New Years' Eve Singapore - No place for the phobic...

Well Happy New Year everybody! I've just experienced NYE Singapore style, along with about two million other people, all of whom seemed to follow me around from the subway through the mall and out onto the esplanade.

It was a night of crowds, and crowds with hands, and crowds with hands touching me everywhere as we fought and jostled for a coveted place on the escalator and out into fresh air. It's no place for the claustrophobic or the agoraphobic. You wouldn't want to be aphenphosmphobic or enochlophobic either, although considering the tight space and sweaty bodies, ablutophobics woudn't feel out of place.

My new friends on the staircase

The night began trying to figure out the Singapore public transport system in order to get into the city, which eventually got us on the subway along with most of Singapore. The City Hall subway station was amazingly busy, but we finally made it to a staircase and up out into the fresh air. Or so we thought. NYE sees the Singapore Auxillary Police out in force, and it's clearly their time to shine and exert their power. We were stopped half way up the stairs because it was too busy out on the park. About 20 minutes later we headed back into the bowels of the Singapore light rail system and to an alternate exit.

Eventually we found position and waited for the fireworks. A lack of watch meant that I had to rely on my camera's clock to figure out the time, but it seems like I was out by seven minutes. Fireworks (fairly spectacular) were followed by a Singaporean youth tradition of shooting shaving foam and sticky string at everyone, which if nothing else meant they had to put their PSP and mobile phones down for a few minutes. In fact, it was more entertaining watching the sea of digital cameras and cameraphones aimed at fireworks in the crowd, than watching the fireworks themselves!

Nice view of a building... with the fireworks behind.

Leaving straight after the fireworks probably wasn't the best course of action, since 90% of the crowd had the same idea. Backtracking the way we came didn't work, since the pseudo-police had blocked off that route, but after another hour or so trapped in crowds, fighting for position, we made it back to the subway. It was late and I was tired and we got lost in Geylang. For those who don't know Singapore, if you're cyriphobic you may want to avoid it. Finally made it home by about 2:00am...

Off to Little India then out to the World War Two memorial at Changi today.