So Singapore is HOT. It’s a nice change after the rubbish summer we had in Wellington though so I’m not going to complain.
The weather forecast for Singapore seems to be the same everyday (I had been checking it every now and then in the few weeks before we got here) – thunder/lightning and heavy rain showers, hot, and humid. So far we have only had the hot and humid part though and we had a beautiful sunny day today which was perfect for our first day exploring.
Most of our day was spent at Universal Studios on Sentosa Island. We got there pretty soon after it opened via a $1.50 ride on the local MRT (which is awesome – super easy to use, cheap and quick) and spent most of the day there going on all the rides.
I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to roller coasters but managed to enjoy them all today. The new Transformers ride along with the Battlestar Galactica roller coaster were definitely highlights. The Transformers one is with 3D glasses and makes you feel like you’re pretty much in the movie. The ride moves along in sync with the 3D action on the screen and it works really well – you almost forget you’re on a ride at times. Only issue was the headaches caused by a bit of motion sickness (mainly for Dayna).
Sentosa Island also held one of the things that Dayna had been looking forward to – Candylicious, a huge candy store. It was actually a pretty cool store – lots of odd candy (e.g. a bottle of liquid sour skittles spray – I’m guessing for people who don’t like chewing) along with all the classics. In huge quantities of course. I would say Dayna was as excited as a kid in a candy store but there were kids there and Dayna looked a lot more excited than them. She restrained herself to only spend around $15 there though (the accountant in me is very proud of her).
We did some further exploring through Little India and a side trip to a huge mall specialising in electronics meant that Dayna finally found the camera lens she’s been trying to get for months (and it was cheap too). I’m sure she’ll have fun testing it out in the next few days.
I’ve decided Singapore is the perfect place to start a trip in South East Asia – you get all the comforts of the western world with flash, quick transit systems along with it being super clean nearly everywhere but you also get a bit of Asian culture, nice weather, lots of attractions and really nice food.
Speaking of food. People in Asia are definitely more adventurous with food that what I’m used to. For example, “Pig Organ Soup” and “Pig Intestines” were both on a menu I was looking at tonight. I like trying local dishes but I am nowhere near ready to try Pig Intestines. The hard part is that this stuff isn’t weird here so some pretty odd things can make their way in to your rather boring sounding meal without you knowing. I’m OK with that though – I just apply a policy similar to the US’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”. If I don’t know what something is then I can eat it no problem but we thought of a new game today that might change that.
Basically, it’s just trying to guess what any weird looking things are in whatever we are eating or drinking. I haven’t decided on what to call it yet but maybe “Pick the UFO” (Unidentified Food Object).
So everyone playing at home can join in, Dayna and I ordered these amazing drink (“Iced Lime Juice with Plum”) and it looked perfect but right before the guy making the drinks gave them to us he dropped in a unidentified brown object. Thankfully the brown UFO didn’t seem to detract from the flavour of the drink.
So – what do you think is in our drink? Any ideas?
I’m going to take a wild out there guess and say…a plum/prune!
Probably a good guess except it looked a lot different when it first went in (had like a powdery look). Maybe a dried out prune? Either way the drink was amazing though.
Just catching up on the last six (!) posts. I love reading about your travels! And the kids think the Transformers ride sounds pretty rad. 🙂
The kids would absolutely LOVE the ride – we were thinking of them when we were waiting in line for it. Hope you don’t get nagged for a trip to Singapore now!