Singapore trip
2010-Aug-18, Wednesday 07:57
It's been around three weeks. I'm really bad about writing these entries. And I need to e-mail Yoshimi-sensei again too...
Anyway, so, yeah.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
schoolpsychnerd and I went to Singapore for the last week in July. In retrospect, we probably should have chosen a time that wasn't the hottest time of the year in a country a stone's throw from the equator, but it was still really neat. The best part was probably the Night Safari, which included a bit of Singapore's remaining rainforest. The orchid garden was also good (if small), though the bird park was better. The National Museum was really neat--there was an audio guide with a ton of information and recordings corresponding to numbers given on the various exhibits--but we only got an hour there when we should have spent at least two. We also took excursions into Little India and Chinatown, though the heat and sun made staying out a bad idea. Fortunately, unlike Japan, Singapore knows what central air is.
The two weirdest things for me didn't have anything to do with where we went, though. The first was just hearing English everywhere. There were a lot of people speaking Mandarin, and some people speaking Malay or Tamil, but it was somewhat jarring to be able to understand people around us (and realize that we couldn't just talk about whatever we wanted and be secure that we probably wouldn't be understood). The second is that in dealing with the service industry employees, I nearly universally thought, "Why the hell is everyone so fucking rude here?" They weren't, of course. I've just had my ideas of what constitutes good and bad service recalibrated by living in Japan.
So, yeah, I recommend going. Just not in July.
Anyway, so, yeah.
schoolpsychnerd and I went to Singapore for the last week in July. In retrospect, we probably should have chosen a time that wasn't the hottest time of the year in a country a stone's throw from the equator, but it was still really neat. The best part was probably the Night Safari, which included a bit of Singapore's remaining rainforest. The orchid garden was also good (if small), though the bird park was better. The National Museum was really neat--there was an audio guide with a ton of information and recordings corresponding to numbers given on the various exhibits--but we only got an hour there when we should have spent at least two. We also took excursions into Little India and Chinatown, though the heat and sun made staying out a bad idea. Fortunately, unlike Japan, Singapore knows what central air is.The two weirdest things for me didn't have anything to do with where we went, though. The first was just hearing English everywhere. There were a lot of people speaking Mandarin, and some people speaking Malay or Tamil, but it was somewhat jarring to be able to understand people around us (and realize that we couldn't just talk about whatever we wanted and be secure that we probably wouldn't be understood). The second is that in dealing with the service industry employees, I nearly universally thought, "Why the hell is everyone so fucking rude here?" They weren't, of course. I've just had my ideas of what constitutes good and bad service recalibrated by living in Japan.
So, yeah, I recommend going. Just not in July.
