Sleep like Angels

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Fred and my hostel roomies must be from somewhere here in southern Asia, because they didn't want the air conditioning on last night. I woke up hot, sweaty and ready to get out of the hostel moving. A fantastic shower later to cool me off and wash away the grime of the past day did a lot to make me feel human again. To start our morning right, Fred and I headed across the street to the mall to try out one of the Kopitiams (local Singaporean coffee shops) called Toast Box. The shop had a number of different type of toast with spread options or you could get a traditional Asia dish with noodles and meat. I grabbed some toast with a spread name I didn't recognize. The spread was super salty and was some type of protein. Fred thought it might be fish - either way it was fantastic! Fred ordered a kopi (coffee) and it turned out to be black coffee with sugar and he said was one of the best he ever tasted. He claimed it missed the normal bitterness that he usually associates with black coffee. As a non-coffee drinker, I ordered Teh-O (tea) that turned out to include sugar and an evaporated milk that made it AMAZING!
From the mall we took a taxi to the industrial part of Singapore to visit the Tiger Brewery. On the way, we passed numerous big company locations - everything from Caterpillar to Coca-Cola. Singapore really managed to pull in so many industries to be their key hub into the Asian markets. The Tiger Brewery took us on a tour giving us the history of the company and walked us through the brewing process. It was a combined effort of Singaporean government officials and the Heineken brewmaster that the Tiger Brewery began. That means this brewery is also brewing and bottling Heineken and Guinness for this part of the world. The tour guide took us into the area that has the tanks for brewing and walked us through the process. I did not realize there were two different types of yeast depending on the type of beer - one that settles on the bottom of the tank to create Lagers and one that sits on the top to create Ales and other types of beer. There were practically no people at the plant because the entire process is automated and the people are only involved with quality checks and support roles. So not only was it the first brewery in Asia, it was the first one (in 1990) to become fully automated! That means instead of the 4,000 people it used to need to run now its down to a little over 400. The tour had a point where we could pour our own beer to try and do the "perfect pour". Fred did such a great job that he baffled the tour guide! Then they left us with unlimited Tiger beer in their cute, very English feeling pub for the next 45 minutes. That, of course, meant Fred and I enjoyed ourselves for that entire timeframe spending it wandering from philosophical topic to topic like we usually do! It also gave us a some time to talk about what we each wanted to get out of this trip.
A couple 1/2 pints later, the bartender called us a cab to take us to our next destination. We ended up in the more ritzy part of town at a park called Haw Paw Villa. This was an area where a local Singaporean gave up his land to create a park that described the Chinese heritage and walks the visitor through many of the Chinese legends with these large statue visuals depicting the story. The colors and characters were fascinating to walk around and see. However, it was 1pm and the sun was out and shining - we were melting so didn't stay too long. Instead we took a lot of pictures to review later and made our way to the metro to head to the Harborfront. It dropped us off in the bottom of a shopping mall that we meandered our way out of to head to Mt. Faber.
Mt. Faber is a meager mountain (even smaller than some of the high rises in the Singaporean city) that we climbed up a number of stairs to reach the top. A short 15 minutes later we were up where the mountain had a cable car stop to bring us down to Sentosa Island. Lucky for us, there was a restaurant there where we could grab a bite to eat and cool off before being shoved in a cable car smelling like sweat. Our poor waitress did not speak English very well and appeared to be pretty new to her job because a few miscommunications later we eventually got our food and some refreshing glasses of water. After lunch, we hopped in the cable cars for a pleasant ride down to Sentosa Island.
I would compare Sentosa Island to a mini version of Orlando, FL. It had a number of different entertainment activities like Universal Studios, a casino, the beach, an aquarium, and tons of food and shops. To keep people on the island spending money there were free tram and buses to take you anywhere you desired (despite how small and close everything was). In this heat, of course we had to stop and get ice cream. Then Fred and I headed to the Southern East Asia (S.E.A) aquarium. The aquarium started with a cultural look at the different areas the fish came from. Then it lead into the normal aquarium part with tanks full of colorful fish. There was one room with a huge tank and viewing wall that had the most relaxing music (reminded me of the Harry Potter soundtrack) so we took a break and relaxed while watching the fish. Fred, and his artistic eye, had the best time getting some amazing shots of the fish and other sea creatures. I, on the other hand, looked for colorful fish!
Leaving the aquarium, we meant to take the train to the other end of the Island, but the line was too long for an impatient Bobbi. So we walked to the other side instead, which turned out to be great because we stumbled upon an intricate water fountain compiled with bright colored mosaic tiles that stretched for a quarter mile. It had fountains and characters that made me wish Laura was along to capture in photographs. Instead I'll have to live with my attempts at being arty to capture the eye popping colors and textures. (This might be another location I have to high-jack Fred's pictures later). This lead us down to the beach where we walked along the water until we made it to a rope bridge. This bridge lead to a small outlet that was considered the southern most point of continental Asia. As luck may have it, my camera died on the bridge so I will also be making due with poor quality phone pictures of the clear blue water covered in cargo ships as the sun is setting behind clouds casting light blue and pink colors across the sky. It was a great place to relax and rest our sore feet who were still yelling at us from the day before.
A bus, tram,and metro ride later, Fred and I returned to our hostel to freshen up and wash off the sweat from a hot day before heading for dinner. We wandered over to the other side of Chinatown to an area with bar to grab some food and a beer. We realized how great of a deal our Tiger brewery experience was when we saw on the menu that a beer went for minimum $15 each here. So after a quick meal and single drink, we decided that going out was not the most economical use of our time (especially since we were falling asleep in our chairs). Instead we headed back to catch a nice nights sleep. Luck was on our side and we had no roommates this evening so could turn the air conditioning down to 'sleep like angels' (per Fred, I'm not sure how or if angels sleep).
The sleeping like angels must not be a good thing, because at 2am the fire alarm went off in the hostel. Being the bottom bunk, I went rushing out to see if there was a problem. The few ladies hovering in the hall claimed it was a situation with the shower that set off the alarm and that management was coming to investigate and fix it. Though I was a bit hesitant, I was too tired to really counter the situation, so headed back to bed and was out before my head hit the pillow. Since I am here typing this morning, I guess it really was a false alarm.

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