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Published: March 6th 2007
Why didn't anyone tell us it was the rainy season in Singapore, someone out there must of known? The captain on our Tiger Airways flight from Phuket lied! His exact words were,"And the weather in Singapore is around 20 degress and partially cloudy but sunny". From the moment we landed to the moment we took off again it rained, and it rained hard! As you can imagine, coming from 4 weeks of lying on beaches getting sunburnt, we weren't prepared for this.
After landing and doing our now customary worrying about whether our bags would come out or not, we headed for the MRT, Singapores much cleaner, much cheaper, much more efficient version of the London underground. After ten minutes we worked out how to use the ticket machine and with a little (ok a lot!) of help from a very friendly young girl, we were on the right train heading for Kallang. We arrived at Kallang station twenty minutes later, and realised we now had no idea how to get to the hotel we had booked a few days earlier. With the heavy rain, walking around the streets trying to find it was not an option so we jumped in
a cab and took the 90 second drive to the Fragrance Hotel in the Heart of Singapores red light district! The hotel was what we expected small and basic, but we had stayed in alot worse already! A quick look out the window and no prostitutes yet but it was only 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
We dug our coats out from the bottom of our backpacks and then attempted to walk back to the MRT station to catch a train into the city. We got about 50 yards down the road and were completely soaked so we turned back and waited in the room til the rain eased up slightly. We eventually made it into the city a couple of hours later. First impressions big, clean and lots of shops. The whole city seemed to be linked by shopping malls, underground walkways and escalators to other shopping malls. If your big on shopping this was definately the place to be, but for two travellers on a budget, window shopping was the order of the day! We decided to head to chinatown for dinner, Rach was craving duck pancakes so we hunted some down. We decided we couldn't go for
drinks because it was too expensive, so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed hoping the next day would bring clearer skies.
No such luck, day 2 and more torrential rain! To escape the rain for a few hours we headed to underwater world on Sentosa Island. To get there we had to choose between three options, the bus, monorail or cable car. Having spent lots of time on buses and trains already we decided on the aerial route. If the skies were clearer the view would have been good but as they weren't we couldn't see much at all. However, we did see a lot of fish, sharks, stingray, jellyfish, swordfish, crabs and dolphins! We even found Nemo! After sinking a few tiger beers on Orchard Road (the Regent Street of Singapore) our evening was spent with Will Smith (in the cinema as it was too wet to wonder the streets!).
Our third and final day brought yet more rain but fortunately it stopped long enough for us to make a wish at the Fountain of Wealth, the biggest water fountain in the world. For some reason, the one night it had temporarily stopped raining, we
didn't get to see it in action with the laser show and music, typical! The rest of the day was spent trying to find accommodation for our arrival in Bali, which proved to be difficult as Singapore only seemed to have one internet cafe! We have now arrived safely in Bali, surf school starts tomorrow!...
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Taylor
non-member comment
Well looks like ya both as wet as we r in crawley right now, although the sun has got his hat on 2day! Sweet umbrella malc, doesnt suit u but does suit the yellow railing in the background (great photography rach!!). malc u love sharky & george and as for those spider crabs ..well, wouldn’t like to bump into 1of those!