Singapore (July 2019)

Last year (2019), during my summer break, my family, my cousin and aunt, and I all took a trip to Singapore! When we first landed there, I realized how clean the streets were. I later found out that in Singapore, you got fined BIG for littering. We then took a Lyft ride to the hotel which was really fancy.

That day, we had to eat at a nearby tiny restaurant which served tiny amounts of food for a pretty big price. After that, we checked into our rooms which were 3 rooms apart from each other and were on the fourteenth floor. We mainly just unpacked and relaxed the rest of the day.

The next day in the morning, my cousin, my sister, and I explored the HUGE buffets there. We then explored the outside of the hotel and found this gigantic swimming pool right outside the buffet place!

That day, we went to the Singapore Zoo which is supposed to be considered one of the best zoos in the world. To us, we found our local Oakland Zoo even better! All the animals were in cages or secluded habitats, so to me it didn't seem that different than a regular zoo. Near the entrance, there was this circle that had these six to seven posts going around it. And on each of these posts, there was a different spirit animal and a value to go with it. I chose the white tiger whose value was courage. Its true, I do/enjoy/want to do a lot of new and dangerous/cool stuff (sorry for all the slashes :))

The next day, we went to our aunt's apartment and got to meet our new cousin who was only 6 MONTHS OLD! Later in the day, our uncle (our cousin's dad) took us to the Chinatown there. Even in California, I had never gone to Chinatown, but I don't know why 'cause its awesome to me. We went into the temples there and everywhere around us we could see Buddhas.

From the outside of the temple, I was able to see a really tall hotel called the Oasis, and there were these huge green creepers and vines climbing around the outside of the building. I wonder how they get enough water. Hmmmmm...

I think it was the next day or maybe later in the same day that our uncle also took us to the Google campus that he works at and it was HUGE. But I mean it's supposed to be one of the Google headquarters, so it makes sense. I think the other headquarter is in London. Anyway, when we went inside, we found out that the place had a yoga area, a gym, a lot of food bars, a hall of mirrors, and game room! We also saw this really cool YouTube sign and if you took a closer look at it, it looked kind of like the surface of an Arduino kit board.

We also ran through the hall of mirrors a LOT of times and our aunt took a bunch of photos of us.

Later we went to the office area, and there was this secret room our uncle told us to find. I looked everywhere but I wasn't able to find it and then once we all gave up, he went to the closet, opened it and pushed the coats and other stuff away, and scanned his id badge on this tiny machine and a door swung open. It was so frustrating for me, because I had looked in the closet but didn't bother to look behind the stuff in there. Ughhh.

The room was pretty cool, there was a bar with a lot of drinks on the shelves (obviously we didn't have them), and there were a bunch of chairs to sit on and these really bright lights. Like no one would ever imagine that behind a closet, there would be a room. Outside the room, there was a Pacman game also in the office and we played it for around 1/2 hour before we left.

The day after that, we went with our uncle and his family to this indoor rainforest place. From the outside, there were these huge, tall, white towers around the entrance. Then inside, there were these huge tree like areas with waterfalls coming from the outside. There were these lines that took forever, but we had to wait in them, because that's how you can get to the top.

The structure was so thin to me that I was secretly planning an escape route incase it collapsed! From the top, the waterfall and the trees looked really cool, and I kind of actually felt that I was in a rainforest.

The next day, we went to Singapore Universal Studios. It was really fun, because there were some rides different than the ones back in the Universal Studios in California and Universal World in Florida.

We went on this ride called Madagascar something... and we waited in line for ONE AND A HALF HOURS! My cousin and I both knew that it was a really babyish ride, but since the others thought it would be fun, we had to go on it.

It sucked.

And after that, we learned the valuable lesson of getting a fast pass, so even if we accidentally went on a really boring ride, we wouldn't be waiting in line for an hour. Personally, the coolest to me was Human, a really fast and high up-and-down ride. Since my mom didn't want my sister to go on it, and neither did my mom, aunt and grandma, me and my cousin, Sanjna, went on it by ourselves. The red colored one is the one we went on. The blue one was called Cyclone and the two rides are part of the same thing called Battlestar Galactica. Even though Human doesn't have any 360 degree turns, it has a huge drop right in the beginning that brings your heart to your throat!

After that, we went on some other rides, like the popular Harry Potter ride, and Revenge of the Mummy, where you have to expect the unexpected.

The day after that, we went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where we got to see a big iguana lying near the trees. We also got to play in this treehouse thing they had there almost at the end of the Gardens. We mainly played on the mini-mini zipline.

That day in the afternoon, once we came back to the hotel, we went swimming in the huge pool I mentioned in the beginning. Then we basically relaxed in the hotel rooms for the rest of the day.

The day after that, which was the last full day we would be in Singapore, we visited the infamous Marina Bay Sands, an extremely fancy hotel that had cost 5.7 BILLION DOLLARS to make, making it one of the most expensive hotels in the world. Its also the tallest hotel with a boat on the top of it where there were multiple restaurants. From that view, I was able to see the whole of Singapore, and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. There were also these huge swimming pools on the floors that extended all the way to the tip of the boat. This is the view of the top of the boat:

It looks pretty amazing, doesn't it. This is the view of the whole hotel from the outside:

It looks AWESOME!!! We had dinner there, at a really fancy restaurant close to the tip of the boat.

The day after that, we packed up our stuff, returned the keys to our hotel rooms, and got a Lyft ride back to the airport, where we took a flight to India. So that was my Singapore trip, which to me, was pretty freakin awesome! If you want to know where else I've been to, you can read some of my other blogs about Canada, Utah, Florida, etc.

Adios amigos from Singapore!