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This week brings me to the begining of my South East Asia trip. I have left Australia behind. I spent so much time there I am a bit home sick for it. I really miss Tim Tams.
Singapore is another stop on the British Imperialst tour. Every time I think of how much arrogance it requred for Europeans to just show up in a place that seemed like it would be usefull to business and just claim it as their own. Forget about the people that were already living there. Of course on the other hand, had the British not invaded the rest of the world like a virus, it would be a lot harder for a monolistic English speaker such as my self to travel. It never fails to amaze me that no matter where I go I can find signs in the local language and English. Egypt probably would have been a struggle without a tour guide, but otherwise the world has been good to me.
As an entry into Asia from Australia I found Singapore a nice clean transition. It has a reputation for being expensive, and no doubt I would have agreed with that had
I not just come from Australia where it cost 4$US for a 20oz bottle of coke. I found delicious cheap food in Singapore. They had takoyaki and yakitori which I haven't had since I was in Japan. Yum, Yum, Yum
There are several great museums that I went to, in particular the Art and Science Museum was having a Harry Potter Exhibition with lots of the props from the movies. Including the giant chess pieces and the flying car. I think this same Exhibiton was at the Science museum in Sydney but I passed on it because it cost more than $50. In Singapore the same thing cost less than $20. Proof once again that frugality is the cornerstone of sucessful travel. The Signapore National museum was very interesting as well. I got in free because I have a student ID. And the the audio guide is included in the price. I got to learn all about how Singapore was claimed by the British, even though the guy who did it wasn't supposed to. They made it into a succesful trading center with a noticible lack of import taxes and duties. Then WWII came around and the Japanese invaded
and occupied the island for three years. Singaporeans weren't too happy about that since the Japanese liked to go around intering people and murdering them, so even when the British reclaimed the island after the war was over they were not happy and soon after kicked the British out. They later tried to combine with Malaysia but for some reason that didn't work out. I would have found out why but the museum was closing and I had to rush.
What really amazed me about Singapore was the massive amount of shopping malls. There are malls connected to malls connected to more malls. I truely think, though I couldn't find any facts to back this up, that it must have the highest number of malls per square kilometer in the world. They would be hard pressed to physically fit any more malls onto that tiny Island.
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