I am lazy this morning and miss the free breakfast, but I do make it down to McDonald's in time for pancakes! Great! At about 3:00 I meet R at her hotel. After having coffee in the lobby bar, we decide to go for a walk. She must be on her way to the airport by about 6:00 PM to catch her flight to BK. We first walk thru a mall next to her hotel. It is the Funan IT Mall, a mall devoted to computer and electronic stuff. It is very shiny and clean, and much more quiet than Panthip Mall in BK. Also, the prices are regular retail prices--no the extreme discounts, no pirate software.
We then walk across the street and into Fort Canning Park. We walk up 187 stairs to get to the park entrance. The park encircles a city water reservoir (which is behind a fence, a tall hedge, and a berm) which you never actually see. There are lots of old trees, and the gateway to an old fort that once stood on the top of the hill. It is a cloudy afternoon, and a couple times we feel raindrops, but it never actually rains.
We soon walk back down the same way we entered. After stopping for R to get a bite to eat, we say goodbye and she gets into a taxi to go to the airport. It is 6:00 PM, and I am supposed to meet my friend S and her friend M at 6:30 at the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.
I stop by the hotel briefly, and then walk to the MRT. M is there waiting for me. S will join us later. M is a librarian at one of the branch libraries in the national library system. We walked to Mall Singapura, the same mall where I had been yesterday, and had dinner at the food court. After dinner I stop in at a travel agency located next to the food court. I finally get my ticket to India! I will leave on the 20th, and come back to SIN on the 25th. I ask the agent if I will need a visa for India, and after checking it on her computer she tells me that yes, I will. She gives me the phone number of the India embassy which I will call in the morning.
We then walked around the mall a bit, and soon were joined by my friend S, who has been my email friend for 3 or 4 years. She has even been to the USA a couple times but we never had a chance to meet. So it is nice to be able to say hello in person. We walk to the nearby Starbucks where we sit and talk about the USA, Singapore, etc. She wants to import into the USA a hair product, and so we talk about how this might be accomplished. She has a good idea. I hope she can make it work.
By now it is getting late, and so we say goodbye. We will meet again later in the week. S and M get on the MRT, and I walk back to the hotel.
I then walk across the river to a park (no name) and thru it to the City Hall MRT station. I then take the MRT to Harbourfront Station. This is the station that is next to the cable cars that go do Sentosa Island. Sentosa is a privately owned and developed island that has beaches, hotels, golf courses, and other displays and attractions. The island is about 3 or 4 km long and about 1 or 1.5 km wide. You can get there either via a bridge, or you can take a cable car, which sounds much more interesting!
The cable car station is on the 15th floor of a harbourfont office building. The cables are very high! This will be a great view! The cost is about $10S for a round trip. OK! I take the elevator to the 15th floor, and soon I am on the cable car. There are few people, and so I have my own car, which could seat maybe 6 people. The cable car ride takes abaout 10 minutes. There is a very tall concrete support at the midpoint of the trip, which is also the highest point on the ride. You then go downhill to the cable car station on the island.
I exit the cable car and walk into the island. Right there is a tall tower, rising perhaps another 200 feet or more, and a revolving observation deck which goes up and down on the tower. Think of the Seattle Space Needle, but much smaller. Well, maybe I will do this later. I then find the monorail train and go for a ride to the other end of the island to one of the beaches. Here, at the southern side of this island on the south side of SIN, we are only about 135km north of the equator. The beaches are very nice, and I take off my sandals and rolls up my pants and get my feet wet. Ahhh, feels good! The sand is coarse and sofe and white, and it feels good on the bottom of my feet as a walk along the shore.
There are very few people at the beach, but I can imagine what it is like on the weekends. I come across a couple small dogs playing together. How cute! Further on there is a wooden suspension foot bridge across the swimming lagoon. I walk across. It bounces and sways, but it is fun. At the other side are two wooden observation towers, and I walk up one of them. The view is quite nice. The colors of the green trees against the blue waters are very good. As I am wandering around I meet some young people from Bintan, a nearby Indonesian island, about 90 minutes away by boat. They are here in SIN visiting friends for a few days.
