Singapore

Leaving Singapore for Kuala Lumpur in a matter of hours. Taking an overnight sleeper train, which is bound to be a bit of an adventure.

Singapore is as clean and efficient and nice and modern as you hear. Upon landing (15 minutes early), I flew through immigration in less than five minutes, literally had my bag waiting for me, and was on and off the subway in front of my hostel in about 20 minutes. Nice work.

Yesterday I crawled basically every district of the city: the British Colonial district, the seaside, Little India, the Arab district, Chinatown. I visited my first mosque and greatly offended everyone (innocently) by walking in the prayer room and by not wearing the green gown they told me I had to wear.

My afternoon brought me to Orchard Rd where I ate ice cream and spent about an hour walking trying to find the Botanical Gardens. They were alright. I walked back, took a shower, and headed to the Night Safari, a night zoo. Saw some sweet animals (elephants, leopards, etc. up close). Came back around 11 and had an expensive (2.75USD) Tiger beer (these were 90 cents in PP) and slept.

I've been staying in a 6 bed dorm room. Suprisingly, I've been the last person to bed both nights.

Today I woke up feeling drained. I've been running myself hard the last few days. I took the subway to Harbour something-er-other and then took the monarail across to Sentosa Island, some sort of synthetic resort island off the coast of Singapore. I haven't quite figured out exactly what it was supposed to be, but it sure looked nice and touristy. But they had a great aquarium with an underwater passageway and a tank where you could touch rays and sharks - nice.

After this it was crappy out and I was totally exhausted so I decided to see Transformers. I actually didn't hate it and it made me realize I really miss America. I'm one of the few "backpacker/NGO workers" that doesn't actually hate America. Michael Bay, you have shown me the light.

Now here I sit. Gotta shower, etc., and then I'm off.

City 3/3 on deck. Back in the US one week from today!

- m