Day 3 was our “cultural” tour of Singapore. We started in “Ox Cart Water”, the funny-named Chinatown. Early immigrants from China settled here and were surrounded by Muslim Malays and British colonists. But now it’s just weird to think that a country with 74% ethnic Chinese still has a Chinatown. At Tanjong Pagar, we picked
Vacation
Singapore 2/5
The thing with the Earth being round is that jet lag happens. The thing with traveling with an inconsiderate little person is that your waking hours is a factor of both your biological clock and hers. There’s a place and time for everything, and fighting the inevitable just wasn’t appropriate in this case. So, we
Singapore 1/5
After some 19 hours of air time, we arrived at Changi Airport, the gateway to paradise. One of my least favorite things about long-haul flights is the back stiffness associated with being stuck in an ergonomically inappropriate position for too many hours. Well, this time I found out that having a squirmy baby solves much
Japan Honeymoon – 100%
Today marked our last day in Japan. We both were sad about ending this fun trip, but at the same time relieved to end this continuous pain from walking too much. After checking out of the hotel, we locked our luggage up in a convenient coin-operated locker at Shinjuku Station. This was the third time
Japan Honeymoon – 90%
At the onset of this trip, I thought we’d have a chance to practice and learn some Japanese. Perhaps I could pick up a phrase or two, or ask for the whereabouts of a restroom. It shouldn’t be hard to at least see some improvement in my pronunciation of the limited vocabulary that I commanded
Japan Honeymoon – 80%
After picking up a couple of heavenly sandwiches from the Family Mart downstairs, we enjoyed them in the brisk morning outside an after school classroom names WAC. Then we decided that it wasn’t enough, and had seconds at a 24-7 McDonald’s filled with trendy youngsters who probably didn’t go home all night. I spotted this
Japan Honeymoon – 70%
The mountain climbing trips did wear us our because we passed out watching TV at 9:30 and didn’t get up until 5:30am. Hong got up and watched another hour of TV around 3, but she also got up slightly later. We took a brief morning walk to Higashi (East) Honganji, a Buddhist temple around the
Japan Honeymoon – 60%
It had become clear that we were adjusting for jetlag backwards: we were mostly awake between 12:30 and 7am, talking, showering, soaking beat-up feet and applying Tiger Balm, watching TV, etc, with a nap somewhere in there. Turning on Japanese TV for the first time was pretty entertaining. Too bad they didn’t play any prime-time
Japan Honeymoon – 50%
It’s pretty lame to start every post with a jetlag update. But, seriously, both people waking up to the morning at 11:58pm was not funny. We lay down less than 3 hours ago! Mixing half-ass attempts to sleep, shower, and magazines, we killed enough time before getting breakfast from 7-Eleven at 4:30. Oh thank heaven.
Japan Honeymoon – 40%
The jetlag problem improved drastically today as we woke up at 3 and stopped pretending to sleep by 3:30. We carried on some deep conversations (because 3 hours of sleep really cleared our heads like Drano would a toilet) for two hours, then we stepped our for an early morning walk like a grandparent-aged couple.