Day 1

Yesterday was my first day out and about in Singapore (which I'll probably refer to as "Singers" - a term I have picked up!) I say yesterday because it's 4 a.m. here as a type. I'll get to why I'm up at 4 a.m. a bit later...

After a few hours of fitful sleep (hot as blazes here and I couldn't figure out how to get my air con to work) I got up and met a couple that was backpacking across Asia. The girl was from Scotland and the guy was from Spain. We chatted a bit over coffee, and then were joined by a lady from England named Jane. She had been traveling for 5 weeks all over it seems - she even made it down to Australia and New Zealand. Her daughter just finished Uni (university/college) in London, and had decided to take a year off to backpack the world. How exciting!

Anyway, the Scot and Spainard were catching an early flight to Thailand, so Jane invited me to come exploring with her. After a cold shower and a change of clothes (dresses are a must here; thanks mom for getting me all those maxi dresses - it's too hot for pants!) we navigated our way to Suntec City Plaza - a 4-block long mall and commercial office park - to catch a topless tour of historic Singapore. The pics I'm posting are of that! Don't ask me what the buildings are, cause I can't remember! The only one I can really recall is the colonial-one style one with what looks like a flying saucer in the background - that is the Supreme Court!

We returned to Suntec City after our tour and sat down for a coke. Diet Pepsi isn't called "Diet" here - it's called Pepsi Light. Random, I know. So Jane and I sat down and had a lovely chat. She's a nurse back in England, and works with young families among others. She's very lively and very sweet. After our Pepsi we had a look around for me a SIM card for my cell - apparently you can just get a SIM card here and prepaid minutes and I can use my phone from the States. No luck though, so I'll try again tomorrow.

We then decided to have lunch before catching the City tour. However, about that time I started feeling awful. I don't know if it was the heat, the jet-lag, dehydration, low-blood sugar, lack of sleep, or what, but all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke/pass out. Not a good combination. Jane insisted on geting me a taxi back to the hostel - she offered to come back with me, but I thanked her and told her I didn't want her to do that since she'd have to waste time coming back. It was still very nice of her.

After I arrived back at the hostel, I immediately went into my room, figured out that the reason that my air con wasn't working was because it was turned off (such a me thing), turned it as low as it could go, and was out, dead to the world. I woke up and thought, oh it's probably around 6 p.m. Nope. It's was almost 9. 8 hours of sleep. FINALLY!

When I emerged from my room to find the loo and figure out what I was going to do about dinner, I met another woman from Canada. She told me that she had had a glass of wine with Jane, and wanted to check on me. I told her that I was fine and just slept for 8 hours, so feeling much better. She told me about all the restaurants/food stalls around, so I took off down the road a ways and found a Chinese (I think) noodle house. The menu was in Chinese, so I had to look at the pictures and point to what I wanted. I had a noodle bowl with prawns. Ok, lemme just tell you, the prawns were whole. And when I say whole, I mean with the head and eyes and shell and whiskers and everything. 3 huge prawns that I think they just cut in half (length wise) and cooked. Thank the Lord I am use to seeing crawfish whole!

So, the noodle bowl: not only are the shrimp whole, but the noodles are pretty slippery from all the broth (think more of a noodle soup). So here I am, staring at my dinner with it staring at me back, and trying to figure out how to eat this with a pair of chopsticks. Oh, and not the flimsy little bamboo chopsticks we have in the States that I swear actually make it easier to pick food up with - oh no. These are the large, plastic, heavy, shiny kind. So I'm sitting there in the restaurant trying to pick the noodles up, having them slip from my grasp, trying to pry the shrimp out of their shell and away from the head - it must have been quite a sight! Finally, the nice waitress (who spoke very little English btw) came over and gave me a fork. I know she and the other waitress and the cooks must have been getting quite a laugh out of me! When the fork arrived, I decided I was too hungry and too tired to try anymore - I abandoned the chopsticks and went with the fork. It was delicious. The shrimp were very fresh and the flavor was amazing. And - the best part - with tip it came out to be about $9 USD. $9!!! In the states, a meal like that would have easily gone for double - I'm telling you, those prawns were huge.

After dinner I came back to the hostel to figure out if I wanted to go out, but fell back asleep almost immediately. I woke up about quarter to 4 and decided this might be the best time for me to blog since no one is using the public computer. I'm going to try to go back to bed after for a few more hours so I'm a bit fresher in the a.m. Tomorrow I'm going to head to Orchard Road - it's a touristy spot with lots of differnt offerings, so hopefully I will be able to find a SIM card for my phone and get that working. Oh, and an AC adaptor/converter so I can charge my computer and camera charger! Hope you've liked the story of my first day and pics!