Well, after many, many hours of flying we finally arrived in Singapore. After extensive stays in many airports we have decided that Taipei is our favorite airport, namely because they have authentic Chinese food (imagine that!), free computers with internet, comfortable couches to watch Discovery Chanel on, and free tokens for massage chairs that feel really nice after hours in a slightly uncomfortable plane chair.
We have to say though that we were rather impressed with China Airlines. On our two flights with them they served us a total of three meals–dinner, breakfast, and lunch. All of which were surprisingly good and (for some strange reason) included a tomato. They also had really cool little touch screens on the back of each chair where you could select which movie you wanted to watch, or which song you wanted to listen to, or which game you wanted to play from a rather long list of movies, songs, and games. Once we reached Singapore we splurged a bit and took a taxi to our hotel.
Once we got to the hotel we took a shower before heading out to explore the Colonial Part of “old” Singapore. We never really made it to the Colonial part–we got sidetracked by other sites–but we got a feel for Singapore. It is a cool city. Everything is amazingly clean. I remember when we went to New York I walked out of the hotel and just felt dirty. There was no other way to describe it when you have sewer juice dripping on your head as you enter the subway. Singapore is quite the opposite; all their subway entrances are sparkling clean (and I really do mean sparkling). The light just glares off of the tile and chrome. Not to mention that every subway stop is really just an excuse for an underground mall. Singapore is obsessed with shopping, and I really do mean that! They take the motto “shop until you drop” quite seriously. We already had a number of people tell us that if we want to buy any electronics we should do it before Sunday. Apparently, June is some sort of huge shopping sale and everything goes up in price by Sunday. So, maybe we’ll have to hit the stores today. Anyway…yesterday we got a bit lost in this underground subway/mall and wandered for about a mile, never leaving retail haven, except for a stop at The Esplande (it is Singpore’s big theater). It was really quite educational–if you’re looking for a “modernism is all about commercialism” sort of education.
Finally, we left the contiguous malls of downtown Singapore and headed out to the Singapore Night Safari, a must see according to all my travel guides. This is a part of the Singapore Zoo that is open each night, where you get to view the animals awake during the night time hours. After a long subway ride, in which we met a very friendly Singaporian who was willing to tell us all about the town (and the need to buy electronics before Sunday), and point us to a place to buy an umbrella (it was raining outside) and catch the bus to the zoo. A long bus trip later, we arrived at the zoo. We were impressed with the zoo the moment we arrived. The place was really cool. Everything was tropical and safari-ish. The rain falling added to the whole experience. First we rode the tram around the park. The tram drives slowly past the animals and stops whenever there is anything really good to see. Our original plan was to leave after the tram ride, because we were completely wasted after about forty-eight hours without any real sleep, but we decided that the zoo was just too cool to leave, and we wouldn’t get our money out of the journey if we didn’t stay a bit longer. Boy was it worth it! We spent the next hour wandering around the zoo trails, feeling very much like a character from Jurassic Park. The atmosphere was a little on the creepy side and walking through fruit bat cages, where the huge bats are just hanging from branches a foot away from your face before they decide to just alight and fly across your path, was a bit on the scary side. We also saw hippos, elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, and bears (just kidding about the bears). We also say the biggest flying squirel. We waited awhile for it to “fly” away but didn’t have much luck. As Scott mentioned, the zoo was really cool because every zoo you’ve ever been too you push your way through the hot and sweaty crowd to stare at the lion through the glass cage and silently will the lion to do something besides just sit there and sleep. In the case of the night safari, we were practically the only people there and all the animals were actually doing something exciting! It was a cool experience and we decided it was definitely worth staying up an extra hour. We were out about five seconds after we hit our bed through, but it was worth it.
Singapore/Thailand | 3 Comments »
