Chinese and Japanese gardens

Today we visited two beautiful gardens in Singapore.

The first was the Chinese garden, and right at the entrance is a huge pagoda. It was a red hot day and we strolled slowly around trying to get a bit of shade from overhanging trees.

There was a lake filled with lotus flowers and next to it a café that sold amazing ice creams for the equivalent of 58 pence.

I have no idea why they did that because everything is expensive in Singapore, and at the next café that we came across they cost more like £8 each.

We found out that the Chinese word for bonsai is penjing. It aims for a more natural effect of miniature trees than bonsai which is more stylised.

They had some beautiful penjing trees in a traditional style building.

Then we crossed a bridge and on to Japan. Not to be outdone by the Chinese lotus flowers the Japanese garden had a fantastic water lily pond.

It had paths meandering through the pond so you could get really close to the flowers.

It was fortunate that we went in the morning because this afternoon there was a big thunderstorm, the first one we have seen on this trip. Strangely the BBC has been forecasting rain everyday and this is the first time that they got it right.