Singapore Slings

Singapore
Eastern Time plus 13 hours

Singapore is the busiest port in the world. It is on the tip of the Malay Peninsula and ships traveling east or west usually stop here for fuel and supplies.

Singapore is a beautiful, well kept city. This thing that looks like a revolving bar is really a judicial building.

They have very strong laws/fines to keep everyone regulated.

• Jaywalking: 50 SD
• Littering: up to 1000 SD
• Smoking in an undesignated area: Up to 500 SD

The city is very green and lush. They get about 96” rain a year. They had had 10 straight days of rain when we arrived. Notice the ferns growing in the trees.We took a city tour in the morning and then took a cab to Raffles Hotel, home of the Singapore Sling. It is a neat old place that was redone into suites in the early 1990s. We were told by our cab driver that the suites rent for between $500 and $6000 a night. He said that Michael Jackson had tried to rent out the whole place so he could stay there in privacy, but they told him he could only rent half.We had lunch at the Long Bar Grill followed by Singapore Slings in the famous Long Bar. The Singapore Slings reminded me of our great Happy Hours in college drinking them at Andy's Library.

Jeff managed to mooch a Financial Times from the guy sitting next to us so he could read the Greenspan article he heard about on TV. The lunch was fantastic and the place was great.

Here are a few shots of the desserts.
We hung out at Raffles for a couple of hours and then back to the ship.

At this point we decided we would cancel our tour for Kuala Lumpur. It is a long drive from the port and we just didn't feel like it after our overland etc. After we canceled it, I felt like the next day was a snow day from teaching school! A day off! A day off! It was really funny! In fact, it felt so great that we decided to do tomorrow in Penang on our own so I canceled that, too.