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DAY FIVE - Singapore |
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Previous Blogs: Day 1 Tokyo | Day 2 Tokyo | Day 3 & 4 Singapore | Day 5 Singapore | Day 6 Ho Chi Minh City | Day 7 Ho Chi Minh City & Tunnels Day 8 Can Tho | Day 9 Floating Market | Day 10 Flower Market | Day 11 Hoi An | Day 12 My Son Temple | Day 13 Hanoi | Day 14-16 Halong Bay Day 17 Luang Prabang | Day 18 Temples-Waterfalls | Day 19 Mekong River | Day 20-21 Bagan | Day 22 Bagan | Day 23 Inle | Day24-25 Inle Click photos for a larger image... |
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 The ducks hung next to the chickens look absolutely delicious! Wherever you go in Singapore people are eating. No one in Singapore cooks....EVER! They eat out and street food is dirt cheap.
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Entrance to Buddhist Temple in China Town |
Everyone has a smiling face for you in Asia. |
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Chinese New Year is coming up soon - first week of February and preparations are well underway. This is the year of the Monkey and monkey caricatures are everywhere! |
Monkeys hang from every decoration. |
| Next we decided to go to the Marina District, which is where all the fancy restaurants and hotels are. It is absolutely beautiful but exponentially expensive. We stopped off at a bar overlooking the harbor for a beer and they cost $11 each! I checked them menu and there was nothing under $30 - compared to the street restaurants where there is nothing over $5. A city of contrasts! | |
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Above left is the famous Marina Bay Sands Hotel where three buildings are connect at the top by a sky deck that looks like a ship and contains an infinity pool deck and restaurants. Visitors can go to only the observation deck below the top deck at a cost of $20 each. Top pool deck is reserved for residents. The hotel also has a casino, one of only 2 casinos in Singapore which generates $6 Billion in revenue. What is interesting is that Las Vegas has a total of 75 casinos that generate $9 billion in revenue. Dang! Asians like to gamble!!! |
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The next section is what I like to call "Skyscraper Porn", because Singapore has a lot of it! |
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Then you get this... not a sky scraper, but just a fantastical design for a building. |
I just LOVE this building, on approach you can see it is a trapezoidal building but as you move closer the other side disappears and all you see is what looks like a paper thin building. Totally freaky! |
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Cars are also interesting in Singapore. There are no old cars seen on the streets and here's the reason. Singapore limits the number of cars. Every two weeks the Government offers a certain number of permits up for bid. A permit allows you to buy a new car, no car without a permit can be owned, new or used. The number of permits released is based on the number of retired permits - permits are only valid for 10 years so after that you have to sell your car. Here's where it gets interesting, permits typically bid up to $50,000 and that is before you have even paid for the car! And in 10 years you have to do it all over again! Singapore is the 2nd largest exporter of used cars in the world (after Japan).
Wendy's Interesting Notes: In 1942 the British surrendered to the Japanese and then in 1945 the Japanese surrendered to the British - IN THE EXACT SPOT on the island. Singapore is much "dirtier" than I expected. It's beautiful and clean...However, I expected pristine because of all the hype about Nazi Police fining you every second of the day - we did not experience that. It is no cleaner or dirtier than New Port Richey - which is a beautiful little city!!! Beaches are NOT promoted once you get to Singapore. Shopping and eating is where they make their money. Since they reclaimed over 25% of the island for urban development, all beaches are manmade - kinda like the shipped in, fake sand at Sunwest and Clearwater Beach. One must be 23 years old to go into an "adult" toy store. (We saw the signs...we didn't go in - really!!!) The sky-scraper porn and architecture are superbly awesome!!!!!! (Wow - I just used porn and adult toy store in the last 2 sentences - y'all are never gonna believe me again!!!) If anyone ever comes to Singapore and likes to drink - PLEASE HEED THESE WORDS - MAXIMIZE YOUR GENEROUS ALCOHOL ALLOWANCE AT DUTY FREE!!!!!!! This is one of very few countries you can buy Duty Free before you get out of customs!!! You'll thank me when you pay dearly ($35+) for a bottle of wine at the 7-11!!! FINALLY: 7-11 IS the bees knees in most all of Asia. They have a bank. They have a currency exchange. They have a grocery store. They have a travel agency. They have an optical mart. They have a pharmacy. They ARE the Wal-Mart of Asia.
And then here are some interesting signs we came across today: |
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In Little India there is liquor control - as you will see on the left. One cannot drink in public from 7am on a Saturday to 7 am on a Monday (and other times) Apparently the Indians and migrant Indians workers got so drunk, stoned and stupid a riot ensued, thus forcing the government to ban drinking in public over the weekends in the Indian Sector of town.
Is this like someone suing McDonald's because the coffee was too hot? |
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<<<< So what happens when you press the button? A Martian pops up out of the sidewalk?
Ice cream = happiness and thankfully it can be bought!
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And finally...
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StarYucks could learn a lesson from this. I KNOW their revenue would increase dramatically! |
By the way...."Coffee - Tea & Beer" is where Mr. Fu invited us to sit with him and chat awhile. :D |
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