Sore Feet

Location: Net Cafe, Little India, Singapore

Day 3 (2/04/08): Exploring Singapore

Owww.... sore feet. I have been walking the whole day. I had a relaxed start to the day, updating this blog with yesterday's activities. After being very touristy the last couple days at the Bird Park and Zoo, today I was just going to explore Singapore itself.

I read about the Singapore Science Museum, and decided it might be an interesting visit. It turned out to be more of a 'discovery centre' place. Lots of flashy demos and interactive 'exhibits', primarily aimed at school kids. Oh well, it was cheap and I didn't stay for long.

I caught the train back to the centre of town by the City Hall just after lunch, and proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around. First off was the old historic sites of Singapore, including the famous Raffles Hotel. It just looked like an old building to me (although there were plenty of fancy cars parked outside). I walked to the Suntec centre to see the world's largest and most expensive fountain - it was turned off! I also saw Parliament House and the Supreme Court. I then proceeded to just wander around, following streets that looked interesting, and exploring the concrete jungle of downtown Singapore.

I eventually made my way into Chinatown and walked through the thronging multitudes of stalls, each one selling and touting the same touristy crap. I just spent the last few weeks of my life divulging myself of accumulated crappy possessions, and I'm not planning on getting anymore. I did however make the mistake of walking into a camera store and straight into the arms of a very good salesman. He ending up convincing me to get a UV filter and polarising filter for my camera, and he threw in a free small tripod. I was at least somewhat interested in getting these filters, so I was reasonably happy. He also made a very strong sell for a wide-angle conversion lens, but I wasn't interested in that at all. The trick with photos is that less is more, correctly framing the subject of the photo is crucial, hence a good zoom is vital. Whereas a wide angle lens just puts more clutter into your photo.

I proceeded to just wander around, including going through some giant malls, including what seemed to be an entire mall just fulled with massage and foot reflexology shops. While the idea of a foot massage was tempting, the concept of paying an old Chinese man to rub my feet was a little odd. I spent most of my time trying to find a place that sold travel guide books. I didn't have one, and would most likely need one once I left the very tourist friendly Singapore. I had been told that finding cheap travel books was easy in Singapore, however I had no luck. In all the malls I went through, there was no-one selling books at all, let alone travel books. What does that say about a society that has a million clothes shops, but no book shops?

By the evening I was back in the Chinatown market for the much talked about 'Chinatown Night Market'. It was exactly the same as the Chinatown Day Market, except darker, with more people. I did have some very good satay chicken kebabs for dinner and ate slowly as I watched all the people go by. Deciding that I wasn't going to buy any touristy trinkets, nor a tailored suit (although I was often dozens of them), I caught the ever-dependable train back to Little India.

The backpacker's staff told me that one of the malls nearby had a retail bookstore that sold travel guides, so I was off! After finding the shop (an ordeal in itself, considering the average size of a Singapore mall), I was happy to see they had the Lonely Planet guide I was after ('South East Asia on a Shoestring'). While it wasn't the dirt cheap price I was hoping it to be, it was still about half the price of the same book from any of the NZ bookstores I had looked at.

So by now my feet were thoroughly hurting after walking on them all day. My legs are fine, I am fit enough after doing lots of cycling that my legs are fine with the exercise, my feet just aren't used to all this plebian walking!

Today was my last day in Singapore. Tomorrow I catch a train early in the morning into a small Malaysian town. Once there I will figure out how to catch the jungle train to the National Park I want to visit. I don't know how it will all work out, but it should be interesting! I am actually quite looking forward to getting out of the city and its thronging crowds of people. The leeches of the Malaysian jungle should be a lot better company.

So my final thoughts on Singapore? The place just seems to be one huge never-ending shopping mall. Every building you walk into is a shopping complex of some kind. I guess its to do with the very high population density. They all seem to be themed as well, with all the massage shops taking out one floor of a mall, and all the electronics shops down in one corner, and then all the clothes shops filling in everywhere else. The MRT train system is very good though, and makes it very easy to move all around town cheaply and efficiently.