Another Place I Never Thought I'd Go

In my latest effort to try and see most of the world in four months: Singapore! I took a REALLY, like really, quick trip to Singapore for work. I left on Saturday night and got home on Friday afternoon. When you consider that four of those days were in the air, I managed to squeeze a LOT of fun stuff into a really busy work trip. The entire experince was make much better by the fact that I randomly had friends in town. Seriously, what are the chances? Brian and Lyl and I saw Singapore and fought jet lag together!

I arrived at around 4:30 in the morning and headed over to the hotel. (by the way, I'm getting kind of spoiled with this first class travel. Singapore airlines this time ) I was kind of strung out from all that flying (almost a solid 20 hours on the plane) but managed to stay awake to see the sun come up over Singapore that morning. I was on the 50th floor of my hotel with a KILLER view.

Wait, is that? Yes, it's a gigantic building built to look like a ship. It is super clever as you can see al the ships on the horizon behind it. It's a hotel, casino, gigantic luxury shopping mall. They don't do anything halfway here. Everything is new, upscale, and CLEAN. It's almost like you're in Disneyland and everyone is wearing Chanel. My view was Killer in the morning, but pretty much indescribable at night. It's just big buildings in the day, but at night it becomes kind of magical!
After working that day I met up for a drink with Brian and Lyl. We had to try out the Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel. This is where the Queen stays when she comes to visit. It's also where the Singapore Sling was invented. The Queen is a high dollar drinker because this drink cost 25 bucks. That's ridiculous. It tastes exactly like malibu and pineapple juice. Not my thing anymore. At least it's checked off my list. Done.
The next night we met up again to do the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. I was worried that it might just be the zoo at night and well, it was. Still the zoo, like Singapore, was nice and new and very well done. Here's the only picture I really got. Yeah flamingos! The animals didn't really get the memo that they were supposed to be awake, so they were mostly snoozing. Oh well.

The real highlight was my fish pedicure!!! They have these shops all over Singapore where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I decided there was no way in hell I was picking some random shop, so i figured if anywhere was clean, it would be the zoo.

I lasted maybe two minutes because a) it was tickly! b) I started thinking about tropical foot fish fungus and I couldn't shake it. So far, my toes are still intact, so I think I'm ok!

The last night we went out on the town again! My new friend Jacqui is actually Malaysian so she took us out to eat a "local" meal. There was no English here =) I was scared, but it was REALLY good. Just bascially steamed chicken and chili and giner sauce. yum!

After dinner we headed over to try and make it to the top of the ship. We got a little sidetracked becasue the Junior Olympics were having their closing ceremonies. I even got to see the Olympic flame. This is probably the closest I'll get to a closing ceremonies in my life. Everyone had gathered in Merlion park to watch the fireworks. The reflection off the water and the buildings was amazing!
Now, this is the Merlion. Singapore is the "lion city" and this is the logical half lion half mermaid that guards the bay. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it was beautiful. Random, but beautiful.
I didn't make it to the top of the ship, missed it by a minute, but I guess you have to save something for next time!