A Couple’s Journey

Yes you heard right, my prayers have been answered, I love this asian country!!!!  Before I get into how great Singapore is let me go back to our last few days in Bali.  Yes we did the monkey park, laid on the beach, had pizza hut, watched movies and surfed online, however we were ready to leave for sure.  Mostly I think due to the male shopkeepers (the ladies were nice), they went a little overboard trying to get you into their shop.  Luckily we didn’t think it was too bad after seeing them at work in Cairo, so far they are the pushest (is that even a word?!?)  Since we had to walk by them everyday to get to anything outside our hotel it did get a little annoying to say the least after awhile.  Plus since we weren’t there to shop it just wasn’t for us.  Now I would have been okay laying out on the beach all day, but since Maryanne is not the sun worshiper like I am…. well we just had to go.  Our last day we had to go to the beach because we forgot to take a picture of it.  Yes Lamar the picture includes topless women, I send you the photo soon!  We get to the airport early enough however we didn’t bring enough money for the departure tax.  We were short by $1 dollar and as we were getting ready to go to the ATM a nice American couple behind let us 10,000 Rupees (who says all Americans are not nice?!)  We board the plane, which luckily I was able to switch our seats from the back of the plane to the front.  Since you all know I hate flying is a better place to be.  It was Singapore Airlines which was fantastic as they had games, movies and TV on your own personal screen which helped during the flight.  What gets me though as someone who hates flying it is the take offs and landings that are the worst, but wouldn’t you know it you can’t use headsets during that time.  This is exactly the time I need the distraction the most!!  Incidently their music is still playing ( I checked right after the wheels left the tarmac).  The flight isn’t too bad, I think, although Maryanne didn’t think I handled it too well.  I say that because as soon as we landed I turned to her and said straight face “that was a good landing”.  She started busted up laughing and did an impersonation of me during said landing.  (Maryanne here..  What Jared did not tell you is what he was doing during the landing. So let me draw you the picture. His left hand is gripping the seat in front of him.  He right hand is in mine hand.  His feet are pushing hard against the metal box that is on the floor in front of him. So now that you have the full picture you can go back to Jared) Okay true I didn’t like the landing but it was better then some of the others.  Hello!!!  I hate flying so any landing will be tough, it is all about the degree to which the landing sucks!  Anyway we get off the plane and Maryanne has forgotten the sudoku book on the plane and thinks she left something else.  Oh well!  We get to the hotel, which is a whole lot better than we thought.  Considering it was one of the cheaper ones in Singapore.  It is tiny for sure, ie you can shower, use the bathroom and brush your teeth all at the same time from the comfort of the toilet!  So when taking a shower you pretty much get the whole bathroom wet!  Oh well at least we have hot water (with a nice shower head, which I think is the best shower so far .. MA)and not using a bucket to pour water over our head.  We venture out shortly after arriving, cause what the hell there isn’t much to do in the room.  It is raining a little bit, we have no real idea of where we are going.  I have an idea of the direction, but since we are in a cheap hotel that means we aren’t really close to town.  Okay we aren’t too far, but far enough that the streets near our hotel are on absolutely none of the tourist maps, guides that we picked up.  And we picked up about 20 of them, only 16 where in English mind you (opps probably should have looked closer when selecting them!)  However with my inate sense of direction and the ability to tune out Maryanne’s plea to ask for directions, I lead us to a street that is actually on a map we have!!  Yippee! So after the I told yous, we headed to Little India, mostly because it was relatively close, by close I mean an hour walk.  Now is the big Hindu festival (Festival of Lights), so we walk around taking it all in (really we were just looking for a restaurant that served Garlic Naan, rice, Butter Chicken or Tikka Masala).  Bingo we found one of course all the way at the other end of Little India.  And the place is even in the guide book as a must eat at place.  It is quite good, however not as good or as cheap as our favorite Indian restaurant in Qatar at the Hyatt Plaza mall.  Although we did get to eat with our hands, we had no utensils or plates.  You pretty much just scooped out what you wanted from the serving dishes and put it onto a big banana leaf.  We had to take a photo, it was kinda cool.  We walked for another few hours, oh yeah, half way through the trip we did stop and get an umbrella, which was very hard to do.  We had to ask three people in one department store, where the umbrellas were.  Really wish just one of them would have just walked us over to them! 

Today we decided to go to the zoo, I thought we were going early but miss sleepy head was cold and didn’t want to get out of bed!  So we are finally up, have an apple for breakfast and head out the door.  I forgot my sunglasses so I told Maryanne as we are heading back to the room she says “Hey that was the other thing I left on the plane”  She is cute isn’t she everyone!  Now to get to the Zoo we had to walk about 15 min down one street, turn left walk 10 min, get on a train for 9 min, in order to take a bus #138 for 30 min!  Thankfully as soon as we got off the train a nice lady reckonized that we were white and magically new that we were at this train station to ultimately go to the zoo!  Amazing!  So looking lost and being white does help!  I did wonder though if when we leave the zoo, will there be someone there who will know where I want to go next???  Turns out the lady was directing us to a tour package person, who would arrange a direct bus to the zoo, instead of the public one that stops every mile.  So we pay extra and take the direct bus.  I am a huge zoo fan, hey I love the Lion King and Madacascar!  I am a big kid and Maryanne seems to get a kick out of my reactions, although she laughs and says there is something wrong with me when I get on the ground in front of a statue of an alligator, put my head inside its mouth and ask here to take a picture.  Yes I am 6 years old and I also sing “In the Jungle” while hiding behind plants, so what 🙂  This zoo is really cool, but freakin huge, we walk and walk and walk!  We were going to do the Night Safari, but it starts at 730, after being at the zoo for about 4 hours and having seen everything, we decide to come back to it another night.  So we head to Orchird Road (a main road with lots of shops, resturants, etc) We find a Starbucks and wouldn’t you know it (well if you read the heading of this post then you would know) they have White Chocolate Mochas!!!  Now if only the movie theater has butter for their popcorn, I will never leave Singapore!  Well they don’t, good I really didn’t have a clue what I would do in Singapore for a job anyway!  Now if any of you haven’t seen Burn After Reading, you got to, it is so funny!  Remember that train station that was about 25 min from our hotel??  (if not please reread this post! 🙂 ) well they have a Burger King and it serves breakfast!!!  So I may move here after all!  Most fast food in Asian doesn’t seem to serve breakfast, weird cause why in the world would I want a coke and a Big Mac for breakfast!!

Tags: Singapore

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Singapore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.