SINGAPORE, April 30th-May 15th

After Malaysia, Peter and I flew to Singapore on the 30th, the day before Peter was set to start working. Luckily for him, the 1st turned out to be a holiday so he had at least one day to "settle in" and orient himself before throwing himself back into work after months of travel. Our travel to Singapore was quite uneventful. We booked a bus to the airport from Penang, and consistent with the awesomeness of Malaysia, they sent a private SUV to drive us to the bust station about 30 minutes away. The driver dropped us off at the station where we waited for about 40 minutes in a mall parking garage for the bus to arrive. This gave us time to eat and go to the bathroom. Ride was great. Comfortable seats and plenty of bathroom stops (one time driver even pulled over at the first stop when we asked him to stop)!

Since we were flying Air Asia, a budget airline in Asia, and were only flying 1 hour to Singapore, we waited at the Domestic terminal. Wasn't much in the way of food that we wanted so we had a disappointing lunch (managed to spill tuna fish on my pants so that was fun), and then sat on the floor of the terminal awaiting the flight. There were no seats before entering through security and I wanted to wait until the last possible second to pass through because there were no bathrooms on the other side. We may have waited a bit too long because once we got inside, they were making the "final boarding call" for our flight. We walked outside and, after a bit of a guessing game, found the right plane to board. We were lucky to have seats together since we didn't pay the extra fee to choose our seats.

Well, since this is an entry about Singapore and I'm 3 paragraphs in and haven't even arrived there yet, I should probably write about Singapore now. My first impressions of Singapore were that it was clean, organized, and very well-developed. Those impressions remain after 2.5 weeks in country. The people are very nice and almost everyone speaks English (exceptions being the older generation and China town area). Other observations in Singapore are: there are malls EVERYWHERE! No really, we decided that every single building in Singapore has a mall and food court in it--Literally. They don't even bother putting up signs advertising the presence of shops, I guess it's just assumed. Seriously, try it next time you're in Singapore. Walk into a building, any building, and tell me if you don't find shops and a food court---I dare you to find the exception!

Along with food courts (some of which have no menu for the exotic Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, etc. foods), Singapore has any restaurant you could think of from home—besides the usual fast food places, you can find Outback Steak House, California Pizza Kitchen, and my personal favorite, BAJA FRESH!!! There are also SUPERMARKETS, like real, big, ones! I even found tons of gluten-free and organic items!

The only down side is that Singapore is expensive, REALLY expensive. I thought we had it bad in the states, but I'm starting to rethink this a bit as I see prices of things and hear about others from friends I meet along the way. I spent $150 for two bags of groceries and all I got was some fruit, salad goods, and nuts. A taco in Baja Fresh was $14. Yes, one taco, $14. I managed to spend $25 there, on fast food. Get it? We still haven't done the exact math, but Peter seems to think it may be cheaper to eat in food courts than to grocery shop here. Don't tell him this, but I'm starting to think he may be right.

One of the only things that is free in Singapore is toilets (most of them), of which there are many, complete with toilet paper, sinks, and soap (this is uncommon in Asia). There are also hand-washing stations everywhere in Singapore, like even some street carts have a place for you to wash up. A HUGE plus for Singapore is FREE water since you can drink from the tap here. It was SO great to buy a water bottle that I could fill from the tap, and…wait for it…..I could even get ICE…everywhere!!!! I really miss ice.