SINGAPORE AND THE SLING!

Singapore and the Sling!

Singapore was the jump off for the Southeast Asia leg of our journey. A busy, totally modern spotlessly clean city with some of its original architecture left in place – Little India, Bugis Market, Raffles Hotel. By contrast the architecture, like a lot of Southeast Asia has very futuristic looking buildings, or at least buildings very dissimilar to U.S. stuff. Maybe we just don’t have enough imagination.

We decided to explore using a Trishaw! So much fun – riding through the streets, with the driver stopping for photos if we wanted, Bugis Market (where we bought a selfie stick to look totally tourist) and eventually to the InterContinental Hotel (Raffles is closed for remodeling) for a Singapore Sling. Little India was fun, with saris on display, and jewelry. Little Bugis had everything from electronic accessories to clothing to food. It is a big jumble of goods and aisles leading to other goods.

The InterContinental Hotel was located by a huge mall. Now, we don’t really care about that but we had learned there was a grocery market on the lower level of the mall. That we cared about. Cashews, Coke Zero, granola bars, and other goodies were on the list! We got them all then jumped into a cab to head back to the ship.

Our driver talked to us about the cost of buying a government permit to drive a vehicle and how much vehicles cost. $10k to drive! $70k to buy something to drive. In the U.S. we consider driving a right, but not so here. He also talked of how safe the city is as most of the taxi drivers are former military.

We learned from lectures about the strict rules of Singapore about gum chewing, litter, jaywalking. People joked they were afraid to head out on their own for fear of breaking a law they knew nothing of. In the malls, in the food courts and markets all seemed very normal and way too much like any other big city.

Take away from Singapore: modern, clean, regimented and another city.