Tourist Week, part 1

My parents and my grandma came to visit me in Singapore! It was a lot of fun playing tourist with them for a week. It actually felt like I was in another country for vacation. When I'm here at school, I don't do any of those things, partly because I don't have the money to. It was funny because Mom kept talking about how many westerners she kept seeing, but I had to remind her that if she got out of the tourist areas, she wouldn't see so many whities. Anyway, I've tried to write down the things we did while they were here. I can't remember what we did a couple days, but there's a lot of stuff to remember. There's so much stuff, I've divided it into Parts 1 and 2. So here's Part 1.

Thursday, 26 Jan
I met up with them at their hotel. Well, not quite. The cab driver misunderstood me and dropped me off about 4 blocks away. So I walked that far in the heat with my luggage and a hangover. Yes, a hangover. I figured I’ll go ahead and tell you because I’m sure Mom will anyway. I was sick as a dog. That’s what cheap pitchers on ladies’ night will do to you. So after I threw up in Chinatown, we decided to go back to the hotel, find me some medicine, and rest. Though I will say that it’s awesome being in college. Instead of yelling at me, we sat around at dinner (really good Italian, by the way) sharing drunk stories. Even Grandma threw some in. That was funny.

Friday, 27 Jan
We checked out Clarke Quay and Boat Quay. (I know you don’t know these places, but be patient… pictures will come, and then you can match it up. Like a game. It will be fun.) Boat Quay is pretty much a long row of restaurants and bars on the riverfront. We tried to just walk through there and look around, and that was a bad idea. Mom was getting impatient with the millions of salespeople we had to deal with who were trying to get us to eat or at least have a few drinks before Happy Hour ended. I told one guy I couldn’t drink in front of my parents (especially after the hangover fiasco), so he told me to drink soda. We walked to Clarke Quay to look around, which is like Boat Quay, but more spread out, more western, and slightly fancier. So we walked back to Boat Quay, and the soda guy remembered me, so we had Thai food there. It was pretty good.

Saturday, 28 Jan
First we tried to go to a festival for Chinese New Year, but that didn’t work out. Turns out that though the festival opens at 11 am, nothing really happens until about 8 pm. So we checked out some museums. We went to the Singapore History Museum, which was interesting, but a bit small. Mom and Grandma got tired and headed back to the hotel for a rest (jet-lag sucks; I’ll testify to that). Too bad for them, though, because Dad and I went to the Asian Civilizations Museum, which was way cooler. It was divided into galleries for the different ethnicities and time periods represented in Singapore. I read about this Singaporean legend: There was a great rock at the mouth of the Singapore River. It got there when the strongest man in Temasek (ancient Singapore) threw it there. Apparently this guy got his strength from eating the vomit of a demon. (I’m not making this up, I swear.) And the stone stayed there until a “foolish British engineer” blew it up to make the river passage bigger for large ships. Yeah, cool story.

Sunday, 29 Jan
On Sunday we went to Arab Street. We visited the Sultan Mosque, where we took our shoes off and walked in only to find that we were allowed only in the foyer. Though we could still see into the main temple, we weren’t allowed in there. Although it looked very nice, we were surprised to find how simple and undecorated it was on the inside. The outside is very big and beautiful, and the inside was just kind of plain. After, we shopped a little on Arab St, though most things were pretty quiet on a Sunday. There was a Malay street festival a couple blocks over, so we checked that out. They were selling the typical jewelry, clothes, food, etc. There was one woman selling massages, and she had a very clear sign saying “For Ladies Only.” Most Malays are Muslim, and Muslim women are not permitted to touch men at all who aren’t related to them. We tried to do a little shopping, but most of the places were closed. Not only was it a Sunday, but it was the beginning of Chinese New Year, so most things were shut down for days.