Singapore

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Hi all

Because we checked in so late for our flight we could only get seats on opposite sides of the isle from each other, which was no big deal. However when we went to board we were asked by the cabin crew if I would mind swapping seats with another passenger who was sitting along way from her partner, who I would have been beside. They had assumed I was on my own but I informed them that I was with my partner on the other side of the isle. That didn’t seem to bother them though and they asked if I still wouldn’t mind moving. Being the nice guy that I am I agreed and moved down to the back of the plane a long way from Emma. No big deal as we’d probably be sleeping most of the way anyway, but it would have been nice to sit together for a long haul flight. And I’m not sure what was achieved by splitting one couple up so that another couple could sit together. Oh well.

We touched down at Changi International Airport just as the sun was starting to appear on the horizon. The immigration guys were scary. They didn't say a word to us. There were some complimentary mints on the passport desk and he pointed at it to indicate for me to take one. I politely declined but without looking up from his screen he pointed at them again authoritatively, so I decided not to push my luck and did what I was told and took one, being careful not to carelessly discard the wrapper once I'd finished with it. Changi is a nice airport. Very, very clean as you would expect. We made our way from the air conditioned airport to the air conditioned MRT (subway), which again was spotless. At the first station we had to leave the comfort of the MRT to wait on an open platform for another train. As soon as the doors opened and we stepped outside we were immediately overwhelmed by the muggy heat. Kinda like opening the door to the oven when you’re cooking something. At first we quite enjoyed the experience of being in such warm temperatures at 6:30 in the morning, but we were happy when the train finally arrived and we could escape back into cool comfort of the air conditioned carriage. Looking out the window on the way into the centre of Singapore it felt like we were in Asia. That might seem a bit of a strange thing to say, but we'd been told to expect it to feel more like any other western city than being in Asia. But it didn't feel like that at all.

We got to our stop then had to head back out into the heat to tramp with our packs through to our hostel. Of course we were wearing all our heavy clothes to save weight on the plane so we were soaked through with sweat by the time we got there. We took our time checking in in the air condition lobby, knowing that we didn't have a room ready for us yet and we would soon have to head outside again. We checked in then sat outside with a cold drink to try and acclimatise. We still had a few hours until our room was ready so we decided to take a walk up Orchard Road, the main shopping street in Singapore. This is where it finally began to feel like a modern western city. The main street was a wide busy road lined with large tropical looking trees. On either side the street stand numerous large shopping malls with all the familiar chain stores. We took a break from the heat and went into one of the malls for some authentic Asian food.

After lunch we went back to the hostel and were finally able to refresh ourselves with a nice cold shower and a change of clothes. Then it was back up Orchard Road to the Botanic Gardens. Half way there the sky suddenly darkened and eventually the rain began to come down in bucket loads. We took shelter and decided to sit out the impressive mid afternoon thunder storm with all the other locals and tourists under a covered walkway. After half an hour it didn’t seem as though the rain was easing up, so knowing that we only had a limited amount of time in Singapore we decided to brave the rain and continue on our way. Within minutes we were soaked to the bone, but it was warm enough that it didn’t really bother us too much. The rain stopped soon after and we dried up in no time. Botanic Gardens aren’t normally my thing, but Emma’s parents had been there during a stopover on their trip to Europe and Canada and loved it. They unfortunately lost all the photos they had taken of the famous National Orchid Garden so we thought we’d try and take some photos for them. The gardens were very good, with lots of interesting looking plants, and a few weird looking little beasties, including a flying squirrel who was amazing to watch leaping from tree to tree.

After the gardens there was time for a quick dinner before we had to catch the train and bus out to the Night Safari. The Night Safari is a definite must do when in Singapore. Its basically just a zoo, but at night, which actually seems to liven things up a little. You jump on these trolley things, and then they drive you round the park and through the animal enclosures. Half way through you get off the trolley and can walk along the dark paths through the bush, trying not to get to freaked out at all the weird noises and the things that are lurking in the bush. We love a good zoo, but having everything at night added a lot to the experience and we really enjoyed it. There was a large variety of animals and we were able to get right amongst some the less lethal of them, like the deer, thar, anteater and bearded pig etc. The more dangerous ones such as the Lions, Tiger and Hyenas etc were safely separated from the poor unsuspecting tourist by moats etc, but there was no fencing and it felt like you were very close to the animals in a more natural habitat than you find in a normal zoo. The Lions were rather noisy and the loud roars could be heard all over the park and were a little unnerving when you’re walking down a dark bush path. The last animal we drove past was the resident elephant, and he was the biggest elephant I’ve ever seen. Fricken huge he was, and the cheeky little blighter just happened to have a trunk full of water as we drove past that he tried to spray over us. I was surprised by how active all the animals were. Surely they can’t all have been nocturnal, but they were all up and about doing what they normally would. As well as the tour and the walking tracks, there was a demonstration show starring a number of the animals that was very entertaining. All and all it was a great way to spend the evening.

