Singapore in Monsoon Season

I got to the bus stop early at Times Square in Kuala Lumpur and had time to stop off at Krispy Kreme while I waited. Have I mentioned recently how much I love Krispy Kreme? The donuts aren’t as good in Malaysia as they are in the States, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyway, I got on the bus to Singapore. The bus was actually pretty comfortable and spacey. I was able to write many of the posts for this site on the ride and the views were pretty good. The trip took about four hours into Singapore and then another hour-and-a-half to get through immigration and across town to the bus station. As we were approaching Singapore, it started to sprinkle. I should have seen this as the ominous omen that it was, but I thought nothing of it at the time. After a full-body cavity search (or something close to it) at immigration in Singapore, I made it to the bus station and took a short cab ride to my hotel in the now strengthening rain.

I didn’t spend a lot of time at my hotel because I was meeting a friend at my hotel to head out into town. I waited for about a half hour and by the time he arrived, the strengthening rain had turned into a Category 5 hurricane. The lightning was so close that I was afraid to sit near anything metallic, even indoors, and the rain was hitting the window in waves instead of drops. But my old friend arrived, along with a new friend – because a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met – and the three of us headed out. Immediately, I started wishing that I owned an umbrella.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to move around in Singapore without spending too much time outside because it is a city that is around 60% mall, much like Kuala Lumpur. I was hungry, so we went to an Asian food court in a nearby mall for dinner. I think I had teriyaki salmon and Tiger beer, but it could have been chicken now that I think about it. Not important. After dinner, we headed to the subway to go to another part of town, Orchard Street, to meet another old friend and another new friend and head to a bar.

Getting off of the subway at Orchard Street, at another mall, and looking around, the first thing to strike you is that Singapore is as decked out for Christmas as Kuala Lumpur. There were lights crisscrossing Orchard Street and on every storefront and ginormous Christmas trees everywhere. I made the comment that it looked like New York in December but felt like New York in July because it was still about 85 degrees and humid even though it was after 8 pm. Immediately outside of the mall/subway stop was a huge purple Christmas tree that was big enough to walk inside. We went in and I took some pictures and as you can see, purple seems to be the color of Christmas in Singapore. (Note: These were the only pictures that I took on my first night in Singapore, so the other photos for this entry are from the rest of my time in Singapore.)

We walked around for a while until we finally found a bar that would let us sit and drink without eating and I had a few beers. It was good to see old friends and meet new ones, but the night was without much excitement. We discussed meeting up a few nights later for some chili crabs and then I took a cab back to my hotel to plan the next day’s activities. More on those in the next post.