SINGAPORE

I had wanted to check out Singapore's Chinatown, which is supposed to be pretty big, so this morning Chris, Jeffrey from Maine, and I took the MRT there and wandered around for a few hours.

At one point we found our way to a huge indoor market that had all sorts of strange seafood and other slimy "edibles" on sale. Some of the bizarre food for sale included tropical aquarium fish like panther groupers and giant gouramis (I didn't know you could eat those), some big stingrays, a swarm of live snakes in a bag, and some particularly sad-looking frogs and turtles in cages. The doomed live critters were a bit depressing to be around, really, so we didn't stay too long there. (Plus there were a lot of seafood...uh, parts, everywhere, which were really spoiling our appetite for lunch.)

After walking around some slightly more pleasant Chinese shops and stalls (with the usual fans, silks, carvings, etc.), we had lunch at a ridiculously overpriced local restaurant, and Chris and Jeffrey went back to the hostel. I decided to head for Orchard Road, Singapore's high-end shopping street, which is basically one giant mall. No Gucci or Prada for me today, but I did do some window-shopping for CDs at HMV.

Later, Chris and I had dinner with Alex from France at a restaurant near our hostel in Little India--I had a paper dosa masala, which was a long crispy pancake stuffed with curried potatoes and onions. Pretty good, actually! The streets tonight were jam-packed with hundreds of Indian men just hanging out and socializing--apparently it's a Sunday thing.

People met today:

• AJ, a friendly girl from Nigeria who's staying at our hostel while she looks for a job as an accountant in town.
• Also, the German guy (forgot his name) who was on our dive trip to Sebayur in Flores is staying in our dorm room, too--small world!