Singapore photos, part 1

My trip to Singapore

This week is my week off of school, so I used half of it to travel to Singapore. It's only an hour's flight away, I don't need a visa to go there because I'm an American, and I have some friends there. Plus, I was in dire need of a tan, so I thought for sure I'd get some sun while there.

Enjoy the random photos and commentaries!

I stayed in Singapore with my friend Joy. She and her boyfriend picked me up at the airport on Saturday afternoon, where we ate at a Korean cuisine diner.



The food was served to us raw, and then it cooked itself at our table, and we just ate out of the middle. Yum!



We clicked on the menu items instead of a waiter taking our order. SO COOL!

Sunday

On Sunday, I went to church with Joy in the morning. It was soooo nice to be sitting in a REAL church! In the afternoon, we went to a mall to meet a friend.

This is our college friend named Mike that we met up with, who also lives and works in Singapore. We ate Chinese cuisine at the mall and walked around for hours.


We found a new friend at the mall!



A chocolate store, haha!

Mmm...too bad it was too expensive for me to eat there...

One of the many train stations where I learned how to navigate Singapore via public transit (There were signs all over the station warning against committing suicide there...kinda morbid)

Monday

I went exploring around the Indian section of the island while Joy was at work. In between the bouts of pouring rain, I managed to take a few photos.

Touring Little India, where I bought a CD for a Bollywood movie soundtrack, which my family will appreciate this summer when I come home. :)


Woo, shopping!

Fountain of Wealth = largest fountain in the world

Joy and I visited the Chinese Fountain of Wealth. If you can't read the sign below, it says you're supposed to touch the water with your right hand, walk around the fountain 3 times, and make a wish...

...but I forgot to make a wish...oops...

The pretty stairwell and fountain wall by the Fountain of Wealth

The rainbow-colored buildings of the Singaporean skyline...

...and all lit up at night!

The Fullerton Hotel is a historic hotel...I forget the details...but in the corner is a merlion, which is the symbol for Singapore.

Here's a close-up of it. This is a cool picture because it looks like he's spewing a comet out of his mouth!

I kinda like this photo, even though I didn't mean for it to be blurry at all. :-P

Tuesday

Tuesday was my last full day in Singapore, so I tried to make the most of it. (You can read most of this day's events in the next post because I couldn't post all of the photos in one post.)

Entering Chinatown...

Singapore photos, part 2

Tuesday (cont'd)

When it finally stopped raining, I rode the train to visit a Japanese and a Chinese garden. Admittance was free, and it was probably the most tranquil place in all of Singapore because it was peaceful and beautiful. (Hence, the couple that I encountered who was trying to make out in one of the gardens...yuck....)

Come walk with me through the gardens! :)





A close-up shot







Entering the Japanese garden

Tuesday was a great day, filled with much walking around Chinatown (sometimes in the rain), much randomness, and quite a few well-known people.

If you've seen the documentary "Born Into Brothels", then you'll remember the woman who was teaching photography to the children of the prostitutes. (If you've never seen this movie, I highly recommend watching it. A woman taught photography to children of prostitutes in the Red Light District in New Delhi, India, in hopes of getting them into school instead of being next in line for prostitution.) Anyways, while on the train yesterday, I KNOW I saw this woman on the train! This is exciting only to me, I know, but I just had to share it with people who are familiar with the movie.

I encountered some famous people in the Chinese garden, too, such as...

CONFUCIOUS!

MULAN!

DAVID ARCHULETA!

(Oops, random transition...)

If you don't know who he is, he won 2nd place last year on the show "American Idol". He's currently on tour in Asia and was going to perform at a mall in Singapore, so naturally, I had to go find him.

However, I was like a mile away from him, so my photos aren't that great.

I tried my best to get a decent photo of him, but it was hard because of the sea of cell phones and him jumping up and down and running all over the stage.

After listening to a mall full of screaming people-NOT just screaming teenage girls-Joy and I left and felt very old because we had headaches from the hype.

One thing Joy wanted to do with me before I left Singapore was go to the night safari at the zoo. It was tons of fun, and the zoo offered a lot more than just treks to visit sleeping animals at night.

At the zoo, I was enchanted by the shadow puppet displays. Unfortunately, there wasn't a puppet performance there. My aim is to travel somewhere next year to see one.

However, we DID see the end of some performance that involved men running around in loin cloths and belching out fire. Too bad!

We also did something new and weird: we let doctor fish eat the dead skin off of our feet and legs. It was slightly therapeutic, in a strange way. (For the record, this has GOT to be THE weirdest thing I've ever done in my life!)

See the fish?!?? It was SUCH a weird sensation!

"Yum yum, dead skin!" say the doctor fish. :-P

Then we walked through the zoo at night, which was tons of fun. It felt like walking through a haunted cornfield at Halloween time, minus the cornfield, because it was spooky and had our adrenaline pumping. (No photos b/c it was too dark)

Wednesday

Before Joy took me to the airport in the afternoon, she and Marcus and I had a brunch at a cafe that specializes in a Chinese egg-mixture meal. I don't trust myself to make this myself, though.

Here's our brunch: iced coffee, toast with kaya (coconut-flavored jelly), and soft-boiled eggs. (That means, they're not fully cooked. You stir the eggs with a spoon and then add soy sauce to the mixture. Sounds gross, I know, but it's not!)

Yum!

(I'm wearing a t-shirt that says "Singapore is a FINE City" on the front, and on the back, it lists tons of things you can get fined for doing there, haha!)


Some funny photos at the cafe :)


Sigh. Just a gentle reminder that I'm back in Indonesia. (in the Jakarta airport)

The men in my life...

April Fool's! :) :) :)

Haha, there really aren't any men in my life (at the moment) that you should know about...but yet, there are. Currently, these are the 2 guys I see on a daily/weekly basis, outside of school.

Meet Ferry and Pak Mohammed

Ferry became my ojek driver at the beginning of the school year when he randomly showed up at my house. He's a good driver and a nice guy, and he's volunteered to take me to the mall and the movie theater. Several times. Even though he has a girlfriend. Eventually, after I never replied to these things, he got the hint and hasn't asked me to hang out with him anymore. *Whew* He's a safe driver, which is all that matters.

Pak Mohammed is my gardener. He comes once a week to cut my grass, water and trim my bushes and banana trees, and keep any potential yard rats and snakes away. (He's doing a great job in that area, because I've never seen any in my yard, thank goodness!)

Behind Ferry is an ojek. I zip around Sentul on ojeks, which was a terrifying ordeal at first, but now I'm totally used to it. They're a way of life here. For that reason, they're also very cheap and totally safe, so don't worry! :)