Done Worse

We awoke (too early) on our first day in Singapore. But we know the drill: try to convert to your new time zone as quickly as possible or sleep at the wrong times at your own peril.

So we dragged ourselves to the delightfully enormous breakfast buffet at the Westin hotel. The buffet was really an extrapolation of the population of Singapore: Western pastries and cereal, Chinese fish soup stocks with funky looking chopped stuff to add to them, sushi, dal and naan, bacon, eggs and about 10 types of fruit juice. Needless to say, our brains may have been tired but our stomachs were full of international flavors!

My main approach to dealing with jet lag involves constant movement. I learned when I was an exchange student in Denmark that if instead of passing out, you go for a long hike or bike ride:

1. It’s much harder (though not impossible) to fall asleep while moving thus defeating exhaustion (curse you ill timed exhaustion!!!);
2. You’re so exhausted at night you can actually fall asleep when you do finally got to bed;
3. You can see stuff while you walk/bike around (provided you can keep your eyes open).

Winning!

Singapore is a really interesting independent republic. It is built on a diverse background of leadership and immigration. It was independent. Conquered by Japan in WWII. Back to British control. Merged with Malaysia, got kicked out and and finally became independent in 1965. Now hosts diverse breakfast buffets. You get the drill.

We walked to the “Palace of Heavenly Blessings”, the oldest Chinese temple in Singapore. (See photo of awesome door guard). AJ and I rang bells, put our hands in prayer position, made wishes and threw coins in the well as per instructed. We shall see if they come true.

We toodled around Chinatown, walked through the city some and ended up in the Singapore City Gallery. The museum has the history of Singapore, including two scale models of all the buildings/developments/etc in the city. Given the dense population and limited land the country works to balance green spaces with developments. For example, many of the buildings have green areas 20 floors up, and we saw multiple vertical gardens. Cool stuff.

By late afternoon we found ourselves exhausted (six miles of walking will do that to you), hot and sweaty and ready to be done.

Fortunately, Mike is a genius and reserved us a hotel with a 25 yard infinity pool on the 35th floor. Did I mention they also served caipirinhas??

Bliss!