2007 - Asia - Day 19 - Singapore

Facts about Singapore: • British ruled from about 1814-1947, therefore they drive on the left side of the roads. • Singapore became part of Malaysia afterwards, but was abandoned by them in 1965 • The city was built in about 41 years, and they are in the top 5 economic countries in the world • Population of 6 million • They speak 3 languages here: English, Mandarin and Malaysian We flew out of Chaing Mai to Singapore this morning. It was a 3 hour flight. I found out that we will have taken 14 flights all together on this trip. OUCH! In Singapore, we went directly to our hotel. It was on the beach in a fantastic area. We could go to the lower floor and walk out onto the beach. The rooms smelled so strongly of mildew though. You could see it on the walls, ceilings, curtains, and carpets. One couple would not even go in their room. Several made separate bookings to other hotels on their own. Mark had arranged to meet his Singapore friends as soon as we got to the hotel, so we left shortly after we arrived. We took the sky rail over the harbor to Vivo City. It is like a large mall. We met up with his friends there and they ordered dinner for us. They got a lot of authentic food for us to try of the area. It was good. We then went back to our resort at the beach for a water, laser, and fire show. It was really cool. I’ve never seen anything like it. When it was over, we went back to our hotel since we were so close and Mark wanted to give his friends a gift. As we got to our room at 9:20, there was a note on our door saying that we switched hotels and the last group was leaving at 9:15. I ran to the lobby and caught them, then went back and packed up our stuff and got on the bus. Marks friends came with us. After we got checked in to the York Hotel, we left and took the train to the city center and walked around the buildings and harbor. We took pictures of the merlion, a mythical creature representing Singapore.