And then the name of the blog... If you google the word "eitumba," you will get something along the lines that it means "time of great famine," and possibly "rainy season." While both of these are accurate in their own way (rainy season is the most common use), it can also be translated as "winter," which is the use that is being implied here. My cat in Uganda was named Eitumba from the use of the term as winter.
So for Dawn's visit. I am just going to put in some pictures and then some explanations near them.
This was in Little India where we had dinner the first night she was here. The dinner was really nice and I had been telling her about the packs of Chinese tourists I had seen there last time I was in the area on tours in bicycle sidecars, and lo-and-behold, packs of them started riding past.
This is Singapore from the cable car that heads out to Sentosa Island. I had been hearing about Sentosa since I arrived as the "must go" place that has nice beaches and lots of fun stuff to do. So I was interested to finally see the place. The cable car was pretty cool, even if it only was about 3 minutes. From there, things quickly went downhill. It was really expensive (we didn't do any of the expensive stuff).This is a fountain we found on the island. It was about 50 meters long. As far as I can tell the theme of it was "intestinal worms of the Asia region," since that is what it looked like. But as far as fountains made to look like intestinal worms, it was pretty cool.
Now, a couple comments on the island... We took the cable car over, which is the expensive way (there is a bus for about $1, the cable car cost $15), but the maps they had available had none of the paths marked, only general locations of things to do (we eventually found a map with paths inclued at the bus entrance. I guess there are benefits for being cheap). There is also a very big "land luge" being built across the island, so it is blocking taking any direct paths. This was rather confusing and frustrating. But not nearly as frustrating as finding a sign that says "Merlion, this way" pointing to the left. So we follow the sign and a hundred meters later find a sign pointing for the Merlion in exactly the opposite direction, with no paths in between.
So this is the Merlion. And it is not only for some random exhibits that this problem of directions was found.... It was for everything. Eventually we found one of the busses that drives around the island and got on to go to the beach. Everybody is always talking about how beautiful the beaches are on Sentosa, but I was wary. We were not going to go swimming, but we were hungry and tired. The average temperature here hovers around 250 degrees during the day with at least 185% humidity.And my wariness was not without foundation. Singapore is one of
the world's busiest ports. And Singapore is very, very small. So I thought "I bet there are ships all over the place" and that the water is not exactly nice, especially compared with lots of other places in Southeast Asia. So my advice... if you are looking for some relaxation in the tropics on a beach, don't come to Singapore.
A day later I met this girl on the subway. I thought the shirt was pretty funny, though she had no explanation for why she wanted to kill Molly.
We also took a walk in one of the nature areas here. This has been one of the biggest surprises. There is a ton of green. I expected Singapore to be one big block of concrete, but there really are efforts being made at bringing back living things. So we heard about this "tree-top walk" where there was a suspension bridge through the trees. So we headed out. The first order of business was finding a taxi. Easy enough. We got in and told the driver where we wanted to go, and I tried to show him a map. He wanted nothing to do with it. So we are driving and driving and driving and going in circles, so I start asking him if he knows where we are going. He assures me he does as he pulls into a residential area and starts looking at his maps. Eventually he brings us to a random parking lot and tells us we are at the reservoir. We are skeptical and start talking to him about where we want to go. He eventually takes us to the entrance to the reservoir. So we get out and there is no sign of people. A bunch of buildings, but we are baffled. Dawn eventually found the security office and got photocopies of a map for us. The security officer explained that the tree-top walk is about 5km away. Ugh. So we walk. And walk. 5km in a park in the US is not so bad. Here it is awful. But we were assured that once we got to the tree-top walk we can go across it and turn back, without doing the whole loop. Well, we get to the walkway and there is a big sign that says "one way, no turning back." And the guards told us we should "report"' the woman who told us we could turn back. Anyway, after about 7km we found ourselves on the road. EXACTLY WHERE THE TAXI HAD TRIED TO DRP US OFF!!! Now one question I am really wanting to have answered about Singapore. This country is well-known for being organised and efficient. So why can't they make signs that are useful? We eventually did find some signs for the treetop walk. There were about 1 foot off the ground and in front of all the parked cars in the parking lot. But we then took the advice of a person from work and went and had some margaritas, which made it more or less all ok.
This sign seemed pretty clear, though. Don't feed corn-on-the-cob to the monkeys.Well, so that is a brief overview of doing tourist stuff here. This whole thing is not meant to make the visit or life here seem too
awful. I am just feeling a little bit sarcastic. The visit was awesome. We had a lot of fun and it was nice to see Dawn. For those who don't know Dawn, this is her. We were in Peace Corps together in Uganda and she lives about a half-mile from me in Medford, MA with Paul, also of Peace Corps and a classmate at Fletcher. So Dawn, thanks for visiting. It was a lot of fun.
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