Singapore, April 2016

From Colombo, Sri Lanka we flew to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My husband Sergey spotted on the Internet cheap tickets Kuala Lumpur – Singapore ($87/round-trip ticket) and we decided to add it to our South Asian trip.

Singapore is a sovereign state that consists of just one city situated on the main island and a group of islets off southern Malaysia. It used to be a British colony until 1965 when it became fully independent and changed its name to the Republic of Singapore. Today’s Singapore is one of the most developed and expensive cities in the world. Its most valuable commodity is land. Singapore does not have much of it. That’s why it keeps creating it by reclaiming land from the sea and rivers.

We arrived at 10 am and went straight to the hotel. After the sleepless night on 2 planes, we were tired, but time was limited. We were leaving Singapore on the following day. So we had no choice but to set out to see the city right away. I begged for a short break before going outside into the heat and humidity of the tropics. Singapore is located 1.3° (144 km/90 mi) north of the equator and April is the hottest month of the year. We agreed on a one-hour rest and stretched on the bed. Napping was impossible as we were fatigued beyond the stage at which people fall asleep. So we simply let our muscles to relax and prepared them for a long walk around the city.

Our hotel room deserves a description. It was basically the size of a bed. The room was built to accommodate the bed with narrow gaps between the walls and the bed edges. A small dresser with a mirror was attached to the wall. Above it in the corner, there was a flat-screen TV. A passage wide enough for one person led from the front door to the bed. In that passage, there were two more doors: one opened into the bathroom and the other was the door of a tiny closet. A toilet and a sink were crammed into the bathroom so closely that I could wash my hands sitting on the toilet seat. A shower head was on the wall between the sink and the door. We left our shoes and clothes outside the door before turning on water in the shower because the entire bathroom became a shower cabin and everything in it got wet.

After exactly one hour of rest, Sergey elbowed me, ‘Get up, let’s go. We did not come here to stay in the room.’  Reluctantly, I got dressed and mentally readied myself for the wet sauna of Singapore. We walked through the area called Little India, then in the direction of the waterfront taking in what we saw around us.

The majority of the population there is Chinese; however, Singapore is a very diverse city. Buddhist temples are mixed with mosques and Christian churches. Traditional low-rise Asian buildings surround modern skyscrapers that are each unique in their architecture.

Singapore is famous for its skyscrapers. Of course the most spectacular of them is Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

We walked the streets until our legs could not carry us anymore, returned to the hotel and went to bed at 8 pm. Our exhaustion reached the limit when it was enough to close the eyes and be asleep immediately. We woke up at 8 am after 12 hours of deep uninterrupted sleep. I remember heaving a dream of living in a village where I owned a house and was dealing with difficult neighbors. God knows where this dream came from and in what part of the world that village was.

In the morning I took a shower thinking that it was rather pointless. We started dripping with sweat as soon as we left the air-conditioned hotel. Our flight was departing at 6 pm. We used the available time to see more of Singapore, the places that we did not go to the day before. It rained on and off and we hid from the rain in Chinatown where small shops lined the streets and we could walk from one shop to another under one long roof within the same block. Why does a trip never feel complete without a bit of shopping? Sergey, as usual, went for souvenirs. I found a couple of practical things to buy. When I was going through security at Kuala Lumpur, an airport agent opened my first aid kit containing a tiny bottle of iodine tincture that I used as antiseptic. He did not know what iodine was and decided that it was a dangerous substance. I did not mind to throw out the iodine, but the agent after some deliberation closed the bottle and put it back into the kit. Apparently, he did not tighten the cap; the iodine splashed all over the kit contents and ruined the cosmetic bag too. Later at the hotel, I had to throw out the entire kit together with the bag. Luckily the iodine did not stain anything else in my backpack. So I bought a replacement cosmetic bag and also a nice little purse shaped like a knapsack.

From Chinatown, we returned to the hotel to pick up our luggage and took the metro to the airport.

The flight from Singapore back to Kuala Lumpur was only one hour, but it was just the beginning of our long trip home. After 3 hours in Kuala Lumpur, we flew to Tokyo where we had a 4-hour layover. My husband left Narita airport to see a temple in the vicinity. I did not feel like going back and forth through passport control and security and stayed in Narita’s rest area where they had real beds, comfortable and free, for weary passengers. Sergey and I met later at the departure gate. He showed photos of the temple and surrounding gardens trying to make me jealous because I missed this site. Sure, the temple looked interesting, but how much more sightseeing can you fit into one trip? Had we not seen enough during 12 days in 3 counties?

Our return flight was via Dallas; we landed in Denver on the following day, tired, but overall very satisfied with the vacation.