Singapore, Singapore

The morning of May 22nd , Erik, a couple of his friends and I took a short flight to Singapore from Bangkok. I was pretty excited to go to Singapore because my co-worker and friend Vyoma is from there. She gave me tips and a list of things to do while I was in her home country. We first checked into Sleepy Sam’s hostel where we slept in a huge dorm. We then ventured out in the city where we went to Clarke Quay, a very beautiful place in the city full of bars and restaurants. After that we went up to the 72nd floor of the Swiss Hotel to get a beautiful view of the city. Singapore’s city skyline is full of massive skyscrapers. Later that night we went to celebrate my 25th birthday (holy crap I’m already a quarter century... eesh) along Boat Quay where we had dinner along the river. Since Boat Quay is a strip of restaurants, each one tries to persuade you to come eat at their establishment. We finally chose the restaurant that gave us 2 free beers and a 10% discount. Not bad right? Well the prices of the meals were quite high, so we basically got screwed. To end the night we headed back to Clarke Quay for more beers.

The next day we visited the rest of the sights that were on Vyoma’s must see list. We first went to see the Merlion, which is a huge half lion half fish statue and is also a fountain. The Merlion is a very popular symbol for the city. We then walked down Orchard road, which is full of shopping malls. That evening we went back to Clarke Quay for some drinks where Erik and I were hit on by a whacked out cougar! She was pretty drunk and bought us a few shots. Good times.
I really enjoyed Singapore. It was a very clean multicultural city, with an amazing metro system but it was a little too humid though haha. Perhaps the reason Singapore is so clean is that there is a fine for everything from littering to eating on the metro. I asked Vyoma about this and she said there are fines for such infractions but they are not enforced that badly. It is mostly a joke for tourists that you can get fined for EVRYTHING in Singapore.

This is just a quick warning to those planning on bringing drugs into Singapore. The immigration card that we had to fill in before landing had this written on it in big bold red letters:

“ DRUG TRAFFICKING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH”

LOL! Good thing I left my pound of cocaine in Bangkok… haha.

Take care,

Jason