It is getting near to sunset, and I want to go up the tower to see it. I walk back along the beach. There are also some beautiful peacocks walking around. I get back on the train/monorail. The ride back takes longer than I expected, and by the time I get there sunset is pretty much over. I go up the tower anyway ($10S). The view really is very good, but for photos daytime would be better. The viewing deck rotates, and so in low light the image is blurred. Maybe I will come back another day!
Now it is nearly dark and time to head back to town. I must pick-up my air ticket to India from the travel agent, and I decide to have dinner at the food court again. After the short ride on the MRT I get my ticket and then have dinner. After dropping the ticket off in the room, I walk back to Boat Quay. Yes, there are quite a few more people now (in the evening) than there were earlier in the day. The evening is very comfortable. I end up going to 3 different bars. The first one was a small narrow bar on one of the side street. Upon entering I find out that it is a chinese karaoke bar. That's OK. The waitresses are singing karaoke. I order a glass of beer. Yes! It is a very cold beer in a very cold mug! Very nice. My waitress is C, a student by day. She tells me she wants to be a lawyer, so I try to encourage her. After my beer I walk down the street to Rav, which is a much louder disco bar. They have a good crowd, and the music is really good, but no one is dancing! It is mostly young chinese. I am the only westerner, and probably the oldest person. I drink half of my beer and leave. I then walk back to the riverfront, where I have my third and final beer at one of the many places that have outdoor seating. There I meet J, an EE from Boston here in SIN on a business trip. He and I share conversation for a while, and then I say goodnight and walk back to the hotel.
After the free breakfast (it was worth every penny), it is time to get busy regarding the visa to India. I will need at least 2 visa photos. I walk to the mall, but the mall stores do not open until 11:00 AM. I walk further up Orchard Road, and finally find a photo shop that does immediate photos. A few minutes, and S$10 later, I have my photos and am on my way to the India embassy, which is also near Orchard Road.
The embassy is in what looks like an old mansion. The visa section has a special entrance, and when I walk in I am confronted by what looks like mass confusion. There are lots of people, a couple of long lines, and it is rather noisy. There is a TV blaring some Indian programming. I take a minute to analyze the situation. OK, it is really not so bad. There is a counter with visa forms; there is a ticket dispenser where you get your numbered ticket, and there are counters where people are getting attended to. OK. I get my numbered ticket, number 210, and then get the forms and start filling them out. Although they were only on 186 when I started, they reach 210 even before I am finished completing the form. I rush to window number 4 and give my forms to the young lady. She looks at them, has me provide some additional info, and approves me for a 30 day visa. She gives me a paper telling me to pay $20S today, and another $120S on Friday, when I am to come back and pick-up my visa. I then wait in the cashier line, and after about 10 minutes I had paid my $20 and am out the door. Well, that was not so bad!
I then walk back to the hotel. It is lunch time, and so I have lunch at the café. This time I have an asian dish--noodles, veggies, and seafood, in a brown sauce. It is pretty good!
I then decide that it is time to go exploring. I walk down to the river. The other night I was at Clarke Quay. This time I go a block south (downriver) to Boat Quay. This is just across the river from the SIN Parliament Building. Stretched along the riverfront are lots of restaurants and bars. It is early afternoon and so it is rather quiet. Some people are eating lunch at tables along the river. It is quite nice. I walk thru Boat Quay, keep going south, and find Clifford Pier. This is a commercial pier. There are some ferries, and a couple tour boats, that operate from here. I pick-up a couple fliers. I then walk east along the harborfront to Merlion Park. Here in SIN there are lots of references to merlions--a mythical creature with a lion's head on a fish body. At this park there is a huge Merlion spouting water into the harbor. On the pier in front of the Merlion is an assortment of unusual benches. One of them looks like two commodes. I meet a couple young ladies from HK who are visiting SIN and Malaysia. One of them joins me in a photo on the commode/bench!
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