Okay, so as promised, I am writing about my adventures in my tour de Asia. I’ll do it country by country so it’s not too overwhelming.
Let’s start with country #1 on the trip: Singapore
Singapore is probably the cleanest, most respectable place ever! It’s so the opposite of the rest of Asia, and since it’s my favorite country in Asia that just tells you how Asian I truly am. Hah! In Singapore, there is actually zero trash on the ground (okay maybe a little, but probably the cleanest country I’ve ever been to, aside from maybe the Vatican), nobody shoves you when you line up, everybody looks and dresses amazing (seriously, everybody dresses as if he/she is on his/her way to the club or some other fabulous party), the metro system is super convenient and clean, and the service is amazing.
I would definitely say that Singapore is the Europe of Asia; the clothes they wore and everything reminded me of Europe…but with all Asians and malls literally on every other street instead of old buildings. I think we went into at least 10 malls (and they are really big malls, too) in the two days we were in Singapore. Okay, so I’ll tell you now about the events of our trip. We got to Singapore and their metro system is awesome, except for the ticket machines. It requires that you put 1 Singapore Dollar (SGD) to get this metro card and you use it to put the fare cost on it. When you’re done, you put the metro card back into the machine to get your 1 SGD…but for your next ride, you have to repeat the entire process, instead of being able to reuse that metro card to reload. I complained about this inefficiency a lot!
My sister and I got to our bed and breakfast Sunday afternoon on June 14th…totally exhausted from just landing in Asia. I totally ticked off the cabbie by offending him and asking if the meter was on (in most of Asia, meters conveniently “don’t work”). Luckily, the B&B was amazing: super duper clean and the owners prepared breakfast each morning. So we met up with Yingheng and Aaron (both friends from Penn) and they took us from China(town) to (Little) India, all within a few blocks. Since the boys were huge eaters, we sampled everything on the street to get a taste of, well, randomness. Singaporean food happens to be a combination of Chinese and Indian food. Around afternoon time, we heard the Islamic song prayer (you can actually hear it from almost anywhere in Singapore, I think?); it was our first time hearing it so that was interesting. Yingheng amused us by coming shopping with us and then took us walking around some famous areas like Raffles City (Raffles is considered the founder of modern day Singapore) and Marina Bay.
I loved that Singapore was surrounded by water and everywhere you went, the buildings reflected off the water. We went to Clarke Quay (a cool bar strip near the bay) and had Turkish ice cream: ice cream where the vendor picks on you…you’re mostly paying to watch the vendor act silly. The following day, my sister and I were mostly on our own. We went to Orchard Rd, super famous for its shopping. Unfortunately, my sister and I didn’t realize that the shopping was all ridiculous name brands wayyy out of our budget. There were at least two stores for every designer. I tried on a Dior dress and looked terrible in it…sad, even in a several thousand dollar dress, I still look silly. A bit of advice, it’s really not expensive to eat at a real food court so even if you’re in a really nice area, don’t go to a shady looking basement area food court just to get cheap food…it’s probably going to be terrible (as my sister and I quickly figured out). After our stroll down Orchard Rd, we went to a mall where we could actually afford things, Vivo. I bought tons of cute clothes for super cheap prices; it was Singapore’s sale season so that was awesome. The only bad thing was the super small sizes. For example, in one store, I wasn’t allowed to try on clothes that were less than like $10 or something. So my sister pulled out a Large sized skirt and I thought, I don’t know if I’ll fit it…it’s a large and I’m usually a small. Yeah, so the store employee measured my waist size and pretty much told me I was too big for the size L skirt. Haha SAD! Anyways, I went on to buy an XL shirt later on in that day. Also, one out of the many weird things you will find in Asia is that there is an “F” size…which means Free Size. This free size is apparently a one size fits all type deal; unfortunately for me, the F size in Singapore was like an XS in America.
Other than the ridiculously small clothing sizes, Singapore did have other downsides. There are crazy strict rules, to where it’s kinda terrifying. On top of the rules, they brainwash you by having signs everywhere that pretty much tell you what to do. They also show videos to tell you how to behave. Seriously, it’s a bit extreme, but I guess that’s the only way to turn around a country so quickly like Singapore has done.As a side note, if you’re ever stuck in an airport, pick Singapore. It has free games, music, internet, and everything else you could ever need in an airport! I’ll load pictures soon.
Okay, so that about details my entire Singapore trip. It was super super fun, I’d totally recommend it!
