MerLionLand

Finally getting a chance to describe our vacation. It was pretty busy from one end to the other. We had a week, well actually 9 days, but we also had 3 destinations, plus a return to Singapore at the end before coming home. The trip started with, well, how shall I put it, I guess you could say it was a pain in the a%%. We went with Tiger Airlines. They are a discount airline flying out of Singapore and Australia. They started coming to Bangalore recently so they had a sale and we bought it. The seats were EXTREMELY uncomfortable. Basically I felt like I was sitting on a toilet seat at a 15 degree angle leaning into the aisle. All of the seats in the plane seemed to be similarly old and worn out.

We were trying to sleep as the flight left at 11 am, was 4.5 hours long and we would arrive in Singapore at 6 in the morning. Tiger "doesn't serve anything" on the flight--ok, we wanted to sleep-- except that they sell drinks and food. And the stewardesses are on commission, so they kept going back and forth up the aisle (bumping into me as I was leaning due to the seat) and yelling out 'who wants more drinks?' all night. Not only that, but because there wasn't enough leg room for me to have my knees in front of me when the seat in front of me was leaning back, they complained that I was blocking the aisle for their cart. I snarled at them about the lack of space for my knees and they backed off. Oh well, lesson learned-- NEVER NEVER NEVER fly Tiger Air again except for really short or necessarily cheap flights where you don't care about food or space, or comfort.

Enough bitching Bryan. We arrived in Singapore. It is spotlessly clean, an extreme contrast with India. There are signs which point out everything from directions to what is and is not allowed. They say Singapore is a Fine City-- Spitting $ 200 fine, Littering $400 fine, etc. But this does make it clean and feel safe. To me it feels like Disneyland where people actually live, and yes they even have rides on Sentosa Island. (We didn't go there.)

We spent the first day going around on our own (after checking into the hotel and having a short snooze and late breakfast). We did some shopping for Anna and Cindy. We went to Orchard road. The shopping opportunities are amazing. The road is lined with large buildings (not quite sky scrapers, but tall big enough), and the bottom several floors of each was a shopping mall. I mean it went on and on. Most of these would dwarf any mall I've seen in the US. We saw a couple of groups performing on the street. One of them was a drumming/percussion--Samba Masala group of about 30 youngsters who were trying to raise money to go to Ireland. They were awesome. We watched for about 1/2 hour.

The next day we took a bus tour in the morning to get a bit of the history and decide where to go. At the end of the tour, we skipped out and continued to visit the orchid garden for longer, and have lunch. The orchid Garden was beautiful again, but obviously this was not the optimal time of year. Many of them were not flowering or had few flowers. Bollywood made it there though. SRK has his own flower . You cannot read the sign, but if you click on the earlier link, you can read the sign there.

Then in the afternoon we went down to Clark Quay, traipsed around, had ice cream, took a boat tour. On the tour we saw some boys frolicking on the riverbank , and took in the Merlion by the waterfront . Singapore has done a nice job of retaining the old architecture in spots, keeping the cultural and historical heritage alive, while allowing the new to come in and support a growing economy which provides for housing and other benefits for Singaporeans. You can see an example of it here along the waterfront where the older architecture is in front of the financial district in the background.
And then they have things which I just cannot explain. Like the hOOters Restaurant with one of the biGGest signs along the waterfront. Something really Singaporean for all...

Sunday night (we arrived on Saturday morning), we took the train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. I must say this was one of the more interesting parts of the trip for me. We had first class Sleeper berths. Here is Cindy looking out of her window from her berth. And here you can see the whole cabin a little better. We left at 21:15, we arrived at the train station at quarter to nine as Cindy had, admittedly in a sleepless daze the morning before, read it as 11pm. I checked with the ticket office as we had pre-purchased tickets over the internet, and they sent me right to the train. Fortunately we arrived at the station early as the guide book had told us to, or we would have missed the train altogether. Fortunately we didn't. At about midnight the train stopped somewhere in Malaysia, and a young man joined me in my cabin on the top berth. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur without a hitch, got to the hotel by about 8am, and had to wait for a room to be ready. They served us breakfast as we waited. We were just about to give up when they had a room ready, so we checked in and then went out to see the city. More about that next time.