Day 3: Singapore

Welp, I'm still in Singapore. This is my last night (for now). Tomorrow I head up to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, where I get a chance to pay homage to the Petronas Towers, the second largest building the world.

Cool things of done/seen so far:

I did the unthinkable and I went in a Mosque. A real one, built by Indian Muslims. It's down the street from where I'm staying. I sat inside (which is apparently forbidden for non-believers, but I was ok for some reason) and chilled with all the other Muslims. Being inside a Mosque is really different then a church. It's a big room with columns and it's rugged. I saw a guy sprawled out on the floor sleeping and a guy reading the Koran (in Arabic) out load to himself. Most people were reading the Koran (I assume; there was one guy reading Bridget Jone's Diary). Then there's a bunch of guys who chill in the back on plastic red lawn chairs. One of them yelled at me because he thought I was stealing something, but I explained to him things and everything was alright (this I am serious about). It was a seriously scary thing to do, to go into a Mosque, because of all the 9/11 and terrorist stuff. Every time I see something hardcore Muslim like this, I fear for my life. Thanks TV. I have to say it was really peaceful in there though.

Don't worry, I balanced out the Mosque with a Roman Catholic Cathedral, a Chinese Temple (you can never tell what religion it is because the Chinese worship everything), and a Hindu Temple (yup, some of the Chinese after the Chinese Temple stop by here too, because you can't worship too many gods if your Chinese, and boy does Hinduism got plenty of them). The Hindu Temple was pretty intimidating. I didn't even go in there. There were half-human, half-animal statues all over the thing (if you've ever seen a Hindu Temple, you know what I'm talking about, statues everywhere!). And the guys inside where wearing skirts, and had a sheet draped over their shoulders. It reminded me too much of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, so I left.

I saw some Native Americans from Peru playing music today. In Little India (now that's ironic, Indians in India who aren't Indian). It fascinated all the Chinese and they had a big crowd. Then sky opened up (= rain) and people scattered in all directions, it was funny.

Singapore is the ultimate utopia of capitalism. Yea, it has an authoritarian government, but that's what you need to get ahead in the world economically, when it's done right (Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong all had authoritarian governments during their rises). Anyway, there are shopping malls everywhere here. There are shopping malls across the street from shopping malls. Everywhere there are shopping malls. Even funnier, near my hostel is the Laissez Fairre Cafe. And there's a monument to Free Trade in Central Singapore. I went running in a Park on the Ocean today and saw Singapore's other city. It's floating out in the ocean and made up of dozens of container ships. I know Singapore is the world's largest port, but the amount of ships just sitting in the ocean in front of the city was ridiculous. If you know how big a container ship is, picture that. Now picture 100, maybe 200. That is Singapore.

Well I must stop myself here. I could go on forever. Too bad no one could travel with me; instead I'll write here and try and take whoever is reading this with me, figuratively speaking. By the way, my hostel has free internet and power for my laptop, that's why I can type here. And it cost $11 a night!! Hostels are great, if you find the right ones...