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March 29, 2005

Singapore, Rationalized!

First, the service on Singapore Airlines is superb. It's rare that you get flight attendants who smile in such a way that you know they enjoy their job and serving you.

So...I landed earlier than I thought, 11:45 am Tuesday because a Singapore Airlines attendant noted that my change of flight in Hong Kong was unnecessary. I could stay on the same flight and get there earlier. So that was, let's see, 4 hours Minneapolis ot SFO, 14 hours SFO to Hong Kong, and 3+ hours Hing Kong to Singapore.

And I slept about 6 hours. I did watch Closer (Uhgh! What an awful existential mess of a movie that has the kind of dialogue that screams "A WRITER is writing this." Then The Incredibles. Again. Worth it. In between I read a George Pelecanos novel (blood, drugs and guts in D.C. with Strange/Quinn).

So I arrive at the hotel around 12:45 and checkin and shower. I only have the rest of the day to see Singapore. The next three days are 12- to 14-hour working days. I go to a tour desk saying I want to get on the cable cars and visit Sentosa. So they say one starts at 3:30 pm. Good. So I can eat.

I also heard about something called the Night Safari where you tour a zoo at night and see night animals, I guess. So I ask if there is a way to do that too, since it's on Sentosa (I thought, but I was wrong.) So they say Yeah you can do both and get back around 10:00 pm. So I pay for both.

Then I notice that I can have a suit and shirts tailored while I'm here, so I set that up. They want me sized immediately, cause now I find out that I have to LEAVE AT 2:00 PM, just 30 minutes to eat and get tailored.

They say no problem it's practically next door (no). I follow a guy and realize I won't have any time to sit down to lunch, but he points to a Subway sandwich shop. Great. I'm in Singapore, with world-renowned great food and I have JUST ENOUGH TIME TO EAT AT AN AMERICAN-STYLE SUBWAY!

So I pick out fabric, get measured for a 3-button suit with two trousers and three shirts, give them my credit card for more than I thought, but still a good deal, I think.

By the way, unlike China and Taiwan, the former British colony Singapore is completely English-friendly. All the signs are in English. In fact, even though a majority of the population is Chinese, there is virtually no Chinese characters on the publis signs. Everyone is raised speaking English.

Okay, so I grab a quick Subway chicken sub sandwich (ugh) and rush to be on time for the bus. But, hey! I'm gonna see Singapore!

So one bus takes us to other buses where we wait. Good thing I brought my Pelecanos novel. Singapore is only about 30 square miles so I know we won't be driving for long.

Finally we get under way with about 30 of us tourists and a nice talky local. He tells us we have to drive up Mount Faber to get to the cable cars. Sound ominous. Turns out "Mount Faber" is 105 meters high. Whoopee!

The cable cars are an aweseome 95 meters above sea level. My fear of heights is not even triggered. We get to see the city, the port, the South China Sea, and some foggy islands in the distance. The cable cars hold up to 6 people and look safe enough. We land and get ushered into...

...The Sentosa Butterfly Park. Yay. Butterflies. But first we have to go through the museum part, with hundreds of dead, mounted beautiful butterflies, the kinda stuff I've seen before and took no pleasure in. I mean, DEAD butterflies? Ain't that some kind of oxymoron? I want to see an enclosed kinda greehouse with LIVE butterflies.

So I race through the DEAD exhibits and into the LIVE greenhouse...where there is about 1 butterfly per 8 cubic meters, and none of them are extra-large, like I would expect being so near the equator. (Oh yeah, apparently nobody felt that Indonesian earthquake, and no tsunami).

Anyway, I'm starting to get a bit of a hankering for those BIG and BLUE and SHINY BRIGHT DEAD butterflies...why do we only see those exotic ones DEAD behind glass? So I quickly run through The Butterfly Park (yeah, I guess the butterflies parked themselves outasight) and run into ANOTHER museum, but this time there behind the glass are...

...BEETLES! And these are LIVE and BIG and EXOTIC with PINCERS, like the Rhino Beetle and some kinda African beetle. And some even have a third protruding tusk-like thing bigger than the pincers arcing straight out over the pincers and I'm beginning to freak because these things are like 5 or 6 inches long, some with extra-wide bodies and...

So I run out and am gratified to see museum display cases of DEAD humungous beetles, and I thinkg that's a VERY good idea. No oxymoron there.

So I'm thinking that this is all very touristy and such but ultimately boring. Is the Night Safari going to be more of the same? I'm beginning to have doubts about the Night Safari.

Isn't that just like the mind? Here I am on 6 hours sleep heading for a mother of a jetlag experience within hours and relating my current tour with a tour I know nothing about and trying to rationalize doing both and thinking one will tell me how good the other is, and I have little idea how exactly STUPID my mind is right now, rationalizing as it goes along.

Anyway, with the cable cars and butterfly park a bust, out next stop is...

Underwater World Singapore! That's right. Just like at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco or the Monterey Aquarium or any of several dozen places around the U.S. and hudnreds around the world...And who would have guessed how UTTERLY COOL IT WAS GOING TO BE?

I mean I was writing it off as a disappointment, but when we get inside it, we see beautiful tropical fish in big tanks and HUGE nautilus (I thought they were foot-long snails) and then there is this tank with a stingray and a HUGE Alligator Gar, a fish about 3-4 feet long with a big butt and a front-end like an alligator.

And then I turn a corner to see these HUGE seahorses that look like plants called Sea Dragons or something, some kinda chameleon ability with arms like green plant leaves,

...and next to that is a Morey Eel tank with these HUGE things sticking out of of large tubes.

Not a fish
Not a whale
Not a 15-foot snail
It's...A MOREY!

(Dean Martin is rollin')

And then we descend into a basement hall where they have Pirahna and a video showing them ripping apart a pelican (with cameras both mysteriously above and below the water line) leaving a feathery, bony carcass.

And then we get to ride a little people conveyer belt through the standard underwater plexiglass TUBE the "Sphincter Spotlight" I call it and sure enough we get to see the sphincter of HUGE fish and sharks and stingrays (which have a bunch of parallel ones) and i mean some of these big ugly fish average 4 to 5 feet in length and some of the sharks are actually 7 feet.

With huge sphincters!

And I leave that place rather jazzed, still rationazing that I will get out to the Night Safari. Then we get on the bus and jetlag hits and I'm...

..not doing it.

But I get a second wind, enough to write this mess without correcting the typos...

Let me know if it was worth it.

*** I could do great things, if I weren’t so busy doing little things. Ashleigh Brilliant

Posted by witnit at March 29, 2005 11:33 PM

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