Saturday, October 14, 2006

Raffle's, Merlion, Esplande, Fountain, etc.

We have been very busy these last few days. We had to come to Singapore to get our Visas for Thailand. You have to get your visa out of the country because it starts the day you enter. You don't need a visa if you stay in a country for under 30 days, just went you go over that amount of time. So oh darn we had to go to Singapore for a few days.

While we were there we of course saw more than just the Thailand Embassy! The street that our hotel was on is Orchard Road. This is like the magnificent mile (Michigan Ave in Chicago). Only a couple differences. In Chicago the street is lined with top end stores, restaurants, museums, and bars. In Singapore its mainly just stores. Hermes, Coach, D&G, Prada, Tiffany & CO, etc. If you love to shop this is the place to spend a lot of money fast. Singapore is also known for its electronics, so troy and I got new digital camera. So my pictures will greatly improve after this entry! The subway system is very very clean here, most of the time you are walking from one subway station to the next you are in a mall. So it is hard to find the actual subway system because they are usually in the malls. I was told this is the nicest subway system in the world! I can believe that.

Raffle's Hotel- is a beautiful hotel. It's been even prettier after I left their famous Long Bar-Home of the Singapore Sling drink. If you never have had one before I would recommend them. It's like a sex on the beach but with a different type of alcohol. They are very good.

Merlion statue-is a statue that is 1⁄2 lion and 1⁄2 fish. The island of Singapore was found because a man in a boat thought he saw a white lion on the beach (they are sacred here). Then it became a major fishing town. This island itself is not large; we to a taxi from one end to the other (long way) and it took about 30 min.

The Fountain of Wealth-this is the world's largest fountain. We went there to partake in its ritual, which is the walk round the middle bottom of the fountain. It is said that walking round the fountain and touching its water brings good luck to the person carrying out the ritual. Sir Richard Branson did it so it must work!

We also saw a couple temples. I didn't take many pictures of the second one because a service was going on while we were there and I felt that would be rude. The first was the Thian Hock Keng Temple. And then the Sri temple.

Esplande is the name of their new convention center. We didn't go to an event but did see it from the outside.
Night Safari. The zoo there is suppose to be pretty good but since we have both see a lot of zoos we wanted to do something a little different. So we took a Night Safari tour. This tour takes you on a trolley through an area of land where the animals roam around. Obviously the very dangerous ones like the leopards and lion have some glass between them and us. But most animals just wandered a round. You are not allowed to take photos with a flash since these are night creatures and would hurt their eyes and startled them. Since my camera can't do that you don't have pictures of this sorry. However we got to walk along with hyenas, elephants, giraffes, hippos (they were huge). One tourist last weekend wasn't following the rules (like oh so many stupid people) and took a flash picture of the hippo, well just like they warn you the hippo got scared and trampled the lady and her family-I bet she doesn't do that again! This happened the week before I got there, I figured that would scare people a little, but sadly enough many people still had there cameras out with the flash on.

I know you have all heard me say it before. But why do some people think they need special treatment just because of who they think they are. One day's examples.

While at the Zoo people were told in 6 different languages NOT to take pictures with flashes. Is that really that hard to understand? Why do they think they are so high and mighty that they can ruin an animal's vision for their mere one picture? Or startled and animal that's 10-20 times their size to the point it greatly injuries themselves, family, and staff. Even when the staff came up to them and told them to turn their flash off they continued to do it. I think their asses should have just been thrown out of the zoo without a refund!
Then there are the parents who think that just because they are there with their child that they have the right to not listen to staff members. The people behind us in line at the train (for the safari) were instructed to move to the end of the train line so that it could be filled in correctly. They had to sit in the front! So they stood there until staff "made" them move to the back to fill in the open areas. Then while we went to the FREE show at the end of the zoo night this boy (probably 30plus years old) decided that he needed to sit as close to the stage as possible so the A-hole actually removed the RESERVED sign on the chair so he could sit. The staff told him to move and he got in their face about how he paid for is admission just like everyone else so no one should be special and get reserved seating. The idiot later found out why that seat was reserved-it was reserved for a cast member and an 8-foot snake! Which showed up almost on his lap-I hope he shat himself!

Other examples that bug me lately. And I would just like to say..yes I realize I don't have children but come on...

When at the airport they announce overhead that they are now seating people with disabilities and SMALL children. Small children to me is probably under 5years old. Not teenagers (and they looked pretty healthy to me)! They also announce the flight is full so please put one item under your seat and one in an overhead bin. I have had this happen many times. If I have one item I will put it under my seat so there is more room. But I have seen so many people that still put their two items up in the bins. And most of the time one article is very small anyway-like a coat. Stupid. I have actually had one of these type of people tell me (after hearing me bitch) that someday I would understand why people do that on plans and that's why he wants to be seated right away so he can do that. Well would now consider myself somewhat of a traveler now and I still don't get it. I don't get how anyone can think of themselves as greater than someone else.
We are done here, so back to Thailand we go.

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