Singapore

            On March 16, we stopped in Singapore for the day.  Singapore is a really small, independent city state, though it still has connections to Malaysia.  It has a reputation for being really strict, but it’s one of the biggest trading ports in the world.  People were nervous about the laws and punishments, but it was a great day.

            I spent the day hanging out with Steven and Stephen.  To be honest, hanging out with them was fun, as usual, but kind of felt like babysitting.  Steven gets so excited whenever we reach port and cannot wait to leave.  As soon as he was cleared to leave, he was running around the fifth deck trying to find the gangway and trying to get us to leave with them.  He bolted out of the ship and I had to get him to stop running off.  I had to keep track of Stephen too, but that will come later.  After clearing immigration in the cruise terminal, the three of us took a cab to

Orchard Street

, the shopping district in Singapore.  I’m not really a shopper, but I needed souvenirs and there really isn’t much to do in Singapore besides shopping and eating.  Everyone, including my friend who was from Singapore, said to just do that instead of the museums or SAS trips, to get the full experience.  After shopping in a mall for an hour so, we headed to the Hocker Center (spelling?) for lunch.  The center is famous in Singapore.  It’s basically a giant food court with hundreds of different places to order and eat.  The center was all Asian food.  I don’t like eating seafood, and I don’t really like to eat food where I don’t know what it is so the center was a little overwhelming.  The menus were too high for me to read and most of what was at eye level was in a different language so I was kind of stuck.  I found my way to a juice bar and ordered banana-pineapple milk, which was fresh, creamy, and really good.  I found a sign for a vegetarian restaurant, and since vegetarian is always a safe bet, I went there for lunch.  I asked a local girl behind me in line what she suggested and based on her recommendation, I had some vegetarian “chicken” rice and a spring roll.  I went back to the juice bar and had a dragon fruit and sour sop juice.  I have no idea what sour sop is, but the juice was bright purple (think Barney, the dinosaur from my childhood) and had large chunks of a bright purple fruit in it.  The drink was really sweet, but it was still good.  Juice is one of my favorite foods in the world so I was pretty happy with lunch. 

            The three of us found Mark and Timothy, the interport students from Singapore with some other SAS students, and we all traveled together.  We went to a temple, where supposedly some of the teeth of the Buddha are.  The temple was pretty, but I can’t tell you much about the inside because about half us, including myself, weren’t allowed in the temple because we were wearing shorts.  After the temple, the girls wanted to take the subway, or MRT, to the botanical gardens.  Stephen had apparently been to botanical gardens in most of the ports so far so he didn’t want to go back again.  He tried to get me to go somewhere else, but neither of us had a plan or knew where we were going, so despite his begging, I said we should probably stick with the group, especially because we wanted to meet them later.  We strolled through the gardens for an hour or so and then went to the Marina Sands Hotel, which was a very luxurious hotel with a roof garden that had great views of the city.  There was also an infinity pool on the top too.  Most people had to pay twenty dollars to get to the top, but Mark and Timothy have a friend from their days in the army who works in the hotel and he let us go for free.  Everyone male has to serve two years in the army in Singapore.  After spending time relaxing on the roof, we went to dinner at McDonalds.  I let Stephen and Steven know that I felt like a chaperone to them so I joked that because they were good all day, I took them to McDonalds.  After dinner we went shopping for snacks and headed back to the ship.  You have to get back to the ship by on ship time or you risk getting dock time, where you can’t leave the ship for a few hours in the next port, and I came too close for comfort in Singapore.  We had a lot of loops to go through for immigration so the line took forever.  We arrived at the terminal almost an hour before on ship time, which should have been more than enough, but  it took so long to go through immigration, I didn’t get back to the ship until past 8:30.  The LLCs said that whoever made it through immigration by on ship time was safe, and I made it through with five minutes to spare.  Everyone was really stressing and freaked out though.  It was intense and I think about a hundred people got dock time for being late, which is a lot more than usual.

            Singapore is a really nice.  It’s a lot like a clean, sort of sterile, New York City.  Everyone speaks English and it is really easy to get around.  However, I don’t think I could live there.  I don’t think there is a lot to do there.  I am not even sure what I would have done if we had more than one day in Singapore.  The laws aren’t bad though.  I broke two while I was there and didn’t get in trouble.  I jaywalked, because Mark and Timothy made us.  I also used a public toilet and the toilet wouldn’t flush, which is also an offense.