Singapouring

So, a quick recap of my 5-day Singaporean adventure. Part 1.

Welcome to Singapore. An early morning flight landed us there around noon, with the sun shining happily over the airport as we deplane. We get our baggage, go through customs, exchange some Sing Dollars, and get to the MRT (their mass rail system). The MRT leaves the station and goes up above ground ... and it's literally pouring buckets outside. WTF??

Well, it turns out Singapore has a predictable (albeit strange) weather pattern in the day: it's sunny until about mid-afternoon, then it gets cloudy from 3pm, and around 6pm (while we were there) the lightning and thunder start. But no real rain until maybe 7pm or 8pm. It's like clockwork. Clockwork that hinted that we should skip the Night Safari.

Not like the Ads. If you're like me, you think that Singaporean women are all just like the hot models they use for Singaporean Airlines ads. Kudos for effective marketing, but scorns for programming false expectations into my head! Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of beautiful women in the island city, similar to Taiwan in a per-capita basis. But, again like in Taiwan, mainly because they know how to do themselves up.

Stay. Staaaay. Good boy. We pretty much went hotel-hopping this trip, because of the different places we wanted to see, and where we could exercise some rewards points. The first night, we stayed at the Albert Court Hotel in a part of town called Little India. It's literally India, and carries with it the fantastic curries, spices, and small shops. And one vegetable vendor who yelled at me angrily for smelling his basil.

Second night was at Shangri-La on the island resort of Sentosa, which sounds great (and is), but the beach is pretty much artificial and even then, not that nice. Yeah, the hotel is nice, the rooms are nice, the pool is nice, but the beach it's on is man-made and not that nice. Still, Sentosa has tons to see and do, all of it tourist-oriented. (And we, as it would have appeared, were tourists.)

Withdrawal Symptoms. I had no symptoms of being disconnected from the world. I checked my email only once (at the Sheraton), but just long enough to get a friend's phone number that somehow didn't sync onto my phone. 2 minutes online, and I didn't want to stay on longer because (a) we wanted to go out, and (b) the business center lady was nice enough not to charge for net time if I was quick.

More tomorrow or something.