First Impressions of Singapore

Due to jet lag and sheer confusion over the difference in timezones, Scott and I woke up at 4:30 am. We decided to go ahead and get an early start for the day trying to stay up later that night. We managed to find the MRT station which is the equivalent of DCs metro station. Its actually set up very similar so we didn't have too much trouble figure out how to navigate through it, but even so everyone has been very nice about helping us out since we definitely have that deer in the headlights look going on. Even the MRT station was spotless with lots of shopping which ended up being a good indicator for the parts of Singapore we would see today.

Evidently Singapore doesn't wake up very early which is fine by me. We, however, still had our schedules screwed up so we got to Orchard Road's shopping district around 10am. Most of the stores don't open until 11 and even then they weren't all open. We decided to get breakfast at Burger King since there are a ton of "American" restaurants here. You can find most US fast food chains here, but some of the menu items are a little different. For instance, Burger King has turkey ham, turkey bacon, and turkey sausage instead of pork.

Singapore really does love food and shopping (I really think I am going to like this place!) We walked around for hours and into numerous shopping arcades or plazas. The stores inside are much smaller than in the States and our favorite shopping center had exceptionally small stores. Many of the stores were the size of a walk in closet, but there were tons of them. Each store seems to specialize in a few items instead of the large department stores where you can buy everything at once. We loved the little stores though and I can't stress the size or quantity. There was one watch store that literally only fit the owner and me. It was fun though and everyone is really nice. They love to give out business cards and I still have the issue of smiling too much so I get approached frequently. I need to work on just walking away because they just keep talking and trying to sell their products.

Honestly, I am still a little intimated by all the hawker centers, but am trying to work up my courage to try some of the food. They have food courts with tons of these little shops selling food and they are everywhere. I am just not really sure what the food is yet. I tried a Japanese fast food place today that had sticks of chicken and unagi (eel) served with rice. It was pretty good. The funny thing is... Scott and I haven't seen any traditional sit down restaurants. I am sure they have to be somewhere, but mostly there are the hawker stands ranging from fruit, noodles, indian, korean, japanese, dessert, pasteries, chinese.... its not possible to name even half of them. Well, I could go on about food forever so I will just get back to this subject later =)