November 1 2010 / Singapore

Today I woke up and went to go grab breakfast—my objective today was to go and see the Peranakan museum, as I was going to be doing a paper analyzing it for my Anthropology of Tourism class.  If Julie was to be found, I was going to leave with her early in the morning at breakfast, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so I decided I might as well just wait for my group and go out at noon.  But just as I curled back into bed, a knock on my door alerted me to Jared and Julie!  They were going to find internets at the hotel of Kathy and Miranda, so I decided to join them with the knowledge that afterwards we could go to the museum. 

After a brief stop at McDonalds (in which I teased Jared at supporting the Evil Empire and then ate my words when he gave me one of their hash browns… SO DELICIOUS) we hopped in a cab to go to the Bayview Hotel.  At the hotel we plopped down and opened our laptops to find glorious, glorious internet.  I spent far too much time trying to upload more Morocco pictures—I can’t wait for the time where I will be able to just set my laptop down at home and upload everything at once.  And after a while we decided that it was about that time to head back out.  Turned out that the museum was only several blocks away or so, so we decided to walk.  We went to the 7-11 next door to buy a couple of merlion postcards, and I also found an EPIC GIFT for someone back home there.  Then we started searching for a place to dine for lunch.  After passing up several crowded food courts, we found a fancy and entirely empty North Indian restaurant (Indian food? what a surprise!) in one of the malls.  It was beautiful inside, everything all red and wooden, and a man who I think was the owner came out and talked to us for a little while, because he noticed my massive cupping bruises and shared a story about his brother who fixed his back problem through cupping.  He was very friendly and nice.  :)  Our food was INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS—I had butter chicken, which is this red curry with chicken, and garlic naan.  I am going to miss real Indian food so much, I swear.  It is my new favorite food type. 

After a while we headed over to the museum.  The museum is dedicated to people who have mixed ethnic origins, particularly people of Chinese descent,  as Singapore is a big crossroads for lots of different people.  It was a very modern museum, just big enough so that I could wander around happily but small enough so I didn’t feel horribly overwhelmed.  There were lots of exhibits for children—my favorite was this video game that helped tell the story of Ramayana (a prince in India who had to rescue his wife from an evil king).  There were lots of interesting sociological angles that I’m planning on working for my paper.  It’ll be good.

After that we headed back to the cruise center mall.  We had objectives: we needed to buy stamps (I hadn’t sent out my India postcards yet), find some Nutella for Julie, and get boba.  It took us a while, but we managed.  I even spent the last of my cash on a little Singapore shotglass with a merlion on it, which I had to smuggle through security because Singapore doesn’t allow alcohol paraphernalia (Singapore is crazy).  But I’m just going to use it to hold toothpicks anyway, you know. 

Upon getting back to the ship, I sat out in Tymitz Square to write approximately ten thousand postcards.  If you get a postcard that doesn’t say very much on it, please don’t be mad—I had to write many of them in a very small amount of time so I could turn them in to be sent out.  Bryan even decided to “help” me out by guest-starring the writing of my postcard to the Burrow, so get excited for that, ya’ll.  People kept coming up to me and asking, horrified, what had happened, so I made up an elaborate story for getting caned because I was smuggling heroin.  Most did not understand the allure of Chinese cupping—then again, I think that’s something you need to experience in order to fully understand. 

After that I took a MASSIVE NAP.  It’s getting harder and harder to just charge through the ports without resting, because the ports are getting closer together so there are no days in between to just rest.  When I woke up I had bypassed dinner, so I woke up Julie and Jared to get dinner out on Deck 7.  Delicious burgers were ours!  Martha came by, as did Steven, and we talked about our time in Singapore and looking forward to Vietnam, and while we were up there, the ship slowly pulled away from harbor and went off into the night.  After a while Julie, Jared and I decided to make a tri-venn diagram that had all of our similarities and differences, which was great fun—the first thing to go up was that Julie and Jared both care about how circular venn diagram circles are, while I do not.  :D  In the middle are lots of lovely geeky things, like DND, Liam Neeson, organ donors… we are all over the place, and the circles still aren’t filled in! 

I stayed up late because we GAINED an hour for once, so I wrote part of my blog for Singapore.  I really need to get back on track with my blogging.  I will get back on track!  :)  Also, my back hurts intensely from the backpack straps laying across it all day.  Darn you, bruises!