Well, it's been pissing rain all day, so time for a short update since I've only got 15 free mins on the computer. Here are a few things I've done:

A ton of hiking. Singapore has an amazing amount and variety of green space in the city, all integrated into it's urban planning. One of the hikes I've done is called the Seven ridges, a group of seven hiking trails all joined together to form about a 9-10k circuit and that include everything from arduous uphill climbs with sweeping views to suspended paths through forest canopy. It was pretty amazing, I really meandered through and took about 5 hours to do it. The funny thing is, it's enormously packed right at the start with tourists taking the cable car up to one of the peaks and then doing an easy walk down, after that it's nearly deserted except for the odd tourist and a lot of locals running.

Also hiked a nature reserve where it poured down rain, the one I mentioned in the other post about looking for the bus stop in the pouring rain. Being able to hike through rain forest during the rain is pretty amazing though.

Went to a place called For Canning that's a big park/historical site on a hill, it's where the old seat of power used to be on the island. Found out that all the British had to do to take it from the locals was to walk up the hill and basically say 'right, this is ours now', since the locals believed it to be a forbidden place where their royalty and deities lived.

Got hopelessly lost one night while doing a long hike around a bay, got bad advice from a local who told me the loop around back to where I started wasn't much farther along after I had essentially made it to the opposite side of where I was. He was wrong. 2 hours later I'm looking around for a bus stop with a map to find my way back to the hostel and managed to find a subway stop instead by asking a few more locals. Ironically enough it turned out to be about 5 minutes from where Ashley and his family live, and I was back to that same subway stop the next night to meet them and have a few beers.

Those few beers? About 3-4 pints each between 3 of us and the bill was about 175 bucks. I nearly pooped my pants.

I paid 30 bucks to go on a 30 minute glorified ferris wheel that's enormous and gives great views, only to find out the next day from Ashley that I could have just gone to the bar at one of the tallest buildings right in the same area. Was not impressed with myself. Turns out though that when I went to go try it the next night at dusk to get some photos, I need pants and shoes to get in, neither of which I have, so it all worked out. trying to convince the hostess to let me up did not help, she took my joking pleas waaaaay too seriously.

And that's about all I have the time for at the moment. More to come later.