Singapore: The cleanest place on earth

Well, you know it's a good sign for me when instead of seeing tons of dogs in the streets, I have already seen a handful of cats (which are by far healthier looking that the ones in India!) and no dogs.

Seriously, this country doesn't mess around. They have the death penalty for drug trafficking. And a $500 fine for eating on the MRT train! This is possibly the cleanest and probably most efficient places I have ever, ever seen. The public transport is amazing. I am always paranoid of missing my stop in India, but on the MRT it shows the exact map with all the stops marked and which stop u are on. In addition it even shows which side of the car that the door will open!

The bus stops are amazing too! Some of them are linked with GPS so it even tells you when the next bus is coming. It shows all the stops of each bus at every station so it is so easy to get around. In India, you just have to ask people to tell you when you reach your stop and hope you are getting on the right bus inthe first place.

And man, these people are all about courtesy, and you can be sure they stick to the rules! Already I've seen several people, men and women offer their seats on a train to people with children or to older people. There are signs on the train to remind people to let others out first. The bathrooms remind you to wash your hands so as not to spread flu. It's a completely different atmosphere! In India, it's like a huge competition, and you have to fight your way on the bus, off the bus, to do anything in fact.

And I can't tell you how excited I've been to be able to get real american food! I got off at the airport and there was a burger king. Seriously, I ran up the escalator. I wanted to yell, "HEY INDIA, I'M IN SINGAPORE AND I'M EATING COWS AND THEY'RE DELICIOUS!!!!" And I'm so excited - I walked into a 7-11, yes a 7-11, like at home with all kinds of food from the states. And NO MASALA! ANYWHERE! No snacks with weird spice combinations, whahahahah. I was so beyond excited.

So I've pretty much been buying food at every opportunity. I completely stuffed myself tonight. The night before we went to a food court with Nihal and Karuna and had some dumplings and eel and chicken and rice, oh it was really good. I passed another burger king while I was out today and had to take advantage of that....Then later I went to this food court called LauPa Sat. There are all these different vendors selling all kinds of food. Wouldn't you know it, I walked in by the South Indian ones. They tried to get me to buy something and I was like, THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I am eating something with masala, or a dosa, or a chapatti. No damn way.
So I had some more dumplings and some black pepper beef. Yum! I may have to go back there. There was all kinds of weird gunk to eat. There was some really weird deserts - hot soup desert with black beans and coconut. I met a Singaporean woman here at the hostel and she says it's really good actually. She also recommends I try a stinky durian fruit. We will see, we will see....but I definitely see another trip to burger king in my future...and I've also seen ads for Chili's restuarant....