The Land of No Chewing Gum...?

Howdy from Singapore!

Stop number 2 on the so-called maatventure is over half way. The contrast between Bangalore and Singapore is certainly a large one. Singapore is known as being one of the cleanest cities in the world and it certainly has appeared that way. How this is accomplished is laws of course. Laws such as; no littering, no spitting, and yes, no chewing gum. It indeed, up until recently, was illegal to even possess chewing gum in Singapore. Though talking with a friend of Lauren's last night it sounds like that ban on possession is no longer in effect.

So we got here early morning on Thursday somewhere around 6:30 AM (6:30 PM in Mich). We both slept a bit on our red eye but we were a little spacey. We used Singapore's MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) Train to get from the airport to the hotel. This was a good experience, as it was a very simple system even though it was rush hour when we were on it and the trains were packed. We made it to our hotel around 8:30 or so, checked our luggage in, and headed out for the day.

First stop was the Singapore Botanical Gardens. The Gardens were beautiful. The grounds were extremely well kept and admission to the main gates was free. Laur and I spent about an hour wandering around exploring and taking a few pics! After this we headed for the Island of Sentosa.

We decided to take the cable car ride to Sentosa which was a very cool experience as we got to survey the skyline and the greenery from an elevated perch. The ride took only about 10 minutes but we took many pictures and let our legs rest a bit. We found Sentosa to be quite a tourist trap. We were apparently the only people on the island that after riding the cable car to the island didn't want to pay $10 each to ride a street luge to the bottom! We did however end up

walking down and we made our way to the beach. We went to a little beach restaurant called Coastes and grabbed a little snack and just relaxed and gazed upon the sight of about 30-40 ocean freighters sitting off the coast. At this point Laur and I were exhausted so we headed back to the hotel to rest up. It was a good first day we were hot, sweaty and tired and when we finally cleaned up and hit our beds we rested extremely well. I am going to pass the baton on to Lauren for the next portion of the blog...so long for now...