Cowbright: Next stop - Singapore, Singapore

I’m getting close to catching up with where we are now. I don’t feel the need to blog every single day but I do like to write something to help myself remember each place. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we’re in a single port for one day, a different port the next day and still another port the next. After a while it all tends to run together and I feel like I’m constantly asking myself (and sometimes Ronnie if I’m not too embarrassed) “Where are we?" or “Where were we yesterday?” Already I find myself looking back at my blog to see where we were “when” or where we did "what.” So it’s definitely better if I don’t wait too many days to blog and even then I have to use my photos to help me remember.

I’ve mentioned our numerous time changes, but I’ll share what Ronnie wrote on his FaceBook post today. “A bit about time changing as we sail around the world. We advance our clocks one hour as we cross each time zone boundary. We are 12 hours ahead of Texas time now, so we are half way round the globe. However, traveling thru India, we moved ahead only a half hour. Go figure. Bouncing around between Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, our clocks moved forward a day or two, then moved back an hour. We've changed clocks almost every day for two weeks. Back and forth as if it were a pinball bouncing off islands. We left Singapore last night and set our clock back again to visit central Indonesia. Crazy time. Island hopping has goofed up my body clock but not my eyesight. Yes, the buildings in the photo are curved. Sailing this long has curved time and space.”

photo credit: Ronnie

I say Amen to that! We sailed into Singapore the day before yesterday, arriving around 1 p.m. We knew we would be in port overnight and sail around dinner time the next day. There’s so much to see and do in the beautiful city of Singapore, but since we’ve been here a couple of times before, we decided to stay on the ship that afternoon and take the hop on/hop off bus to see whatever sights we wanted to see the next day. Many passengers booked excursions for each day we were in Singapore (one friend had 3 excursions in 2 days) but I think we are learning our limits. Ha!

I was fortunate to schedule an appointment to get my teeth cleaned on Saturday at the mall adjacent to the port. So that morning we walked through the cruise terminal into the multi-storied mall without even having to go outside. The mall was huge and Ronnie was able to get his hair cut while I was having my teeth cleaned.

Afterwards, we walked around the mall and passed by a grocery store (yes, inside the mall)! I wanted to go inside and take a look around. It was a large store but after we got inside, we realized there were 2 more floors! It was HUGE! A conveyor belt carried shoppers and their carts between the different levels. I always find it interesting to see what kinds of products are sold in foreign grocery stores. So I started snapping photos and that will be the topic of today’s post. By the way, we didn't buy a thing. The last thing we need is more food!

We debated getting something to eat at the mall, as there were lots of sit-down restaurants along with a large food court. We even considered getting a cab to take us to find a Mexican food restaurant. ha! We walked and walked but never got consensus (we’re both somewhat ‘iffy’ when it comes to unfamiliar cuisines). We were both tired so we ended up just walking back to the ship, eating onboard and not going out again.

Singapore is a beautiful city that offers a lot to see and do, but it definitely deserves much longer than a day and a half to do it justice!

view from a mall escalator

this mall sized vacuum robot was busy at work

grocery store entrance

beautiful produce individually wrapped

fresh herbs growing in store

We were just browsing but I did want to see if they happened to have any Cheez-its, one of Ronnie's favorite snacks that he hasn't had seen we left home in mid-January. So we headed upstairs to look for those (no luck). But we did find lots of other snacks, the majority unfamiliar.