Starting out in Singapore

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So, it was finally time for me to pack my bags and get ready to go.... and it turns out getting a years worth of stuff into bags when there is a 30kg weight restriction is not easy to say the very least. After getting lost on the way to Heathrow and saying goodbye to the family (and Valdez) we set off on the long and boring flight to Singapore.
The 30-something degree heat and ~90% humidity definitley hit us when we started to wander round, I was almost dying after about 10 minutes. Anyway, the area where our hostel was was called Little India, an where Singapore's Indian community live (no shit). It was nice just to spend the afternoon wandering round, where we found a couple of Hindu temples (which we made to look proper old but are actually like 70s built), a big market centre which sold literally EVERYTHING, including approximately 23547657 pirated bollywood dvds. There were loads of small shops on the side of the road with indian families haggling over gold jewellry, those colourful indian clothes that people wear, and incense burning everywhere. In this sense the area had much in common with half of Birmingham. After a few hours of aimless wandering, we ended up in some random bar on the side of the road which looked like literally nothing from the outside, but a guy showed us in (the aircon was a big lure I'm not going to lie) and we were inside what can only be described as the Singaporean version of the rainforest cafe, with dark lighting, model animals everywhere, and random bird noises coming from every corner.
After drinks when we got back to the room I made the classic Tom Russell mistake of having a nap when I should have really just gone to bed. I woke up at like ten just as the others were going to bed and I was awake as anything (fml). Not wanting to keep the others awake, I took my book downstairs and across the road to the little restaurant to read my book. I ordered some random noodle dish not knowing what it was because the guy said it was good, when it came it was an amazing prawn/fish noodle thing, although I only got chopsticks, which is fine with the thin dry galaxy/charlie chans noodles, but these were massive thick egg ones in a sauce, so the resulting scene of me trying in some form to get the food into my mouth ended up being a horrendouly embarassing situation where about a dozen pairs of locals were looking at me like the retard in the corner who couldn't use chopsticks whatsoever.

Waking up the next morning, we decided to go to the rainforest, which has been cut down a lot in Singapore, but there's still more than 7000 acres left. After navigating the Singaporean public transport system we decided to do the 3km walk, as the 35 degree day probably wouldn't let us go much further - but in the end for some reason or another we thought it would be a good idea to do the longest walk which was a horrendous 11km. We did manage to see some monkeys, lizards and turtles, which made it worthwhile despite the fact that much as I nearly died from exhaustion towards the end. After collapsing temporarily on our hostel beds, we headed out to the Raffles hotel (some apparently famous hotel which everyone at home I spoke to seemed to know about even though I didn't) where we had a cocktail that was invented there called the Singapore Sling (again, never heard of it before). It was the best cocktail I've ever had (even if it was only like the 4th in my life) but at 17 quid a go we didn't stay for another. We then headed for a food market for dinner, I got some random boiled shellfish (amazing) and the woman also gave me some raw cockles to try (definitely not amazing).

After the previous day's trek through the rainforest, we decided to take the day off and have a relaxing beach day. Considering it's an equatorial island, Singapore doesn't have many natural beaches at all - the one at Sentosa is artificial (thanks wikipedia). After the beach we went for cocktails (again) and then headed to chinatown - we found this was one of the best areas of Singapore, especially in the evening as the streets were packed with people browsing round the hundreds of shops selling all sorts of random chinese bric-a-brac, all below the endless lines of chinse lanterns lighting the streets. We ate outside at a small chinese cafe and had almost definitely the best chinese of my life. We spent the following day wandering round Orchard Rd - this is the Singaporean eqiuvalent of Oxford Street, and one of the most exclusive areas - hence most of the morning consisted mainly of looking through windows into shops where a single item would be more valuable than my entire suitcase. Afterwards, we left the comfort of the airconditioned malls to brave the heat once more and go to the Singapore Botanical Gardens - without doubt one of the nicest, most peaceful places I have ever been. We spent a few hours wandering round the various gardens (the track with the ancient trees and plants was one of the best) before heading back to the hostel where I said goodbye-for-now to Will and Katrina - an STA Travel cock-up meant that they ended up flying on to Perth a day before me.

This meant I had my last day to myself - I spent the morning trekking miles in the pissing rain to try and find a post office for my postcards - so it is an understatement to say I was irritated when I found out that the hostel both sells stamps and has a postbox... Why the guy at the counter didn't tell me this and instead gave me (wrong) directions continues to confuse me. On the plus side, by the time I had found the post office, the rain had stopped so I made my way to Singapore Zoo. Being my usual retarded self, I struggled to find the bus stand that I needed to get there, so I sacked it off for half an hour to go get a pie. When I finally got some good directions, I got to the zoo quickly and spent most of the afternoon wandering round the various enclosures of 'standard' zoo animals that you'd find anywhere, as well as many exhibitions which were specific to the South East Asia area - the Malaysian Sun Bears were particularly good to watch run around, as were the dozens of chimps and orangutans. Random fact of the day was that orangutan actually means 'Man of the Forest' in the Malay language.

Heading home from my final Singaporean outing, I had the most stressful hailing of a taxi experience that I've ever had in my life (how an earth it can take an hour to get a taxi in a city of that size is beyond me), I got the the airport hoping only for me (and my bags) to make it problem-free to Perth.....

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