Singapore, Singapore

If you want to visit Singapore and have a good first impression, DO NOT travel to Singapore via a Malaysian train. The travel from Malaysia to Singapore was great. I felt like I was transported back to the early 20^th century and I was a British agent keeping tabs on society. The first-class train wasn't bad. I had a wide, far-reclining seat, an electrical outlet and a foot rest. I slept for a few hours in the morning and was awake most of the afternoon. I had plenty of time to read GQ and the Ensign. I also was able to catch up on some blogging/journal writing.

Anyway, back to my first five minutes in Singapore. We pulled up to the immigration office, got off the train and did the usual customs stuff. However, the machine didn't like my passport, so I had to go to the special line; the one where the random checks are process (j/k). I sat in the office and things got taken care of pretty speedily. The whole process felt very cold, though—no smiling faces. The center was old, rundown and the bathrooms were disgusting! Lots of "water" everywhere. I was shocked to see such a filthy restroom. When we finally pulled up to the train station in Singapore, it was rundown, deserted and homeless people lined the fence outside the station. I felt like I was being taken to a WWII Japanese concentration camp. Also, there was no ATM at the station, just a money changer. We left Malaysia with a whopping 1 RM (Ringgit). Fortunately, we had some US money, so Yale exchanged a little bit to pay for the taxi.

Once we left the station and started towards downtown, my perspective totally changed. All of a sudden, I was in a clean and modern city-state. Maybe the Singaporeans don't think that Malaysians have a lot of money, so they don't invest in a nice station. The station is only used by the three trains that go between Malaysia and Singapore.

To make the day even more interesting, we reached the beach resort with S$18, just enough for the both of us to eat dinner and laundry. Oh yeah, there was no ATM at the resort, so we were broke AGAIN (seriously, we were down to S$0.50). Since we had to do laundry, we stuck around the resort for the evening. Eventually, Just Married was playing on TV. I was so excited to see a movie on TV. Since Hiroshima, all I've been able to watch at night is BBC World News and CNN News (only in Kyoto) and foreign language channels. Like any news station, they repeat the same news every 20 minutes or so. You're probably asking me why I care to watch TV while I'm on vacation. Well, after a full day of playing and walking around, I like to relax at night. Anyway, my first evening in Singapore was pretty uneventful. Nothing really happened.