The next day was spent exploring the city on foot. We began by visiting the famous Raffles Hotel. It’s a glorious old colonial hotel built in 1887 and named after the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles. Its quite a fancy hotel with a shopping arcade full of all the top names for the rich guests to spend their millions on, and is also the place where the Singapore Sling cocktail was invented. You can buy one in the famous Long Bar, but its not cheap, so we chose not to. We poked our head in the main lobby which looked very impressive so decided to step inside to take a closer look, only for me to be turned away because I was wearing shorts and jandals. Emma on the other hand was permitted to enter and assures me it was very impressive inside.

After stopping off in one of the malls for a bite to eat we continued our journey down towards the river where we checked out the Singapore Flyer (their equivalent of the London Eye) and inspected sections of the F1 street circuit. We then followed the river along to Merlion Park, then across to look at Parliament and the impressive former and new Supreme Court buildings and City Hall. After watching a spot of cricket on The Padang we headed indoors again to an air conditioned mall to refresh ourselves with some iced Milo. Being from NZ I’d never really learnt to fully appreciate the comfort provided by air conditioning, but I cannot imagine life without it in Singapore. Singapore is the land of the shopping mall. There are hundreds of them, everywhere, but thank goodness there are as it provides a much needed place of refuge out of the heat.

We headed back outside again and made our way up the hill to walk through the park that was once Fort Canning, and back down the other side to Clarke Quay. Clarke Quay wasn’t just a cool name, it was also a cool spot along the Singapore River lined with bars and restaurants and tourist activities like reverse bungee etc. After wandering around there and taking photos of all the things named Clarke we continued back into town and down Orchard Road, bumping into a Changing of the Guard Ceremony outside the Presidential Palace. Then it was back to our hostel to pick up our gear and then off to the train station to catch our sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur.

The Tanjong Pagar train station is owned by the Malaysian government and is the terminal for railway services into Malaysia. The station was built in the early thirties and again has a pleasant colonial style. However stepping inside, it is immediately apparent that Malaysia is quite a different country than Singapore. The station was hot and crowded with no air conditioning. There was a bustling food court but without any of the usual neon advertising, or any advertising at all really, just simple straightforward menus and crowds of people eating authentic Asian foods. A large number of the crowd were wearing more religious dress and overall was a lot dirtier. There were even stray cats wandering round inside. Because the station is considered Malaysian land they operate a unique customs and immigration set up where you pass through Malaysian passport control prior to boarding the train, then pass through Singapore passport control just before you leave the island of Singapore. As a result you don’t get a Malaysian entry stamp in your visa as you can’t get stamped into a country before getting stamped out of another one. Instead they give you a piece of paper to keep in your passport to hand back to them when you leave Malaysia, if you don’t lose it first, and if you look at your passport you wouldn’t even know you’d been to Malaysia. We got on the train and found our beds in amongst the team of teenage footballers. We settled ourselves in, but knowing that in 30mins we’d have to get off the train at the border to be processed by Singaporean immigration I suggested that we should stay awake so we didn’t miss any important information. Sure enough 10mins into the journey the train guard came to clip our tickets, and wouldn’t you know it Emma, who was taking care of our tickets, was fast asleep and had no idea where she was or what was going on when I woke her up, much to the annoyance of the train guard. Once we were back on the train it didn’t take long until we were both out to it. The journey was better than I thought it would be and we didn’t have any trouble sleeping. Waking up in the middle of the night and staring out the window at the unfamiliar site of a moonlit jungle was certainly an interesting experience.

We got off the train at KL Sentral and decided to chill out for a while and have some breakfast and regain our bearings. As we were getting off the train we got talking to a Singaporean lady who had a house in Malaysia that she takes the train up to every weekend. She was a very friendly, chatty lady and quite out of the blue she guessed that Emma was a teacher. As we were resting in a café at the station she came over and sat with us and told us all about her life, her family and things to do and see in KL and Singapore. She was a very pleasant lady and was the first of many friendly people we would encounter in KL.

