Happy Birthday Singapore

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By overnight train we arrived from Kota Baru in Singapore. Here we met our German friend Julia again. We've been running into Julia everywhere since we met her first in Tama Negara. At this time Julia was traveling with a father and son from Switzerland annd son from Switzerland annd son from Switzerland and we decided to join for a bit. During our Journey to Singapore it was Ilse who attended us to the fact that it was Singapore's 44th birthday on our date of arrival. After the train, we said goodbye to the Swiss and Julia joined us to our hostel. After check-in, we had a look around and ended in Little India.

Although not really my coup of tea, as you know, i was interesting to see how the Indian lived in Sindapore. First thing that is obvious is the lack of pollution probably due to Singapore excellent disposal system. I think the 500 dollar fine for littering has something to do with this aswell though. For the rest it was much the same as India which is really funny in a way. This is because Singapore is in no way a overcrowded City. But as you enter little India the ammount of women in the street decreases rapitly, but the ammount of extra indian men more than compensates for this decline, making it a very crowded area.

Then the time came for celibration as we made our way to the tonhall, were most of the festivities were bound to take place. The ammount of people joining us grew steadily as we got closer. Finally it became such a mass that it was hard to get anywere near the places of interest so we just watched the whole spectacly unfold on the big TV screens.

The Show was nice but I particullary liked the parade which was military in nature. It had Jets flying over, helicopters in formation and soldiers, policimen and scouts parading the streets. At some point I was almost excpecting the tanks and Missle platforms to roll in, Russian-style. But that wasn't the case. At the end was some firework and we had a small drink near the festivities. All in all a great evening. Its great to see the Singapoean people so proud of their country and the should be. It is a world city now but 50 years back it was little more then a town with no natural resources except its manpower.

Last I should writing something on shopping as singapore is widly known for this. As someone who is unmaterialistic, even I see that shopping in Singapore must be lots of fun. All the rbands you can immagine are present and the malls are just huge. Its so much that I think that Singapore can bleed any wallet dry in a matter of days. We invested our own hard earned cash in a water purifier and coocking equipemt. THis set us back 300 dollars but our equipment is now finally complete. For me, I would rather spend my money in KL. KL doesn't have the many facilities Signapore has, but its close. But the prices are a lot more bearable.

Still Singapore delivers and we enjoyed our time here

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