunch, while my mom and sis queued up to buy tickets. I think it took us more than an hour of lunch plus queuing up to get the tickets before we entered the zoo!

It’s Rachel’s FIRST visit to the zoo. She was pretty excited to see the animals. Thank God she was well behaved, sat in her stroller and allowed us to push her about. But I think after a while she got bored la and wanted to get down from the stroller and run about……I think she’s still too small to appreciate the animals. We spent about slightly over 2 hours at the zoo. By then, rachel was tired and ended taking a nap in her stroller. Tairven’s good buddy came to pick us up from the zoo – he invited us to go to his place (which is pretty near the zoo) to chit chat and catch up a bit. It was good to catch up with him again, his kids are all so grown up already! They were still toddlers when we last saw them but now they’re already in primary school!
After the short visit, his friend dropped us at the MRT station nearby his house. By that time it was already 6.30pm. We took the MRT and headed straight for City Hall station.

We met up with Chui Ying, her bf PS, joyce and wei ming at the Raffles City Basement and had dinner at one of the Western restaurants there (cant remember the name of the restaurant already). It was wonderful to be able to meet up again! It’s funny….every year all 3 of us (CY, Joyce and myself) will meet up back in Penang for Christmas. However this year all 3 of us were not around in Penang for Christmas but instead we were all in Singapore! Hehehe… so wonderful to be able to have the reunion, we had a great time catching up! I miss them so much…… my dearest best buddies!

The restaurant provided kids with colour pencils and paper to keep them occupied! Rachel was so excited and she was busy colouring away which was good coz it gave me freedom to chit chat and catch up with the rest! hehe…… we really had a good time over dinner. After dinner, we headed over to Orchard Road to checkout the Christmas parade and also to meet my parents and sis. The crowd at the MRT station and at Orchard Road itself was simply unbelievable! I think literally the whole entire Singapore must have been there! So crowded!!
But the whole place was beautifully decorated, there were stationary floats lined up along the road, every building were decorated with brightly lit lights, carolers singing, dancers dancing…the whole city was celebrating Christmas! Very nice :)
We headed back to our hotel around 10 something and then it was zz time.