Singapore Day 1

I have not caught up on the rest of my blog (most is written but not posted) but here is what I did today.

The trip started by catching a taxi from HKUST. There is a special service put on by a guy named Dennis for flat rate taxis around Hong Kong for students, and we had called him for a pickup. Usually when you do this you get one of Dennis’s friends, but we got the actual Dennis, which was very cool. The best part is he is probably one of the only taxi drivers in Hong Kong that is fluent in English so we had an interesting talk on the way to the Airport.

The airport the flight was nothing exciting. I managed to catch up on some schoolwork and most of my blogging on the 4 hour flight. When we landed in Singapore and got through customs, I felt the first wave of heat. The heat index was in the mid 90’s and it was very humid. Something that is cool about Singapore is that almost everyone speaks English. They speak other languages (Chinese, malay, etc) but I haven’t found someone yet that does not speak any English at all, so telling the taxi driver where to go was easy.

Singapore was a British Colony until shortly after WWII and then became apart of Malaysia. The Malay people didn’t like the number of Chinese people in Singapore, so they rejected Singapore from the country making Singapore the only country to gain their independence involuntarily.  Now Singapore is probably the most diverse place I have ever been to. There is an almost even mix of South East Asians, Indians, Chinese, and Caucasians. It is odd when in public, all of the signs and menus are in English, but almost no one speaks English in their conversations.

The taxi driver took us to the hostel, and after checking in. David and I set out walking around the area. What we noticed then and for all of today is that the streets are very oddly clean and not noisy at all. The location our hostel is in is awesome as well. It is in the Arab district of Singapore, and right down the street from us is a large mosque. After a bit of exploring we headed back to the hostel and went to bed. The hostel accommodations were perfect except for our roommates. For some reason they found it necessary to turn the lights on at all hours of the night, and then wake up at 7 am, turn the lights on then (even though the room had plenty of sunlight). They also thought it was a good idea to let their alarm go off for 30 minutes straight. Oh well though, hopefully they are gone tonight.

Mosque down the street

After waking up to the annoying people, David and I set out for the Marina Bay Sands. We had heard that it was possible to get to the roof, but we were not sure how. This hotel opened last June, and is very nice. It has a casino, multiple shops, high class restaurants. And most importantly a sky park that connects the 3 buildings, and has a 150 meter long infinity pool. We took the elevator to the top floor but they wouldn’t let us on without a key and told us we could purchase a viewing pass instead down below. We went and purchased that pass and went back up to the top. At the top there were certain things that tourists can do and certain things guests can do, like swim in the pool. They don’t monitor this boundary very well though, so we went to the pool.  The views from the upper deck, especially the pool, were awesome. It was very cool to go swimming and when turning my head to breathe looking out over the city from above. I was worried we would get caught, but we didn’t for the hour we spent there, and even got free samples and fruit water.  Overall this lounging by the pool and swimming made the entire trip to Singapore worth it.

Infinity pool

Marina Bay Sands

After the skypark we explored the surrounding area. Then I realized that I had lost my passport. Thankfully I remembered I had left it at the Skypark but was worried they would catch us when I went to retrieve it. Thankfully though someone had found it and turned it in to lost and found and it was recovered without hassle. I think of all the places to lose a passport the poolside of a 5 star hotel is probably near the top of the list for not really having to worry.

After the passport issue was all sorted out, we continued exploring, including going across a very cool helical bridge.

Marina Bay Sands and Helix bridge

We walked all the way around the Marina and looked at all of the modern buildings of Singapore, and then took the MRT to the district of Little India for lunch.

The restaurant we ate lunch at was very interesting. Although the menu was in English, I didn’t know what any of the actual dishes were. Also interesting was that it was all finger food. There were no utensils in the entire restaurant it seemed. The food was very good though. I ordered a tortilla like thing that was dipped in different sauces. It was also very cheap.

After lunch we took the MRT around Singapore exploring many of the shopping malls that the country has. I swear there is a shopping mall almost everywhere in the country, it is ridiculous. Singapore does not have a lot for big tourist attractions so we spent our time just exploring the culture, which seems to be a lot of high end shopping.

We then headed to the home of the original Singapore Sling, the Raffles Hotel Bar. Raffles was the “finder” of Singapore for the British, and there is a very nice hotel named after him. The hotel is in colonial style, and very cool looking.

Singapore Sling

We went to the bar and ordered Singapore Slings and only afterward found out that the total bill was over 20 USD a drink! But oh well it was worth the experience to try the original.

We ended our night by taking the MRT to the world’s only nighttime zoo. At this zoo, you get to go on a safari through the jungle and see many animals very close up. The non violent ones would be able to be touched if you got off of the tram. It was a very cool experience. There were also trails to go see other animals, such as a giant flying squirrel which was bigger than a house cat, and fruit bats which were very cool and you could get very close to. Sadly my camera isn’t suited for nighttime photos in dimly lit conditions of moving animals, so none of my pictures really turned out but the experience was very cool.

Fireshow at Night Safari

After the zoo we took the MRT back to our hostel and I am now going to bed.