Singapura

I spent two days in Singapore because I had to get out of Indonesia for visa reasons. I spent two days walking around a city in Asia, and my feet weren't black at the end of the day. Nice.



Singapore is a pretty cool place. It is extremely easy to get around in because everything is very well signed and makes sense. They have great public transportation. But don't get caught smoking on the MRT because the fine is $1000, and don't dare eat or drink because you'll get fined $500. No durians allowed either.

I stayed at the YMCA International House in a hostel room. It was a small room and didn't have anything fancy, but it was cheap at about CAD$30/night.


The first day I was in Singapore I took the train to Little India, which was really neat. I did some shopping, enjoyed the rich smells, and the explosions of color of the buildings, shops, and women in their saris. I ate some great Indian food there too, and also met a nice waiter who told me about some other great places in Singapore that I was sure to check out. Oh, and I had a slurpee from 7/11!!!
After Little India I went to Sentosa, which is a little resort island (sounds like Bali, but its not like Bali...) In Sentosa I went to their Marine Park, where you can walk through a tunnel and sharks and all these other big and little fish swim all around you, and also to their dolphin show, which was pretty impressive. I had dinner at Subway, which was a highlight of the day because just last week we were talking about how much we wanted Subway... and then I ate at one. After dinner I went to the show called "Song of the Sea" which was reeaally cool. They use water spry as a screen and can project images onto it, and there were fireworks and fireballs and lazers too! The plot of the story was very lacking... but the effects were amazing!




Oh ya! Best flights EVER. Singapore Airlines is amazing and on both the flights to Singapore and back were less than half full (or more than half empty?) so on both trips I had the whole row to myself. Senang sekali!

Sidebar: I've been trying to figure out what the name "Singapore" means, I'm pretty sure the real name for the city is "Singapura" which I can kind of make sense out of because it might be based on Malay, which is really close to Indonesian and "singa" is lion, and "pura" is temple. "Lion Temple" maybe? Would make sense cause the symbol for Singapore seems to be a lion. Hmm.
Ok, I looked it up. I was right about "Singa" but in Malay "Pura" apparently means city- so it's Lion City! Thank you very much Wikipedia.