Singapore

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Singapore!
 
We left Japan ready to embrace warmer climates - we’d both had colds since being in Japan and although Singapore was renowned for rain, we didn’t care - it was 30° and we were armed with waterproofs and umbrellas.  The torrential rain that greeted us at the airport was a bit of a shock, but Singapore is designed for rain and we made it to our backpacker hostel pretty dry thanks to all the underpasses and shopping malls on route.  We were staying in Little India, which was brilliant because it was just like being in India (ie all the awesome range of food), but it was clean!  And slightly surreal with all the different cultures (Chinese, India, Malay & Westerners) blended together, seeing a Chinese old man tucking into malasa dosai, and South Indian women in saris eating egg-fried rice!
 
Back at the hostel I got chatting to a very bubbly Scottish lass called Charlene, she was going out for some beers that night and as we’d been told that the best way to enjoy Singapore is partying, we joined her and a few other guys she’d met and went across the road to The Red Comrade (which was owned by a Singaporian guy called Kodo and wasn’t remotely Russian!...).  The flamboyant Kodo spent a large portion of the evening showering us with free drinks and teaching us how to make (and drink!) his house-special cocktail, the Kodo 66!  No complaints there!  Pleasantly drunk, we then headed to Clarke Quay, the glitzy party district, met a few Singaporians who became our hosts (and providers of more free alcohol!), and got our groove on to Rhythm and Blues and the latest popular music hits. Raaaa.
 
The next day we woke up bleary eyed, and figured at day at the beach was in order.  We went along with Charlene to Sentosa Island, a great man-made themed park/beach resort complex.  It was actually quite nice, except for the enormous oil refinery and container ships looming on the horizon!  We ate lunch at Café del Mar, and chatted (mostly about Charlene’s love life…) whilst the heavens opened and Singapore drowned for a couple of hours.
 
Rach and I then went off to visit Underwater World to meet the pink dolphins.  Sadly the dolphins had already met everybody and weren’t out to play, but we could still see them swimming around and had the treat of watching a seal playing around on a surfboard.  How random!  The actual aquarium area was good, except it was absolutely rammed and full of idiots flashing there cameras at sensitive deep-sea creatures despite hundreds of signs forbidding flash photography.  I’m sure Asia is decades behind the West on understanding animal welfare!
 
After persuading the girls to join in, our last bit of fun on Sentosa Island was having a go on the Luge - a downhill racetrack on go-kart/sledges.  Of course I won, but only by overtaking the girls on the ‘slow down’ section and briefly going into a sideways skid directly in front of the marshals, which happened to be perfect timing for when the automatic cameras took a photograph, showing my cartoon-style shocked face! :-p
 
The following day it was raining cats, dogs, and horses so we went shopping.  There was an awesome complex, rammed full of discount clothing that would make Primark seem a rip-off, but with one catch.  Most of the clothes were for Asians, so may as well have had ‘Age 10 - 14’ written on them.  Fortunately, we found some nice things and Rachel picked up a particularly fetching corset for £30! My kind of shopping!  An Asian family stopped at the shop entrance to watch this tall blonde western girl trying on rather sexy attire - the ten year old daughter looked inspired, and the grandfather looked delighted!
 
We visited Raffles, which was a bit of a disappointment as High Tea was self service!!!! Not quite what our friend Blouse had described.  Nevertheless, the scones were particularly tasty and our teas were drank pinky-up.
 
On our last evening in Singapore, we visited the Night Safari, which was excellent.  After a well delivered show featuring civit cats, golden leopards, otters, and an ‘escaped’ 10 foot python (that ‘turned up’ under the seat of a group of terrified Indian ladies!), we went on the safari and saw tens of different species.  The highlights were being literally a foot away from giant fruit bats (one of whom took a dump whilst grinning directly in front of us), and later Rachel getting leared at by a spotted hyena a few metres away.  All the animals looked well and conservation was massively promoted there, so it all felt very good and we left three hours later feeling very happy.
 
We took one more nights sleep in our cramped single bed (another darn hostel where twin rooms meant bunk beds!), and took our flight to Borneol.

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Photos

Captions on a postcard please
from little india

Party time!
At the Red Comrade

Urk!
Rich looses control of his face

Vampire bats
at the night zoo

Safety first
on the luge

Trout pout
Our friend Theo was at the night zoo

Contrasts
View from the luge