after landing and taking the train into town, i reached my hostel, put the luggage in the room and took the metro to the marina. the city has a nice marina with hotels and business district and you can walk around it. lots of sea type chair our next to the marina and couple occupy everyone. the marina is mostly dark and during the walk i see couples hiding away in various dark corners enjoying the warm humid evening.
i walk around and saw the symbol of the town a merlion - a lion with mermaid body. btw, this is Singapore... i walked some more and passed the nice Victoria hall, city hall , war memorial and was impressed by the size of this city and its bustling night life. i watched the new Marina bay sands hotel and casino, the 3 towers with a ship for a roof! from this place they have water and light show with lasers that light the entire marina, an impressive display. after 3 hours of walking around which included a shwarma dinner , with the wrong kind of bread, i returned to the hostel for the night.
early morning i got up and was late for the Saturday weekly trip. lucky they were too. i grabbed a couple nutella sandwiches and join the hostel crew for a trip in the city. we took the bus to the start and this trip passes in the green corridor of the city, a large and narrow park , and you go everywhere on bridges within the canopy and see the town from all angles. I also saw some nearby islands. which are indonesia!!! a new place is within my sight, literally, not like S palin. well next trip perhaps, lets not get too greedy. we were 4 guests and 5 hostel staffers, they do a trip every week and share SIngapore (lion city) history.after 2 hours of walking we stopped for lunch. the specialty of this place is chicken rice, rice cooks in oils that give it chicken taste. this mea comes with... chicken and chicken broth soup. i liked it. for desert they ordered for us a treat of sorts. it is shaved ice with everything and i do mean everything. some of the ice is fruit flavored, the red and the green were good, but on top they had sweet corn in some sauce, black beans at the bottom and a bit more stuff. i like corn and sweet ice, but it doesn't work together. after this interesting yet i will never try it again desert, i left the guides who refused a tip!!!! and went to discover little india. this city has 3 ethnic areas, china town, little india and little malawi. i toured the hood for an hours, stopping at the temple which is actively in use, many locals were praying or meditating inside. from there i took the metro to marina bay gardens. these are new garden with a nice river , interesting vegetation, sculpture and some very unique items. the super grove tree are 7 or 8 huge trees out of metal and they let the vegetation and vines cover it to look like a real tree, and you can use an elevator and go up these huge pillars to the top and view the city. a most interesting design, but it was expensive to go up. they also had a rain forest and a flower dome that required a fee and i passed, little time. but next to it was a show. i heard music playing and came by to watch, a guitarist was playing and lots of cameras were pointing at him. i didn't know the guy, but so many cameras for a no one, no way. i saw the sign and took out my camera. at the end of a 45 minute free show where this dude joked with the crown, sang songs of his and his band and also any song the crowd asked for. if he didn't know the song, he joked and waved it off. i am not sharing the name, till AMit sees the photo- this is a quiz for one, no one of you will know the guy by his face, but most of you know who he is.
after a most enjoyable show where i sang along and got a great selfie with him i made my way back to the hostel after a burger late lunch, took a de-soaking shower since it is so hot and humid here and then walked 10 minutes to the train station where i was soaked once more.
i am now at the airport, boarding soon, returning to Nam for 2 hours then moving on to Tokyo
and Singapore happily makes 58
btw- the malai prince found this island after a storm and found many cats, his advisers thought they were lions (but they were just cats) and since this was a fisherman village, then=y needed a sea theme, so the lion mermaid was born
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