Singapore

On a sunny but cold day with -7 we wheeled our bags to the bus stop for a ride to the airport and the trip begins. After a short stop in Istanbul we finally reach Singapore in the late afternoon, with a quick and efficient breeze through passport control and customs. It was warm outside but raining which would last one and a half days.

After a good night's sleep we had breakfast, then headed out into the rain, we took a taxi to Orchard Road to shop as this was the best thing to do in the rain. The first shopping item was umbrellas as this is the rainy season and we might need them in Bali, our next stop. After a morning of shopping of course it was time for Jounn's favorite time, food (lunch), and she had been looking into places to eat. The place was crowded but we found a couple of seats at the bar and had a wonderful meal with chili crab, and fine old wines in the cellar behind us. Done shopping we head back to the room as all this air conditioning is gettting to my sinuses and will soon have some bad effects.

In the evening we once again braved the rain and headed to China Town for dinner and the sights. As it was close to Chinese New Year the streets were filled with tourists and Chinese, the tourists were looking for souvenires and the Chinese were buying things in prepartion for the year of the rabbit. After a good meal we once again headed out in the streets as there was a short letup in the rain, but by then there were even more people in the streets and the rain was back so we headed back to the hotel.

The rain got worse the next day so after beakfast we did a strange thing, we went to the exercise room for a nice little work-out (first time in a hotel), which felt good but my sinuses were getting worse and I had a little bit of a cough (shit).
That evening we met friends from Norway/Thailand (Svein and Tam) in Little India for dinner. We took the MRT and came to a very different world. It was like arriving in India with bustling streets with mostly small Indian shops and restaurants lining the streets and traffic racing in all directions, but still the order of Singapore. We walked for a while to see and hear the sights and sounds, when Svein and Tam arrived we went for dinner to a place called the Banana Leaf. This was fairly crowded, as we sat down we each received a banana leaf to eat on. Svein ordered several dishes and when our food was ready a man came out with several large pots and started spooning out rice and other Indian goodies. This was good fun and very tasty, there were steadily new arrivals in this place, the lively sound of people and a satisfied smile of well fed people. After dinner as we walked back to Svein and Tam's car we walked pass a few of the trendier places where we saw that banana leafs wree placed on a plate instead of on the table and we wondered if they had to pay more for that. We headed off to a wine bar in Changi where we had some good wine and caught up a bit on what has been happening before we departed as the next morning we were off to Bali. We didn't take any pictures in Singapore, mainly as it was just wet, wet, wet.