Singapore
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
16
19
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Singapore,
Singapore
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
We get picked up by our driver at 6 am in the morning and he takes us on one last ride: to the airport, for our 7:50 am flight back to Singapore. The flight itself is pretty uneventful until the end - there's a big storm over Singapore and we can't land for about 20 minutes. After that we land safely, though the steward does sound quite surprised when he announces "despite the stormy weather that was a really nice landing". :D
First we try to figure out some things about our flight home (more about that later), and then we go into the city to our hostel. It's raining again, which seems to be a recurring theme for us in Singapore. :D After settling in we head into the city and get a suit for Selmer. The salesguy, called Feroz, is quite amusing, putting up a whole show about giving us a special price he never gives anyone and showing us postcards from happy customers and a picture of him with Bill Clinton - I'm terribly amused. In the end Selmer does get a really good price though and we leave happily. We have lunch in Chinatown (I have a very good laksa I totally have to recreate at home - I got so many cooking ideas during this trip!). We wander around a bit linger - mostly in the airconditioned shopping malls; even after four weeks in South East Asia Singapore still feels very hot and sticky. At 5 pm we go back to Feroz to get the first bits of Selmer's suit fitted and then we meet up with Ruben & Wendy (our friends that got married :D). We head for a foodcourt where we have a very nice meal - mostly chilli crab - and then they show us around for a bit in the city centre. We also try a few more typical Singaporean dishes. I really like Singapore after dark - they really seem to have made an effort to make it look appealing, with lots of different colours of lights and everything.
Day 30: Singapore
We sleep in in the morning and then deal with our flights home a bit more (still more to come on that :D), very annoying.
After that we set off to Orchard Road as Selmer wants to go to a big Japanese bookstore there. It's a fantastic bookstore where amazingly enough I don't buy any books. I think I'm just too overwhelmed by everything they have on offer. :D Selmer does buy a few books though and I go a bit crazy in the stationery section; they have lots of pretty Japanese stationery sets!
At 1 pm we meet up with Ruben and Wendy again, this time to have lunch. They drag us to a few different foodcourts, insisting we try even more Singaporean dishes. Ruben has a booklet from the Singaporean tourism board that is basically a list of all the typical Singaporean foods. He insists we have to try everything and I think in the end we do make it through about half of it. :D It's lots of fun though, I get to try lots of different things and I always like that sort of thing. :D After lunch Ruben and Wendy have other things to do, so we say goodbye and then Selmer and I go back to Little India (where our hostel is) where I splurge on a bunch of Bollywood VCD's.
At night we go to the Singapore Zoo for the Night Safari, which is really cool. I'm not really big on zoos and stuff like that, but I really enjoy this evening. There's a tram ride past a lot different nocturnal animals with a guide telling you about them, and there are a few walking trails that you can stroll along, looking at animals. I especially love the huge bats they have. I love bats for some reason, and these are bigger than any I've ever seen! The walking trail actually goes through their cage, so that's really cool. You can almost touch them as they fly over your head!
