The other day I was 5 minutes from the Mexican border, looking homeless with my long hair and a beard, wearing my backpacking setup, waiting for the bus under the scorching sun, and some truck driver walks across 3 busy lanes each direction to give me a rolled up 5 dollar bill. Told him I didn’t need it but he insisted, opened it expecting there to be some coke or something hidden inside, but no this guy simply wanted to pay for my bus ride since life has clearly beaten me down. Long story short, I went home and shaved the beard.

That was a facebook post from back in July, it is now October, so I have some catching up to do.  What was I doing down near Mexico?  Well I had a plane to catch out of Tijuana, no I wasn’t going anywhere in Mexico this time.  As you probably expected, corporate America chewed me up and spit me out.  After being used and deceived I decided it was time to fix up the van and head back South for another big trip, as usual, nothing went as expected.  Unfortunately mid repair I found out I had an auto-immune disease which jacked up the skin on my fingers, to the point where I had to park the van before I could finish and move onto plan B, so I decided to use this free time to backpack parts of S.E.Asia.

Jumped on a flight headed to Singapore and rather than stay the typical 2-3 days that everyone does I decided to stay longer, partly to let the hands heal, mostly cause I like to travel slowly.  Now I see why people blast through Singapore, it is boring, all I did was eat, and relax in my apartment.  No offense Singapore, the food is great, but you are clean and orderly, and I wanted chaos. I suppose it wasn’t terrible, but it was so damn hot which also kept me indoors, so that didn’t help with anything.  Luckily, unbeknownst to me the International Champions Cup was going on, a soccer tournament with some of the worlds best played across multiple countries on several continents, and 3 matches were happening 15 minutes from where I was staying…so I promptly purchased tickets to all 3 matches, for a whopping total of 60 bucks.

Idiot taking a selfie

The games were great, and for game 3 the turnout was weak since it was A weekday, so they bumped those of us in the nose bleeds to the 1st 8 rows, nice!  I saw Arsenal, Atletico de Madrid, and Paris St-Germain all battle it out.  The games were great, and many goals were scored, but Arsenal was the clear favorite in Singapore.

I also hit up the touristy spots like the botanical gardens, Chinatown, and the merlion statue which is full of idiots taking selfies. Why Singapore then?  Well the flights to Singapore are generally a cheap way to get into S.E.Asia.  They provide a visa on arrival for Americans, so it is easy to get in.  They even gave me 3 months without my asking, dear god what did I do to you?  Overall it wasn’t bad, and there was some other things I did and saw, but since they were blah they have already slipped my mind.  But Singapore is incredibly safe, and everyone speaks English, probably two more reasons I was bored with it.  Of course while my lack of planning would have me bouncing all over the world in the next few months, I probably won’t be back in Singapore anytime soon, unless I get hungry, damn that food was cheap, and delicious!