Sultry Singapore

When I looked up sultry in the dictionary it was the perfect description of Singapore. There is something sexy about the architecture and the beautiful young people, the sleek quality of newness on every corner. And the heat. That's the best part of this definition. characterized by oppressive heat and humidity; "the summer was sultry and oppressive"; "the stifling atmosphere"; "the sulfurous atmosphere preceding a thunderstorm". I can't imagine living in a stifling heat like that all year round. That's all that I could think of in that heat: 'it's like this the whole year round'.

I enjoyed Singapore. It was clean and I felt like I was in a city that I could relate to again. It wasn't much outside of my comfort zone, an idea that was personified by all the of the western expats. We spent two nights in a classic hostel which was very central and pretty clean. On the 3-6th nights we stayed with a friend of Alex's, Lorrie. Lorrie worked with Alex in Ware at GSK. She was just transferred to Singapore for a year. Although Lorrie and I got along really well and I was very glad to have gotten to know her and spend time with her, it was also so nice to stay with her as we got to stay in a home. It's amazing how a home can feel after 6 weeks on the road. We got to do laundry and have music playing in the background, skype our families and generally feel safe and happy.

We ate some fantastic food, both at hawker centres and in restaurants. It is a very nice to place to visit, sorry Dad. Some of the sites we saw: Botanical Gardens (so georgeous, and free), National Singapore museum, Little India, Boat Quay, Clrke Quay, Colonial district and Central Business District, which really felt like Canary Wharf. Two things I want to see if we go back: the zoo, I was sorry we didn't get a chance to see that. and China town.

On our second to last day we went to Parasilk, an electronics store that my father found on through his online research to be the best store in Singapore for such things. And low and behold when I arrived, Lorrie confirmed this to be true. Well done, dad! We had a chat about cameras and we decided on the Panasonic LX3 Lumix. We took the camera out to play the first night and it takes some great photos. It is not as powerful as the proper SLR but because of the size I am so happy with it. We compared the processors with a couple of other small SLR-like cameras and this one had the best processor. It is not a large optical zoom, 3 I think, but the camera is 10 mega pixels, so we can always crop the picture after the fact. I feel like the size is the most important part of it, it is not only small, but it seemed to have better specs than some of its peers. The guy said it was good for night shots. And the brilliant thing is that it does do good photos in low light. If we want to open the shutter for longer, we can, but since it is not a real SLR you can't feel the shutter opening and closing. The result is that it doesn't quite do it as well, but I am so happy with this. The lens is also 24mm so we can take wide angle. The aspect can be changed from 4:3 to 3:2 (original 36mm film aspect) and 16:9. And of course, you can manually change all of the settings if you want. oh and you can set it to auto so it chooses the best setting, eg portrait or macro. Murphy was right about having a camera that takes good pix, it makes the world of difference.

On Tuesday morning we took a very early morning train out of Singapore and into Malaysia. it was a fine train ride other than the fact that we had said a proper goodbye to Lorrie with lots of drinks. It felt like an eternity on the train. We arrived in Jerantut around 1pm. We found a hotel and crashed. Jerantut is only a stopping point on your way to Taman Negara. We are currently in the little village that serves this national park. Taman Negara is apparently the oldest rainforest in the world, at 130 million years it survived the ice age. We hired a guide and went with a couple we met on our way up to the park. The couple, two Aussies, at the beginning of their year of travel, were the perfect hiking companions. The boys carried the heavy packs and the girls trudged along in our day packs. We trekked for 7 hours and made it to a hide, which is as it is described, a hut on concrete stilts to hide from animals. It was 12 wooden bunks and that's it. The toilet didn't flush. If no one is going to go out there every day (and they shouldn't) the park should put in squat toilets. It's much cleaner. Unfortunately we didn't see anything more than a Tapir, but it was worth the trek and the excitement of going out there. Today we hiked another hour to a jetty and got motorised canoe back to Kuala Tahan where our hostel is. Most of the last 36 hours can be better described with pictures. I haven't downloaded them yet, but I will, hopefully. I think one thing that can not be fully described is the amount of liquid our bodies expelled in this heat. It looked like each of us had gone swimming in our clothes. Alas it was only sweat. literally dripping. quite a picture. Canopy walkway tomorrow then off to KL.

If I have forgotten to tell everyone about anything in particular you were looking forward to hearing about, maybe I mentioned it to you or someone else? feel free to remind or ask me.

Off to bed to sleep in a mediocre mattress that will feel like the softest foam mattress after the wooden planks last night.