Secret agent man

I mentioned in the last post how disgusting our initial hotel was. Rowan wanted me to elaborate on the story.

We arrived at the hotel, and the front desk guy handed me the key to go see the room. It was bad, but I wasn't sure if other hotels in our price range would be any better. I asked Rowan if she wanted to see the room, and I waffled internally in my head for awhile, but then--for some reason--said okay.

We went up to the room, and Rowan immediately said no. There were some hairs and stains on the bed, and the bathroom was not nice. There was a hanger laying on the floor in the shower. It was nothing like the pictures on their website. So we left, which I should have decided to do immediately.

At least the desk clerk gave us a good tip on another hotel. We are quite happy with our current accommodations.

We are staying in Little India. The streets are decorated and light up at night in anticipation of the Deepavali festival, the Indian New Year.Today, we needed to get our work visas, so we met with an agent (apparently a common practice for acquiring visas). We met him at a McDonald's and gave him our passports, passport-sized photos, a document from the Indonesian government, and money to pay for the services.

While the agent was taking care of business, we saw some of the town, including the Merlion.
For the most part, Singapore is a beautiful city. There is a lot of greenery and public works of art.
The city is also quite clean, and the people are friendly.

We traveled on the metro system, which is extremely modern and clean. It far exceeds the systems in Barcelona, Milan, and Fairbanks. It also features delightful cartoons for the warnings.
This one isn't actually a warning, but it shows a woman admiring a shirt, then wearing the shirt, and then having a stranger cover the shirt with sploshes of soup. The sign then encouraged people to be courteous to their fellow passengers.

We returned to the McDonald's and waited. The agent said he would arrive between 3:45 and 4:00. At 4:05, we started to worry, but he showed up soon thereafter. He had our passports, now with fancy work immigration stickers. He also had the passports of about fifteen other people, who lined up to receive them, attracting odd looks from the McDonald's patrons.

We walked back toward the metro station and grabbed some liquid refreshment from a combination Dairy Queen/Orange Julius stand, and then drank them in the garden area of the McCafe of a different McDonald's.Now we are headed out to eat some Indian food in Little India, to wash the delicious taste of American commercial imperialism out of our mouths.