Singapore Day 1

Today was the longest day of walking EVER! Yet, also one of the most amazing. We woke up around 9am and almost none of the other hostel-ers were awake. They are all kinda douchey by the way, not exactly what I was expecting out of traverlers our age, but they keep to themselves so its not a big deal. Anywho, we had a little bit of cereal for breakfast and took off. Literally outside the door of our hostel there was a stand. Once we walked through it and got to the street, we saw all the way up and down there were stands just like it lining the road. We looked at all the little trinkets in chinatown for a while, remembering what we wanted to revisit, then headed off to the river to see the Merlion (mermaid-lion composite creature thats symbolic of singapore, it "welcomes visitors and protects the city" or something along those lines). Our necks were hurting by the time we got there from looking up the whole time. There are soooo many ginourmous buidlings...and theyre all banks! But we eventually saw this really cool looking building called the Fulerton Hotel, and figured we would just go in (by the way, we were wearing tank tops, and no one all day questioned us about staying at any of the 3 hotels we creeped through...thought that was pretty funny!). The place was AMAZING. I could sell my first born son and probably still not be able to get anything other than a standard room here. We went up to the top, took some pictures, and left. Outside, our day almost ended because I about passed out. Parked next to each other were, in this order, a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin, a Porsche (Cayenne 300GT not an old crappy one), and a Maserati. There were a bunch of measley BMW and Mercedes around also, but this sight amazed me. So we left there, went and saw the Merlion (little bit anti-climactic, not as big as we thought it would be). From there we crossed the river to head to little india. We saw this Asian Civilization museum and thought wed stop in and check it out, if not at least for the air conditioning. We ended up getting student priced tickets and a pretty cool little tour. From there we went to the first shopping center of the day. We don't know how to shop in America, these people are hardcore. This center was the smallest shopping center we saw all day and it was 4 stories tall, had at least 200 stores, and probably around 50 restaurants. We doodled around there for a while, got a bite to eat, and went to the Raffles hotel. Sir somebody Raffles was the Brit who founded/discovered Singapore and this hotel place was soo cool. They had tons of WAY upscale dining, beautiful courtyards, and a HUGE tea collection. Once again, we kept walking. We then went to another shopping center and then stumbled across the Burgis Junction. This is about 2 square blocks of shoulder to shoulder hawker stands and little shops. This place was the quintessential foreign market. After that, we FINALLY made it to Little India, which is VERY run down. Which made it quite fun. We looked at all the fancy indian clothing stuff they had for sale and decided we would head to the famous Orchard Road. This place is the best shopping of the world crammed onto one street no longer than a mile. We were way to tired to explore all of it today though, so we just went into one of the behemoths that they call shopping centers and headed back. On the way we came upon clarks quay and had a beer at burger king "whopper bar". This is the nicest burger king establishment I have ever seen, it was insane. And would you believe it a good old Bud Heavy was more expensive than a Fosters, Heiniken, Carlsberg, and Stella Atrois! Go America! We eventually made it back to chinatown were we found some food at some little restaurant, and are now about to pass out at the hostel! We plan on heading to Malaysia tomorrow so we will post when we get there!