Singapore-Singapore Day 1

 

Feb 20^th

                We arrived in Singapore at around 7am and were off the ship at around 10 am. It takes a while for immigration to clear everyone. Cindy, Mike, two Chinese students and I wanted to visit Sentosa Island which is just outside of Singapore (about an hour away, mostly using the Subway system). Before getting onto the Island we stopped at a family style Malaysian food restaurant. It was pricy but we had been told it was one of the best. It  was really good, we had chicken and pork with rice and vegetables. Definitely different then the food I had had at that point in the voyage. We took our time eating and took in the atmosphere at was Singapore. Singapore is one of the most ethnically diverse places I have ever seen. In a matter of minutes you would see different ethnicities selling their products.

                After lunch we headed to the Island. Which is a very touristy place. It is set up as basically a resort because there is a theme park, hotels and more. But it was so beautiful. It is fairly newly built and most things on the island are new. It used to be a military island but was transformed into a place for tourists. We decided we wanted to do the Island zip line. It’s a zip line which begins on a small mountain on the top of the island and goes down past the beach and some ocean onto a platform. We took a small hike up to the zip line through the rainforest. We saw some pretty big spiders and some birds. Mostly spiders which was terrifying because they were huge. The zip line was truly amazing. It was only about two minutes of zip lining but the view was amazing and it was a fun ride down to the beach. We enjoyed the beach for a while and then decide to go to the aquarium which want as big as we thought, but did feature a cool dolphin show and an ocean tube you walk through and see sharks, sting rays and more. I had to be back to the ship by 5 to meet up with an SAS group for the night safari.

                So we left around 4 so we would make It back on time. Due to traffic though I ended up barely making it on time for the trip. Without having time to eat dinner I was so hungry during the night safari. But I didn’t let that ruin my experience. I still made the most of it. The night safari has all nocturnal animals which is really cool because most of the time at zoos the animals are kind of boring because they aren’t very active at day, for example the big cats. But at the night zoo we got to see the lions being fed, bats the size of my full arm hanging and eating fruit within a foot of my face. It was really cool to see so many animals and in such a different atmosphere. After we took the safari we headed for ice cream and I enjoyed a ben and jerry’s cone. (YUM). I got back to the ship at around 11 and got ready for my night out with my friends.

                We decided to go to a club called Zuke because it’s a new one that just came about and had amazing reviews online. Walking in we were asked if we were SAS and they gave us VIP because of it, it’s exciting for the club to get a lot of white people because everyone wants to party with the ‘”cool” Americans. So the club filled up really fast even though it was a wed night. The DJ was amazing, drinks expensive and dancing was a lot of fun. Me and friends even got onto the platform in the middle of the dance floor a few times which was pretty fun. We danced with guys which was different because of the harassment policy in Singapore. In Singapore if a man even brushes up against a women and she thinks it’s harassment he can get fined or jailed. So when dancing they stay at an awkward distance away from you, unless they aren’t locals. We left at around 4am and pretty much crashed in our beds.