2 days in Singapore

I made it back to Singapore late Monday night, and was able to wake up for work this morning…barely. Vacation can really take it out of you! plus there is a 1 hour time change. I’ll get my photos together and post the highlights!

Then I have just one more day here before I’m leaving again for California. It should be good to get back to see family and friends for a little while. Joe is here for one more day- flying back on Wednesday. Tonight we’re going to see the Night Safari here in Singapore.

On a side note- when i got back to my appartment I noticed the one vacent lot across the street from me had a For Sale sign now posted.... I'm sure it's just a matter of time before more construction starts up there too.

Phuket

The first thing I've learned on this trip is that it's not a good idea trying to travel to Bangkok on a one way ticket with no return or forwarding flights. Our trip almost didn't even get under way when we tried to check in at the Singapore airport. However, I guess because we were white and I smiled really nicely the agent gave us our boarding passes after talking w/ her manager. Once we arrived in Bangkok, passing though immigration they also wanted to see proof of a return ticket... which it seemed everyone else had... but they did let us though w/ little problem.
After all that the trip got going fine.
We spent 3 nights in Bangkok which was fun. The last time I was there it was fur such a short time I didn't get to explor the city at all. There is a really nice subway and skytrain which make getting around really easy. Cabs tended to try to rip us off though. We managed to book oneway tickets to Phuket for Saturday night where I'll stay 2 nights. I booked litteraly the last ticket back to Singapore for monday night.... I guess I overestimated how easy it would be to get back to Singapore by Monday as I later found out Phuket is really booked because last Thrus was National Day for Singapore and this Monday is a public hodiday in Thailand so everyone is on vacation. At least I'll get back to work by Tuesday so I'll have two days to get things in order to leave again for California!
I been taking a lot of good photos I'll post once I get back

back to Thailand

The national day celebration is tomorrow and we're (myself and Joe) are skipping town to Thailand. We're flying to Bangkok tonight and the rest of the plan is still under development. I'm planning on returning on Monday but don't have tickets yet since we may or may not try to go to Phuket as well... this should be an interesting trip...

tourists

For the last day I've been acting like a tourist running all over town seeing the sites. My friend Joe is in town for a little over a week so I've become a tour guide since I'm a 'local' here now. It's been such a long time since I've been out seeing a lot of the tourist sites and this is kind of a good time since the city is really getting ready for National Day on August 9th... it's so patriotic. I guess people like to hang flags out here and the govn't just changed the law to allow people to hang the flag outside their windows without a pole for a whole extra month.

Joe found some Singapore tourists shop and wanted to buy some things...

Singapore Tourist Heaven! This place had every kind of trinket you could ever imagine...especially if you were to imagine like 500 types of key chains and shot glasses.
...

This one was an interesting souvenir I found sitting there on the shelf right next to the merlion key chains. I'm not exactly sure what it was or why it was there but I guess it must help create a lasting memory of Singaore... maybe?