$$$ingapore

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A short flight from Kuching, Borneo to Johor Baru, Malaysia and a bus ride put us in Singapore. We had to exit Malaysia and go through customs/immigration to make it onto the island of Singapore. For some reason it took longer to do this than it did to fly from Borneo and take the bus to the border. It took less time to travel through communist countries than to cross this border, go figure.

We had tried to book a room online (something we never do) and found the prices to be out of this world. We could book into the YMCA hostel for $84 or use Orbitz and book a four star hotel for $89, what do you think we did?

Singapore was incredibly clean and had an easy, cheap public transportation system. It was modern with high rises and skyscrapers everywhere you looked. The amount of cranes on the horizon was astonishing. We headed out to Little India to enjoy “Deepavali” the Indian Festival of Lights. One more festival and public holiday we were completely in the “dark” about. There were people everywhere and the temples were in full swing. After several hours here we headed into Chinatown. We spent some time wandering around this part of town and had some dinner before the rains hit and forced us back in for the evening.

Day two put us on the go again, checking out the city and heading to a New York style deli for a burger and a Rueben sandwich for lunch. This was another eye opener into the cost of being here. Our lunch tab was as much as some of the rooms we stayed in, beers ($10 draft each) were cheaper than water.

Singapore was a place we didn’t really spend a lot of time in. It wasn’t our cup of tea. Everything was expensive and almost Disney-like. It was very nice, but almost not real, we are used to eating on the street in food stalls, drinking cheap beers in tiny bars or Chinese restaurants or eating curry puffs from Indian vendors. Paying $25 cover charges to get into hip clubs really aren’t what we do. Maybe we didn’t give it enough time, but we couldn’t afford to either. Hitting the road to Kuala Lumpur (via express bus, again).

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Photos

Happy Deepavali
The Indian Festival of Lights

Comments

[Bob Andrews]

Happy Veterans Day
Cliff, Thinking about you and having a beer in your honor today! Thanks to all veterans (esp. you and me) on this great day.