Just after I made it to my room I decided that I would have to go out to change some money so I could get food. Unfortunately, the rate at the hotel was pretty terrible, so I was walking around for a while to look for somewhere to do that. Unfortunately it was too late, and things had closed already, so I had to do it t the hotel in the end. I ended up not buying anything to eat either, just something to drink (Vitamin water! yay!)
I woke up fairly early the next day, though not really in jetlaggy proportions. I decided to just walk alongside the Singapore river to the Singapore Flyer, the biggest Ferris wheel in the world. It was a pleasant enough morning, although pretty hot, and I thought I would just pick something up for breakfast along the way. Sounds easier than it turned out to be. SIngapore gets going fairly early in the day, So even though it was about 9 by the time I had made it to the Flyer, pretty much nothing was open. At least I could get a Dragon fruit/Lemon juice for next to nothing, which was pretty great but definitely a mouthful so early in the morning.
I wanted to buy the whole Singapore touring 2-day-package, with the buses and the museums and everything. It was relatively cheap, compared to what this sort of thing costs in other cities. I already had a bit of trouble finding the bus I wanted to take, and so I didn't manage to leave the wheel bus/stop before 10, and I was the only person on that bus (plenty of other buses had left and filled up completely until then)
So the bus drives around the city, and occasionally a voice will tell you something point;ess about the cost of owning a car in Singapore (high) or the quality of the state/owned apartment buildings (like, totally awesome) and before I knew it I was in Orchard, the local shopping street. I thought it would be a bit like downtown Bangkok, a few malls and smaller stores, but holy crap - it's like 2 miles of huge, new malls. In a pretty, tree-lined street from which the birds are singing rather forcefully. Quite an interesting general composition.
I ended the tour one stop before the end, at the Tour-bus headquarter, another mall. I walked around a bit looking to spend time until I could reasonably eat lunch, because breakfast still hadnt happened. I discovered that, aside from an interesting penchant for toast, what Singaporeans love most in their food was puns. the Foodstalls are called things like "Yoguru" (for Yoghurt), "What are you doing Prata?" (Roti Prata, Indian Pizza-crepes) "Seoul Kitchen" (Korean) and Octapas (Tapas, with an Octopus as their logo). I ended up with a local specialty, Hainanese chicken, from the Hainan region in China. It was actually really delicious, and not even slightly weird. somehow I had expected it to be exotic, but it turned out rather ordinarily delicious. Well Done, Singapore, or something.
I went and took the "historic" tour after lunch, and then decided I wanted to visit Sentosa, the Beach-Resort Island-Suburb of SIngapore, and a bus-ride there was included in the ticket. Sentosa resembles nothing so much as an enormous Disneyland at the beach, landscaped within an inch of its life, but very pretty, and with rides. A bit pointless alone though. I wandered around and was impressed with the general High Quality at such a big scale (large island! all pretty!", had some disastrous Japanese Hamburger and fries (both inedible, the Burger mainly because it was a gross sweet chinese soft bun on the outside and I had ordered an Unagi Burger because it sounded interesting and had forgotten Unagi means "eel". ew)
I missed the bus back by a few minutes and had to sit around a good hour before I got back. After I made it back to the mall where the buses stopped I decided to go get one of the yellow buses, the last kind i hadn't been on yet, and got myself to Orchard, the mall street, to wander around and maybe look at some stores a little more closely. After I couldn't drag myself through yet another store looking at, among other things, suitable new bags for me to lug things around with, I tried out the subway to get back to my hotel. Using the very nice Copenhagen style double/door subways, it was a reasonably quick if a little packed ride back to my hotel. The next day my company lunch would be waiting for me, I could meet my new colleagues.
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