Singapore

The flight was nice and cruisy. We flew into an air conditioned airport, went thru the usual visa, baggage claim etc. We got on to the MRT (Subway train) from within the airport terminal, backpacks on, looking like turtles (It was hard to turn with the limited space and our shells on..)

It wasn't till we got to our stop that we had to exit the train, at about 10pm. The doors open and we both walked into a thick wall of humidity and heat - it was like stepping into a sauna! The temperature in Singapore stays at about 25-30c all day and all night, and it is like a blanket.

from wikipedia on Singapore:

Temperatures range from 22 °C to 34 °C (72°–93 °F). On average, the relative humidity is around 90% in the morning and 60% in the afternoon. During prolonged heavy rain, relative humidity often reaches 100%

Thankfully our hostel had lots of big fans and so we could sleep that night. The hostel was run by a guy named Yang, and he works in electronics doing(destruction) testing of printed circuit boards (PCBs) during the day - making sure that batch production was going smoothly and soldering correctly etc. In his spare hours, he ran the hostel. Everything was reused items - from the toilet-come-PC-chair, to the Epson toilet roll dispenser (pictured on top of TV) . A neat guy working overtime to make a nice place, and some cash.

I realised that I had lost my (expensive) prescription sunglasses somewhere between Sydney and Singapore, which really sucked. I now have to either squint or see things blurry behind cheapie sunglasses....

The shopping in Singapore is even better then Sydney! There are malls everywhere, and they all impeccably clean and tidy. This is a recurring theme in Singapore, it is so straight and orderly.



I didn't take many photos of the shopping malls, but this one thing was sooo sweet. The photo is blurry sorry, but that huge rack of drawers has every lego piece known to man in it. You could replace individual lego items, or hand pick exactly what you wanted.. like a kid in a candy shop :)



We found a pet shop in one of the complexes - and they have hamsters! These things are so small and cute, Princess nearly popped with excitement at seein them. http://cuteoverload.com would not work without them.



A sunbear at Singapore zoo.



A cotton-tailed tamarin.



And yes, that is 2 giant turtles trying to do their thing... they are big and slow moving so it was likely quite a drawn out affair. Singapore Zoo is the best zoo we have ever been to. There are so many animals, and they are obviously well cared for with large enclosures and awesome maintenance. Go and click on the pics to go to Flickr and see the rest of the pics - I have tagged them with "zoo". We went to the night zoo also, but no night pics sorry.

At the night zoo I was lucky enough to be next to the glass wall when 2 Leopards were very active, pacing back and forth right in front of me. We both love the big cats, and these 2 animals were mere inches away from us (ie the glass thickness), strutting around. It was awesome!

We were staying in the north-west corner of the island, so we travelled on the train (MRT) every day for at least 1/2 hour. Was good to interact with the locals and get 'a taste' of asia however watered down it is - Singapore was a great way to dip our toes into Asian culture. It is very western in most senses, so there was no culture shock to speak of, and not too many stares (aside from the shenanigans with our backpacks). Although English is the official language, everyone speaks ching-lish, a sort of hybrid of lots of languages.


We also spent time looking at Singapores "little china" area, and their "little india", but they seem to just be a way to draw tourists to sell them cheap stuff. Fun to look at all the same, lots of guys wanting to be my tailor! I'm guessing the hourly rate for a tailor is good in comparison to lots of other industries because there are heaps of them! We also spent some time looking thru the asian culture gallery - art from all of Asia and as far as the middle east. No pics were allowed sorry, but lots of beautiful pottery, amoury and paintings. Also caught the latest Harry Potter with Malay subtitles.

We visited Sim Lim tech shopping mall: man-Shopping! This place was NUTS - 7 floors PACKED with every piece tech hardware I had eve heard of. You name it - cameras, laptops of all brands, pdas, cellphones, game consoles... gaah. By the time I had walked the 7 floors looking for a new camera I was dizzy with choice. I was so flummoxed, in fact, that ended up buying a camera without thinking. A Sanyo. A brand I didn't even know did cameras.

It was my first attempt at bartering and so I paid much more then I might have, but I have accepted it and moved on, and besides, its actually a good camera anyway. Sanyo just never got on my radar for cameras before. I'm so used to researching and carefully selecting my tech hardware - this ended up just being a (confused) whim. In any case, hopefully you'll notice better pictures from now on...