Welcome to Singapore, now lets practice

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Air Asia departed ahead of schedule and we arrived in Singapore 30 minutes early.  Cindy and I recall being in Singapore with Kenny and Karen 20 years ago, and there was a guy selling ice cream sandwiches on the sidewalk for a dollar.  He was set up with a cooler on a milk crate, and had a cardboard container of ice cream that he would cut a one inch slab off and put it between either two wafers or a slice of break.  Brilliant, and we are hoping that we can find this marvel again.  Also remember that the back of the visas are the same.  The back of the visa states, “Death is the punishment for drug trafficking under Singapore Law.”  Seems like a fairly good deterrent, but I recall that they hang people every Friday for trafficking. 

 This might be the best organized city that we have ever been in, everything (subways, signage) is very easy to follow.  So, what to do?  We hear that on the Saturday’s leading up to their National Day (August 9), they rehearse their fireworks.  We head into the city centre and find a mall that puts poor Penang to shame, and any other mall we have ever seen before.  I took a bunch of pictures before I realized that I was taking pictures of a mall.  Outside, on the other side of the bay is the Junior Olympic Park, and it is packed to capacity.  As we question what is happening, a bunch of military sky divers drop into the Olympic center, coming right over top of us.  We then walk inside the mall before a mighty roar has us scrambling outside to see several fighter jets doing a fly over.  One of the jets goes straight up, and the rumble and roar is deafening.  Then helicopters come in, dropping divers into the water, followed by rescue boats.  Then gun boats chasing guys on sea doos, shooting at them.  Luke wonders if the guys on the sea doo’s are the drug dealers, told to get on the boats and drive for their lives.  After more fly overs and helicopters, we get an impressive firework show.  And this is just the rehearsal.  Wow!  They do it all over next Saturday.  The boys are wondering if we can reroute our fly to Japan to pass through Singapore.  We were going to stay for the laser show over the bay, but this occurs every night, so we elect to call it an evening and return tomorrow night.