I'm Baaaaaaack...And Then I Leave Again

So the run didn't work out as well as I wanted it to. Next time, I'll try eating more during the day (or how about during all times?) and keeping myself hydrated so that I don't nearly pass out from sheer exhaustion 3/4 of the way through. Phew. And the Indian foodies? Didn't work out either. Both friends I was going to go with ended up having lunch without me. Buh. So I had Extra Creamy Kraft Dinner instead. With extra freshly ground pepper.

So it's 12am right now and I have to get up at the unholy hour of 5am so we can leave for The Windy City. I promised myself that I'd get Singapore photos out of the way before I left, so here I am! Travel and photo-treats for you to feast on while I'm gone.

Asia - Volume Four: Singapore

SINGAPORRRRRRE!!!

After a nice long drive through the Malaysian countryside, we made it into Singapore and we survived customs! It reminded me of crossing the US border; we had to throw away all our chewing gum (it's banned in the country) and all the men had to share their cigarettes because one person is only allowed to bring one pack into the country. What an awesome country/city. No gum. No littering. Little to no crime. Clean drinking water. English as a working language and FOUR official languages. Multi-ethnic. Special owner's licenses are needed to drive cars (it controls traffic). No drugs. Low unemployment rate.

The only thing that made me pause was the fact that they still enforce capital punishment. They do so by hanging - being caught with drugs is punishable by death. No doubt they've got strict laws (they're called "A Fine City" for a reason); there's two years mandatory military service and punishment by caning (people are beaten/caned with long sugar cane poles soaked in horse urine).

But. It is a Garden City. And they have a Merlion. And "Singa Pura" means "Lion City". And their national flower is a hybrid orchid. And they have an awesome botanical garden that Annia would LOVE. She'd go nuts over the trees. Monkey Pot trees! Canonball trees!

 
Left: That's me and the Singapore skyline. I'll never get over the fact that someone's arm is in my cliche-tourist-and-skyline photo. Stupid arm.
Right: That's the famous Merlion and the skyline. Ooh. Ahh.

The Merlion:

This isn't the one pictured above; this one is on the island of Sentosa. Our tour guide kept saying mer-LIE-on. It got really annoying.

One of our destinations was the Jurong Bird Park where we saw...well, birds. We got to ride on a panorail, and see a bird show and do typical fun things like that. Tanya would have loved it here. (Can you tell I'm missing my peeps by then?)

  
Left & Middle: These are lorries! They're gorgeously colourful and enjoy being fed by people, but I was too afraid to get close and I didn't have my camera with lots of zoom. Alas. It gives me a reason to return, no?
Right: Flamingoes! Sooo pink.

Singapore is a very tiny place - I think I heard that you can drive across the whole country/city/nation state? in about 20 minutes. We only spent a day there and took another day to visit Sentosa, Singapore's island resort.

Singapore from a distance:
 
Left: Moi with a bit of Singapore in the background as well as some of Sentosa (you can see the island across the water). We were waiting for the cable car at the top of Mount Faber (Singapore's 2nd highest mountain!) to take us to the island. As you can tell from my glistening glow (okay okay, it's dirty, sticky sweat!), it's HOT there. And those awful tan lines? I got rid of them! Whoooo.
Right: A view of Singapore from the cable car.

Sentosa is totally a vacationer's paradise. It's HOT (spicily so) and beautiful with lots to see and do. After gawking, our first stop was the wax museum, which not only taught us the history of Singapore, but also swept me off my feet with it's delicious and absolutely fantabulous museum-ness. Best museum I've been to in a while, if not ever. I wish I didn't have to race through the end - I could have had the nicest conversation with a character about his hut and his twin brother. It was HUGE and I miss it already. (Again with the nerd talk.)

We then took an air conditioned coach to Underwaterworld! I'm not too big on marine life, but these creatures were fantastical...
  

This is a cool photo of The Parentals and I on the Movator in Underwaterworld. You stand on a belt and it takes you around and through a huge tank so that you're surrounded by water and fishies. You can see sharks above our heads.


A Benz bus passing Benz taxis took us to dinner (during which we were served a whole cooler of rice), and then we saw the musical fountain show which impressed us all muchly. It was a bit cheeso-beezo for me at times (see: singing-dancing fish and Princess Pearl). The show managed to turn an ordinary stage and fountain into something that used water as a projection screen and managed to make neon come out of EVERYWHERE.

 
Right: Check out the neon-green rays of death coming from the Merlion's eyes.

Our night in Sentosa was probably the most memorable night of our whole trip:

Then. Oh, then. A walk to the beach and a night swim in the ocean!! It was an awesome time - NIGHT SWIMMING! A few gulps of salty water, a game of tag, a run, a freaking good time. The Southern Most Point of Continental Asia! Our family made friendly with a bunch of other people so we all partied in the ocean that night. It was unbelievably fun. It was somewhat creepy to be stepping into water that was pitch black (the only lighting came from the strip of bars down the way), but you make do with what you've got, yes? And to think! I was swimming and playing and splashing and running right at the Southern Most Point of Continental Asia. Damn, that's pretty cool.

Singapore was great and I suppose I miss the good times I had there, but I'm not sure if I miss the place necessarily. It's a great palce to live because it's safe and clean and modern...but maybe it was too modern for me? I'm not sure. I love the fact that there are four official languages and it is very multi-ethnic, but because English is the working language, everything seemed to have a strange Western glaze to it. It was curiously familiar, yet foreign.
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