Singapore
Last weekend I went to the island of Singapore which, from my point of view, is a mix of California and Europe somehow mixed into a Southeast Asian island. Everything there is about as clean as it is in the suburban parts of San Diego and Orange County. Then you toss in the colonial architecture in the colonial section of the city with the parliament building, city hall, opera house, and the cafes/bars along the river to give it the European feel. The british high tea time and prevalance of different types of non-asian pastries also add to the British feel of the city. But if you walk into India-town or China-town it is also very intersting because you have all the traditional shops and foods from the respective country but it still has the cleanliness and evenly paved streets of Singapore that just seems quite out of place.
Orchard street was interesting... It was a collection of extremely expensive malls with stores like gucci, armani, cartier, and vertu (with their 17,000 UK-pound cell phone). I think they had some affordable places too but I wasn't there to do any shopping so we didn't check them out.
The architecture of the city was interesting too. There are 5 buildings Orchard that are supposed to form a hand if seen from the sky. They have a theater hall near a river that looks like a local fruit called Durian from one side and from the other it matches the shape of the trees in the park. Also you see things like a chinese-styled roof sticking out of the side of a mall that has palm trees on top.
For public transport you use something called an EZ Link card that works like a debit card for the subway, bus, and even places like McDonald's and Starbucks (apparantly... i would never actually go to those places...). Its an RF card that you can actually just keep in your wallet and just press your wallet against the sensor when you want to use it so you never even have to take it out to use it.
I was meeting up with Vandna, a friend of mine that I met in Spain, so we thought it was appropriate to go out to a spanish place for some spanish wine and tapas for dinner. It was pretty cool and there was an interesting collection of different bars around there as well.
On sunday evening we hiked up this hill and got a great view of city skyline. From there we took a cable car ride to an island called Sentosa and on the way we got a cool view of the docks for all the cargo ships that come through the area.
But the craziest thing was probably the airport... I have heard of some cool airports before with movies and stuff to do, but I have never been to one of them. Singapore was the first entertainment filled airport I have been to. They had an internet cafe, music videos (that you request of course), about 5 to 10 TV's with international channels playing constantly, a sleeping lounge area that is quiet and dark, a movie lounge, a garden, and a pool... all free of course. They also have a 24-hr food court with a couple video games too. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have to spend a night in the airport there. It is definately more comfortable than many of the other hostels and guesthouses I have stayed at in my life.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home