Our Real First Day

If I thought yesterday was exhausting, boy was I wrong. Today, I walked seven miles, it was easily the most I've ever walked in one day. We got off to a pretty late start today too if you ask me. We woke up at 8:00 AM and had breakfast. After breakfast we headed off the Sultan Mosque at 9:00 AM only to find out that the mosque doesn't actually open until 10:00 AM. So we just wandered the streets of Singapore to kill the time and found some very cool artwork, along with a pretty raunchy coffee shop sign.



Once the mosque finally opened up for visitors we went to check it out. I found this particularly interesting since I have never been inside a mosque before. Apparently you aren't allowed to wear shoes or shorts inside the mosque and I was given a skirt to wear along with all of my fellow brethren who wore shorts. Here are a few pictures, the first one is of the mosque and the second one is of me in the mosque, just in case you couldn't tell.



After the mosque we did a couple other things that weren't big enough for me to take pictures of, so I'm going to stick to the main parts of this trip. Let's skip to our first lunch here, we went to a restaurant called Hejh Maimunah, where we ate some traditional Malay food. After lunch we headed to a Thai styled buddhist temple. We didn't have to wear a skirt here, but we did have to take off our shoes. Understandably. Pictured below is me standing next to Buddha.



After the temple we were off to Gardens by the Bay. There were two main attractions at this place, the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. We hit the Flower Dome first and let me tell you, this place was pretty cool too. This is literally a giant dome and inside were different sections with different climates. It wasn't just flowers though, there were sculptures too! Here are a few of my favorites from the Flower Dome.

We stayed at the Flower Dome for about an hour before heading to the Cloud Forest. As soon as you step foot in Cloud Forest you see a giant waterfall. Cloud forest allows you to go inside of this manmade waterfall. This place was so beautiful and relaxing that I almost took a nap inside of there. It amazed me how they could recreate something like this inside of a building and make it look so gorgeous.



    


We finally finished at 6:00 PM and then ate dinner at the food court in Marina Bay Sands. This hotel was jaw dropping, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it has a boat sitting on top of it. I remember reading about it a while ago, but I never thought I would actually be able to see it, let alone go inside of the hotel. After we ate, we watched a water/light show outside of the Marina Bay Sands. The light show was incredible as well, the way they combined the water with the lights that were coming from so many buildings was really cool to see.


After the light show we walked to the subway (MRT) and went back to our hotel. We finally made it back at 9:00 PM. Although it was a very tiring first day, it was pretty cool. The thing that stood out to me the most was how many things people could get fined for here. You can get a 500 dollar ticket for bringing durian on the MRT, the same amount of money that you would have to pay if caught smoking. Everybody knows that Singapore is a fine city, but mostly because you can get FINED for anything. Just a little joke I picked up today. Goodnight Singapore.



Sal Puma