Singapore

Day 3, Wednesday March 25: After getting to our hostel in Singapore and showering/changing our clothes (we had been in the same clothes since leaving the US) we set out to explore Singapore. We were staying on the border of the Muslim and Indian disctrict, so found some amazing food for brunch. I of course had butter chicken with garlic naan...bringing me back to my days in India, and Brent had the traditional Malaysian breakfast. This included rice, a full fish (we think it was the same type of fish that cleaned our feet the day before, so we were kind of sad) and some chili sauce...plus a bowl of coconut soup to help with the spice. Both were amazing, but I liked mine better :) We then jumped on the MRT (or mass rapid transit underground system) and headed out to the Botanical Gardens. We were planning on only spending an hour or so there, but the Gardens were massive covering 52 hectres and there was so much to see! We wandered around in the Healing Gardens and then went into the world renowned Orchid Gardens (I guess Singapore is known for their orchids...and they are amazing!). We spent quite a few hours there and then headed down to the Esplanade where we saw the true "glory" of Singapore...in the shape of three massive hotels with a ship on the top of them. We dined at another hawker stall with this as our view and then headed out of the city a ways for a Night Safari. Although slightly kichy and not a "real" safari, the enclosures were pretty natural looking and we got to see the animals very close up...we saw a ton of deer, lions, tigers, anteaters, civets, flying squirrels, bats, etc. etc. It was actually pretty fun, although we were both catching ourselves falling asleep while sitting by the end of the train ride! We headed back to our hostel and couldn't even stop to have some hookah along the way befor showering again (it is SO muggy here, we were still dripping from sweat even at 11pm) and face planted into bed. The wonderful thing about hostel sleeping is you never really know what you are going to get. In our case it was in the form of a child screaming around midnight (in the room next door) and then a father banging on his door to have his daughter let him in the room around 2 am. Also, because we were near the mosque, we also got serenaded to at dawn...it was still probably our best night sleep of the trip so far! Today we are off to Kuching, on the Malaysia island of Borneo. I'm supposed to have this part of the trip planned...but I don't, so we will see where we end up! Hopefully I'll get pictures uploaded in the next few days. Love you all!