Singapore

After an hour delay our plane finally left Chengdu for Singapore. We were glad to get off the ground. Finding magazines and newspapers on the plane that were in English was also great. The stewardess gave us a copy of Newsweek to take with us.

After settling in to our hotel we finally turned out the lights at about 11:30. At about midnight the phone rang. We've been pretty jumpy for the past week and this put us out of sorts. It was the husband of the person we were supposed to meet at 10:30 in the morning to get our bus tickets to Kuala Lumpur. "Would it be okay if we met at 9:00 A.M. instead?" "Okay," was my reply and off we went trying to sleep. We slept some and did meet and we have our tickets. This was followed by the best breakfast we've had since we left the states. Omelets cooked to order, and all of the extras you can imagine. We had a feast and look forward to another tomorrow.

In the meantime we were working on a new problem that came up yesterday. The airlines called us and told us our flight back to Chengdu was cancelled. We were able to book a flight a couple of days later, but, this left us needing new plans for where we would stay, how we would get around, etc. By 3:00 in the afternoon we had finally gotten everything straightened out. This included phone calls, e-mails and a taxi ride to the bus station to get our ticket which brings us back to Singapore from Malaysia changed.

We decided to go for a bit of walk from the bus station as it looked like it was close to the water. It was and we enjoyed the long walk immensely. We watched 'dragon' boats practicing for the upcoming Dragon Boat festival in two weeks. These long narrow boats are paddled by 10 - 18 people and will be decorated like dragons for the race. These festivals take place all over Asia. As we continued our walk we watched a few ultralight single person planes flying around, it sure looked like fun. After walking a few kilometers we turned around and started walking back. Have you ever seen an ultralight crash? We watched as one of them began to spin out of control, finally lose all lift, and quickly plummeted into the water. Fortunately the dragon boats were not too far away and the man, along with his ultralight was rescued.

After that we headed for the hotel, at least we thought we were headed for the hotel. It didn't take long to figure out we were lost. We finally ventured into a large hotel and asked for a map which we took outside and pondered for awhile. We went back in and I, (Steve), had to admit that I had no idea how to get from where we were to where we wanted to be. The concierge was helpful and 15 minutes later we were in our room. Perhaps we should get some chalk to mark our path as we walk ... or maybe we just stay close to our hotel.

Two items of note. First, we haven't worried about tremors for 24 hours now. It's good to have ground you can trust under your feet. Second, pedestrians are respected here. It's been good to relax a little as we cross the streets. Make that three items of note. All of the signs are in English!

Tomorrow we head out for Malaysia.