I am currently staying at this youth hostel in Singapore China Town. If heaven exists, I think I am coming pretty close to it.

I spend today lazily, I send in my application for Indonesian Social Visa and I restocked my medication (I have been playing doctor with the family I lived with for a while and I am out of many medications...) I then walked around China Town.

Last night, I checked out the cheapest youth hostel I found on the Internet; it's in Marsiling (sp?) and the first thing I got there, they asked me how many hours... I could be wrong but I think I might have walked into the seediest area in the country. I ran for the exit and never turned back. I sat at the park for a while, reading my freshly purchased Singaporian map, watching the children at play, and the old man chatting. I had walked a very long distance with my huge backpack (I upgraded my day-pack into a 60L backpack) and I was getting really tired. So I decided to ask for helps to find a phone to call the other hostels. I talked to the 3 older men sitting at the benches in the park, they looked at me with a difficult expression and finally, one of them spoke to me in Mandarine. So I tried to ask him again in Mandarine, and suddenly find it very difficult. I think the process in my head went like this: "speak, but not in English... [tries to speak... uttered something in Indonesian]... no, not that other language, but *the* other one..." eventually, I had to ask myself what a Chinese sentence structure is like, because my brain is all cross wired now and I am really confused >_< But, at last, I managed to ask them where is the phone and they pointed back to the MRT station. I called a few places and finally, I decided I would just go back to the airport and sleep there.

But then on the train, two foreigners came in and sat next to me. I got over my "shyness" (ahem) and started talking to them. I asked them if they could recommand any youth hostel, they said travellers reststop is really good, but there might not be any beds left. I decided to give it a try anyways... and find myself suddenly feel like I am back to Canada again.

But, about the train ride... I took a very long ride throughout the city and spend a bit of time watcing the people, and I decided I really like Singapore: it has a huge blend of people of different ethnicity, each preserving their own language, attire, and even traditions such as religious practices. Here in Singapore, I can also see a lot of large families dressed in traditional clothing; I assume they are visiting relatives to celebrate lebaran. On the train, I heard a lot of English, Cantonese, Mandarine, and Bahasa Indonesia/Malayu (not sure which one), and some other languages that I can't make out. It's so multicultural it's really truly amazing. Even the archetectures are like that: the Expo district looks a lot like Burnaby Vancouver with a few huge buildings of Foreign companies and a lot of trees, then the next stop looks a bit like Discovery Bay of Hong Kong, where it's a semi-dense residencial area with lots of entertainment facilities such as swimming pools and track and fields and clubhouse etc, then I went through districts with schools that looked just like schools in Hong Kong, and districts like the city centre of HK where there is a very interesting blend of extremely old and run-down building and new, fancy, "cool," metallic looking buildings. Then there are huge malls with colorful neon lights; MacDonalds, police...

I cannot help but to notice how much "instructions" they give you in the MRT train. I guess Singapore government really likes to tell people what to do... and the people here don't seem to mind it. Apparently, Singapore on average execute one prisoner every 9 days... So much for my hellish paper on "sovereign feudalistic government vs a modern state with humanitarian police force and prison system," here is the living disprove of my essay, with a very modern state, with an extremely sovereign government, with people living with relative satisfactory with the government, and not much complains about human rights violation. Maybe that's why our department don't have Singaporian studies, it's just too damn confusing.

Singapore is known to be *the* "fine" city... you can be fined $150 for jay walking; fined and put to work at hard labour for littering or even chewing gum, and so on. What happens if you don't have enough money to pay the fine? Do they cane you? Or would they actually hang you for that? I don't know, and I don't really want to find out, so I obediently waited at the red light and watch all the Singaporians running across the road when no car is nearby. I continued to wait dutifully, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait. I got bored and turned around and saw the ice-cream vendor on the street was looking and laughing to (at?) me ... Then I look around, and I can't help but to notice there is quite a bit of garbage on the ground, perhaps not as much as in Indonesia but definitely noticebly more than in Canada AND in Hong Kong. So I waited no longer, and crossed the road.

I am not sure what "tourist attraction" to go to; I feel a little too lazy to go to the theme park, or the zoo, or the museum... the fact is, I feel like I am *home*. Like I am suddenly not living with a lot of peasants and being targeted by hawkers, like I can freely take the MRT to where I want, talk to people in my language, and just relax, and to me, that's good enough. In fact, it's even better that I can talk to all the other travellers at the youth hostel, it brings back memory of 1997, when I half hitch-hiked, half-bused across Canada from Toronto back to Kelowna and met many interesting travellers at the youth hostels. I might be over spending by flying to Singapore; but it's probably worth it. As much as I appreciate a bit of "cultural shock" and new perspectives and new lifestyle... I think I really needed this "rest stop."

-C