I had a look around Orchard road on my first day to have a look around the gigantic shopping malls. There are so many and they are all 8 floors and more high. People enjoy shopping here for sure.
The next day I went over to Sentosa which is an island just south of Singapore. I was not that impressed with this island. It was pure make believe. It is also soo tiny. Managed to walk around it in 30 minutes. The island is a big tourist resort with man made beaches. The sea view is of huge tankers and boats going to Indonesia. The water was full of fish, but it did not tempt me enough to take a dip.
I have been chilling a lot this week. Taking in all the buildings and surroundings. I did the China Town walk, and Little India walk and visited the small Arab district. The buildings and people change quite dramatically on this small island. I am staying close to Little India. It is fairly quite Monday to Saturday. Then on Sunday the district is overflowing with people enjoying their one day off.
I spent one day on the east of the island and hopped over to Pulau Ubin which was a fun island to cycle round. It was full of coconut trees and swaps and huge spiders. The area on the east of Singapore is different from the city centre. Here is the prison and the RAF barracks. I could not say it is run down, as no where I have been in Singapore could be described quite like that, but neither was it the same atmosphere of the city. It looked out of place, like it did not belong to Singapore.
China Town is pretty and decorated with lanterns and orange blossom. I went down for the Lunar New Year's Eve. I did enjoy myself, but everything was in Chinese and really quite cheesy, with local pop groups and dances. so I did not really understand what was going on. There was a small lion dance too which was cool, but I could not see the stage so well, though I was right in front of the fire crackers, and thought I was going to die when they were lit. They went off very quickly. so much smoke came out of them. All the crowd close by all jumped away from the barriers.
Walking back to the hostel from China Town was interesting. The air smelt of incense as people were attending the temples and making their prayers for the New Year. People were offering flowers and mandarins and incense. And of course it was raining, so it made me feel like the New Year has really begun.
Today most things are closed. Will head out today and tomorrow to take my final pictures of Singapore. Tomorrow night I head for Dehli so will a new place to encounter.
Singapore is very easy. There is clear information for everything and is so well organised. It is clean. There are details about the history everywhere and it is quite difficult to get lost as everything is signposted. People compare Hong Kong and Singapore. I felt that Singapore is very friendly as people will just offer their help, kindly. Singapore is very flat and does not have the dramatic views that Hong Kong does, which makes Singapore even easier to walk around.
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