More Singapore Sightseeing – Days 3 and 4

Monday, November 24th, 2008. Can I tell you how much I missed a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich? When traveling in China and Thailand for the last 6 or so weeks, there was a trick associated with cheese…if and when you found some, the trick was enjoying it. Cheese was usually off-white, bland, and lacking in texture. Yesterday morning, after a nice business meeting that Sara set-up (good work baby), I enjoyed the greatest breakfast sandwich of my life. Sadly, I didn’t take a picture.

Yesterday and today have been split between sightseeing and working. Singapore is an expensive city, but there’s plenty you can do without spending much money. It’s also a surprisingly small city – we managed to cover most of the city on foot today.

The highlights:

• We visited an amazing (and expensive) Indian restaurant for brunch this morning. The food was served on a big banana-leaf place mat, and we enjoyed some of the best Indian food we’d had in a long time. Our hotel (the Albert Court) bordered on Singapore’s “Little India,” and it was an interesting preview of a trip to India that Sara and I hope to take someday. On a side note, many famous people had visited this restaurant before us. Bollywood stars, politicians (Hillary), and even Mel Gibson. Neato.

• Malls, malls, and more malls. Lots and lots of them. Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, and even Burger King were everywhere. Singapore is very Western, good and bad.

• We found Fort Canning park and Clarke Quay (Quay is pronounced just like “key” – crazy Brits). We even found a funny sign at the top of the hill that Fort Canning once sat upon.

If you trespass, you better have your arms raised when the awkward gone-toting soldier rolls by.

• Sara captured one hell of a sunset photo:

Some people say equatorial sunsets are better – this photo makes me tend to agree. Singapore sits at about 1 degree north of the equator.