Singapore

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Well, I got a bit ahead of myself trying to catch up on journal entries. I forgot to put in my day spent in Singapore.

My flight from Darwin to Thailand (aboard Singapore's budget airline, Tiger Air) had a 12 hour stopover in Singapore, so I took advantage to see this city. My 3:15am departure from Darwin arrived in Singapore at 6:00am. Clearing customs was a breese, as we were the only flight coming into the budget terminal at this point, but my first indication that I wasn't in Kansas anymore was the military types patrolling the airport with machine guns. I don't think I will ever get comfortable seeing these guns in real life, even if they are not pointed at anyone.

Singapore is a sparkling, clean city, even though the repealed the chewing gum laws in 2004. English is the dominant language I encountered, altough most signs are posted in 4 languages - English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

I tackled Singapore without a guidebook, so looked to the skytrain map to decide where I should go and decided on City Hall, Little India, and Chinatown. The skytrain system is great - much like Vancovuer's but with 4 lines.

I hit City Hall first - had a look at St Andrew's Cathedral and the War Memorial, then headed into the shopping centre for a coffee and a little breakfast and an opportunity to cool off. Even at 8am, Singapore was stinkin hot and humid. I watched hundreds (thousands?) of Singaporeans stream by on their way to work and then decided I had seen all I needed to see in this area and boarded the skytrain for Little India.

Little India was something of the Asia I was looking for. Although English was still spoken everywhere, little India was all markets and shops spilling out onto the sidewalks and roads hawking food, saris, gold jewlery, electronics, and everything else. I wandered through a food market with cooked food stalls at one end and fresh meat and vegetables at the other end. I have to say that fresh goat has a particularly pungent smell. Don't think I will be enjoying goat anytime soon. I even worked up the courage to sample the food at the stalls with a little roast duck over rice. I picked the stall with the longest line-up and hoped for the best.

After a 3 hour wander through Little India, I boarded the skytrain once again and headed to Chinatown. Chinatown was less crazy, but generally the same idea as Little India - with more of a Chinese spin than Indian. There were a couple of temples in the area worth a photograph though. An hour was enough in Chinatown and so I headed back to the air conditioned coolness of the airport to read my book until my flight departed for Bangkok.

Singapore is often referred to as Asia-Lite, but if check out the ethnic communities, you definitely get a feel for it. Plus, being a Westerner, it was probably a good idea to ease myself into Asia.

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