Shopping day. The girls went over to Bugis Junction which is full of shoes, clothes and fashion shops. The boys headed over to Sim Lim Square; 6 storeys of electronics, computer and IT products. Urr-urr-urr!!! Supposedly the place to score a bargain.
Holy crap! I have no idea how all the shops survive. There must be about 20 shops in 500m² selling exactly the same gear. Maybe they don’t survive. There are probably businesses that go bust all the time just to be replaced with new tenants.
Most of the vendors seem to get by on low profit margins and high turnover. The shops are packed to the gills with stock. One store we passed had pallets and boxes of cordless phones (all the same model) stacked to the ceiling. There must have been at least a thousand of them.
As we walked back to the hotel we passed through a mall market. Markets seem fairly popular over here. In the middle of the mall were 2 temples; one Chinese and the other Indian. They were seperated by only a few buildings. The different religions seem to live quite happily together. Everyone seems to be able to do their own thing.
Had dinner at Raffles plaza and then went up to the Long Bar for a beer. No trip to Singapore would be complete without stopping in at the Long Bar for a drink. The girls had the obligatory Singapore Sling and we ate peanuts and threw the shells on the ground (I’d like to know where that tradition came from…….maybe they were just messy bastards.) This is a pretty cool place. Okay, it’s gone a bit too far into the touristy scene but the atmosphere in the bar was sweet. The slow swinging fans, the timber, the architecture and the bar itself (which apparently isn’t as long as it used to be) make for a pretty special experience. Though for some reason I felt like I should have an elephant gun over my shoulder.
The ladies and the kids got a rickshaw back to the hotel. I think the bargaining started at S$30 and ended at S$10.
