The last few days have been a whirlwind. There’s a lot I want to say about it and I’m sure I’ll miss a few things.

To start, though, my flight out was an adventure. I was originally scheduled to fly Boston -> JFK -> Frankfurt -> Singapore. My flight from Boston to JFK was delayed 2 hours an hour before departure. I also was only supposed to have a 2 hour layover in JFK before the delay. This posed a bit of a problem. After talking to the flight attendant, calling two different booking sites, and the airline’s customer help line, I was told my best chance of making it to Singapore was to take the delayed flight to JFK and deal with it there.

That is, anyways, until a wonderful flight attendant named Glorisel came to the rescue. She was on and off the phone for several hours talking to various airline companies trying to find a way to get me to Singapore. She managed to get me on a flight going through Newark and Hong Kong, and at 10p.m. est, 9 hours after I had arrived at the airport, I was finally boarding a plane!

Singapore is a strange place. It’s a big city on a tiny island. It’s a melting pot of cultures, with significant populations from China, Malaysia, and India, and the effects of British Colonialism still evident. It’s also wealthy and surprisingly modern. The streets are lined with luxury cars and I’ve probably been in more malls in the past 3 days than in the rest of my life. There is a lot of pride in Singapore as well. We are coming up on Singapore’s 50th National Day on August 9th (which we’ll be here for) and it’s evident not just from the decorations that are starting to pop up on city streets but also from how often locals will drop it into conversation.

I know that Singapore gets a reputation of being a strict police state, but really, this isn’t at all what I’ve experienced. Sure, you see signs like below on public transit (I got a good laugh from them explicitly banning durian on the trains, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with durian check out Andrew Zimmern’s first taste), but on the other hand I haven’t seen a single police officer yet and apparently most of the police stations are only staffed during normal business hours.

The food here is amazing. I’m not sure what they do differently, but it tastes so much better than anything like it that I’ve had back home. Here are a few pictures, even though the pictures don’t do the food justice.

I’ve spent the first few days exploring the city. We’ve explored Chinatown and Little India, walked through countless malls, eaten too much delicious food, and walked through Hindu and Buddhist temples. Yesterday we drove to the west side of the island which is still largely undeveloped. There we explored a traditional dragon kiln used for making pottery, almost ran over a Malaysian water montitor, and visited the various graveyards on the island. There are fields after fields of these graveyards, organized into Christian, Hindu, and Chinese groups. It’s incredible seeing the different character of each of these grave styles on seas of headstones, especially when there was usually no more than a walkway separating two religions.

Tonight Adela’s uncle hosted a traditional Singaporean dinner. Adela got pictures of all of the food, which I’ll have to get from her. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing dinner.

Tomorrow we fly to Hanoi, Vietnam. See you there!