We spent December
23, 24 and 25 of 2002 in Singapore. It's really a neat city, very
western, and everything's in English! It was so nice after being in
Japan for five months. The city is nearly on the equator so it was
around thirty degrees Celsius almost all of the time. One of the best
things we did in Singapore was visit the bird park they have. It's a
bird sanctuary with hundreds of different varieties, and many of the birds
are free to come and go as they please. From what I understood, all of
the new birds that came in, many for rehabilitation purposes, were kept in
cages until they get accustomed to the food and environment. After a
few weeks or a month there, after they get used to things, they are let out
into the rest of the park. But there is no roof or net to keep the
birds in. So many of the birds come and go during the day, using the
park as a place to eat, cool down in the water or shade, and sleep.
Singapore also has a
really colourful Chinatown, and little India. However, it seems that
the only thing to really do in Singapore is to shop. In the downtown
area it is block after block of malls, but not the suburban malls that we
are used to. Most of the malls tend to be specialty malls, this mall
sells only electronics, this one only computers, that one sells women's
shoes... they can be quite specialized. But the malls we went to
weren't the boring malls that we're used to either, they were more like
shopping districts that were covered with a roof and walls and
air-conditioned.
For Christmas day
breakfast, Eden's sister's friend brought us out for a Singaporean
breakfast. The food was fine, but given that it was Christmas morning,
it wasn't the traditional Canadian meal that we wanted. Also, Eden
didn't quite like the look of her giant prawn's beady eyes staring back at
her while she ate the curry around him.
Christmas night we
boarded the overnight sleeper train and headed off for Taman Nagara
National Park in central Malaysia. The jungle.