Saturday in Singapore

So its my first full day here in Singapore. Some initial thoughts:

The city is clean. Really clean. The only foul smells anywhere are from some of the stalls selling raw fish or other dried fish products that have that have a funky, fish out in the open on a hot as balls day smell to them.

It is hot. Damn hot. I walked around from ~8 AM until 11:30 AM and I am just dripping with sweat. Hot and humid, two great tastes that go great together. Bugis and the Arab district (Arab St, Hajj Lane) were the destinations of the morning. Mostly aimless wandering and some photos now and again as I orient myself. I did some shopping on Arab St. and found a nice present for Steph and some potential batik fabrics which we could hang in our entry way. Gotta check with the boss first and see if she approves before buying them.

Eating here is quite fun. First I ran into a fruit stand with some cut open dragon fruit, something I had never tried. So I bought a piece, it reminded me of a firm, purple kiwi, but not as tart. The hawker also convinced me to try some jackfruit, it was nothing special. I walked around the hawker food stalls in Bugis and sat down with some seafood laksa (seafood coconut milk soup, yum! I'm sure this was much better than what was featured on Top Chef last week), a Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and then a cool glass of soya milk to soothe my burning tongue. That laksa was seriously spicy but so very good. And cheap! All in I spent about US $6.

No signs of jet lag yet. I slept about 6 hours last night (1 AM - 7 AM, thanks Ambien!). Since the middle of the day is the hottest, I'm going to chill at the hotel for a bit before exploring a bit more tonight, possibly in Little India. I'll be poking around Wikitravel further to see if there is anything else that I need to see on my 2 days off here before work begin