31/7/10 Singapore

Jeff got sick shortly after our first foray out in Singapore. We think maybe it was the striped mosquitoes that were attacking us throughout the day. Dengue anyone?

After a day, he perked up and we decided to head out to see the sights. We took the train to the city. This picture is deceptive. We got on at the first stop and 1 minute later, the rest of Singapore jumped on the train with us. The city is pretty cool. This causeway leads over a marina and to the new casino, which looks like it has a cruise ship sitting on top of it. There are gardens up there but commoners like us can't get up there without taking out second mortgages.

Independence day is coming up and the military were practicing for the big parade to be held in a few weeks. This exercise consisted of blockading off the majority of the city (including all of the interesting stuff we wanted to see) and driving heavy artillery vehicles around the city for hours on end. I think we saw this tank at least 4 times. There were guys in every vehicle manning the guns with fingers on the triggers. I hope they weren't loaded but have a feeling they were. While we were walking in the city and then later in the airport, we saw police with semiautomatic rifles. Every one of them had their gun in hand with the finger on or near the trigger. No misbehaving here. And definitely no gum chewing.

We did manage to get into the city and see a bit. This is the biggest fountain in the world.... but it only actually does anything interesting in the evening. During the day, it blurbs out water in the style of a burst water pipe and people pay to go run their hands through the water. Again, there are some things I just don't understand over here.

The highlight of the day was wandering into the convention centre (to be truthful, we were just looking for air con) and finding that the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival was on.
These guys were performing in the lobby. Excellent.