We continued our New Year’s celebrations in Singapore! Let us tell you some things about Singapore. This country/city is weird. And awesome. The city itself is a mix of old traditional Singapore culture fused with some futuristic city planning designs.

While we were more than excited to get to our home-stay where we got to hang out with some amazing smoosh-face pups, exploring the Lion City was pretty entertaining in its own right. It may be the most modern city we’ve ever been to. Crazy cool skyscrapers, the world’s largest infinity pool that straddles three separate buildings, completely automated public transit in some parts, and it was amazingly clean and orderly. Almost too orderly and clean, it felt a little bit like Stepford Wives meets Tron, but it still worked.

Let’s start at the beginning. When you land in Singapore you are met with an airport that feels more like the Bellagio in Vegas than the usual airport. Sing’s airport is the most upscale we’ve ever seen. 100 different types of modern chairs and couches for you to rest while watching a hologram display made to look like traditional shop-houses expertly projected on a random wall.

There were beautiful gardens in the airport and, importantly, the never before heard of pleasant and efficient customs. Seriously, going through customs when entering (or leaving) a new country is the bane of every international traveler. You take underpaid workers who don’t want to be there, couple them with grouchy jetlagged travelers who have usually had some sort of delay or long flight, then mix with just the right amount of useless paperwork and bureaucracy and presto! You now have the prototypical customs / passport control experience. To give you an idea of how much of a well-oiled machine it was, when we left Singapore we literally did not know we even had been through customs and had to ask somebody else to be sure we didn’t skip a step or something. They scanned our passport and thumbprint, an automatic gate opened, and we were on to the next destination. We would tip out a forty in memory of Singapore customs, but we don’t want to risk a public caning. So instead, we’ll just use it as the standard to hold all future customs.  We will never forget you.

This uber efficient initial impression pretty much carried through the rest of the trip. Singapore has their shit together folks. Nothing was very difficult here. Easy peasy. It also might be the cleanest city known to man. Seriously, zero trash anywhere. This might have something to do with the oddly strict laws they have. For instance, gum chewing is absolutely out of the question. You can’t even buy/find gum anywhere. Chewable mints are okay. As long as they are gone within a minute. Further chewing and there are some rather harsh punishments. Fines, jail time and sometimes worse. Among the strange laws, this also includes taking a sip of water on public transportation, spitting outside, or any type of street entertainment.  And don’t even think of bringing durian (aka the sewer rat of fruits) on the bus! Durian is disgusting, unless you enjoy tasting feet.

There is even an app you can download to “report” (read: tattle) on anybody you find breaking any of the rules. Level up Singaporeans! I guess our next perfectly choreographed dance routine celebrating the catalog of Billy Ocean will have to wait.

As we hinted to earlier the entire city had this odd sort of Jetson-y futuristic meets the East kind of vibe. The buildings in the downtown area looked like metallic lava lamp creations. Rarely “standard”, often leaning one way or the other to support massive infinity pools and tropical gardens across multiple structures. Not what we were expecting, but pretty awesome to see.

Since it was still Chinese New Year, this modern flare was juxtaposed against the usual red lanterns, dragons, lions, and other fun things we’ve come to expect as well. An added bonus to though was the last day of the Lunar New Year we got to have dinner with some of Trent’s old grad school buddies from Nashville and their precocious and adorable little girl Kai. The great thing about friends is that it doesn’t really matter where you meet up, it’s always great and grounding. Thanks to Chris and Peiyan for making us feel at home.

Speaking of the Chinese New Year, part of the New Year is to see what your fortune is based on your “animal”: Trent has the coolest one by the way, a Dragon. Michele is, well, a rat. So that means she is good at mazes and potentially leading radiated turtles to fight crime. While we were excited to see our fortunes, they were, well, aggressive would be one way to describe them. Trent’s centered mainly around a loss of a lot of money and severe digestive issues, they did not indicate if these issues were related. Michele’s mainly focused on a high probability of blood loss and that she shouldn’t do anything “risky” this year. Trent has decided that upon our return to the U.S., Michele will remain in a protective bubble for the remainder of 2018 and we will be investing heavily in Band-Aids and Bounty paper towels. Maybe a padded hamster ball… Suggestions are welcome.

We got to spend a decent amount of time in Singapore, mainly so we could look after two of the sweetest dogs we’ve ever met. Kaipo, a hyper yet snuggly French Bulldog, and Zuka, the most handsome and sweetest droopy face boxer who essentially became Michele’s throw pillow while we were there.

We found the house/pup sit through Trusted Housesitters and it was one of the best decisions we made. Why had we not signed up for this earlier? The perfect puppy fix while we are away from our sweet boy, Russell.

Spooky Buddhist Hell Dream

Probably the oddest thing we came across so far in Southeast Asia (and that is saying something), just a 5-minute walk from our stay was Har Paw Villa. Har Paw Villa is a Buddhist-themed park where children get their first look at some horrific Buddhist imagery.

Apparently, some people take their kids here to learn about some of the consequences of actions. Which sounds like a good thing, but these were more let’s say, heavy-handed in nature. For instance, if you are caught cheating on your examinations what would be a fair punishment? Failing the test? Giving your Grandpa a foot rub? Nope, you’d have your intestines pulled out. For the bankers out there, if you charge somebody excessive interest rates you won’t be arrested or sued, nope, instead you will be thrown down into a giant hill of knives. Sounds about right. Side note, Trent used to have a recurring nightmare where perineal father figure Michael Landon forced him to roll down a hill into a pile of knives. The only thing the Highway to Heaven star would say was, “nobody will believe it was me!”.  Please feel free to leave a comment with your interpretation as to the meaning of Trent’s dream.

Anyway, this place was so bizarre it was actually amazing. Statues of people with animal heads playing cards, rodents carrying other rodents on stretchers, and other awesome things sprinkled around every corner. You leave a little confused, but it’s free and hey, who doesn’t love scaring children into obedience?

We left Singapore feeling pretty recharged and ready for Vietnam. We didn’t really know what to expect from Singapore, but all in all it’s a pretty amazing place and similar to our CNY fortune of blood loss, there’s a high probability of a return visit.

Favorite Quotes

“Ha ha ha, that’s actually really funny… but we should probably stop talking about poop in our blogs”

“I love you so much! I get a girlfriend and a frat brother all in one.”

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