Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Singapore Journals part 1 - First Impressions...

This blog gets silent way too often but for once it's for a good reason. I just came back from two weeks spent in shopping mall island... I mean Singapore.
Man oh man, it was actually my first proper long flight trip and it was scary as shit but I'm proud I made it and it sort of quenched my thirst for all things Asian (for a little while at least).
It was actually the first time in ten years that I was taking a 'sunny' kind of holiday (not that it was always sunny, hell in shape of rain and lightning fell upon us at least once a day), hot enough to banish from my vocabulary the words 'scarf' and 'duffle coat'. Although, the Singaporeans do like their AC and it can get chilly in their cabs, bus, shops, restaurants, ... anywhere that is not 'outside'.
The first impression when I got there beyond the vital reflex of looking for an oxygen mask as I felt like I just stepped in a steamy greenhouse, was being wowed by the architecture while sitting in the cab on the way to our accommodation. We stayed in the Western part of Singapore which is pretty much a residential area. I never thought I would be enamored with apartment blocks but Singapore did it for me. They're huge and white, with touches of pastel and surrounded by palm trees. I have to come clean and make a confession, I didn't get to see much of the most famous side of Singapore, that is the skyscrapers emporium look which is kind of weird I guess but I am clinging to that idyllic pastel image that Singapore has for me.
Since it was the first palm-tree kind of holidays in a long time, I got guilty  more than once of being lazy around the pool, sipping bubble tea in the company of Ignatius J. Reilly.
The first few days were basically that, recovering from the jet lag and adapting our bodies to the heat that tends to knock you out. We did venture out to check the neighbourhood commodities and sink our teeth into the local gastronomy. They had this food corner in the shopping centre near our place where you could get basically a meal for 3 Singapore Dollars (which is way cheaper than buying the stuff from the supermarket, that highly satisfied the lazy+cheap me). I quickly got into a routine of buying red bean buns and apple iced tea every morning. Yum.
So here are some pictures of where we stayed to end this first post on our Singapore trip.

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