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Published: August 19th 2006
I took a couple of days this week to go to Singapore and escape the chaos of Hanoi for just a little while, and it was great! People say that Singapore is a boring place, and perhaps if I'd come there straight from TO I might have been less enthusiastic, but I loved it! I was lucky enough to stay with Barb and Ian, friends of my sister, and they had another guest, Melissa, who I could explore with. It really is a beautiful city, very green and wide sidewalks and interesting architecture. I just walked around with a silly smile on my face for 2 days because I was walking without dodging things, and cars actually STOPPED when I was crossing right in front of them and I could finally buy dental floss!! It was also very interesting to be back in a more multicultural place, with lots of different kinds of faces all around.
We visited the beautiful botanic gardens, ate ice cream on Orchard Road, and explored the various ethnic enclaves. Chinatown and Little India were perhaps the least like those actual countries that I've ever seen, in Chinatown were weren't even really sure that we were
in the right place! Very sterile. The Arab Quarter was slightly more atmospheric. I guess you can't have it all though! We also visited Sentosa Island at night, which was a very, ah, unique experience. It's a beautiful island with tons of trees and fountains and gardens, and then a huge statue of a Merlion with creepy green lit-up eyes and other such bizarre sites. We stood on the southern-most tip of continental Asia, very cool, and splashed a bit on the beach. Also, we managed to catch the musical fountain show, which starts out as you might think, with music and water jets lit up in different colours. Then a big blue monkey had an acid trip projected with lasers into misting water. Honestly, it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen - huge scary cartoon fish, a woman dressed in bubbles singing and waving her arms around, then a Johnny-5 style robot named R-O-B-O singing about living with the fish, etc. Funnily enough, we seemed to be the only ones alternating between looking totally confused and laughing our butts off. Then we paid $5 to get our pictures taken with huge pythons - Britney-style! An island of contrasts...
Day 2 we decided to take the city bus to Malaysia, because there are not many place where you can take a city bus to another country. We had a great taxi driver on the other side who took us to an amazing waterfall that we basically had to ourselves, where little (and not-so-little) fish nibbled our toes and a big family of monkeys played on the shore. Can you imagine anything so perfect? In the evening we set out to the Night Safari (back in Singapore) and saw many very cool animals doing their night thang. You know, just haning out and eating while hundreds of people stared at them, but its cool because there's no fences, and the animals are really very close to you. There was a show too - and the sea otters sorted recycling - So cute!
Oh yeah, and we saw a drive-by Buddha. This mini-van pulls up, opens the side door and people come to pray to a shrine inside!
Anyway, I was pretty tired getting back to Hanoi, and didn't realize that my biggest adventure was still to come! Over a month ago, I paid US$165 to update my
visa to a multiple entry, 3 month. However, I did not realize until I was at the Hanoi airport, that it actually is useless! That was fun, getting dragged back to the immigration police offices, and trying my damnedest to convince them not to boot me out of the country. In the end, they found a loophole in my OLD visa, and allowed me in just this once. However, we are flying to Laos in 2 days, and then have to get back into Vietnam for our flight home in 2 weeks. So, I don't know how I'm going to get back into the country again, because last time it took me 2 weeks just to get the visa, and I kinda need my passport with me...hmmmm.....
We'll probably be out of touch for the most part for the next 2 weeks, but we'll update on Laos and Cambodia after that. Love you guys!
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sanam
non-member comment
teehee
i love your description of the drive-by buddha. it reminds me of a place in iran where you can stop by a shrine of one of the imams, whose soul is supposed to be down a deep well, and they give you a number that you can text message a prayer to on your cell phone, and they promise it will reach the imam! AHAHAHAHAHAHA. i miss you, i can't wait till you are home.