Singapore

Singapore is an amazing place, and it really is a place I wish I had more than one day to experience. Going from India to Singapore is a major culture shock as when I was in Singapore, I felt like I was in an extremely modern American city. The only difference, it was too modern for America.

We wanted to hit a bunch of really cool sites through the day, we had a plan and we were going to stick to it… which we didn’t at all, but we still had an awesome time. The first thing we did was go to the Marina Bay Sands hotel, if you don’t know what it is, Google it. We wanted to go up to the pool and hang out on the skyscape, but we got there at 9. First it opened at 10, and then at ten they pushed it to 11. So we left. We went to China town, and you may say, China town? Won’t you be in China in like, a week? And the answer to that is yes. But, our friend loves Singapore suits, and decided he wanted to pay way too much instead of buying a suit in Vietnam, like I will be.

We found some cool things around, I found a few ties, and there were some SAS girls walking by and I told them to each pick me a tie, and I would pick a third one. I ended up getting some pretty nice ties I’d say. We found a little hawker café and got a little food before heading to the Wave House Sentosa. Now I want you guys to Google what a flow rider is, and what a barrel rider is. I’ve done a flow rider a few times before, and I’ve gotten decent at boogey boarding, but I fell pretty good whenever I tried to surf. I’m happy to say I got surfing down for the most part on the flow rider, but I definitely fell pretty hard a few times.

We had an hour of the flow rider followed by an hour on the Barrel rider, and the barrel rider is intimidating, I will tell you that for sure. Everyone was asking who would go first, and of course I volunteered, but I had no clue what I was getting myself into. The first time you fall, you have no clue what is going on, which way is up, down, you feel your shorts being ripped off you, it’s crazy. I kind of got it down, but I fell every single time, pretty hard sometimes. The nice thing is once you learn to fall, and learn what to expect when you fall, it’s not as bad and you can bounce back pretty easily.  The Barrel Rider was a blast and I was definitely happy that we had the chance to do that.

On the way back to where the cabs were, I grabbed a double cheeseburger from McDonalds, just as good as back home! And we jumped on a train which took us to the cabs area a ways down the road. We went from there to Clarke Quay which is a super cool outdoor restaurant area, where there are hundreds of places to eat. It’s really cool because although its outdoors, there is a huge vinyl umbrella on top so you are kind of under the shade, and if it rains, like it did when we were there, you won’t get wet, it’s a really cool place to check out and it’s something I’m surprised isn’t common in the states. We had a few (super expensive) drinks and bumped into our friends who got some awesome stuff that we must have walked right past in China Town. So we went to China town again in search of the couple things we wanted in order to spend our last Singapore Dollars. I got a T-shirt and two Tiger Beer tank tops, one for me and one for a buddy back home! We jumped in another cab to take us to the cruise terminal and found that the line at customs was massive. We waited in the line and literally ran through the terminal to the ship getting on about 10 minutes before on ship time.

I wish I had more time there, but Singapore has done a lot of stuff right in terms of building a beautiful nation. I’d say it is something that the US should model after, but I think that Singapore’s tiny size is why their mentality would not work in the states. We are a hugely diverse group of people, whereas Singapore citizens are vastly the same. There’s some diversity but many people seem very alike. The last thing is our history. I didn’t see any history in Singapore. Their Supreme Court building for example was built in 2005, and is a modern mecca to law, taking over from a building built in the 1800s. We love our history, and Singapore loves its modernity. I could see myself doing business in Singapore, or vacationing there again sometime, but as of right now I wish we had at least two days!