Singapore

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We arrived in Singapore after hearing many Malaysians complain about the expense of the place. On that note if you know where to go you can still eat for less than 3 quid, there is still a high sin tax though, so again drinking was a no no. We arrived on Sunday lunchtime about 7 hours before the famous Singapore GP, I had the idea that because the circuit loops around the city centre there would be somewhere where I could stand and watch a tiny bit of the race free of charge. However after hours of searching I could not find a vantage point anywhere, the authorities covered all the barriers facing out the track with black tarpaulin. The cheapest tickets I could find were about 50 pounds, so I decided against the GP in order to go and see an Ashes test once we are in Australia. Despite not being able to see anything I hung around for the start, and the noise was deafening. It was like the whole city was engulfed with constant thunder.

The following day we decided to do a bit of sightseeing, and headed to Sentosa Island, which is an Island detached from Singapore by only a couple hundred meters, it used to have nothing on it but now it is like a theme park, there are lots of things to do and see, including 3 manmade beaches which compared to the rest of South East Asia are pretty poor. There is also an aquarium and a Universal Studios theme park on the small island. One problem though, it decided to rain for pretty much the whole time we where there so doing anything was a bit of a lost cause.

If you are in Singapore you can’t avoid the shopping, you cannot walk 50 meters in any direction without coming across an air conditioned shopping mall, all of which are huge and useful to escape the heat and peruse the designer goods even if like me you cannot afford to buy.

On the 3rd day I went for a sightseeing tour, and if sky scrapers are your thing then you just cannot beat this place, it will be interesting to see how New York compares but when it comes to cleanliness I doubt anywhere could stand up to Singapore, you could count on one hand the pieces of litter I’ve seen, and I think chewing gum is illegal as I haven’t seen any in the shops and there is no sign of it anywhere on the streets. I also had a little walk around the GP track which they were still in the process of dismantling at the time.

That is all for the South East Asia installment, as in a few hours I will be on a plane bound for northern Australia.

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