Singapore

Singapore was awesome. Not so much a culture shock as India was, but its very modern. It kind of reminded me of a cleaner, less crowded New York. The skyline was beautiful, hopefully we get to see it lite up on the way out.

Today I had an FDP with Kyle. We first went to a mosque where we had to take off our shoes. The guide who was going to be with us until 1:00 seemed kind of cool. He talked really fast and laughed for only short periods of time. After the mosque we went to a church, and then a roman catholic church. I got plenty of pictures on the way. Brittany was with us on the trip too, she kept changing her lenses every few minutes.

After the two Christian sites, we went to a Buddhist temple. This was probably the coolest religious site that we hit on the tour. It got me really psyched for China. The temple itself had many statues to different Gods. I also saw a statue of Guan Yu, who I thought only existed in the dynasty warriors video game. Apparently, the whole game is based on the three kingdoms era of China. After the Buddhist temple, we went to a Hindu temple. I was kind of half paying attention to what the guide was saying because we had just come from India.

When Kyle and I got back, we met up with Carolyn, who had gone to the zoo. Carolyn said that that was one of the two things I should do, but I didn’t get to. Mike said that the zoo was pretty amazing and that the animals weren’t in cages at all. He brought this girl Cassie back from the tour and she wanted to hang around with us. After Kyle got done with talking to his bank about withdrawing money, we all left for the MRT, or subway. The subway was extremely clean, probably because there were fines imposed if someone littered, ate, or carried flammable items in the subway. We took the purple line until we hit Chinatown. There, we got to eat at some awesome place. And of course, we ate with chopsticks. Kyle and I split barbecued pork, and prawns and crab meat over rice. Mike and Cassie split some chicken and some vegetarian dish because Cassie is vegetarian.

Halfway through the meal, it started to pour rain, which wouldn’t help because it already felt like it was 100% humidity. After the rain let up, the four of us went to orchard street which was where all the high end stores were. I saw two rolex stores within 5 minutes of each other. I also had the best ice ream sandwich that I had ever had. If fact it was so good, I had two. The man took a brick of ice cream, and sandwiched it between two real wafers, none of that pre packaged stuff. After I tried to find a shirt that said Singapore on it and failed, we all went to the marina bay front. It took us forever to find a crosswalk. We were all too afraid that we would get a fine for jaywalking so we walked back and forth along the street until we finally found one. There, Kyle and I split off from Mike and Cassie because they wanted to go to the skypark but Kyle and I wanted to get some local food and try a Singapore Sling.

Kyle and I got a kia taxi cab to where we had been before where we got our drinks, which were really good. I wasn’t sure how strong it was, but I couldn’t taste the alcohol. It reminded me of a coke with cherry grenadine, but it had kind of a fruit kick and with less carbonation. After leaving the bar, we walked around and tried to find a place to eat. In the process of doing that, we were harassed by two prostitutes our age. They saw us coming, stood up and started calling us baby and honey and then touched us as we walked by. It was really strange, they looked like they were younger than us. We found a place to eat. I got a roasted chicken cutlet, amazing yet again, and we split an order of dumplings. The whole meal came out to be 15 singapore dollars, which was a pretty good deal for the amount of food that we got.

We then took the MRT back to the ship. Im currently sitting on the back of the 6th deck looking at pier and forklifts driving back and forth. T here is a huge ship called the Super Star Virgo that’s ported next to us. It kind of reminds me of Freedom of the Seas. Singapore overall was a great time. I expected a less modern and less clean city, but it was by far a first class place.