Singapore Travel Report Part 1
I arrived in Singapore at 5 in the morning and rode still in the dark and pouring rain to my hotel by taxi. I went to bed for some four hours and got up again at 11:00. It was still raining massively.
Despite that, I ventured out and walked to the nearest subway station, only to realize that my hotel was in a red light district with street restaurants and ladies of questionable virtue in explicit clothing standing between them and hidden away sex shops. Hmmmm…. I rode to City Hall station first of all and due to the heavy rain discovered there that the underground of Singapore is one giant shopping mall. You can literary walk around for hours through underground malls. Tired from the journey and not thrilled about the heavy rain I ended up at the movies in one mall and watched the greatly anticipated Hobbit 3, see comments about it here 
A not very Singaporean day yet, but the following days compensated for that
After the horrendous rain the day before, this morning the sun was shining through fluffy white clouds and I tried the other subway station relatively close to the hotel called Mountbatten. The way there was lonely, leading along a highway and office buildings, well, better than the red light district.
I headed down to the Marina Bay Sands and rode up to its viewing platform, a bit disappointed that I was not allowed into the roof garden, which is only for hotel guests.
Nevertheless, the view over Singapore is magnificent.
After that, I went into the gardens by the bay and was grateful for the cooled down cloud forest and flower dome installments. The flower dome disappointed with Xmas decorations and the only remarkable flowers being cacti, but the cloud forest is impressive with all its exotic tropical mountain growth and many orchids.
It was so cool inside the cloud forest and so hot outside, that my camera fogged for a while 
Sufficiently cooled down I wandered around the entire bay to get to the Merlion.
Barely retreating for a break into a Starbucks all hell broke loose with a giant thunderstorm and I sat it out outside under the Starbucks tent with the rain being so hard that you nearly lost sight of the Marina Bay Sands across the bay. These tropical downpours are quite something. I wandered back to the city hall station in lighter rain and called it a day.
I planned for a religious day and that is what I got at first I went to the most famous and oldest mosque of Singapore, where I was surprised by not having to put a veil over my head, you only have to cover your legs and shoulders, which is the case with me always anyway, due to T-shirts and long pants against the sun. Half of the mosque was under repair but the main prayer hall in green was still intact.
Next up was the oldest Indian temple of Singapore which happens to be in Chinatown and not in little India. I must admit I don’t know the deity that this temple is dedicated to but I had the luck to be there when a service happened. To live music from three players the deity was unveiled from behind a curtain and priests poured buckets full of water, milk and other paste-like creams over it. It was interesting to watch and I appreciate that they tolerated non-believer picture-snapping visitors.
Just a few meters down the road from the Indian temple was something more familiar to me, a Chinese Buddhist temple. The Buddha relic tooth temple is very rich (thanks to donations of believers I suppose) and glittered in gold and red. In the back was a display of the twelve guardian Buddhas of the Chinese zodiac. Amongst some praying believers loads of gawking and picture taking tourists and thanks again for the tolerance towards them.
I had a good lunch in a cooled down restaurant in Chinatown and then went back to the shopping malls because of a serious shoe problem. The sandals I had brought were not fit for long walking and after some searching I bought new shoes and retired the hurting feet in the hotel.
The next day was a “junk” day! meaning, I went to the universal studios Singapore and had a good time. After lining up for the children’s ride of “Madagascar” for half an hour, I got too impatient and seeing the lining up time for the “Transformers” ride of 80 minutes, I decided to afford the luxury of an express ticket, which allows you to skip queues and ride all rides as often as you want.
I ended up riding the high speed roller coaster in the dark of the “revenge of the mummy” five times and the impressive 3D Transformers ride 4 times, all others at least once. The Jurassic Park water ride scared the hell out of me in L.A. Where I’ve once been in the universal Studios many years ago, but the final drop down the waterfall in Singapore was harmless by comparison The “drying pods” after it were hilarious.
It was a fun “junk” day and I really liked the Mummy roller coaster and was very disappointed that the much more challenging looking Battlestar Galactica roller coaster was under maintenance luckily the weather held by the way, it was mostly cloudy but rained only late in the evening when I was only returning home anyway.
The rest will follow next weekend and as usual there are more pics on Flickr
