Good job I renewed this site when the hosting reminder came up. It’s for Singapore matters only, and we don’t live there any more, so I considered letting it lapse. But our return this Christmas brought back the relevance of – and need for – a PartlyCloudy post, so here it is.

We left the Little Red Dot in 2017 and returned for a visit in 2018. That five-week return trip felt like closure, and did us the world of good. Since then a lot of ground has been covered and we are very much Londoners living in the Northern Hemisphere. So I didn’t expect, on our Christmas trip, to feel so at home so fast.

Singapore is mercurial in its changes, and a lot of building work had taken place as we emerged blinking into the sunlight on our first morning. But much had also stayed the same, like our beloved Botanic Gardens (point one on our to-do list), Henderson Wave bridge (made it there on the last day), concrete over-road passes with big jungly trees forming essential rain cover, efficient Changi airport whisking us straight to the cab rank, etc etc – all this stuff made us feel instantly at home. Here are some more things we loved reconnecting with:

• Commuting on the MRT felt so normal. Smooth, quick, cool, WiFi everywhere. No food or drink allowed, mind you, and no entertaining buskers, but those are also plus points. When riding the escalators we had to remember to stand on the left (and we’re now remembering to switch back).
• I do love the buses. Little things like tapping out as well as in make so much sense. They run in all weathers, including torrential storms but they’re very joggy, so don’t expect to sit down before they hit the gears.
• We made good use of the fiendishly cheap Grab cabs spinning us around Malaysia and Singapore to a backdrop of bluesy 80s choons, furry animals dangling above the dash. That’s my cab quota used up for the whole year.
• Food, glorious food should really be point 1. We are still dreaming of it (and working it off). Cheap eats, fancy seats, take-out, stay in, it’s curiously available in a way I can’t describe. Tangy south-east Asian scents wafting from every air outlet, brilliant food courts in almost every mall, offering food you actually want to eat. The whole country is a giant foodie playground and we could have spent a month tucking into kaya toast for breakfast, quick curry lunches, Crystal Jade, Tim Ho Wan, Ippudo Ramen, proper Din Tai Fung. Oh and the bread shops, cake shops, skewer sticks, nonya dishes – and airport snacks a speciality (Old Chang Kee, Kopitiam, etc).
• Shopping? Yes, but it’s a funny old thing: when I lived there I loved coming back to the UK shops. Now I’m here I love it out there. Singapore is a shopping city and not always in a brilliant way. Loads of plastic and packed-out malls on weekends. But how do I know? Because I was right in there, sorrynotsorry. Couldn’t hurt to hunt for a few bargains, like the third-off quilted cross-body bag and the bargain Bata sandals. And my suitcase didn’t split, result.
• Back outdoors and there’s those funny chunky up-and-down pavements with a tree in the middle, suddenly, or a railing over a drain, or a fence. On off on off up down up down. Good for the glutes. And the traffic lights that make the “peow” sound before the fast green countdown. Don’t dawdle, the roads are massive here and red comes round fast. I remembered my way around a few places as if I’d only left five minutes ago. Weird and not-weird all at once.
• Waiting at a crossing in the sun or sudden rain, forgot your umbrella, need water? You can find a 7-Eleven or Watsons on every corner selling those. And the one time an MRT didn’t have one (naughty Telok Blangah) there was an HDB over the road with shops at the bottom.
• A word about water: Singapore is 95% water (made up that figure but you get the idea) and it’s effortlessly drinkable straight from the tap, so ditch the plastic and fill up those water bottles.
• And HDBs, OK not always amazing, but such a great concept. A little round of applause here for convenient communal living (when it works, that is, not for the rubbish ones)
• Another shoutout for one of the best bits of Singapore living: toilets. Public conveniences are every-single-where. Everywhere. Such a great idea, but I guess you need the infrastructure to do that, and attendants willing to keep them orderly. Thanks, Singers, for being so practical.
• Clement winter weather made our trip more doable. Yes we had melty moments every day, but there was a lot of uncharacteristically breezy, sunny stuff going on, and a few coolish nights too (a parky 25 at times). I did find the heat tougher this time, no doubt thanks to a few more years on the bodyclock. When I lived here I prided myself on not minding the weather too much. For this trip the answer was: yes it’s hot – table inside, please. One bonus: western hair is a fluffy nightmare in Asia, but my thinning threads loved it. Bit more of that humidity and I’ll start looking like myself again…
• I’ll roll into one the giant palms on every corner, lianas in hedges, monitors and otters in the Botanic Gardens, cicadas ringing in the trees, and the simple joy of having warm bones (when it’s not too hot). But it’s more than that, the whole fortnight was a feeling of being at home in a place.

I now see our 2018 visit as a stamp of security, whereas this trip will go down as the one that confirmed how much we love the city. Grandpa came too, and loved revisiting the gardens and MacRitchie. Jonah loved every second of our roam around town, remembering familiar things, coming up with places to revisit, promising to return. Our tattoos (phoenix and monkey), which sometimes seem a bit twee here in the UK, made much more sense over there.

Expat are always, or often, aware of being a guest, but over time a sense of belonging can develop, and that’s in part down to the friends we make. Most of ours have left the building, but we enjoyed breakfast (Yien), lunch (Ai Lee and Angela), tea (Saori), dinner (Chessers), plus a night on the town for Jonah, and New Year rooftop fun for us (thank you Karen and Ian, and for the house-loan). Just the right amount of catch-ups for the time we had.

We did also include a trek around Malaysia, this time to Penang and Ipoh to meet up with more family. More food, more walks, night markets, daytime hikes, chilled nights with snow beer and chicken skewers, novelty shops, local temples, and an important visit to see John’s Aunty Rosy’s resting spot. We’ll be back to knock on the glass three times. A bonus for me was taking the train from Penang to Ipoh, really not much to get excited about, which is why I loved it, just so normal, notably efficient, clean and simple. UK transport routes – take note.

I used to write my travel posts while flying for 14 hours at 36,000 feet. This time, cruising home, I had an MA assignment to complete, a fellow student’s story to review, and a contextual statement to draft. And all with a seatback in my face. Definitely out of practice with the whole long-haul work thing.

We are just about the right way up – jetlag was tough. I’ve stopped playing the time game (‘five days ago I was…’). I don’t know what happened to our first week back but I seem to have written that assignment, drafted my statement, co-planned three webinars, and more.

And so 2025 begins, and we’re standing on the right, sleeping without a fan, wearing extra clothes to bed, packing the sun clothes away, passing credit cards over with one hand not two, thinking in snapshots of our two-week Asia fest.
Until next time, LRD.