Four hours and fifty minutes later we arrived in Singapore. We walked to our hostel, The Hive, in "Little India" and got settled in.
If we thought Kuala Lumpur was clean...Singapore was much, much cleaner! The people were just as friendly as in KL, everyone spoke English, and everything seemed to move so efficiently.
On our way to dinner that evening we passed a Hindu temple that had some sort of ceremony going on. Because I didn't feel as if I was dressed properly enough, we didn't go inside to catch a real glimpse of what was going on.
We ate some dosas at a restaurant called Dosa Corner and wandered a bit around Serangoon Road.
The next morning Ryan and I walked around Little India moving in an out of shops. It felt a little strange and familiar at the same time to be there because it reminded me so much of the real India...minus the grime and poverty.
As we walked around we came across this gorgeous mosque.
From Little India we made our way to Chinatown to get lunch at a hawker stall and do some shopping. While the prices in Singapore are cheaper than those in the United States, things are much more expensive than in Vietnam or Malaysia.
Because we were there during the Chinese New Year the city was filled with decorations.
A Hindu temple, a mosque, Chinese New Year decorations...again, like in KL, I loved the multi-cultural aspect of Singapore.
Singapore has an incredible transportation system. It's clean, fast, on time, and easy to navigate. From Chinatown we took the subway to the colonial part of the city only to end up at a shopping mall (the Raffles Place station lets you out in front of a mall). Ryan and I really had no intention of going to a mall that evening, but we ended up spending several hours there - walking, eating, and just wandering around.
Initially, we had only planned on staying in Singapore for two nights, but since we didn't feel as if we would get to see everything that we wanted, we decided to tack on one more night.
The next day Ryan and I went to Tanjung Pagar Railway station to buy our tickets for the following day to Kota Bahru - a Malaysian city in the Islamic state of Kelantan.
The train station is probably one of the oldest buildings in Singapore and it was only built in 1932. Government officials are considering knocking it down, like most of the other older structures, to probably put up another shopping mall, hotel or another high rise office building.
After buying our tickets Ryan and I decided to split up and go our separate ways for a few hours. I was more interested in going to the Asian Civilisations Museum while he was more keen on going to the Singapore Art Museum. On my way to the ACM I came across this statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles on the Singapore river.
The ACM museum was filled with the history and artifacts of many of the Asian cultures that are represented in Singapore today: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Malay. It was really cool because the museum was also designed for children, so there were lots of hands on exhibits as well.
Ryan and I met up again at a Starbucks and decided that we were going to see a movie that evening. The only movie playing that was of any interest to either of us was, "Inkheart". Not bad, not great. I'm not a big fan of Brendan Fraser anyway.
(Note to self: Next time you go to a movie theater in Singapore, bring a coat!)
On our last day in Singapore Ryan and I wanted to see the famous Singapore Merlion at the marina.
After we took our pictures here, we headed back onto the subway to Arab street for a Middle Eastern lunch.
We returned to our hostel, grabbed our bags, hopped on a bus, and arrived at the railway station. We got on an overnight train back into Malaysia and onto Kota Bahru.
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