It wasn’t difficult getting from the station to our backpackers, but again we were way too early to check in so had to drop our bags and go exploring. We didn’t know much about KL and what it had to offer so the first thing we did was take the train to the KL City Centre to check out the Petronas Towers, which were once the worlds tallest buildings between 1998 and 2004 (they are still the world’s tallest twin towers). From the towers we wandered down to the tourist information centre and grabbed a map, then wandered around the city centre looking at all the landmarks on the map. It was raining gently all morning, but at about midday it began to bucket down monsoon style again, so we took refuge under the covered market of Pentaling Street, a popular tourist spot with all sorts of bargains, just behind our hostel. We eventually made it back to our hostel and were let in to our room, so we took some time to relax and refresh before heading out again. Again we did much of the same and went into a couple of the malls to try to get some dinner. While Singapore has a large quantity of malls, KL has absolutely massive ones. The first one we went in was called Times Square and includes a fun park at the very top, with a full sized roller coaster. Very impressive. And they were all very busy with shoppers. Walking round outside, KL feels quite dirty, crowded, smelly and polluted with masses of people and traffic and fumes. It seems a lot poorer than Singapore, but step inside one of these monsters and it’s a completely different storey. It feels very rich, modern and western.

As darkness fell we wandered around the city to check out the street life at night time, and headed back to the KL City Centre to have a look at the Petronas Towers all lit up. They are very impressive structures at night time, as are a number of the other nearby buildings, and are fairly imposing and dominant on the night time KL skyline. We then walked back to our hostel and around some of the markets and impressive looking older buildings near our hostel.

The next morning we slept in a little, then went and had a look around Merdeka (Independence) Square, the national mosque and the HQ of the Malaysian Railways, which is pretty impressive and looks more like a mosque in parts than the actual national mosque does. Then we headed back into town for some lunch at Pizza Hut (I know) and some NZ Natural ice cream. I understand that most of Asia is relatively cheap for us western travelers, but we were surprised at how expensive things were in KL. While the accommodation and travel was still reasonable, we didn’t notice much price difference to Singapore in a lot of stuff, and the price of a small pottle of NZ Natural ice cream was ridiculous.

We had a final walk around the city and through the KL City Centre park then back to our hostel and on to the train station for our return journey to Singapore. We had left our packs in a locked up storage room at the hostel, but when the guy went to get them we noticed that the room wasn’t locked and was open to anybody who wanted in. Needless to say we checked our bags very carefully before we boarded the train as it was entirely feasible that with such dodgy security someone might have planted something on us an we could soon be facing the death penalty. In fact, while the guys at the hostel were very friendly and normal looking dudes, they had asked us where we were going next on our trip and their friendly, normal appearance could have been a cover for a major drug trafficking ring, of which we could quite easily have become unsuspecting mules. We were being over cautious of course and letting all the horror stories you hear get to us, but I guess you never can be too careful given the severe consequences.

On the train on our way to the station we got talking to another very friendly Malay who was interested in the traveling we had done and why we’d done it, and took great pleasure in telling us about a recent holiday he had had in NZ.

Just as we got to the station the city was hit with an impressive thunder storm which made for some spectacular viewing from my little bed and made sure I was wide awake as we made our way out of KL. The train ride was a lot more stop and start this time round and we must have been close to some brakes as it was much louder every time we stopped and I didn’t get much sleep at all. There seemed to be a lot of times when we were stationary for long periods of time and even reversing now and then. Nevertheless we made it back to Singapore and faced the familiar task of dropping off our gear and amusing ourselves for a few hours before we could go back and change our clothes and take a shower.

Once we had dropped the gear off we headed down to Bugis Market which is a busy little market where a lot of the locals appear to do there shopping. We then took the MRT to the waterfront and took the monorail over to Sentosa Island. Sentosa Island is a beach resort with numerous beautiful white sand beaches and plenty of beachside bars, restaurants and attractions. We were desperate for a swim so spent a couple of hours in the nice warm waters, trying to keep from stepping on Stone Fish and looking out for Jellyfish. It was lovely to be able to bath in nice warm water with out losing the feeling in your extremities like you do in NZ, but you could hardly call it a refreshing dip.

After Sentosa Island we headed back to Clarke Quay and walked up and down the river looking for somewhere to eat, while trying to fend off the restaurateurs trying to convince us to choose their establishment. There was so much variety it made choosing very difficult, and it all looked so good. Eventually we settled on Hooters. Not what we had originally planned given where we were, but after a few days of Asian food we were ready for a good old western style meal and what better place to have it than in the first Hooters restaurant in Asia. It was a massive let down though. The food wasn’t too bad but the service was shit and the waitresses were more annoying than they were good to look at. This was also where I had my first beer of the trip. No, I haven’t turned over a new leaf and decided to cut back on the amber nectar, but the price of alcohol in Singapore is prohibitively expensive. A pint of the local tipple Tiger cost me a whopping $10 Singapore (that’s about $11 NZ). After dinner we worked off the calories by walking up through Orchard Road one last time before returning to our hostel for a good nights sleep before our flight to London the next day.

