Exploring Singapore (Dec. 29/08 - Singapore)

With our internal clocks completely out of whack, the 9am alarm came as a bit of a shock this morning. Our first mission of the day was to find a post office to ship a box home full of things we bought in Africa and clothes we realized that we really don't need. The wide, clean streets of downtown Singapore were easy to navigate, but with four sets of misleading directions from people on the street, it took us about two hours to finally find the post office. We ended up on Orchard Road, which is the main shopping district in town. Apparently Singapore is known for its shopping - and they weren't kidding because the city has more shopping malls than any place I've ever seen! You could pretty much stand anywhere and be within sight of three or four seperate malls. Christmas decorations were still up and the streets were being decked out in red and gold for Chinese New Year celebrations that kick off later this week, so the streets had a very festive feel to them. For lunch, we ducked into a mall and found a place selling hot and sour noodle soup for about $3, and the portions were so big that we could barely eat half!

Later in the evening, we popped into Singapore National Museum and checked out some displays on the history, culture, and food of the country. The food one was cool - the walls were lined with big glass canisters, each containing an ingredient used in southeast Asian cooking, with descriptions, photos, and recipes for each. They had everything from tumeric to lychees and anchovies to palm sugar. Needless to say, we were famished by the time we left the museum!

We had heard that Chinatown is the place to go for street food, and one whole street is closed to traffic at night so food stalls can pop up on the sidewalks and tables can be set up on the road. We tried chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce, crab rols, prawn dim sum, and fresh papaya juice - it was all delicious! There was a ton of variety, but we were stuffed. The fresh seafood, noodle dishes, roasted duck, and whole coconut milk will have to wait until tomorrow. We wandered past countless stores selling Chinese clothing, pillow cases, New Years decorations, and Chinese fans before calling it a night. So far, Singapore has proven to be just as we expected - civilized, expensive, and a nice into to southeast Asia.