Is this Asia? It doesn't smell like Asia...

The days are a balmy 12 hours long, with intermittent showers/downpours.  It's the monsoon season with the average temperature reaching into the low 30s with some god awful percent of humidity.  Down the most prominent street, there are stores featuring Gucci, Prada, Emporio Armani, and many others we will never be able to enter without being asked to leave immediately.  Jump onto the metro and get off in the Red Light District, where a few prostitutes speckle the side-walks at sundown and where the food is cheap and delicious; even though you may not always be sure what it is exactly that you're eating.  The smells that are typically associated with Asian cities are curiously absent (usually), and the streets are impeccably clean, given that it's a city of over 5 million people. Such a curious place it is. The large island, about 700 km squared, where most people are, is almost completely covered in concrete and gives new meaning to the term "Concrete Jungle".

This is Singapore.

We arrived two nights before the Singapore Marathon.  Matt was only 1 out of 20,000 people running the full  marathon, not to mention the 45,000 other participants in the other events.  Alyssa opted out of any of the races, which she regretted on race day. The race began at 5:00 in the morning, Alyssa waited 25 meters past the starting line to try and catch a glimpse of Matt as he passed by.  But after 45 minutes, with runners still crossing the starting line, Alyssa went somewhere else.  Matt put up a hell of a fight, considering he was injured. But in the end, or more like in the middle, he cut off about 10 km, finishing around 3 hours 36 minutes. Alyssa saw him cross the finish line.

Matt's Race Number

Metro Full of Racers at 4:30am

Matt on the way to the race, with many others

Matt After the Race. Great Job Matt!

  The rest of the time in Singapore was filled with walking in the heat and searching for good touring bikes. Which we can now say for certain, Singapore has very few.  After hours of searching, we found two bikes that will hopefully do the trick: M's Trek 7.2 and W's Trek 7.2.

Tomorrow (8/12/11), we leave for Malaysia and we expect many challenges and obstacles to overcome.  The road is calling and we are anxious to move on.