Singapore
After a very extensive tour of the planet, we are both back safe and sound in Victoria once more. Arriving back on the 17th of October, we are currently residing in the exotic locale of Shepparton. It feels a mixture of good and bad to be back on local soil once more.
Of course, it is good to be back and catch up with family and friends, but on the other hand, there is the small matter of reality that wants to attack us once more. Returning to a land where we have no home nor employment is a little daunting, to say the least. We are hoping to at least get some work in the near future and are already energetically searching the employment information.
Since the last update, we swung through Singapore and checked out what is known to be the most expensive city in south-east Asia. Not only is it reasonably expensive, it is terminally dull. An extremely efficient city, to be sure, with everything very well regulated to make certain that citizens and visitors are whisked around with great speed and accuracy, but it is rather dull.
We did, however, manage to check out the Night Safari there, which is the only one in the world. In essence, it is a zoo that is open at night, with lighting provided that allows visitors to see the animals and the animals to be active, since the lighting simulates moonlight. It was really quite interesting to see some animals moving about that usually, when seen in a regular daytime zoo, are pretending to be dead inside a log at the back of a cage. Very expensive at $SGD18.45 each, but a must-do if you’re ever in Singapore.
We also went through Battle Box in the heart of the city, where the decision was made to surrender Singapore to Japan in WWII. It cost $SGD8.00 each but was really quite interesting to go through if you have an interest in that sort of thing. Neither of us profess to be knowledgeable at all about that part of the world at that time of the century, but it was very informative and worth visiting.
If you are also interested in efficient use of space, be sure to stay at the Boon-Wah Hotel while you’re there. In order to save space, the room curved around a corridor, meaning there were several non-right angles in the room. Also, to fit everything in, the shower nozzle was located right above the toilet, since the toilet was installed INSIDE the shower cubicle. Suffice to say, we had to time the shower and toilet visits right if we did not want to sit on a toilet which had just been drowned by the shower…
Food was a bit of a concern, with nothing really outstanding on offer. We went to a bakery and found several nice cakes (avoid durian cake though - very unpleasant). We both decided to avoid the pie filled with “chicken and dog” though…
Singapore, we decided, was a large US-based shopping mall. Wherever you go, there is a department store from the USA. You can easily walk past a McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse and Taco Bell in the same block when searching for food. Shopping includes JC Penney, Gap and other large department stores which are found in large shopping malls all over the USA. Walmart seemed to be missing though, which seemed a little odd. In any event, for a country dominated by the British for a long time, the capitalist icons of the USA have now well and truly taken over.