Singapore Day 12 - Friday

Our last day in Singapore began lazily. After Roger left for work I repeated my routine a week earlier or rotating between laundry, exercise, laundry, and swimming. We decided we'd be a lot happier to open luggage with clean clothes when we got home. I packed as much as possible before heading out for one last walk across the street and over to the East Coast Park to walk along the beach. I headed in the opposite direction of where we usually walked, until I reached the Carl's Jr. that Sarah had told me about last week. Much to my own surprise what looked best on the menu was a garden salad. (I think it might have been the only healthy menu choice, and I realized I hadn't had a salad since we arrived in Singapore.) They have a very healthy diet, but we haven't eaten very many vegies while we've been here.

I decided to explore and see if I couldn't find another underpass to cross back from the park and found one almost immediately. Only problem was that it didn't take me to any walkway. Instead I walked between the busy East Coast Parkway and a construction area. I wasn't worried because we felt safe the whole time we've been here. But the closer I got to the end of the construction site, the less possibility I could see to walk out to the road. In fact, I had to step up onto the concrete and hold onto a rail by a body of water. It was like a canal, but it came from the beach so I'm not sure what you call it. I could see the sidewalk at the end, but as I approached it I realized I had to step over a gap and up onto an even higher concrete to step up onto the sidewalk. It wasn't pretty and I was glad I didn't have an audience. In fact, I'm not sure why I recorded it here. :)

I walked around the many shops that are in the area of the mall we've frequented while we were here. The variety and quantity of items was quite impressive... toys, paper products, eye glasses, purses, clothing, food, health products, a small wet market like the huge one I was in yesterday... and much more. After browsing for quite a while I went into the mall a final time and purchased a few items for the trip home.

Roger came home with an avacado drink for me from LiJun. It was similar to avacado batidas that we had on our missions in Brasil, a blend of avacado, milk, sugar, and this one also was flavored with chocolate. It was pretty tasty, but no time to drink it before we joined LiJun, Lei (who took us out last Friday night), and Jeff who drove his car. All 3 are of Chinese descent, speak fluent Mandarin, and are very generous and fun to be with. We drove over the racecourse for the Formula 1 Racing that started that same evening. (The highway we were on was an overpass w/ the highway for the race directly below.)

They took us to an Indian restaurant so we could enjoy prata. That's a bread that looks a lot like a flour tortilla, but is more moist and pliable. We had 4 types - plain, cheese, mushroom, and egg - which means that's what the prata had inside it. They cut each one up into bite size pieces and then we helped ourselves to some of each. Each of us had our own bowl of curry sauce which we dipped the prata pieces into. I pretty much used my hands even though I'd been given a fork and spoon. This is one of the few meals we did not eat with chopsticks. We also had mee goreng maggie (ramen noodles coated in a sauce similar to barbecue but better) and nasi laken (coconut rice with chile sauce, fried minnows, and fried chicken on the side. In the hawker-style restaurants customers just keep ordering more food throughout the evening, anything at any time, until you decide you're done.

The girls wanted us to have a coconut drink again, but we eventually convinced them that we really preferred lime juice. LiJun gave us another gift, which we later found out was coconut cookies that are a lot like almond cookies, and very yummy. She and Lei went home by bus and Jeff drove us back to the hotel so we could finish packing and get to sleep. I'd already arranged for a wakeup call at 3 a.m. and a taxi at 3:30 to take us the airport.