Little India, Sentosa, and Botanic Gardens

October 24th-28th

I finally made it down to Singapore. I stopped by here last year on the way to New Zealand, but only saw the airport. Of course, the only reason I decided to come down here this time was to see Uyen and Sean and Liem.



Singapore itself doesn't have anything spectacular or jaw-dropping, other than food and shopping. As a place to live it's quite pleasant, but as a place to visit, I'm not too sure.

Anyhoo, the first day we head down to Little India. It is right before Deepavali, so there's a lot of color and excitement down there. It's strange that only here does another community actually out-noise the Chinese. Excellent dosais and samosas; Indian food is always so delicious.



On the 26th, we make it out to Sentosa, a resort island off the tip of Singapore. Quite a lot of money went into this place, including importing tons of sand for the beaches. Like I said before, for someone who lives here, it's kind of nice to have it as a quick getaway from the city; but for someone coming from half-way around the world, it smacks of cheesiness. Of course, it's all in good fun!

Though we missed out on the aquarium, we did enjoy a nice stroll on the beach, watching the tourists try the trapeze, ate a Trapizza and walked through the skulls and dragon bones.



The day ended with the light and water show at the musical fountain. It's amazing how good the resolution actually is by projecting on streams of water. The show was really corny, but amusing nonetheless. The songs were nowhere as good as the Disneyland version, but what can you expect.



The 27th started out with a morning walk to the botanical gardens. Quite an amazing park, which reminded me of the one in Seattle but on a totally different scale. I went to try and catch some people doing tai-chi (there were a few scattered groups), but I was awarded with an even better sight. About 80 or so people stretching together with this Cantonese dude. How bizarre, almost cultish.



The evolution walk traced the progress of plant life through the ages; the information presented was fascinating but the visuals and atmosphere were lacking. The rain forest walk was quite nice. I especially liked the strangling figs that seem to float off from the ground.



Last we visited the orchid gardens which was quite pretty, especially when they designed it where one sees the orchids flowering in their natural conditions. I particularly liked the carnivorous plants though!



It was definitely a pleasant way to spend my birthday. Uyen says I act like a monkey too.

Well, tomorrow I'm off to Malaysia to catch my flight over to Sarawak. It's going to be a tough three weeks on Borneo, but it'll definitely be an amazing experience. It's strange to think that the next time I see Liem, he'll probably be running around the house causing chaos and probably saying bad words and being a little devil. Bwahaha, that'll be fun.