Singapore

I don't have a whole lot to say about Singapore as we were only there for a couple of days. I was blown away though by the amount of development and building going on in the city. There must have been over 50 new skyscrapers/hotels/condos/casinos/office buildings/you name it under construction, cranes dotted the skyline everywhere you looked. Singapore is a very modern and technologically advanced city, and it had a great (and inexpensive) public transportation system. We actually took the night flight from Bali to Singapore, so we didn't arrive until a little after 1 in the morning, and stayed in the airport yet again. I'm trying to make sure this trip lasts as long as possible, so any shortcuts and freebies we get we'll take advantage of.

We got to our hostel early the next morning so we had almost 3 full days to see the sights of Singapore. The first day was spent mainly walking around the CBD and other parts of the city. It was really cool to see the fish/lion statue that sprays water out of its mouth that I have seen so many pictures of. The next day was halloween, and we spent the day at the Singapore Zoo, and Night Safari. The Night Safari was a separate part of the zoo where you can tour the animals at night when they are under in a different state of awareness. Since it was halloween they tried to make parts of it haunted, which really wasn't a bad idea with the exception of the number of middle school aged girls there that screem at EVERYTHING, even when its not scary. The main zoo where we were at during the day closed at 6 and the Night Safari opened at 7 and during this time there was a huge thunderstorm and downpoor. It actually culminated very well with their attempted theme of a haunted night safari. I say attempted because in a country like the U.S. where halloween is more widely celebrated it wouldn't pass for anything special. We got out and walked some of the paths instead of staying in the trolleys the whole time, and one of the highlights of walking through in the dark and rain was that hardly anyone else was around, and we turned the corner this one time and stumbled into a few giraffs eating. They were within 75 feef of us and it really felt like we were in their natural environment since Jon and I were the only ones around, very cool.

The Singapore Zoo I think was the only one in the world with free ranging Orang utang, and that was pretty incredible. They have a whole ropes course type thing set up above some walkways and there are Orang utans swinging by and jumping from tree to tree. There are only a few places left in the world where they can be found in the wild, and all of them are in SE Asia, mainly the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. One of my favorite parts were seeing the group of giant Asian turtles. This is mainly for Bob, Meredith, Trish, Beth and Brooke if you're reading this...I like Turtles! The following day was spent seeing some additoinal things on the water in Singapore before catching the night train to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where we're at right now before heading to Cambodia to see the temples at Angkor Wat.