After Australia, the next major stop was Southern Africa. But rather than flying directly there we reckoned it would not add much to the trip to go through Singapore and stop for few days to see our friends there. On top of it we had a bunch of miles with Singapore Airlines that were about to expire and we figured out it would make sense to use them to the best! That being decided we flew low-cost from Melbourne to Singapore. I have to say I was a bit anxious as I’ve done that before and found the long-haul flight being excruciating sitting in a small and hard seat in a low-cost plane. Well this time around it was actually not too bad. We booked our tickets on Scoot Airlines and didn’t go for the cheapest fare but rather went for the next tier. The flight was not funky but all in all not as bad as expected.

Few weeks back, Flavian offered us to stay with him just to remember that he would be in Borneo for a music festival. Oh well, it meant we had his place for ourselves to relax and that we would have to wait for his return to taste his new cocktail master skills. In the meantime we had lunches and dinners organized all around the city with past and present resident friends. It all started with a late brunch with Georgina and Josh. Lots of chit chat later we learnt about their big news. Congrats! We wish you all the best and lots of fun when the little one arrives. Vee and myself then split for the afternoon, me to catch up with David and Vee to have some tea time with Karen and Sandra. We finally ended up in a Korean restaurant on Amoy Street to have dinner with Taehee, Nico, Ramo, Laurent, Mani, Paul and Helen. Good friends, good food, what else do we need? A cocktail maybe, and that’s exactly what we did with Mani and Paul to wrap up this first day in Singapore.On Sunday we had this unexpected lunch with Guillaume who has left Singapore some time ago and is now supposed to be based in Nice. It turned out that few days before leaving Australia I got in touch with him just to find out he was in Indonesia and would be stopping over in Singapore that first weekend when we would be there. We didn’t need more to lock the date to have lunch together. The choice of restaurants is gigantic in the Lion City but we couldn’t pass on one of our favorites, Din Tai Fung. There is something about their xiao long bao that I crave and I will always need my fix when stopping in Singapore! A lunch goes by fast but we made the most of tit to catch up and finally meet Gina his new girlfriend. I also entrusted him with our underwater photography equipment to bring back to France as we won’t have much use of it in the coming months. We finally had to call it an end and jump in a taxi to go to Anne and Damien’s. After a quick dip in the pool, it was time for a proper apéritif. Funny thing is that we are never short on wine when we stay with Anne and Damien. And this time again, it proved to be the case with champagne as well as white and red wine. Enough to go through the evening and more! Guys, it was great spending with you.

Monday, after a bit of shopping we met with Anjuli for lunch. Some people still have to work during the week and our time with her was short. Still it was good to catch up. Flavian was flying back from Borneo on that day but he had to go to the office in the afternoon so decided we would meet later after our dinner with Angela and Peter. And we went on with our shopping spree although we didn’t find much of what was on our list. But that brought us just meters away from Fred’s office and thought it would be fun to get him of work for 15 minutes or so. We called him. He is travelling a lot and is usually in Singapore only other week so we had a 50/50 chance of seeing him. To our surprise he picked up the phone and we told him we were downstairs. He didn’t quite understand it right away as we were just coming out of the blue but was finally excited to see us and postponed his coming meeting to see us. We had a coffee together, chit chat for awhile and had to let him go back to work. We agreed we would stop by his place the next day to see Yuko and the girls.

Back to dinner, it took us a while to decide where we would go eat with Angela and Peter. Peter asked if we had something in mind and we gave him couple ideas. The good point is that we agreed that French cuisine would suit all of us. As usual Peter likes to have suggestions but in the end we have to agree that is choice is most likely the better one. Vee would certainly say it reminds her of someone else… So after numerous messages we agreed that Peter’s choice was certainly a good one and we ended up going to Gaston for a bit of a French bistro style cuisine. It was good but I suggest to Peter to try also Café Gavroche or any of the 13º Gastro Wine, both have good bistro cuisine and excellent wines. Just saying!It was then time to go back to Flavian’s. We actually took him out of bed, so much for the afternoon at the office! It didn’t take him long to put on his mixologist suit and start mixing cocktails for us. Well it didn’t take us long to be slightly inebriated. I actually had to leave Flavian and Vee to their discussions and went to bed. Funnily I didn’t have the best night ever, a bit agitated I would say! Nevertheless it was good to see Flavian and couldn’t wait for more time with him the next day.

We took it easy on the Tuesday morning. We had a bit of laundry to do, it seems you never do enough of that when you’re on long-term travels. When ready we hopped on a bus to go and meet Mike for lunch. Mike is a keen diver and was interested to learn more about our stint in French Polynesia. True that if you like big stuff underwater as he does, the Tuamotus are a definite must-go. In the afternoon I caught up with Cecile and met with Vee later to grab a taxi to Fred and Yuko’s place. Our visit was timed as we had planned with Flavian for dinner. So once again we tried to make the most out of it, catching up with the Maury family and sharing our stories in Japan, Yuko’s native country. We then met Flavian at 13º Gastro Wine on Telok Ayer for some awesome foie gras and cold cuts accompanied by a good Pinot Noir from Bourgogne. What else! It was then time to go back home and have another round of cocktails with Flavian as grand master behind the bar. That night he went off the classics to create one cocktail of his own, my favorite one. I can’t remember what was in there but the color and the taste were just perfect. That one needs a proper name Flavian.It was then time to pack our bags again and leave for Africa. That morning I was about to buy one more tele lens for my camera. It took me an hour to decide I didn’t really need it. Writing this post in Botswana, I now know that I could have made good use of it for some shots but overall I am just good with what I have, until then… But I digress. We had one last lunch with Flavian at Café Melba where they used to have all sort of nice graffiti but not anymore as all walls have been painted white since then. We made sure to arrive at the airport a bit early to give us time to go visit the Jewel, the new addition to Changi. It is a hub for food and shopping all built around a tropical garden with water cascading down from the glass roof, another architectural feat added to Singapore’s long list of crazy buildings. And with no more time we headed to our gate and boarded our plane bound for South Africa. After five super cool days in Singapore it was time for new adventures!