Singapore

We had heard a lot about Singapore and had high expectations coming in. It's safe to say that it exceeded all of our expectations and nearly made us give up our American citizenship. For those of you that don't know, Singapore is an island country that borders right up next to Malaysia. It is one of the richest, cleanest, and technologically advanced countries in the world so when we departed the plane, it felt as if we were stepping into the future. We took the subway right to our hotel from the airport and were only five minutes away from our hostel.

The Merlion

The first place that we stayed was right in the middle of Chinatown. It was a called "Beary Nice Hostel". I had never stayed in a hostel before and was a little nervous/apprehensive to do so. But since Singapore is westernized, the prices are also westernized so a hostel made a lot of sense for us. To my surprise, the hostel was actually one of my favorite places that we stayed on our whole trip. The atmosphere was extremely friendly, the people we met were nice, and the location was prime (mostly because we were right across the street from the biggest hawker center in the city). It was a great experience and it definitely eased a lot of my concerns about hostels.

But now, back to the hawker centers. In Singapore they aren't really big on fast food chains. Instead they have centers all over the city where they house hundreds of food stalls in one place. This is really nice and actually makes a ton of sense when compared to the food carts scattered all over busy streets in Thailand. The food in Singapore was amazing as it was another melting pot of cultures. In the hawker center, the best way to find out what was good and what wasn't was to find the longest line and just jump in it. Sometimes there will be two stalls, one right next to the other, selling the exact same food but at one stall has one person in line and at the other stall has 20 people in line.

Inside one of the hawker centers

Mmmmmmm

This is probably a line you would want to jump in

One of the touristy things that we wanted to do while we were there was to go to the Singapore Zoo. It's known as one of the best zoos in the world and we could really see why. They didn't have any cages at all in the zoo and the animals were treated really well. The only thing separating the animals and us was a moat, or sometimes nothing at all. While monkeys climbing trees right above us was pretty awesome, the best part was definitely following the feeding tour. We got to see them feed lions, cheetahs, tigers, jaguars, etc and it was amazing to see the animals active and fighting over food.

We were being tourists

Roar

Getting his grub on

Another really nice thing about Singapore was the public space they had for relaxing and entertainment. They are right on the water and have a huge area called Marina bay where you can overlook the city skyline and see the big "Merlion" (Singapore's mascot). They had live music going on, light shows, and a nice food center there which was surprising since it was just a regular day and nothing special.

City skyline

This was the kind of feeling that we got the whole time we were in Singapore. It was almost as if they were putting on a huge production. Everywhere in the city, whether it was Little India, Chinatown, or the botanical gardens, it felt like we were in a huge theme park. Everything was so perfect and clean and up to certain regulations. But finally, in our last destination in Asia, we were able to see the future. Hopefully America will be able to get there someday, because in Singapore they already did it. They are definitely there.

Drinks at the marina

Disney theme park or Singapore?