Singapore slip ups

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The bus arrived …… not in the bus station but a short walk down the road and not quite the one in the photo, but with seats that were old, not very well attached and bounced up and down every time we went over a bump. Despite its condition it was more spacious than UK buses, with a single seat on one side and two on the other - so I could still walk when we got off the bus 6 hours later.

Crossing the international border between Malaysia and Singapore was interesting - off the bus to see Malaysian customs and get our passport departure stamp, back on the bus for a 2 minute drive across the bridge and ‘no-mans land’, then off the bus again, but this time with all our luggage for Singapore customs to perform x-ray checks and give us our arrival passport stamp.

Hoping everyone had made it through customs we then had a half hour drive into the center of Singapore for another short city visit of 3 days, before leaving for China. That brings me to the important part of our visit to Singapore, which was getting our Chinese Visa. This was a 2-day process which all went smoothly, with a few queues, but nothing compared to the half a mile of people we experienced in London at the Indian Embassy. The transport system is famously efficient and the bus drivers were amazingly helpful, telling us when to get off and pointing us in the direction of the Chinese Embassy. After sorting out the visa we just had time to wander past lots of shops and not buy anything (apart from contact lenses) and visiting the well thought of Singapore zoo.

The zoo was interesting, it has a good reputation for its breeding programs and support of other conservation projects, the White Tigers for example which are extinct in the wild. Having said that we did see some unfortunately common zoo behavior from some of the animals, an elephant which stood in the corner facing the wall and swung its head back and forth, a rather sad looking turtle stagnating in is pool with a nasty skin complaint and an apathetic group of Orangutans that had seen it all before. The way one of them wandered over to the golf buggy and got in the passenger seat without any direction shows the extent of their routine. But it is a difficult call - the 20 school kids who saw the orangutans close up and got to ask questions will no doubt remember their day and hopefully go home with an increased environmental awareness. I guess education of the public has long been the justification for zoo’s, unfortunately for some zoo’s this has long been the excuse for making money out of caged animals in wholly unsuitable enclosures. We’re not putting Singapore zoo in the category of the ‘classic’ polar bear sitting in a concrete pond full of green water with the sun beating down on him, but given its reputation we were a little surprised at the size of the enclosures and the behaviour of some of the animals.

I was going to say ‘on to a lighter note’, but it was actually very traumatic for me when we were caught in tropical downpour at the zoo, complete with thunder and lightning and by slipping up I managed to break one of my flip-flops. Now call me sad, but flip-flops come a close second in the sentimentality stakes to my favourite shorts and despite the fact we had already mended them once, I wasn’t happy to see them die… They did undergo one final repair with the help of some string off the rucksack, but only enough to see me back into town, where after a simple ceremony they were laid to rest in the hostel waste bin. I like to think a piece of me is still in Singapore (or a landfill nearby) till this day.

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