First day!
Today was a big first day. It was my (Suzanne’s) first day in Singapore, my first day in Asia, and my first day in a tropical country. Dave’s been here before so he had a little bit more of an idea of what to expect. I woke up around 5 am, ravenously hungry and unable to sleep. Luckily, we had brought a couple boxes of granola bars along for just this kind of thing. After I ate one I was able to fall back asleep and we slept till about 8. We got up and hung out with our hosts for awhile, and ate some fresh King Lychees and delicious homemade Malaysian food. In the late morning we headed out with Mark and his older son, Wey Han. After stopping in at the Tourist Bureau, we headed out to the Aquarium. It was small but really neat—we saw octopuses (octopii?) rays, crabs, little sharks, and all kinds of fish. They had a great tunnel under a giant tank, with a conveyer belt, so you could just stand and look up while the fish swim over you and you’re moved slowly around in a circle—a great idea. Dave has a video that we’ll post later.
By this time, we were all hungry, so we headed to a hawker center for some lunch, which included grilled prawns, Hainanese Chicken, fresh lime juice, some sort of greens, a noodle dish with cockles, and something else. After we ate, we stopped at home to pick up Swee Leen and Lee Han, and went out to the Botanical Gardens. They’re completely different than the gardens at home—almost nothing is quite like what we have, although we did see a few plants that we grow in pots in our apartment. It was amazingly green and colorful! We saw pineapples, ginger, galangal, and lots of other stuff. The highlight of the day was definitely the Orchid Garden, a special section of the Botanical Gardens. It was stunning—even though it seemed to be sort of a lull in terms of number of orchids blooming, there were more kinds than I’ve ever seen in my life. We took a ton of pictures, which we’ll post tomorrow.
As we headed home I completely passed out in the car, but it was only 6:30 so I really needed to stay awake for awhile. Dave and I decided to head out to dinner for chilli crab, which is Singapore’s signature dish. Picture lobster, except harder to eat, and served in a pot full of a delicious spicy-sweet-tomato-y sauce. It was just spicy enough to make my tongue burn but not too spicy to enjoy. However, it was very, very difficult to eat without making a mess. The waitress was totally laughing at me. Dave got pepper and salt crab, which is crab fried in a pepper and salt sauce, and which was equally tasty and a lot easier to eat. The place we had dinner was in a little complex, so after we ate we wandered around and then tried another place for dessert (cheesecake, which Dave has been craving). Finally we caught a cab and headed home, and discovered we’d made it awake till 11:30! We’re hoping tomorrow will feel a lot more normal and a lot less groggy—today was just weird.
