Singapore Slingin'

I got back from  my Singapore/Hong Kong adventure on Thursday. The reason for my delayed reporting on Singapore?  There really isn't much to report.

Don't mind the red square around Taiwan.  This is our journey, from Hong Kong to Singapore and back.  Shanghai is 764 miles north of Hong Kong.  As an experienced long distance driver that doesn't sound to bad but infrastructure is subpar and driving skills in China are even worse.  I once, in what I refer to as the worst 17 hours of my life, took the train from Hong Kong to Shanghai.  Needless to say, I don't enjoy sitting on the floor of trains for 17 hours, being spat on or smoking in close quarters. It was not fun.

I went to the Singapore pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo and I could tell you lots of statistics about the country since the pavilion displayed the entire Singaporean census on its walls.  What you should know is that it is an island country nestled very closely between Malaysia and Indonesia.  Apparently you can see both countries from the top of the casino but it wasn't worth the twenty bucks to take a peak.  The size of Singapore is estimated as "3.5 times the size of Washington D.C." therefore, pretty small but densely populated with 4.5 million people.  It is the second most densely population country in the world after Monaco.  Compared to Shanghai and Hong Kong which are super crowded, you really wouldn't notice how densely populated Singapore is because there was hardly anyone on the streets!  The city/country seemed dead. The country used to be a British outpost which left its legacy of English as the most widely spoken of the four official languages.

Speaking of dead, the wife of Singapore's first Prime Minister, and mother of its current PM, Kwa Geok Choo passed away on October 3, our first day in the country.  She seems like she was a very interesting woman.  She attended Cambridge University in the 1940s as a Queen's Scholar.  Shew graduated first in her class, and her husband came in second.  They met at Cambridge and had a secret wedding in the UK.  They had an official public wedding three years later in Singapore.  She was apparently very influential on her husbands policies.  When exploring Singapore, we wanted to walk to the presidential palace but security was tight as people came to the palace to pay their remembrance.

Singapore is known for having great food and that's really the best things it has going. Kirsti and I shared a beef dish and fried shrimp the first night at a open air restaurant by our hostel.  We also explored the large Little India section of the city and had a great meal there.  The most memorable meal, and most expensive meal, we ate in Singapore was delicious Singaporean crab at a restaurant right on the water down town.  The "small crabs" that we ordered were huge and absolutely delicious.

Dinning on Mosque Street

For a country hat give name for an alcoholic beverage, you would think we loaded up on drinks.  We actually only had one Singapore sling.  For those interest in recreating my Singapore experience, here's the recipe

THE ORIGINAL

The original from Raffles Hotel in Singapore is:
1 1/2 ounce (30 ml) gin
1/2 ounce (15 ml) Heering Cherry Liqueur
1/4 ounce (7.5 ml) Cointreau
1/4 ounce (7.5 ml DOM Benedictine
4 ounces (120 ml) pineapple juice
1/2 ounce (15 ml) lime juice
1/3 ounce (10 ml) grenadine
dash Angostura bitters

The "dirty" AKA Americanized version is more simple and in my opinion, more delicious.
1.5 oz. Gin
.5 oz. Benedictine
.5 oz. Grenadine
Dash Lemon Juice
.5 oz. Cherry Brandy
Club Soda

Singapore slingin'!

Singapore frown on chewing gum (can't buy it there) so they surely frown on drinking.  Alcohol is expensive there.  A bottle of absolute is $65 USD! we got the same bottle for $20USD duty free in the airport!

The trip to Singapore is almost worth it for the food and the singing metro.  Singapore has a musical theater scene which is apparent when waiting for the metro and you hear "The train is coming! The train is coming! Please que up!".  We need this in Shanghai.  Orderly lines would be shocking.

Irony: Come to Singapore, from China and stay in Chinatown

Hopscotch with chinese numbers!

The British know how to colonize

from one urban city to another

the one with the longer pants is my roommate John Wayne.  he was pulled from the crowd to particpate in a fire show at the night safari (rip off) and he was hilarious.  This really made the night.

We stayed on temple street and the next street over was Mosque Street