Singapore

The next few posts will be about my end-of-research vacation. Forgive any grammatical errors. I am just trying to churn them out quick.

Basically my visa was expiring, so I had to leave Indonesia, but I didn't have a plane ticket home until December. I took the opportunity to visit Singapore and Malaysia. I then re-entered Indonesia on a 30-day tourist visa.

Anyways, I did my best to enjoy myself. The first stop for 2 days and one night was Singapore, a tiny country of about 3 million people. It is confined to a small island on the southern tip of Malaysia.

Despite its size (perhaps because of it), Singapore is one of the most-developed countries in Asia and the world.

You can see here one of the premier resorts/malls/science centers.

Anyways, since I don't have the cash to stay in such a place (or even shop there), I stayed in Little India at a backpacker's hostel. The area is predominantly Indian with some great biryani and colorful decorations.

The hostel was not super; I am just not cut out for backpacker life, I think.

I wandered the city for 2 days, enjoying the amazing public transit system.

Besides Little India, I went through China Town.

I was also reminded that it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas in many parts of the world.

Yes, those are giant silver sparkly reindeer.

Singapore had a sizeable Christian population, evidenced by these signs:

They made me smile.

I also visited Singapore's symbol, the MERLION! I walked a long way to get there, spraining my ankle somewhere along the way. When I finally walked up to the spot, this was what I saw:

I was really disappointed until I realized that this was just a small replica of the actual Merlion, which sat directly behind it:

I have no idea why they had a little Merlion replica directly behind the actual Merlion. Seems a little like merlion-overkill to me.

I really enjoyed Singapore. I think I could live there someday. It was neat, orderly, and much nicer than most American cities. My only complaint was that there weren't enough 7-11.