Singapore

I had slept on the couch so that Alyssa could have the small air mattress to herself but I had slept surprisingly well. We had put Jane in Yan and Jason's room since she was still pretty sick and coughed throughout the night. Once we were all awake, we knew we needed a plan of how we would see the city since Alyssa and I only had two days there. We didn't really know what was in our area but we had a short list of places that we wanted to visit in the city so we decided to venture out in search of Little India and hopefully find somewhere to eat there. It was a long walk to Little India, but with Alyssa's keen sense of direction and her trusty iPhone GPS, we were able to find it. There weren't many actual restaurants for us to choose from, so we decided upon a little food stand in the middle of a courtyard that a lot of locals were eating at. We each tried to order just the chicken masala and rice but they prended not to understand and gave us a full meal of different things. It was ok in the end though because the extra things they gave us were pretty tasty. The one thing I didn't care for was that all of the Indian people were eating the food with their hands, not with silverware. I know that is their culture and that it is normal for them eat like that but something about people eating with messy hands makes me wasn't to vomit. I had to make sure not to look around at all while we ate. It made me think I might not be well suited to visit India.

After lunch, we walked around the rest of Little India. There were tons of shops packed with shoppers selling gold and jewels and I couldn't figure out how everyone could afford those things. Luckily for us impoverished backpackers, there were also some cheap trinket shops so Jane was able to get a new pair of sunglasses for $3. After wandering for about an hour, I grew bored and so we decided to head back to our side of town.

We stopped at a grocery store to get some provisions for the next few days so that we wouldn't need to eat out and to get some alcohol since they had great pool at the apartment complex and we figured that relaxing poolside with a drink is never a bad choice. The grocery store was pretty pricy so we couldn't end up getting some of our usual staples like yogurt but we were able to get some fruit and snacks. When we got back to the apartment, the clouds had rolled in so we decided it was too cold to go to the pool and instead made drinks and watched "Home Alone" which was the only movie we could find on their tv. That movie is still cute after all these years.

As evening fell, we decided it was time to venture back out into the city. We wanted to go back to China town since we had only gotten a short look at it the night before and figured we could get dinner at one of the many restaurants there. China town was a abuzz with people, most of whom were buying gifts for the New Year. Jane looked for a gift to bring back to Yan and Jason but we couldn't settle upon anything that we liked. We did try some of the beef and pork jerky that they sell up and down the streets. It was really delicious although I didn't think it warranted the line around the block that had formed to purchase it.

 

We ended up walking down one insanely crowded street where they were selling candy. They were different types of mochi and jellies which Alyssa and I are not overly familiar with. We kept asking the salesman questions about different ones and he kept popping them open for us to sample. By the end, we had each eaten about 15 mochis and felt like we were going to throw up. But since we had eaten so much merchandise, we thought we should buy a few. We chose ten mochis and handed them to the guy to weigh. Of course, they charged us three times as much as they said they would and had thrown a bunch of other crap into the bag to increase the weight. In the end, we didn't care much; we should have seen it coming but we were high with sugar, lol.

 

We thought it might be a good idea to get some real food before we crashed from our sugar rush. We tried to get a table at one of the restaurants around us but there was some unspoken line of people waiting in the area, even though they didn't take names or ask how many of you there were. We figured we would end up getting screwed on that since we didn't speak their language and they seemed like they could care less about helping us, so we ended up going back to the same little kiosk that we had eaten at the night before. The food there was cheap and good so we knew we'd be satisfied. After eating, we headed home to wait for Yan and Jason to get home from the airport and tell us about their vacation in Hong Kong. Alyssa and I would be headed there next so we were interested to hear what they recommended for us to do.

 

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