We had been given very mixed reviews of Singapore before we left, so weren’t expecting much from it. It is perhaps for this reason that we were pleasantly surprised by what we found and really enjoyed our time there. One of the main criticisms we’d heard before we left was that it’s a modern western city and, although its an Asian country, it doesn’t allow you to experience the true Asia. Well so what? Singapore is a rich country with a strong colonial history and a large western population in terms of both people and business. The rest of Asia is generally much poorer and the only westerners you’re likely to see are tourists. It should therefore come as no surprise that its not as ‘Asian’ as it might once have been, and why should it be? Its prospered for one reason or another, and so its developed along the same lines of other First World countries, which is exactly what a lot other Asian countries/cities are starting to do and will continue to do as they themselves start to prosper. Pretty soon you’ll probably struggle to find an ‘authentic’ Asian country anywhere. I would suggest that hardly any of the visitors to Singapore come here to get away from the western world and submerse themselves in Asian culture. Instead its more likely that 90% of them come here for a few days stop over, to break up a long haul flight and to take some time out to see somewhere that is a little bit different, but at the same time still very familiar. Which is exactly what we were doing. We wanted to break up the long flight to the UK and wanted to spend a few days somewhere that was new to us and a little bit different, but wouldn’t take much adjusting to. And if this is what you’re looking for then Singapore does it very well. It is an ideal stopover point, and it could be argued that it has actually developed its own culture and identity that is perhaps unique to itself and maybe similar popular stopovers like Dubai and Hong Kong. Its is this juxtaposition and integration of the Western and Asian cultures that I found to be one of the most intriguing things about Singapore. There is a high population of Malay and Chinese, as well as high populations of Westerners and Indians. English is the official language and most people speak it, but if you’re listening to conversations on the MRT or at a mall most people will be speaking Malay or Mandarin etc. The mix of language could also be considered reflective of the countries strong colonial past and position within the global economy. You regularly find place names like Farrer Park next to Kampong Java Park or Tihong Bahru Road intersecting with Henderson Road. I can’t think of too many other places where you would get such a mix and integration of place names, ethnicities or cultures, and I think it’s great.

Kuala Lumpur on the other hand is quite a different story. We both found KL surprisingly bland and dull and were quite happy to get back to Singapore. Like Singapore KL has a strong colonial past and so also has a strong western influence, but not to the same extent as Singapore. It has the tall buildings, the large shopping malls and the developed rapid public transit system, but it feels a lot more like what I’d expect the majority of Asian cities to feel like. It’s quite a bit dirtier, it’s busier, it’s less developed overall, there’s people and traffic everywhere, particularly those scooters whizzing around manically. Normally these sorts of things are experiences you would expect to find in most of Asia, but in amongst all the skyrises and shopping malls it doesn’t quite seem right. It’s like KL is trying to make its mark on the world as a modern global city, but isn’t quite pulling it off. It’s trying to follow in the footsteps of its much wealthier neighbour but still has a long way to go. As a result it really struggles to retain its own unique character and is lacking any strong identity and sense of ‘place’. That said we did have a good time there and met some very friendly people, and from what we saw we definitely want to go back to Malaysia and get out into the Jungle or the beaches, or up into the highlands.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Next stop Ireland

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Photos

Singapore
Local Fire department

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Guards, guarding the Presidential Palace

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Orchard Road

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Special ice-cream McDonalds, needed!!

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Gaz with cool fighting dude

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Mmmmmm

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I'm getting the hang of this

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Yes it is still raining after 2 hours!!

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Orchard Road in the downpour

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Locals waiting out the rain

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Botanic Gardens

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Pretty waterfall, Botanic Gardens

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Orchid Gardens

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Orchids

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Still raining, out come the ponchos

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Gaz eating orchids

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Orchid

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Orchid Garden

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Orchid Garden

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And out of the mist comes Gaz... da da da

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Orchid Garden

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An unusual foot treatment where tiny fish nibble away your dead skin, ewwwwwww. By the way we did not get this done!

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Night Safari - Cheetah

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Night Safari - Python

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Straight to the point - Do not trespass or we will shoot you!!

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Some impressive architecture

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Famous Raffles Hotel, 1887

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Raffles Hotel

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Raffles Hotel

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Raffles Hotal lobby

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Apartment block, look closely at how they dry their washing

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F1 race track

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Singapore Flyer

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Alot of cranes

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The hedgehog building, centre of performing arts.

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Merlion

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Emma quenching her thirst

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Mmm iced milo, very tastey and great when you are about to die from the heat!

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Clarke Quay, very nice place to hang

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Cool restaurant on Clarke Quay

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Old Supreme Court and City Hall

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New Supreme Court, flying saucer looking thing

Comments

[DAvid]

Brilliant
Great blog guys, you have exceeded your previous high standards!!!!!

[helen]

wowee!
im torn between being outrageously jealous that you are off travelling YET AGAIN!! and loving your logs gar, you really are a good writer! lots of love to you both, hope i see you again sometime soon, im coming to your wedding even if you dont invite me! xxxxx