Back in the US, or state-side as the Singaporeans call it. Home sweet home.
Jetlagged? Maybe just a bit... I shouldn't have stayed up until 5am last night and I should have remembered to open our blinds before I went to sleep. We both woke up 4pm-ish today... 8am in Singapore. Oops!
K immediately missed the Southeast Asian weather (especially since our house takes a while to heat up). I miss the heat and warmth, but not the humidity that accompanied that heat.
We won't miss the pollution or doing laundry by hand and waiting 24+ hours for it to dry. (I love my washer and dryer!)
We will miss the yummy cheap foods and drinks. Travellers' diarrhea hits something like 30-40% of travellers to the region. We were fully prepared with Immodium and pills prescribed by our doctor. But we were lucky... none of us had any stomach problems, not even just regular diarrhea. So no days without good food ^o^
We'll also miss the days of just running around and experiencing other cultures and living environments. 20+ consecutive days of newness everyday... ah, life will seem boring for a little while.
Day 25: Singapore => USA
8:30am. Wake.
Pack up everything and leave it with the front desk. Head out to city hall area, where we have kaya toast for breakfast... toast with a coconutty jam. I got a buttered one and K got a cheesy one. The toast also came with soft-boiled eggs, my first time having soft-boiled (or poached?... I can't tell) eggs.
Oh, before I continue with the day, I should talk about durians. Lonely Planet states - Malays believe durian is a powerful aphrodisiac; there's an old adage "When the durians go down, the sarongs go up"! I don't remember if we saw durians in KL; maybe we did but I was so overwhelmed with all the new surroundings that I missed them. Anyways, Singapore has durians. Durian popsicle (as well as other non-traditional-to-US-tastebuds flavors)...
Theater buildings on the Esplanade known as the 'big durians'...
But no durian in the subway (not sure what the penalty is though)...
Fort Canning Park, which used to be a fort with an underground headquarters during WWII. It's a pretty nice park. After walking around a bit, we go on a guided tour of the Battle Box, from where the British staged some of their WWII Singapore operations, also where General Percival made his decision to unconditionally surrender Singapore to the Japanese. Rooms were reconstructed to look like they did back then (complete with people statues)...
Pretty cool to stand in *the* location from which all those WWII decisions were made. And a quick specific history lesson.
We then grabbed lunch to go and went back to the hostel to get our things, 30 minutes late.
But, we made our flight in time and got to eat part of lunch at the airport.
The flight back went really quickly. K and I had to sit apart because apparently the travel agent booked our flights individually. Grrr. I slept for a portion and watched a few movies - Barnyard, Open Season, and Red Flowers (thought I should watch the first half since I only watched the end on the flight over... of course, I end up watching the whole movie).
Plane food is yummier than usual.
~ Trip End ~
Pack up everything and leave it with the front desk. Head out to city hall area, where we have kaya toast for breakfast... toast with a coconutty jam. I got a buttered one and K got a cheesy one. The toast also came with soft-boiled eggs, my first time having soft-boiled (or poached?... I can't tell) eggs.
Oh, before I continue with the day, I should talk about durians. Lonely Planet states - Malays believe durian is a powerful aphrodisiac; there's an old adage "When the durians go down, the sarongs go up"! I don't remember if we saw durians in KL; maybe we did but I was so overwhelmed with all the new surroundings that I missed them. Anyways, Singapore has durians. Durian popsicle (as well as other non-traditional-to-US-tastebuds flavors)...
Theater buildings on the Esplanade known as the 'big durians'...
But no durian in the subway (not sure what the penalty is though)...
Fort Canning Park, which used to be a fort with an underground headquarters during WWII. It's a pretty nice park. After walking around a bit, we go on a guided tour of the Battle Box, from where the British staged some of their WWII Singapore operations, also where General Percival made his decision to unconditionally surrender Singapore to the Japanese. Rooms were reconstructed to look like they did back then (complete with people statues)...
Pretty cool to stand in *the* location from which all those WWII decisions were made. And a quick specific history lesson.
We then grabbed lunch to go and went back to the hostel to get our things, 30 minutes late.
But, we made our flight in time and got to eat part of lunch at the airport.
The flight back went really quickly. K and I had to sit apart because apparently the travel agent booked our flights individually. Grrr. I slept for a portion and watched a few movies - Barnyard, Open Season, and Red Flowers (thought I should watch the first half since I only watched the end on the flight over... of course, I end up watching the whole movie).
