Singapore isn't just an airport?!?!?

For the first time in five visits to Singapore, and entering the country on three occasions, I finally actually stepped beyond the airport terminal boundaries and went into the city.

Singapore will be home for the next three nights. I am supposed to fly home on the 21st, but I am strongly considering otherwise--I talked to my airline today, and if I were to change dates, I'd only have to pay a flat change fee and no fare difference. Yes, the flat change fee is more than the cost of some of the airline tickets I've bought on this trip, but it is only about 10% of the cost of my transpacific ticket, so I'm thinking about squeezing in a couple more places that I might not get to see otherwise--and at the top of the list is Laos, which everyone who I met in Siem Reap was raving about. My limiting factor here is my supply of anti-malaria medication, which I have to take for a week when I get back in the states, which means the most I could extend my trip would be by 3.5 weeks (I physically counted the pills last night).

My main impression of singapore--after really having not done all that much--going to the airline ticket office, the airport, my hostel, and doing a marathon photo upload session on facebook to backup my backup system (i still haven't finished)--is holy sticker shock! I'm definitely not in Cambodia anymore--i'm paying more for a bed in a dorm room here than I did for an aircon room with a shower in a safe, non-sketchy, family run guesthouse in Siem Reap. Bar placards consider it a "deal" to get 5 beers for 35 singapore dollars (about 28 usd).

I really liked Siem Reap--it has a good nightlife scene, and easily my favorite bar of the trip. Shockingly, considering how much I've written about the topic, the bar isn't a brothel or a girly bar. In fact, I asked the bartender last night why there weren't any working girls there (they are in some other bars) and she said that they had banned them. Meaning that the only solicitation you will get at that place is from the bartender or waiter asking you if you want another drink.
Perfectly understandable considering that one of the bar's unofficial mottos is "this place isn't a traveler's information center, so shut up and drink." It was actually a lonely planet recommendation that proved to be dead on.

three random notes from my 3 hour flight from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh to Singapore (i didn't change planes, it was a triangle route).
The airports may be cambodian, but the airport prices are certainly western--think $2.50 for your standard bottle of water from a shop. Since you can't drink cambodian tap water, you are pretty much forced to pay it. Just outside, you'd pay 50 cents for that same bottle.

Cambodian airports don't trust each other. After having gone through the necessary security procedures in Siem Reap, all of us that were making the en route stop in Phnom Penh were forced to get off the plane and go through security yet again, even though Jetstar doesn't carry any purely domestic passengers. The comparison in the U.S. would be if you were on a Chicago-Dallas-Houston flight, and you were forced to go through security again at Dallas even though you did the same thing at Chicago.

I think a celebrity named "pitbull" was sitting behind me, but I honestly have no idea who the guy is. I've just seen his face plastered on all sorts of billboards, so the face looked familiar, and the flight attendants, after arriving in singapore, posed for a picture with him--he was also accompanied by four very big and large security personnel.