Good Morning, Singapore! This was the view out of our hotel room on our first (and only) day in Singapore. More photos of our day can be found in the media section.After a hearty breakfast at the hotel (our last chance to eat bacon for a while, since pork is not a common commodity in Bangladesh), we headed off to see the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the partner in the British East India Company who transformed Singapore from a small village into one of the greatest trading ports in the world. Here are Taara and I trying to assume the debonaire pose he’s in. (People don’t usually believe me when I tell them I married a giant…now you can see for yourself!)

Right behind the statue is the Asian Civilizations Museum, which was our next stop. This place is huge! You could spend an entire day there and not give adequate attention to all the exhibits and all the information that is available about the different civilizations in Asia. We had a limited amount of time so we sort of breezed through and looked at the different artifacts. Some of the artwork is simply amazing.

We walked along the river for a bit until we found a small booth the taxi driver had mentioned, which sold short trips along the Singapore River. We figured it was a good way to spend half an hour and see a panorama of the city, so we purchased two tickets. Singapore is truly an amazing place: not only are the roads in the city extremely clean, the river is devoid of rubbish as well. The architecture of the buildings bordering the river displays the artistic ability of the people of Singapore and their desire to make their land a place everyone aspires to go to.

Following the boat trip, we crossed one of the many bridges and strolled to a series of restaurants we had seen bordering the river. On our way we were intercepted by a store owner who dragged us into his electronics shop to look at his products. As we prepared to leave after dutifully looking around, I noticed another part of the shop we had not seen. Apparently the owner saw nothing strange in combining a tailor shop with an electronics shop, and when the tailor saw us he immediately began asking if he could measure me for a suit, assuring me he was a “veddygootailoh”.

After escaping the shop (sans suit), we finally came to the series of riverside restaurants and selected a Thai shop after being convinced by a jolly hostess that this was indeed the right place to have lunch. As we perused the menu, I had selected a chicken-based dish, when Taara said “Frog legs? I wonder who eats that!” Immediately my ears perked up and I asked her where she had found that in the menu. Sure enough, near the end, there was a selection of different frog-legs-based dishes. I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, especially since even if they were horrible I would have the pleasure of grossing out André when he heard about it. So here they are (below), in all their glory. Bwahahahahaha!

As it turns out, frog legs are really quite good, and taste somewhat like chicken.

Having fulfilled my mission of forever traumatizing André, we headed off to find a few items we had planned on acquiring. Our list consisted of (1) A 220v cordless phone (to plug into our Vonage), (2) a 220v USB hub (for my keyboard/mouse), and (3) a cell phone for me (Taara’s school provides her with one). We managed to pick up all three things between Funan IT Mall and Sim Lim Square (many thanks to Kevin for his valuable recommendations). I managed to convince Taara that my life would be much more productive if I had a palmOne Treo 650 as a cellphone, and she fell for…er…was convinced by my incredibly logical argumentation. So far (I’m writing this about a week after these events took place) the Treo has been wonderful, and I’m finally able to connect to the Internet with it and send/receive e-mail.

A word on bargaining in Singapore…at Sim Lim Square, you will have to bargain. At Funan IT Mall, only certain stores engage in bargaining. One salesman smiled and showed me the door (really!) when I tried to bargain for Taara’s hair dryer (we ended up buying it a full price since Taara really liked it).

The shop-till-you-drop routine continued at the Singapore Airport (which is really just one big mall with airborne access). We found some colognes/perfumes at extremely cheap prices, so we loaded up on a couple of fragrances, knowing that we’d be hard pressed to find them in Bangladesh. We also managed to get back some of the tax we paid, which was a welcome surprise. Travelers to Singapore should remember to request tax-back receipts from any shop where they spend more than 100 Singapore dollars.

After an exhausting day, we boarded the nearly empty flight to Dhaka.