Singapore Slings & Grand Prix

Singapore Sling

We landed in Singapore around 6:00PM an hour later than expected due to our delay out of Sydney. The airport was dead, so we quickly passed customs, which was located in the most beautiful atrium with a fifty-foot ceiling exposing the setting sun outside. We found our way to the city train, bought tickets and we were on our way to the little India quarter of Singapore. On the elevated train we could see the city, everything was immaculate, the airport, train, city streets, I loved it! After transferring trains we arrived at the little India stop about forty minutes later and it was dark outside. As we climbed from the underground subway up to the street we could hear music and commotion all around, little India was a much more vibrant place than the calm, collected, organized, clean, inner city of Singapore, but as we walked through the streets of little India, shop vendors and food stalls occupied the side walks we were at awe of our surroundings, food, smells, sounds etc. We found the Footprint Hostel were we would be staying for two nights in a twelve person dorm. After checking in we went exploring, we weren’t particularly hungry because Singapore Air feeds you five course meals in coach with ice cream for desert, so we simply found a little café on our walk and had a Coke, and Jimmy watched a soccer game on TV; Jimmy has been trying to connect with other world sports, in Australia we spent a lot of time trying to understand Footy, which seems to be like rugby mixed with soccer and uniquely enjoyable to watch, but Jimmy is still keeping up to date with American football, thanks to Martha and Maggie’s dutiful updates. After returning to the room, our roommates stayed up half the night playing computer games, only later did we find out that Korea has one of the largest gaming sectors in the world, even considering it a sport, we have come to realize that gaming is big all over Asia, on a different level than anywhere we have ever seen, these guys in Singapore stayed in the hostel room all day and night gaming, its crazy.

The next morning we ventured further out into the city, walking around downtown by the river, and over into China town, it was the hottest place we had been, hotter than Darwin. It was the day before the big formula one race so areas of the city were blocked off as they set up the course. In the afternoon in Chinatown Jimmy and I had our fortunes read, we are both going to have long lives, the fortune telling said I should be a teacher or work in government and that Jimmy and I would live happily ever after. After our good fortunes we decided to go have a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel were the drink was invented. The bar was very turn of the century European, a place that I’m sure Ernest Hemingway hung out in, with wood paneling and swaying palm fans on the ceiling. There were peanuts on the table and people threw the shells on the floor. The place was crawling with tourists but it was still a fun experience. That night we ate Indian food back by our hostel and went to bed. The next day we were off again in search of a durian moon-cake; a durian is a local fruit that we were told to sample by our friend Eric who spent a last summer in Singapore. Also we wanted to sample a moon cake because it is the Mid-Autumn Festival where the moon cake is the local food of choice, it was everywhere. So after finding a shop with a line half way down the block we decided that this must be the place to find the best sweets in town, however the durian is not a sweet fruit, it is probably the worst fruit ever! So our treat actually turned out to be a real bust, much to my dismay because everyone knows how much I love sweets. That night we had dinner on the river, sitting outside, and the noise from the F-1 race could be heard everywhere, Jimmy wanted to sneak in, but after dinner we were unsuccessful. We went back to the hostel, or gaming central because we had an early flight to catch in the morning to Vietnam.