cara

vancouver to singapore

i have great advice for those leaving on a super long journey. sleep deprivation!!!

Hey All, well it has been a week since i set sail from canada. and at last i am getting a chance to learn about this bolg and to let you all know how the adventure is going thus far. vancouver to singapore my first flight was 10 hours - vancouver to seoul, south korea. we stopped here for about an hour to take on more passengers. then another 6 hour flight to singapore. got into singapore after midnite and headed to a hotel (thankfully included with my ticket). i got to have a whole day wandering around singapore. i only found out little bits about sinagapore before i left, things like: its illegal to spit and illegal to chew gum. yikes! the state is a mix of malaysians, indians, and chinese. and ofcourse all the foreigners. i walked around the city and hoped on and off this tourist bus that cruised the city( taking people to different shopping centres.) nuts. the architecuter in different parts was neat. the 'little india' was probably my favorite. narrow streets, markets hidden away, good smells, nice. chinatown was one giant air conditioned mall after another. not malls like ours, but multistory (tall). the chinatown was not like ours -- sidewalk/ street based. impressions of singapore: it was super humid and hot, it is geared towards shoppers, lots of cars, and a nice place to visit for a day if you are not shopping. i thought i was getting the wrong impression that it was really geared for shoppers, but others have confirmed it for me. it is a major intersection when travelling south asia. it was funny - food was really expensive (bottled water $4, breakfast at hotel $15) but clothes were super cheap (t-shirts $5) bikes: people ride around old model mountain bikes and sort of bmx style bikes. pretty old and beaten up. no one wears helmets and there are fast car drivers all over. i had taken my helmet with me on the plane so i was toting it around with me for the day and i felt a little out of place seeing no one seems to wear them. on the bus back to the airport i spotted a couple of 'roadies' on slick road bikes doning the spandex gear. i have great advice for those leaving on a super long journey. sleep deprivation!!! my flight from sinagpore to christchurch new zealand was 9 hours. so upon arrival in NZ i spent roughly 26 hours total in the sky. yeeowzers! staying up all the night the night before i left and getting minimal sleep the nights before that helped heaps. i slept on every flight and arrived with little or no jetlag. who woulda known??!!