singapore update

okay sorry, I’m back. hostel number one was called wow hostel, don’t have pictures but I hope to be back there sometime, I had to leave after 2 days because they ran out of room, and now I’m in this place called footprints.

wow was right by/in little chinatown, so that was comforting. little changes. food was good, oh and there was a free breakfast every day, all the toast and strawberry jam you could eat, yum.  people were nice, made friends with some cool kids from switzerland, but they left today for indonesia =(

getting ahead of myself, let’s back up. first day: slept in airport until 7. went to hostel, found it with a minimum of lost.  dropped off my bag, couldn’t stay inside until noon. so I took the mrt to city hall, got out and walked around.  it was malls. malls in every direction as far as the eye could see. shops everywhere, all selling things I’m too poor to buy.  fun to walk around in though, and it was air conditioned, which was nice because it’s about 90 degrees and 85% humid. it’s like being home.  oh and everyone speaks english, so that’s nice too.  after looking around the malls for a while, I just walked.  found lots of interesting things, I basically walked around for about 12 hours.  I think singapore actually started when the city had a contest to see who could make the coolest modern building.  there’s also the world’s biggest ferris wheel and the world’s biggest fountain. haven’t seen the fountain yet though. 

first impressions:

people seem taller here. there are 3 kinds of people: regular asians, really dark asians which is like pacific islander or something maybe, and indians.  there are probably more, but I haven’t been to the little muslim/arab part of town, you’re welcome mom.  everything is too expensive.  this was a poor choice of places to visit when I’m still waiting for my first paycheck.  I’m getting really good at finding little hole in the wall local places to eat though, you can find a good meal here for like $5 if you look hard enough.  but just to give you an idea of the price discrepancy between here and taiwan, I’m paying twice as much for a hostel and a beer in a 7-11 is 8 dollars. how is that possible, drinking would be ridiculous here. 

back on point: everything’s in english which is an amazing change of pace.  there are a lot more white people here.  but the weirdest thing when I got to new hostel was I didn’t notice how few white people there were, I was overwhelmed by the lack of asians, I’m so used to being tightly packed in a crowd of asian people that anything else feels weird.

and now pictures!