Catching a Shout in the Street: Book Learnin

During the seemingly endless period of preparation for this trip, I was continually disappointed by the poor selection of travel books on Singapore. It seemed there were big, thick guides on every country except mine. The book I did end up with is the pocket sized, 96 page Best of Singapore published by Lonely Planet. I've since had an opportunity to read the book and tour the place, and now I understand why all the books on Singapore are short. Small city, small country, small book. In a week I've done nine of the fourteen "Highlights." What remains is expensive and not particularly enthralling. I don't know if I'll ever be in the mood for a $20 ride to the top of the 100m "Mt Faber."

But I think that just means that I have to explore the Singapore beyond the guidebook - in some cases, this happens to be beyond Singapore as well. Next weekend I am going with a group of exchange students to Mt Panti in Malaysia. We will camp on the summit and make it a two day trip. This weekend two women I met here went to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It's a six hour bus ride, but staying in hostels is very cheap and booking can be done online. I'm going to debrief them when they get back then plan my own trip.

Of course, I'm also meeting many interesting people. I heard from someone that one quarter of the students at NUS are foreign or exchange, which is easy to believe. There are a lot of students from Europe, particularly the UK and Germany, more from the Asia - I've met students from China, Japan, Malaysia and India, and fewer that you might think from the US.

Matt, Justin, and I wandered around downtown yesterday after going to the Asian Civilizations Museum. I opted to travel light and didn't take my camera, so I can't put up any pictures yet. But as soon as Justin emails me the ones he took I'll post them. That may well be before any of you wake up.

I was right. Here are the pictures from yesterday: