Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Singapore Tourist for a Day

Don’t feel sorry for me today… Here’s a rundown of my not-so-tough day.

1. Woke up at 9AM feeling great after 4 hours of sleep – really!
2. Went on a walk with Allen, proceeded to sweat through shirt almost instantly as it was about 85 with 95% humidity. Learned that a bike purchased on the main strip here runs you about 4000 singapore dollars (1.36 singapore dollars per US dollar, so that’s pretty insane!)
3. Took a swim back at the hotel and sat by the pool for a while… not hard labor.
4. Tour of Eastern Singapore (Allen was the second youngest person on the tour). Learned all kinds of interesting things about Singapore’s history pre and post WWII. Turns out the Japanese weren’t too kind to the POWs here. Also, red-bean paste waffles are pretty delicious.
5. Night time harbor tour/dinner cruise.

Two related take-home facts about Singapore, other than that it seems to be the hub of commerce between Asia and the western world:

1. It’s very clean and orderly, with no beggars or street people litter or graffiti.
2. There is a gigantic jail here, much larger than you would expect in a city this size.

We finally settled down to do some work this evening prepping for our meeting tomorrow. Not expecting tomorrow to be as pleasant as today was, but then again, I’m not technically on vacation either! I’ll try and post some pictures in this blog when I get a little more time. I also realized that I didn’t post the before and after travel pictures in the previous entry. Whoops.

Pete

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