Singapore Day 2

I was glad to get to sleep in before we took part in a canoing trip at Singapore river organized by NUS. Most of the participants were exchange students but some local students had decided to join us, as well. The Singaporean students that I talked to seemed friendly and were willing to help us finding good places to go, eat and shop. The actual canoing part of the trip took almost 3 hours and we got to see many interesting places and buildings along the river, including the opera house that has been designed to remind this fruit (whose name I already forgot, but I tasted it and it was pretty good). It´s winter in Singapore now and it´s cloudy and rainy almost all the time there. We were lucky to get only a few mild showers during our canoing trip. By the way, I would´ve called it kayaking instead of canoing because the kayaks were closed on top.

A view of Singapore river where went canooing.

After our canoing trip we went to take a shower at my hotel before heading to Chinatown. It´s Chinese New Year in a couple of weeks and they were already preparing for the celebrations. There were beautiful decorations and lights over the streets and some fireworks, as well. Many Chinese people were sitting by the streets eating food from coffee shops (Raf, a Singaporean student, explained me coffee shops don´t mean places such as Starbucks but food kiosks selling mostly Chinese or Asian food, at a really cheap price) and just talking to each other. We ate some delicious Chinese food and for desert we bought dried fruits covered with sugar. Chinatown was definitely my favourite place in Singapore! I just liked the atmosphere there the best.

Food courts and decorations in China Town.

We ended the day by visiting at the harbour of Singapore river. All the skyscrapers with their many lights looked beautiful in the dark and there were some small boats offering short cruises to tourists. We walked a loop around the river and stopped by to taste some local beer at an outdoor café (Silja tasted the beer since I´m not still drinking any!). There would´ve been an Indian student party that night but we decided to skip it. Parties are always parties (meaning fun!) but since I was in Singapore only for the weekend I preferred seeing around the city.