Friday, December 5, 2008

exploring a bit o' Asia

Sorry, no pictures are possible from these free computers.

The Battle Box was indeed a worthwhile stop yesterday morning, if only for the slightly creepy animatronic British officers they had to convey the story of the ultimate decision to cede Singapore to the Japanese without continuing to fight. I then walked down to the not-so-clean Singapore River and spent quite a while in the Asian Civilizations Museum. It was pretty interesting, but didn't seem to spend much time on the Japanese or cultures in Mongolia and points northward. The former I can understand, given events of the last century. I then strolled over and looked at the waterfront from Merlion Park at the mouth of the river. The Merlion is some weird city mascot (think lion's head on a fish body) that gets about 5 billion pictures taken of it every year with tourists posing on its pediment. It was pretty hot, so I decided to cool off at the Raffles Hotel. Unfortunately, I don't think my wallet was fat enough to be welcome inside the lobby of the hotel. So, for a slightly less snooty alternative, I bought some snacks and ate on the rooftop terrace of my hostel. It has a good view over the downtown skyline, which I would have tried to photograph last night, if not for another thunderstorm. Pesky things.

Tonight at 6pm the tour group is meeting, and I'm interested to see just what sort of demographics are represented. Odds are I'll be the sole American, which won't be a surprise. Anyhow, I need to go get out of my current room so I can check back in this afternoon.

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