Hey from Singapore!!

I'm on a computer at my hostel right now. My hostel is in the Arab Quarter of Singapore. Today it rained and right now it looks like it's going to rain. But enough about right now, let's talk about how the journey's been!

We grabbed our flight on Friday evening. We have a discount airline, so we can't eat on the airplane unless we buy the airplane's stuff. I brought along granola bars to eat, so we all just sat there hungry until we landed. After landing we got our luggage and bussed it near our hostel, then taxied closer and got to our hostel. It's a pretty nice hostel. I stayed in a dorm bed above a guy I didn't know, so I was always worried about moving around too much or making noise, but it worked out fine.

The next day we visited many of the temples around Singapore. A word of note: if you ever go to visit the temples in Singapore, wear sandals. I wore my hiking boots and it was a pain having to take them off every temple I went in. The temples were very interesting and beautiful, though. It's really warm in Singapore, so by 3:00 I was drained.

We went back to the hostel to recoup and get some dinner (at a really good Muslim restaurant) and that night we went to the Night Safari, which is a tram ride featuring all sorts of tropical animals, none of them in cages. It was amazing! The lions were cool, the tigers were mostly sleeping, the giraffes, elephants, and hippos were HUGE, and my favorite part was probably a bat house where you could see (rather large) fruit bats three feet away from you chowing on oranges.

Afterwards we looked for a bar but didn't find one in Little India until about 11:30. Alcohol is really expensive in Singapore, but we got a couple of beers to bring in my birthday. I'M 23 NOW WOO!! Afterwards we went to an electronic market to get an outlet converter then headed back to the hostel.

This morning we headed to a park and did a hike through a tropical rainforest park. On the hike we saw a lot of monkeys. It rained, however, and we got pretty wet. We were glad when we got back to the hostel.

So we're all freshly showered and on the Internet. We'll probably grab dinner at a place around here then head to catch our bus to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia at 10:30. We'll sleep on the bus and probably arrive around 7 AM. We'll do some hiking there, but it won't be as warm (since we'll be up in a mountain). I'll try to keep everyone updated!