So… I’m at the hotel right now. We’ve taken a day of relaxation, so I decided this would be a nice moment to try and get my impressions on digital paper. So I’m going to try and use my journalistic and photograpy skills to verbalize all of the last few days.
Let’s first start with what I’ve been doing today. Even blind monkeys with no hands are able to write down what they’ve been doing.
The first day in Singapore was a real test of endurance. Hoi-Ying took me to so many places, that both her and I were hurting all over and decided we needed to take it slow. Today we did just that. After a good night’s rest we decided to go to a shopping mall, somewhere in Singapore. I came to Singapore in sweaters and jackets and large skateboard shoes… all too warm. So today was the time to buy some flipflops, which I haven’t worn since ages. I bought some real nice ones, which I think I’ll be wearing some more. But that’s about all we’ve done. We went back to the hostel to read some (I still need to hand in one assignment for my social psychology course). And we ate some at a food court down the block. Some real nice rice, veggies and chicken. The stuff we eat is pretty incredible and real cheap.
Anyways, that’s just one day. I’ve been here for a couple of days now and it’s all so weird. I know western countries and I suppose I know Vietnam, which leads to knowing eastern countries a little bit. But Singapore is so different from both of them and travelling around with a Chinese girl really forces you to try and understand some of this country. I never know what language people are speaking. Sometimes it’s English which just sounds like Chinese, it’s proper English, sometimes it’s Chinese, sometimes it’s Indian (I suppose…) and here in the hostel it’s mainly German. This all leads to some confusing stuff and also leads to me just wandering around mindlessly and just looking helpless. Which works quite okay. I don’t think I’ve offended anyone yet.
Which is actually quite hard not to do. Today Hoi-Ying was wearing a tank top, which really led to some frowny faces in the metro and around the hostel. Our hostel is in Little India and we need to walk past a couple of temples in order to get to the metro. I think confronting these religious people with our western values might be a bit too much. And that’s exactly what is so remarkable about Singapore. It’s such a mix of eastern beliefs and values on the one hand, and things that remind you of western countries on the other hand. For example: holding hands is about as far as Hoi-Ying and me go in public, we try to avoid kissing. People like to play music from their phones as loud as possible. For commercials they use as much American hiphop as possible. We saw a crew of lowrider bikers that were inspired just a little bit too much by Korn.
Well whatever, it’s still too hard to get it all on paper. I’ll just have to think about it some more, but I can’t be arsed to do just that now. I’ll just enjoy my beer here in our hostel and keep Hoi company some more.