Singapore: Asia-lite

Hello Everyone,

Carla and I are in Singapore at the moment experiencing Asia-lite. It is so clean and organised. the buses are never late, the metro runs on time and everything is a fixed price, pretty much. Very different from the rest of Asia. Oh ya, and did I mention it was expensive! Well at least according to my newly adjusted standards. But the shopping is amazing girls, and I have been really good and only buying those few "necessities". We've been here for about four nights now, and fly out to Bali (yay!) tomorrow...on a real plane and all. Who knew travel wasn't always by bus?

Anyhow, Singapore is pretty good for a country where it costs you 1000$ fine if you don't flush the toilet. We visited the Zoo, which was amazing, as you will all pick up on when I send out the hundreds of photos I took there! I had to change memory cards in the middle of the Orangutang feeding...but have no fear, I still got plenty of photos of the Zebras and Giraffes. Animals rock! We also went to the night safari, also pretty cool, yet a bit creepy to be walking around in the dark with giant cats and such. We also went to the Aquarium, slightly less exciting seeing as at this point we're all cocky like "I've swam with bigger sharks than that" But there were still some pretty cool sting rays and a 4 meter spider-crab from Japan.

Sentosa island is like a kind of fantasy-island created by the tourism board, pretty much symbolising the lack of history Singapore has, and its desire to become one of the world's "shopping destinations". The whole thing is quite the show, and features a giant Merlion: the symbol of Singapore/its mascott (half lion half fish), designed by the tourism board and errected in a 500 foot statue covered in lights with laser beam eyes, that you can pay 10$ to take the lift into its mouth and look over the enormous shipping harbour. Too bad we missed that one. Although we did see the spectacular "water show", which Carla misinterpreted as "magic show", and we watched a water fountain dance to "walking on sunshine" and such other lovely tunes...need i say more.

So today we slept in a bit missing our free breakfast at the guesthouse of self bbq'd eggs and toast. And then wandered around getting our flight to Bali (yay!) for tomorrow, and to little India where a parrot "read Carla's fortune" and we got henna tattoos and also sampled all the great Indian food we could possibly fit into a day. So good. So that's it tomorrow we're off to Indonesia, and back to the beach....see you in the sun. R