Plane food is yummier than usual.
~ Trip End ~
Day 24: Singapore (Happy New Year!)
9am. Wake.
Today is Sentosa Island day... Singapore's "resort island".
We take the subway out to the harbor and then a cable car (skyride) out to the island. (We could have picked the cheaper bus option, but hey, it's vacation.)
Butterfly & Insect Museum... another example of Singapore having more money than Malaysia. Interesting insect exhibits and a really nice butterfly section (remember how I raved about KL's butterfly park?)! Something you don't see every day...
Manhead bettle...
Everything on Sentosa takes forever to get to. It's a big island where the island park map seems to show it being walkable, but things are in fact far apart and you have to ride one of the free long-wait buses. There's four bus lines - blue, yellow, red, green. Maybe the lines were crazy because it *is* New Year's after all. So, to get to each attraction takes at least 30+ minutes plus the waiting time in line to get into the attraction itself.
Lunch ended up being grab-n-go bread thing, a chicken burger, and a hot dog on our way over to the dolphin show.
The dolphin show was pretty fun... a couple of tricks we hadn't seen before... and if we had been prepared, we could have gone into the water and touched the dolphin (required getting wet up to your chest/shoulders).
I also bought a cup of corn to eat... steamed corn with salt & butter in a cup. Sounds kind of funny, but yummy... corn.
After the show, we got a little lost, well, went the wrong way, but managed to make it in time for the Animal Encounters show. K gets picked for the hawk landing on someone. The trainer asks for a woman, my hand shoots up, and I got picked, too! (K and I were sitting apart, he having moved due to a large ant convention on the seat area next to me.)
We then head to Underwater World, which is basically an aquarium, but they have this really cool tunnel thing with fishes swimming around and above you.
The best part was the sharks section of the tunnel - up close and personal with sharks [without fear of them bumping you] ^o^
Grab some sandwiches from Subway (!) and then head to the long line for the magical fountain show. The show ends up being something like Fantasmic at Disneyland... with the water movement + using water streams as a projection screen + some fire. I still like Fantasmic better though. Sentosa even has it's own monkey...
We make nearly the last cable car back, just a bit before 11. The cable cars at night...
Sleep. 1am.
Today is Sentosa Island day... Singapore's "resort island".
We take the subway out to the harbor and then a cable car (skyride) out to the island. (We could have picked the cheaper bus option, but hey, it's vacation.)
Butterfly & Insect Museum... another example of Singapore having more money than Malaysia. Interesting insect exhibits and a really nice butterfly section (remember how I raved about KL's butterfly park?)! Something you don't see every day...
Manhead bettle...
Everything on Sentosa takes forever to get to. It's a big island where the island park map seems to show it being walkable, but things are in fact far apart and you have to ride one of the free long-wait buses. There's four bus lines - blue, yellow, red, green. Maybe the lines were crazy because it *is* New Year's after all. So, to get to each attraction takes at least 30+ minutes plus the waiting time in line to get into the attraction itself.
Lunch ended up being grab-n-go bread thing, a chicken burger, and a hot dog on our way over to the dolphin show.
The dolphin show was pretty fun... a couple of tricks we hadn't seen before... and if we had been prepared, we could have gone into the water and touched the dolphin (required getting wet up to your chest/shoulders).
I also bought a cup of corn to eat... steamed corn with salt & butter in a cup. Sounds kind of funny, but yummy... corn.
After the show, we got a little lost, well, went the wrong way, but managed to make it in time for the Animal Encounters show. K gets picked for the hawk landing on someone. The trainer asks for a woman, my hand shoots up, and I got picked, too! (K and I were sitting apart, he having moved due to a large ant convention on the seat area next to me.)
We then head to Underwater World, which is basically an aquarium, but they have this really cool tunnel thing with fishes swimming around and above you.
The best part was the sharks section of the tunnel - up close and personal with sharks [without fear of them bumping you] ^o^
Grab some sandwiches from Subway (!) and then head to the long line for the magical fountain show. The show ends up being something like Fantasmic at Disneyland... with the water movement + using water streams as a projection screen + some fire. I still like Fantasmic better though. Sentosa even has it's own monkey...
We make nearly the last cable car back, just a bit before 11. The cable cars at night...
Sleep. 1am.